As the massive doors swung fully open, Li Wei and Deng Yu led their team cautiously into the shelter.

Although they had prepared themselves mentally, the conditions inside the shelter still took them by surprise.

Perhaps because it had been sealed shut for so long, the facilities inside the shelter were remarkably well-preserved.

On the corridor walls, they could faintly make out propaganda posters from the era. Though the colors had faded, they could still decipher some of the slogans meant to encourage the residents.

The tiled floor was covered in only a light layer of dust. It didn’t look like it had been sealed for centuries, but rather as if the owner had just gone on a long trip and the place hadn’t been cleaned for a while.

The lights flickered on automatically, illuminating the entire hallway and bringing a small measure of comfort to the team.

Li Wei glanced at the map on his wrist and said to Deng Yu, who was beside him:

"According to the plan, I’ll take the administrator’s office on the first floor, and you take the archive room on the second floor."

"Our objective is to find the hard drive. Don’t touch any equipment that might trigger something dangerous."

Deng Yu nodded.

"Understood."

With that, he turned to look at the Mercenaries behind him.

"Squads 3 and 4, with me."

At Deng Yu’s command, the Mercenaries from Squads 3 and 4 quickly gathered by his side.

Deng Yu led them up the stairs toward the second floor of the shelter, while Li Wei led the remaining men toward the administrator’s office on the first floor.

Li Wei and Deng Yu led their separate teams toward their respective destinations.

The shelter’s alarm blared in their ears, but no hostile robots or traps appeared, which allowed Li Wei to breathe a small sigh of relief.

’Perhaps the robots inside the shelter broke down centuries ago.’

’Right now, the only thing probably still running is the shelter’s artificial intelligence system.’

His mood lightened slightly at the thought.

After all, he had witnessed the power of some pre-Cataclysm robots.

Some of the more powerful warbots could even overwhelm a regular armed force with sheer numbers.

If they ran into a full combat unit of them, he’d be riddled with holes, even in power armor—let alone the simple exoskeleton he was currently wearing.

The team moved silently through the corridors.

Recreation Room, Fitness Center, Medical Bay—the team passed one room after another, each marked with a different nameplate.

All the room doors were sealed shut, their electronic locks glowing with a red indicator light.

Many of the Mercenaries stared at the perfectly preserved rooms, their eyes glinting with a mixture of surprise and greed.

The vast majority of them had been inside one or more shelters before—ones that had been opened prematurely.

However, none of them had ever seen a shelter like this, one that had never been opened at all.

Staring at the rows of sealed doors, any fear or caution they might have had was quickly replaced by greed.

In the wasteland, only a few large organizations and factions had the ability to produce their own supplies. Everyone else basically survived by scavenging junk from the ruins.

Even for those large organizations with production capabilities, the things they could make were a far cry from pre-Cataclysm quality.

A completely untouched shelter like this one was bound to hold vast quantities of precious equipment and supplies.

Of course, Li Wei quickly noticed the change in his team.

He saw that some of the Mercenaries were already reaching out, unable to resist touching the electronic locks on the doors.

Li Wei’s eyes narrowed. After a moment, he barked in a low voice:

"Don’t forget your mission."

"The primary objective is to get the computer hard drive from the administrator’s office on the first floor."

"Once I have that hard drive, you’ll have plenty of time to explore this shelter."

"Whatever supplies you find in here, our academy won’t take any of it."

"If you perform well, I might even lend you the access cracker I have on me."

"But before I have that hard drive, if anyone makes a reckless move and triggers the defense systems, I absolutely will not hold back."

Li Wei had a good read on these Mercenaries. He knew that simply suppressing them would likely cause them to push back.

So, along with the warning, he offered them bait they couldn’t refuse.

Hearing Li Wei’s warning, the Mercenaries who had been itching to act immediately drew back.

To be honest, in the face of absolute profit, they didn’t really care much about what Li Wei said.

If the supplies in the shelter had nothing to do with them, these twenty Mercenaries might have swarmed Li Wei, killed him, and plundered the place themselves.

Twenty battle-hardened Mercenaries who lived on the edge... if they truly wanted to take on Li Wei, they actually stood a chance of winning in the tight confines of the shelter.

However, as Li Wei had pointed out, their relationship at the moment wasn’t adversarial, but mutually beneficial.

Besides, even if they could use the terrain to their advantage and kill Li Wei, they probably wouldn’t be able to leave the shelter alive.

After all, there were still two suits of power armor guarding the entrance.

Li Wei’s warning was like a bucket of cold water, temporarily extinguishing the Mercenaries’ greed.

However, just as they were preparing to press on, a dense whirring of machinery echoed from around the corner ahead.

The next moment, eight waist-high, tracked robots appeared in their line of sight.

The tracked robots looked rather plain, their bodies consisting of a hemispherical metal shell connected to four independently rotating tracks below.

On top of the metal shell were two cameras with glowing red indicator lights, and on either side were mobile firing platforms equipped with gun-like devices.

As soon as they appeared, the tracked robots immediately locked onto Li Wei and the Mercenaries. Their cameras flashed red continuously, as if analyzing and assessing the intruders.

Li Wei’s expression turned grim. He hadn’t expected to encounter the shelter’s defense robots so soon.

He subconsciously glanced up at the cameras on the ceiling.

He had noticed these cameras earlier, but because they had no active indicator lights, he had assumed they were long-since broken from years of neglect.

However, judging by how quickly these defense robots had pinpointed their location, it was clear the seemingly broken cameras were still secretly operational.

The endlessly repeating alarm suddenly changed.

"Warning! Warning! Unauthorized intrusion detected. Please evacuate immediately!"

"Warning! Warning! Intruders detected in Sector C045, first floor. No identification markers. Carrying multiple weapons. Threat level: one."

"Initiating emergency defense protocols. Purging all intruders."

[PS: The novel is going premium this weekend! I’m counting on all you handsome gentlemen and Beauties to help out with those first-day subscriptions. Thank you!]

[PS2: Thank you all for the monthly tickets and gifts. Thanks again!]