Chapter 1729: Lock onto the Target!
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
“Hu… Hu… Hu… Hu…”
“Hyena has entered the second workplace in the garbage processing center. No anomaly has been detected. Continuing searching. Over.”
“Hawkeye One is in position and ready to shoot. Over.”
“Hawkeye Two is in position. Scanning all workers in the visible range. No suspects detected. Over.”
“Hawkeye Three is in position and about to search the wall through No. 89 mystic rays to scan the buildings and obstacles in the first workplace. Over.”
“Sandhog is scanning all the tubes. Progress: 15%. No foreign objects have been detected in the tubes. Over.”
“All teams, stay alert and don’t take action recklessly. Our targets are highly dangerous spies from the Imperium who are probably above the Core Formation Stage. There is still one minute and thirty seconds to go before the main troops arrive at the garbage processing center. Not a fly is to leave the place in the next ninety seconds. Over.”
“Hyena copies.”
“Hawkeye copies.”
“Leopard copies.”
“Sandhog cop—what’s that?!”
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
“Hyena, Hawkeye, Leopard, Sandhog! Report in! What happened? Is that cannon fire? What are the things captured by your crystal cameras?”
“Sir, somebody has just activated the ‘garbage cannon’, but it is garbage that has not been highly compressed, with soup and everything. Also, the dome above the garbage cannon was not opened at all. The garbage was blown back into the room. Every corner of the center is now an utter mess… Cr*p… Cr*p!”
“What’s going on? Stabilize your crystal cameras and scan the entire battlefield quickly!”
“Somebody turned off the gravity control rune arrays of this place. We have lost gravity! All the garbage has lost gravity! The garbage is flying. The mountains of garbage are flying!”
“Intruders! We’re under attack!”
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“Ahhh!”
“Hyena! Leopard! Sandhog! Hawkeye! Damn it! Shut down all the channels between the garbage processing center and the nearby ball-shaped towns. Now!”
…
An hour passed.
In the core town at the center of the hundreds of silver ball-shaped space stations that made up Hundred Flowers City, the crowds and shuttles were moving among the skyscrapers that looked like primitive forests.
Because every downtown area was a ball that developed inwardly, there was actually no distinction between up and down, left and right. The high-rises could extend all the way to the ‘sky’ from the ground that was at a slight slant before it poured down from the ‘sky’ to the other side of the ball.
Naturally, for the people who were living on the ‘dome’, they were actually walking on the ground, and above their head was the ‘dome’ for them.
Sometimes, two particularly high and splendid skyscrapers could even be established right next to each other with a lot of transparent tubes that looked like rainbows between them, making it convenient for people to jump from one of the buildings to the other.
The complicated gravity rune arrays distributed gravity on the surface of the ball-shaped town evenly and attracted people who were living in them. That was why such an amazing scene could be created and how a hundred million people could be accommodated in minimal space.
For Li Yao and Long Yangjun who were adept at disguising their traces and faces, after they blended into the downtown area of a super enormous city of a population of a hundred million, they were like two leaves that did not belong to the forest but had fallen to the carpet of dry leaves in the forest’s depths. Unless the city was completely shut down and the soldiers searched for them for half a month, it would be absolutely impossible to locate them.
Li Yao’s assault on the garbage processing center was not entirely futile.
At least he had received the distribution map and processing information of the garbage tubes throughout Hundred Flowers City.
Through the information, he could easily locate the most prosperous downtown area. The place that outputted the most garbage every day had to be the downtown area with the largest population!
Also, when Li Yao searched on the mainframe crystal processor in the garbage processing center, he left a lot of traces that indicated his interest in the Tinder Base, having conducted multiple queries on the tube distribution in the base.
It was meant to mislead Professor Mo Xuan into thinking that the Tinder Base would be the focus of Li Yao’s attack. That way, he might concentrate most of the available forces in the base and prepare a dragnet for the intruders.
Therefore, at least in the past half hour, on the way to the downtown area, few soldiers of the federal army or Secret Sword Agents could be seen. They were able to reach the place without running into any danger.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun were completely different from an hour earlier.
From the moment they arrived in the Dragon Snake Space Zone, with the help of Long Yangjun as the founder of Ghost Character, an assassination organization, the twelve experts from the Ancient Sages Sector had all changed their appearances and presented themselves with false faces.
Li Yao had been pretending to be a plain-looking middle-aged man. That was why the fox girl Ling Xiaole had called him ‘uncle’.
At this time, he tore off the previous camouflage and added another few strokes. Then, he loosened his facial muscles, turning himself into an unattractive young man.
He was wearing sportswear that he had just stolen and even intentionally decorated his face with a series of red pimples, which made him even more look like a vigorous college student whose desires could not be met.
