12 Chapter 12 Excavators

What can ten thousand yuan do in modern society?

Buy one-twentieth of a toilet in Yin City's City Centre?

Stay at a bathhouse for an extra three days?

Buy a room full of leek boxes and lie in them?

One of the things Li Ang said to the possessing ghost yesterday was true; he really had a part-time job as a home tutor, and due to Li Ang's grades, the pay for this side job was not low.

However, Yin City is still the economic center of the Republic, an international city known for finance, shipping, trade, and technology innovation, with high consumption, expensive goods, and difficult living conditions.

The part-time job's salary could only cover rent, utilities, internet fees, and daily expenses, and spending a little more could lead to a deficit crisis.

Usually, Li Ang was so frugal that he wished he could split a one-yuan coin in half to save money; suddenly getting more than ten thousand yuan in cash naturally meant he had to plan and budget carefully.

He opened Taobao and started shopping.

CQB Tactical Bulletproof Vest, anti-stab gloves, anti-shrapnel goggles, all-black tactical pants with built-in knee pads, Tactical Boots, high-intensity flashlights, anti-wolf sprays, anti-wolf tasers, seamless steel pipes, Camping Hatchet, Cold Steel's Little Tuna folding knife, nail guns, high-strength towing ropes used for sailboats, empty oil drums, various machine tools including small punch presses, junior high school laboratory equipment including alcohol burners and flasks, copper material, wood, chemical fertilizers, motorcycle shock absorber pipes...

All these items were purchased using different Taobao accounts, and the delivery addresses were scattered throughout Yin City; the total cost of all the items was just enough to spend the entire ten thousand yuan.

In the days waiting for the items to be delivered, Li Ang didn't idle; he searched the internet for local urban legends in Yin City, following the philosophy of trying three times whether there are dates or not.

Players only receive rewards after completing tasks, and the best way to trigger tasks is to conduct field investigations and personally encounter those spooky, supernatural events.

Things like creepy laughter echoing in the corridors of apartment buildings at midnight, green slime seeping out of the walls of rental houses, and long strands of hair appearing under the pillows of single men every day.

In the past few days, Li Ang visited the addresses where many supernatural events occurred, but unfortunately found nothing, not knowing if it was because these events were purely fictional or had already been solved by other players.

Li Ang also had a puzzle about this: with the development of the Kill Zone game to this point, it was unclear whether supernatural events occurred around the players or if they were randomly generated and attracted players.

If it was the former, that would be relatively manageable, but if it was the latter, that would be bad— who knows how many supernatural events had already occurred and had not been discovered by players or national authorities...

The number of victims in such cases would be a terrifying figure...

Eventually, Li Ang arrived at the very center of all urban legends in Yin City—Qianhua Road.

This road is located in the People's Square area at the center of Yin City and is one of the busiest commercial streets.

At the beginning of the last century, this street was included in the French Concession territory and large scale neighborhoods with a strong French style were built. With the breakout of the October Revolution, Tsarist Russian nobility who fled from the North to this place opened high-end shops that revered French culture.

Amidst the changes of time and world events, today's Qianhua Road still maintains its luxurious and elegant atmosphere, with hundred-year-old buildings blending with modern international apex luxury shops, creating a world-class commercial street.

Simply put, Qianhua Road is extremely valuable.

Next to Qianhua Road, on the top floor of a shopping mall, inside a café, Li Ang held the shop's cheapest coffee, sitting by the window. He watched a news video on his phone while gazing through the glass at Qianhua Road below.

Barricade signs were placed at both ends of that road, shop doors and windows on both sides were tightly shut, and all idle personnel had been evacuated, leaving only the maintenance staff in orange uniforms and fire engines on the street.

"At around 3 P.M. yesterday afternoon, a gas pipeline leaked on Qianhua Road. Maintenance workers rushed to the scene for repairs. Traffic police and the fire department also carried out temporary closures of the road section and watered down the gas-seeping road surface."

