After having lunch with He Zhichu, Gu Nianzhi drove herself back to the headquarter of special operations forces.
Entering Huo Shaoheng’s official residence, Gu Nianzhi saw Huo Shaoheng’s orderly, Fan Jian, come out of the kitchen. She asked casually, “Brother Fan, didn’t you go into the field with Young Master Huo?”
She knew that when Huo Shaoheng went into the field, it was usually Fan Jian who drove.
Fan Jian, “…”
Scratching his head, he smiled and helped Huo Shaoheng cover up, “Uh, Huo Shaoheng just came back from the field.”
Gu Nianzhi was elated, “He’s back? So Soon?”
He hadn’t called her.
“Is he upstairs?” Gu Nianzhi wanted to see Huo Shaoheng immediately and tell him about the “Angel in the world” case.
It had taken so long to finally come to a conclusion. She was also very emotional.
Fan Jian shook his head with a smile. “How could he be at home in the middle of the day? He went to the office building.”
“Oh.” Gu Nianzhi instantly became listless. “I’ll go up then.”
She couldn’t disturb Huo Shaoheng’s work.
…
In the office building of the special operations forces’ headquarters, Huo Shaoheng was holding a small group meeting to review the recent work situation.
Yin Shixiong and Zhou Qiyuan were sitting in the meeting room. Zhao Liangze, who was far away on a small island in the Cape of Good Hope, was also participating in the meeting via webcam.
The other people who were also present at the meeting included the members of the task force of their previous few operations, as well as Xiao Ye, who had just returned to the force.
Yin Shixiong first reported on the situation of their trip to Japan. He said in a pained tone, “We were too impatient this time. We thought we could take them all down in one go, but we were almost completely captured by them.”
Zhou Qiyuan frowned. “How did such a huge mistake occur in the intelligence work this time? What exactly went wrong?”
The leader of the operation team in charge of this dispatch was also very confused, “… We did make sufficient preparations this time. All the clues in Japan were confirmed after cross-examination, and Dou Qingyan and Yamaguchi Aiko were not fake. How could such a huge problem have occurred?”
They could not understand why Yamaguchi Aiko wanted to kill Dou Qingyan at this time, nor did they understand what the purpose of the sniper was.
Xiao Ye also felt that it was unbelievable. However, she had seen many things in her life. She followed up with her analysis, “If we had leaked the news, then Yamaguchi Aiko would not be so stupid as to kill someone right in front of us. Under those circumstances, she wouldn’t have been able to escape either, so she would practically be throwing her life away. Furthermore, that last shot seemed to have been aimed at her. Maybe the sniper wasn’t targeting Big Xiong but Yamaguchi Aiko instead.”
Xiao Ye didn’t know that Huo Shaoheng had personally gone to Japan this time.
Even the internal department of the organisation thought that Yin Shixiong was leading the team, so there was almost no possibility of a leak.
And judging from the sniper’s target, it was indeed not Yin Shixiong. After he successfully shot Yamaguchi Aiko, the sniper did not continue his attacks.
Otherwise, if they had continued to attack Yin Shixiong and Huo Shaoheng, they would not have escaped Kiyomizu-dera so easily.
Huo Shaoheng’s emotions were extremely complicated.
If the invalid number belonged to Yamaguchi Aiko, then how many secrets had been buried by her death?
What was the other party’s motive?
Yamaguchi Aiko, who had been on the run for so long, had suddenly appeared to kill Dou Qingyan, and it was done when they just arrived at the scene. Furthermore, there was no leak of intelligence from their organisation; their opponent’s methods and choice of actions were indeed unfathomable.
Yin Shixiong would not have outwardly said that Huo Shaoheng had gone personally.
He only looked thoughtfully at Zhao Liangze on the screen, who had become tanner by one degree on the phototype scale, and asked, “Little Ze, what do you think?”
Zhao Liangze, who had experienced Bai Shuang’s death, had not only become darker, but also rougher. He had grown a beard. The handsome pampered young man in the past had been roughened by life into a tough man.
Zhao Liangze was expressionless. He looked at Huo Shaoheng, who was even more expressionless, and answered, albeit not to the question, “… While things aren’t going so well on your side, they’re going pretty smoothly on mine.”
Huo Shaoheng looked up in his direction and nodded calmly, “Tell us.”
Zhao Liangze’s face quickly disappeared from the video and was replaced by two magnificent nautical charts.
His voice was like a narrator’s coming from the stereo Bluetooth speakers installed at the four corners of the ceiling of the conference room.
“The chart on the left is the sea area that I’ve searched in the past year, and the chart on the right is the sea area that I’ve recently searched according to the range that Young Master Huo gave me.”
The two maps began to overlap and merge. The map on the left swallowed up the map on the right. In other words, the map on the right became a small circular area in the middle of the map on the left.
It was like a large circle with a small circle inside it.
A small red dot appeared in the small circle in the middle. It was the specific set of coordinates that Huo Shaoheng had given them. It was also the area shown in the screenshot of the shared location that they had gotten from Luo Jialan’s phone!
“I just discovered that there’s a different sound wave at the bottom of the core area in the chart on the right.”
They searched the sea area mainly through the use of sonar complemented by detections by the underwater drone, the Flood Dragon.
However, the ocean was so vast; if they relied only on the manpower stationed on the island, they would have taken a long time to find it.
Huo Shaoheng had originally estimated that it would take five years.
In other words, Zhao Liangze and his team would have to stay on this small island for five whole years before they could completely search the entire area.