It was even easier for Long Yangjun. She had restored the appearance of Lead Eunuch Wang Xi. On the surface, she was a graceful gentleman who was as warm as jade. Naturally, her other self was purely natural without the slightest incongruence. Even the most advanced test magical equipment would not be able to identify any flaws.
The targets of the searchers were a man and a woman, but now, they were two men. The camouflage was enough to give them one to two hours to catch their breath and allow them to summon all their computation and deduction abilities to find out Professor Mo Xuan’s real nest!
When all the roads from the edge of Hundred Flowers City to the Tinder Base were on high alert, Li Yao and Long Yangjun were in a plain-looking restaurant in downtown Hundred Flowers City.
It was noon at this moment. The white-collar workers who worked in the offices nearby all went to the restaurants on the street for lunch. It was the busiest and most chaotic moment for the restaurants.
Li Yao and Long Yangjun were each holding a bowl of hot noodles, pretending that they did not know each other but were forced to have food at a small table in the corner of the restaurant. While watching the news displayed on the light beam, they communicated with each other in private.
“Your analysis does have a point,” Long Yangjun said. “The Tinder Plan has been open and frank since the very beginning. The military, the Secret Sword Bureau, the relevant agencies in the government, and the researchers in the major universities are all involved. It is a half-official project. It’s unlikely that Professor Mo Xuan has deployed a secret nest in the Tinder Base while lying to everyone. It is both dangerous and unnecessary.
“If it were me, the Tinder Base would only serve as a base on the surface, and it is only necessary that I set up a secret base somewhere else that is entirely under my control!
“However, Hundred Flowers City is a large place made of hundreds of ball-shaped space towns, each of which is as complicated as a maze. How can we know where Professor Mo Xuan’s secret nest is in only half a day?”
Li Yao sipped the delicious soup and pretended to smack his lips in satisfaction, but actually, he was speaking in private. “While we were on our way here, I gave it a lot of thought. If my professor really has a secret nest, it must meet the following requirements.
“Firstly, the place must be spacious enough and equipped with a lot of super crystal processors. Even if they are not the ‘Gai’-level crystal processors, they must be at least powerful ‘Jing’-level processors!
“Both the Spiriters and the Spiriters’ Realm sound quite ideal and insubstantial, but they cannot run without material support. Crystal processors and spiritual energy are to the Spiriters what land, air, and water are to the regular humans. They can’t live without them.
“Secondly, there is no way that my professor could accomplish such an enormous plan by himself. Therefore, he must have a bunch of professional researchers. Those researchers may be unaware of my professor’s real scheme. They may still be fooled right now. But they must be specialists in crystal processors, the Spiritual Nexus, and the training of the soul!
“Such an enormous space and so many powerful crystal processors will consume astronomical spiritual energy every day, not to mention that so many specialists are also gathered in the place. It is impossible to hide it from the authorities. Therefore, the secret nest must have an ostensible disguise on the surface, such as a research institute.
“However, whatever the disguise actually is, the organization must be on private property, whose owner is free to construct, modify, or conceal certain things inside as they please.
“Thirdly, the owner of the organization naturally can’t be Professor Mo Xuan himself, but they must be deeply associated with each other.
“Their relationship might not be very good on the surface, but a long time ago, let me think about it, decades ago, when my professor first started to push forward the Tinder Plan, they must have been connected to each other in a certain way.
“As long as we find a place that meets all three requirements, it will most likely be my professor’s real nest! We will search for the distribution of the ‘Jing’-level super crystal processors in Hundred Flowers City first through the public files. Then, we will screen them out through elimination!”
Long Yangjun picked up a piece of red beef with her chopsticks, but instead of eating it, she was deep in thought for a long time. Then she said, “Perhaps, the trouble is unnecessary. The three requirements that you mentioned remind me of a certain person—Lei Yuqin.”
“Lei Yuqin?” Li Yao was slightly dazed. Then he remembered who the person was. “My professor’s mistress?”
“As for exactly whether or not she is your professor’s mistress, I am not very sure, but I’m quite certain that she is much more complicated that an algorithm specialist in the data processing center of the grand-unified Spiritual Nexus.
“When you mentioned the woman at the beginning, I already felt that it was a thorn in my heart. While you and Professor Mo Xuan were in the Spiriters’ Realm together, I searched for the woman’s files in my spare time when I was not chatting with Wei Qingqing. I discovered that there was quite a lot of news about her on the Spiritual Nexus.
“At that time, I did not think much of it, but now that you mention it, I think that the woman and Professor Mo Xuan must be more than a ‘couple’. They are more like some sort of ‘partners’ or even in a chain of command!”
