The heavy transport convoy wound through the dark pine forests of the Western Hills.
Freezing mountain mist clung to the asphalt like shredded wool. At the base of a sheer granite cliff forty miles west of the capital, Qin Haoran’s military jeep pulled off the winding road onto a hidden gravel clearing.
Qin Haoran jumped down, holding an encrypted biometric passkey against a rusted electrical transformer box hidden behind the frozen brambles.
With a deep mechanical shudder, a thirty-foot section of the moss-covered cliff face slid backward, revealing a reinforced blast tunnel lined with heavy steel ribs.
“This bunker was carved fifty years ago during the cold war,” Qin Haoran explained as he jogged back to the truck. “When supernatural rifts began tearing open twenty years ago, the state turned this underground fortress into the Ninth Bureau’s primary northern garrison. But funding cuts over the last five years have left it falling apart.”
Tie Niu shifted the lead forty-foot semi-truck into low gear. The turbocharger whistled as the three massive trucks rolled smoothly into the subterranean entrance.
Lin Mo looked out through the windshield.
The descent was steep, spiraling hundreds of meters down into the cold granite bedrock. Damp air smelled of coolant, ozone, and old rock dust.