However, with the help of the shared location in Luo Jialan’s phone, they actually made a new discovery in less than ten days!
Then, they remembered that Yamaguchi Aiko had also told them to go to the Cape of Good Hope before she was killed by the sniper. Could it be that the location Yamaguchi Aiko shared with Luo Jialan was really related to Gu Xiangwen’s whereabouts?!
“What did you find? Tell us quickly!” Yin Shixiong couldn’t wait any longer and slapped the table anxiously.
The scene on the big screen changed again, and this time, the colorized underwater sonar image appeared.
Under the vast ocean, all kinds of aquatic creatures were swimming around. Even after the sonar image was colorized, they still looked like dark shadows.
Finally, the picture stopped at a dark object at the bottom of the sea.
That thing looked like an olive. Of course, it was a large olive.
Zhao Liangze’s voice came again.
“After the sonar scanning and image processing, we found that this is a small submarine. Its diameter is about four meters and its length is about 40 meters. Its widest part is five meters across. It is probably a mini submarine.”
“Are you kidding me? There’s a submarine in this place? And what’s more, it’s a mini submarine?!” An uproar broke out in the meeting room.
If it was a large submarine that appeared here, they would not be surprised. Countries with submarines would send their submarines out into the five main oceans from time to time.
However, the appearance of a small mini submarine here was somewhat interesting.
Basically, it could be ruled out that it was done by the military of any country.
Firstly, for a mini-submarine to dive to such a deep seabed, the technical difficulties that had to be overcome were not ordinary. Just developing a sustainable power supply was a huge problem. Currently, no country in the world had made a breakthrough in this aspect. Therefore, a typical submarine was very large. Whether it was a nuclear submarine or a conventionally powered submarine, a large part of the design was to provide enough space for the power source of the submarine.
Secondly, that place had almost no strategic significance. Even if a country had achieved sufficient technological breakthrough to create mini submarines that could dive that deep, it would not be placed in such a place.
Then whose mini submarine was this?
Huo Shaoheng’s figure did not change. He rested one hand on the conference table and played with a lighter in the other. He asked in a deep voice, “Did you send the Flood Dragon down?”
The Huaxia Empire’s military referred to their underwater drone as the Flood Dragon.
Zhao Liangze said, “As soon as the sonar detected the target, I sent the Flood Dragon down. You can watch the video taken by the Flood Dragon.”
The scene on the big screen changed again.
This time, their eyes followed the underwater drone Flood Dragon as it gradually descended, and they saw greater numbers of even more beautiful underwater scenery.
The angler fish with light bulbs above their heads, the electric eel that wriggled around like a bolt of lightning, and colorful coral appeared one after another in the Flood Dragon’s lens.
But the people in this meeting room weren’t appreciating the beauty of nature at that moment. They were only focused on the black “big olive” at the bottom of the sea.
Soon, the Flood Dragon descended to its maximum depth and could go down no further.
It stopped at its maximal diving depth and moved parallel to the sea floor towards the “Big Olive” to film it.
Although it could not get too close to it, the images captured were very clear.
Everyone watched this scene attentively and held their breath, as if they were worried that someone would suddenly open the door of the submarine and greet them at any second…
Of course, this did not happen.
The video shot by the Flood Dragon finally stopped above the dark “big olive”.
Huo Shaoheng stared at the scene for a long time before he said, “… Did you use the life detector?”
Zhao Liangze was quiet for a moment, and he said in a rather low voice, “I used it. I used two types, the infrared life detector and the radar life detector.”
Although these two types were sold commercially, and the military was also equipped with them for disaster relief and combat search and rescue, their precision and intensity could not be compared to those of the equipment owned by the special operations forces.
The infrared life detector functions based off the physical principle that any object with temperature above absolute zero emits infrared radiation.
The infrared radiation emitted by the human body and objects that can generate heat is stronger, while the infrared radiation emitted by other objects is weaker. This difference is used to detect the presence of life.
The radar life detector functions through detecting the electric field generated by the ultra-low frequency radio waves emitted by the human body. This way, the detector can pinpoint the exact location of the “living person”.
Huo Shaoheng’s heart sank, but he still asked calmly, “… What is the result of the scan?”
The sound of Zhao Liangze’s deep sigh could be heard clearly from the stereo Bluetooth speaker.
Everyone’s hearts sank together.
“… Negative. I found no signs of life.”
Huo Shaoheng closed his eyes and remained silent again for a long time.
Yin Shixiong sensed that something was wrong and immediately said, “Maybe it’s because it’s too far away; furthermore, this is a submarine. Maybe the materials and paint used are so advanced that any infrared waves or electric fields are completely shielded from the outside, so it’s possible that they can’t be detected.”
Zhao Liangze said, “This is also not impossible. In the end, we still have to fish this submarine out from the bottom of the sea and carefully examine it.”
“Fish it out? Is this submarine broken?” A member of the operation team asked in surprise. “Then what should we do?”
Normally, a damaged submarine would quickly surface, unless it was so damaged that it couldn’t even surface.
Everyone knew that if a wrecked submarine stayed at the bottom of the sea, no one in the submarine could escape death.
“The sonar detection shows that the submarine has no signs of power, so it is likely to have sunk to the bottom due to some form of malfunction. Analyzing the submarine’s condition at the bottom of the sea, it has been there for at least six or seven years.” As Zhao Liangze finished speaking, he turned off the video and his face appeared on the big screen again.