"As of now, the leak hazard has been largely controlled, and the specific time for lifting the roadblock is still pending further notice from the fire department."

A gas pipeline leak? Don't make me laugh.

Li Ang shook his head. On either side of Qianhua Road were either large shopping malls, headquarters of Fortune 500 companies, or internationally renowned luxury shops. Saying that this street was a golden basin raking in money every day wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Money can make the devil turn the millstone; if it were really a firefighting task, under the dual pressures of economics and administration, the crisis would likely have been quickly resolved, and the road reopened by now.

After being sealed for so long and without any intention of unsealing, it could only be related to extraordinary powers...

Li Ang sipped his coffee, watching those "maintenance workers" on Qianhua Road discuss for a while, then along came a... super-sized rotary drilling rig.

This type of drilling rig weighed at least a hundred tons, with a drilling diameter of 1 to 2.5 meters, and capable of reaching depths up to 100 meters, generally used for the large bridge piles of highways and railway bridges.

Now, the colossal drilling machine, with its tracks turning, recklessly drove onto the commercial street. After the maintenance workers set up the casing, the drill bit gently touched the concrete ground and began to rotate and excavate with a roar.

One meter, two meters...

The drill bit slowly descended, the noise cut across the street, and the vibration spread outwards, causing ripples in Li Ang's coffee on the table.

Forty meters, sixty meters, eighty meters...

Gas pipelines definitely weren't buried that deep, so what were they digging for?

Li Ang quietly put on his sunglasses and casually popped in the Cat's Eye.

With a bit of added Perception Attribute, combined with the acute vision of the Cat's Eye, Li Ang could meticulously observe every action of the maintenance workers.

Boom!

The steadily sinking drill bit suddenly halted, startling Ding Zhensi, the driver inside the rotary drilling rig.

Ding Zhensi, just twenty years old, was a top graduate from the Lanxiang Technical School in Shandong Province, known for "which school is the best in excavator technology." He could carve with CNC machines, cook with the scoop of excavators, and drift a hand-push tractor as if it were an F1 race car.

He was battle-hardened, and if the Republic ever had Gundam Troops, Ding Zhensi would undoubtedly become an ace pilot.

But now, Ding Zhensi, gripping the control stick of the rotary drilling rig, was somewhat at a loss.

"Has the drill bit reached the bottom?!" a voice came from the walkie-talkie hanging above the driver's cabin.

"No!" Ding Zhensi took the walkie-talkie and said, "It seems like we have a stuck bit! We should use a small percussion drill to clean the area around the bit first, and then pull out the bit..."

Before he could finish, another loud bang emanated from underground.

Boom!

Eighty meters underneath, a tremendous force tugged at the drill bit. The immense strength traveling along the telescopic drill rod caused the hundred-ton behemoth on the surface to suddenly tilt up, slowly tipping forward like in slow motion.

The surrounding maintenance workers were dumbfounded, watching as the drilling machine completely toppled over.

The weight of a hundred tons crashing to the ground was thunderous, with dust billowing into the sky.

The twisted, distorted metal frame of the rotary drilling rig scattered, and Ding Zhensi, dazed from the shock, crawled out of the shattered driver's cabin by survival instinct and fell to the ground.

The nearby maintenance workers hurried over to drag him away, retreating backward.

The overturned drilling rig, with most of the drill rod still underground, followed the third resounding boom from beneath the earth. The lengthy drill rod, painted in red, was forcefully pulled into the ground, vanishing from sight!

It was as if... something underground got angry because it was disturbed...

Inside the coffee shop, young men and women who heard the loud noise all gathered at the windows, pointing at the dust-covered Qianhua Road and taking videos.

Li Ang, hidden in the crowd, withdrew his gaze, downed the coffee on the table in one gulp, and left the building.

No matter what it was deep beneath Qianhua Road, it was not something he could afford to provoke right now.

One must fight monsters level by level, complete tasks one by one; to aim too high is only to die faster.