One week passed.
Not quickly, nor noisily, but a kind of passing that made people begin to doubt their own judgment.
The room temporarily requisitioned as an investigation station was located on the upper floor of an old steel warehouse in Iron City. Cold gray metal walls, low-hanging fluorescent lights, shining down on a desk full of maps, notes, and communication devices.
The middle-aged male stood before a narrow window, looking down at the flow of people and transport vehicles below. Iron City still operated like any other day, loud, chaotic, and completely indifferent to the fact that someone had once killed an entire power in a single night.
Behind him, two people stood in a line.
No one spoke first.
Finally, the young officer spoke.
"Report."
The middle-aged man did not turn his head. "Speak."
"Chúng tôi đã rà soát toàn bộ Thành Phố Sắt trong phạm vi kiểm soát." "The list of newcomers, strangers, close-combat ability users, and people carrying cold weapons—no one matches."
He paused for a bit.
"There is no man carrying a sword."
A very simple sentence.
But it caused the atmosphere in the room to sink heavily.
"Suspicious places?" the middle-aged man asked.
"Checked." "Underground workshops, the arena district, the black market, private forges, and even gangs operating off the books."
The young officer tightened his grip. "Nothing."
The middle-aged man turned around.
His gaze was not angry, nor disappointed; it was just cold.
"So that means," he said slowly, "a person who can kill an entire weapons research corporation, without using guns, without triggering alarms, without leaving living witnesses…"
He looked at each person one by one.
"…yet leaves no trace of daily life in this city."
No one answered.
"Possibility is that he is hiding somewhere, a place that no one knows or even thinks of."
The room was silent.
The young officer hesitated a bit, then opened a large map hanging on the wall. Not an administrative map, but an old topographical map from before Iron City expanded.
"Sir," he said, pointing to a region outside the steel belt.
"In a fifty-kilometer radius around Iron City… there are three areas not within practical control."
The middle-aged man stepped closer.
"Speak."
"First: the deadly forest to the west, heavily contaminated, no extraction value." "Second: the subsidence zone to the south, unstable terrain." "Third…"
The finger stopped at a blurred gray patch.
"…the deep forest region to the northeast. No resources, no routes, no base. Only marked as 'not recommended for approach'."
The middle-aged man looked for a long time at that point.
"Has anyone lived there before?"
"No records." "But no team has ever stayed for more than three days."
He nodded very lightly.
"Then it is logical."
The other three looked at him simultaneously.
"A person who does not want to be found," the middle-aged man said, his voice deep and firm, "will not stay where there are people."
He placed his hand on the map.
"Investigate again the entire area around Iron City." "Not the city." "But the places that were ignored."
Three days passed.
Then four days.
The three people almost turned Iron City upside down.
Lower-floor residential areas, old resettlement zones, abandoned factories, underground sewage pipes, the scrap yard in the south, pre-apocalypse storage warehouses—not a single place was missed.
On the sixth day, the atmosphere in the room became heavy; no one spoke in a loud voice anymore. The map spread on the tabletop was densely marked. Crossed-out areas covered almost all of Iron City and its surrounding vicinities.
Only a single empty space remained in the northeast, a gray patch no one had touched.
The middle-aged man stood for a long time before the map, not touching it at all. His gaze stopped at that area, for a very long time.
"Now only one point remains."
No one answered him.
He stood straight, his eyes staring fixedly at the map of that deadly forest region.
"Prepare to move!"
"Understood."
No one asked further.
The three separated from the map table. The lights in the room dimmed gradually, leaving only the faint red light from the emergency control panel. Armor was donned, straps tightened. Magazines loaded. Daggers sheathed at the hip. Probing devices hung on chests, though no one expected them to function well in that area.
Fifteen minutes later, they left Iron City.
The boundary of the deadly forest had no markers, only an abrupt change in the world.
Completely different from the machine-filled interior of Iron City, here it was only surrounding trees enveloping everything, mutated species several times taller than normal trees, the soil here unusually lush, trees standing crowded, trunks twisted and gnarled.
There were no sounds of birds, or animals at all; perhaps they had not gone deep enough to meet them.
Only the sound of footsteps treading on the rotted leaf layer emitted an unpleasant noise.
The middle-aged man led the way, hand ready on his gun hilt. The other two also widened the formation, keeping enough distance not to obscure vision.
Before they had gone far, they saw the first thing.
A low bush, leaves thicker and darker than the other plant species they had met so far. On the surface were deep red spots like dried blood. When the wind blew past, those leaves shriveled slightly, emitting a very light rustling sound, unlike a normal tree.
