I started by watching videos, and I chose 10,000 combat power.

Luo Fei frowned slightly, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the edge of the table, but his tone remained calm: "Can you pinpoint their location? Is there anything I can do?"

Amidst the static on the other end of the phone, Old Wu's voice was even more urgent than before: "Captain Chu has already led reinforcements. They're all wearing armor, and we've located them using the thermal imagers on their armor. Breaking through the outer barriers to rescue them shouldn't be a problem."

"However, the seriously injured students... must be sent to the medical ward in Kyoto immediately for treatment, otherwise it may be too late..."

"Even if Captain Chu personally escorts them from here to Kyoto... given the children's injuries, they probably won't last that long..."

His voice paused for a moment after saying "can't last that long".

"I see."

Luo Fei responded in a deep voice.

"Don't worry, I'll go and handle it."

Before he could finish speaking, he had already hung up the phone.

With a slight thought, he vanished silently from the room.

The next second, Luo Fei appeared on the open ground next to Lao Wu.

Old Wu was standing at the edge of the cave entrance, holding a walkie-talkie tightly in his hand. The phone emitted intermittent buzzing sounds, mixed with the indistinct voices of the professor and others.

Seeing Luo Fei appear out of nowhere, he quickly stepped forward and pointed to the dark cave entrance behind him, saying, "Captain Chu has already led his men down. They're wearing armor, so dealing with those ancient traps shouldn't be a problem for them."

"But she said that some areas inside collapsed due to a series of triggers, and a large amount of mud and rocks completely blocked the passage."

"Captain Chu dared not use mecha weapons to forcefully blast the site, fearing it would trigger a larger landslide. He could only lead his team to slowly dig and advance, and rescuing the people would still take a considerable amount of time. But those seriously injured students... I'm afraid they really can't wait much longer."

Luo Fei walked to the entrance of the cave and looked down to examine it carefully.

The opening was significantly wider than when he left, and fresh digging marks remained on the edges, presumably because Old Wu and his men had cleaned it up urgently.

The cave walls are made of loose soil and stone, with some places revealing mottled blue bricks, and blackish-green moss growing stubbornly in the cracks between the bricks.

The cave was pitch black and bottomless. A damp smell, mixed with the stench of earth and decaying dust, wafted out, as if something had been dormant and fermenting in the darkness for thousands of years, and had finally been pried open.

Luo Fei turned around, his gaze falling on Old Wu's bloodshot eyes: "How long has Chu Yue been gone?"

Old Wu quickly raised his wrist and glanced at his watch: "About five minutes. She said there's more than one landslide inside, and there are also untriggered mechanisms, so it will take a long time to reach the trapped students."

Luo Fei didn't ask any more questions. He simply nodded, turned around, and his figure transformed into a faint black shadow, flying straight into the cave entrance and instantly disappearing into the darkness.

Old Wu stood there, watching the figure being quickly swallowed by the darkness, his walkie-talkie still crackling.

He didn't speak, but just stood there quietly, his hands unconsciously clenched, his gaze fixed on the cave entrance.

Luo Fei flew at high speed through the pitch-black passage, surrounded by a faint halo of light.

His eyes could see everything around him clearly without any light: the texture of the blue bricks eroded by time on the cave walls, the moist texture of the moss in the cracks between the bricks, the sloping stone steps extending under his feet, and the animal-shaped stone statues standing on both sides of the passage.

The stone statues, with their unique shapes incorporating features of auspicious beasts such as lions and qilin, crouch on both sides of the passage, their gaping mouths revealing sharp, lifelike teeth, standing like silent guardians of the secret realm in the darkness.

Soon, he sensed the movement coming from ahead.

The sounds of metal colliding with rocks, the rustling of gravel scraping against the ground, and the slightly hurried breathing of the team members filled the air.

Luo Fei gradually slowed down, switching from high-speed flight to a hovering state, lightly hovering in mid-air above the passage, his sharp gaze fixed ahead.

Chu Yue and her team were working intensively at a severely landslide site. The once slightly spacious passage had been completely blocked. Several tons of boulders and sticky mud had piled up to form a thick wall nearly three meters high, extending from the ground to the top of the passage, airtight and without leaving even a crack.

Chu Yue, clad in armor, stood at the very front of the landslide.

She took a deep breath, clenched her right fist, and slammed it down on the largest rock in front of her.

"Boom!" The moment the fist landed, the hard rock shattered like glass struck by a heavy hammer, breaking into countless palm-sized pebbles that scattered all over the ground.

Her movements were swift and precise, each punch landing squarely on the center of the rock, preventing excessive vibration from causing a secondary collapse while maximizing the disintegration of the obstacle. Behind her, her teammates worked in a clear division of labor, moving the rubble. Some used armored gloves to lift large pieces of rock, while others wielded shovels to clear away smaller clumps of soil, quickly piling the cleared debris on both sides of the passage behind them, painstakingly creating enough space for one person to pass through.

Although they moved quickly enough, their overall efficiency was not high because the landslide area was too large, with boulders piled up in layers. Many of them could not be moved directly to the back and had to be broken up before they could be transported, which was undoubtedly a time-consuming and labor-intensive project.

Luo Fei landed silently behind Chu Yue, his feet hovering a few centimeters off the ground without making a sound.

Chu Yue was preparing to smash the next rock blocking her way, her fist already raised high, when she keenly sensed a movement coming from behind her a second before she could exert her strength.

She turned around abruptly, and when she saw that the person who came was Luo Fei, her raised fist stopped in mid-air and did not fall.

Although the armored mask concealed her expression, her tense shoulders visibly relaxed, and even her breathing seemed to become much more even.

She spoke, her voice coming through the helmet's built-in speaker, the relief in her tone clearly audible: "You've come."