"Do not touch."
The middle-aged man spoke.
They began to bypass it; as they went deeper, the ground began to show thin cracks, inside which was a dark viscous fluid moving slowly, as if they were breathing.
Suddenly—
"Stop!"
The person following behind just lifted a foot then froze mid-way.
Beneath his foot, the soil layer bulged slightly, the surface vibrating very lightly.
The middle-aged man slowly turned his head, his gaze lowering.
"Do not move."
The other two stood still.
The soil layer beneath that man's foot suddenly split apart.
It was not soil.
It was a ring of thick, closed petals, gray-black in color, densely packed inside with retracting flesh-thorns. In the center, a small gap opened, exhaling a pungent stench of old blood.
Just set the foot down once more, and that leg would disappear immediately.
Cold sweat ran down the back of the man caught in the trap.
The middle-aged man slowly drew the dagger at his hip, crouched down, the blade stabbing straight down into the "flower's" edge. The plant convulsed violently, emitting a hoarse screech as if being strangled.
"Lift your foot." "Right now."
The man followed, bit by bit.
When the foot left, that flower immediately snapped shut, the two thorn-edges colliding with a clack.
The three took a step back.
No one said anything.
The middle-aged man looked around the gloomy forest before him, his gaze turning completely cold.
He signaled to continue advancing.
They changed formation immediately.
The distance between each person was pulled tight, footsteps significantly lighter and slower. No one stepped straight onto the ground anymore, but used the boot-tips to tap ahead each step, testing the ground's reaction before exerting force.
The deeper they went, the more deformed the forest became.
Trunks were gnarled as if twisted, roots protruding entirely above ground, tangled together like blood vessels exposed outside skin. On the bark grew dark tumors, occasionally retracting lightly, pulsating with a rhythm of unknown origin.
The middle-aged man leading raised his hand to signal a stop.
Before them, a clearing opened up, the ground sagging into a shallow basin. Inside were vines like arms, covered in thorns, lying still as if dead.
"Go around," the middle-aged man said briefly.
Before they could step, a small stone, kicked loose by the footsteps behind, rolled into the basin.
Immediately—
The vines jerked violently.
They coiled around the stone, tightened, then pulled it back down into the earth. A dry crack sounded; the stone was crushed into powder.
No one said anything.
They quietly retreated, choosing another route.
Advancing less than two hundred meters more, the stench in the air suddenly intensified. On a leaning trunk, they saw hanging several pieces of dry bone, unclear if human or beast, pierced through and fixed there by thin root filaments.
The man following swallowed hard.
"This place…" he whispered.
"Silence," the middle-aged man interrupted.
He leaned down, picked up a dry branch, and threw it forward.
The branch fell; there was no reaction.
But only a few seconds later, the ground around that spot moved slightly, thin cracks spread like a spiderweb then slowly closed shut.
He looked deep into the forest, where light had almost completely vanished.
The three continued advancing, gradually disappearing among the distorted trunks, while behind their backs, the ground silently closed as if no intruder had ever set foot there.
Suddenly there was a sound that came very abruptly.
Not loud, but clear.
Amidst the deadly forest with almost not a single natural sound, the sound of flowing water became so out of place that all three stopped almost simultaneously.
The middle-aged man tilted his head, listening.
Not an hallucination.
Every flow-rhythm was very steady, continuous, bent by trees and terrain, but still enough to distinguish from the wind or something crawling under the ground.
"Stream," he said briefly.
The team changed direction.
In less than ten minutes, the vegetation began to thin out. Protruding tree roots gradually decreased, the soil beneath feet became damper, softer. The stench in the air faded, replaced by the smell of cold water mixed with algae and moss.
The stream appeared between two jagged rock banks.
The water did not flow swiftly, but was very deep. The stream stretched in a fixed direction, winding through the forest then pouring straight out to the distant sea.
The three stood still observing.
There were no carnivorous plants near the water's edge. No moving vines. The water surface was abnormally still.
"Move along the stream," the middle-aged man said.
No need for further explanation.
If there were people living in this forest, they could not separate from the water source. Not for convenience but out of necessity.
They moved along the stream bank, keeping a safe distance from the water's edge. Old boot prints mixed in the mud were very quickly erased by the water, but in a few soft earth sections, there were still faint depressions, unclear if footprints or just natural ground subsidence.
The man in front crouched down, lightly touching a stone slab near the bank.
"Someone has sat here before."
A very small, unnatural wear mark.
The middle-aged man looked up the stream, his gaze following the direction of the water flow.
"Not far," he said.
Suddenly there was a voice echoing from behind them.