Chapter 150: Silhouette in the Rain 12
Every person present showed varying degrees of bewilderment, while Yi Ke was forced to become the only wise one. He had no choice but to extend his hand toward Qing Gang, just about to borrow his small mirror, when an extremely small blue-purple light point suddenly appeared in the air for an instant!
Without Zhuang Ningyu giving orders, several action team members had already raised their weapons simultaneously. Accompanied by several “bang bang” booming sounds, three silent hovering drones crashed to the ground smoking. After Ye Jiaoyue inspected them, she said, “Hundred-Armed Giant HKC08, positioning point-fire weapons.”
Everyone temporarily retreated to the forest. Two domestically-produced ultra-micro stealth drones rose to high altitude and quickly completed preliminary marking and measurements of the entire island. This rule zone covered an area of approximately 80,000 square kilometers, possessed approximately 1.5 kilometers of beach around the island, with the building complex mainly located in the northwest corner. The entire island had extremely extensive vegetation coverage.
Zhong Mu recalled the stealth drones. “Just looking at the external architectural style, we can’t confirm the specific purpose of this rule zone.”
The topic returned to the original point from before, because the person Liam was trying to trap with this rule zone was obviously only one. Zhuang Ningyu looked at the teammates’ gazes once again cast back on himself and continued asking, “Your paint—”
The words stopped abruptly halfway through, because Yi Ke silently handed a small round mirror in front of him. Zhuang Ningyu and the person in the mirror stared at each other wide-eyed. His brain fell into a brief lag. He even raised his hand to touch his own face before turning his head to look at Yi Ke in shock. What’s going on?
Yi Ke braced himself to explain, “It’s like this…”
Two minutes later, this bizarre incident that almost made it into the Order Maintenance Department’s top ten unsolved mysteries—”Regarding who actually knew first that there was facial recognition on the island”—was finally roughly sorted out. Qing Gang listened beside them in a daze. From then on, his life motto +1: Sure enough, fearing one’s wife brings blessings, being afraid of one’s wife brings fortune. No wonder Little Yi’s luck has always been so good. In the future, I also want to fear my wife!
Even Ye Jiaoyue silently gave a thumbs up. Can’t help but be impressed.
Yi Ke looked sincerely into his fragrant wife’s eyes and quickly changed the subject. “According to Liam’s plan, he wanted to lure you here alone.”
“Although underground organizations wanting to capture Team Leader Zhuang are quite numerous,” Zhong Mu deliberated on her word choice, “but this Liam, is he a bit… harboring ill intentions?”
The reason Zhuang Ningyu’s evolution direction attracted people’s attention was mainly his ability to freely pass through spatial distortion gaps. In this era where rule zones appeared almost as commonly as eating and drinking, this special ability was truly enviable. So discussions about him on the dark web and bounties had always remained high. As for the relationship with his face, it really wasn’t that significant. After all, although beauties are beautiful, in this world there are always more career-minded people than romance-minded ones, and perverts are even rarer. But Liam—looking at this person’s series of words and actions, Zhong Mu deeply believed he was definitely the most perverted among all those coveting Team Leader Zhuang.
Qing Gang raised his hand to express agreement. What “Eastern Beauty”—it just sounds improper. We, especially Little Yi, must definitely watch Team Leader Zhuang more closely.
“Based on the scale, this rule zone definitely won’t just be a simple base to satisfy his emotional needs.” Zhuang Ningyu scrolled through the aerial view on the screen. Under the extremely high-precision camera, one could see that in a corner of the building complex, large amounts of DX coolant were piled up. Qing Gang asked puzzled, “This is…”
“Human modification experiments,” Yi Ke said. “These solvents are used to cool related experimental equipment.”
“Isn’t Liam a fanatical pure-blood advocate? Then what’s the content of his modification experiments?” Zhong Mu didn’t understand. “And judging from the quantity of DX coolant, the scale of experiments on this island seems quite substantial.”
“Pure-blood advocacy and human modification experiments don’t conflict. When he previously kidnapped Pei Zheng, it was also to make Andao Medical join his experimental gang,” Yi Ke said. “We discussed before whether what he’s conducting might be a kind of ‘anti-evolution’ experiment, to control the number of evolvers globally at a constant value, ultimately achieving effective control over scarce resources.”
“Will Liam be on this island?”
“Hard to say, but he’s one hundred percent anxious right now.”
The point of anxiety was that the action team this time brought the department’s newest research signal jammer. How new specifically? Last week it only existed in theory—not even a single screw had been produced. As soon as everyone landed on the island, it brutally cut off all frequency bands’ external signal transmission within the rule zone, leaving only their own internal network. In other words, if Liam wasn’t currently on the island, then no matter how perfectly he had arranged surveillance facilities in the rule zone beforehand, most likely they had all become decorations now.
At Jincheng Order Maintenance Department, He Mo was leading people based on transmitted data to calculate the specific landing point of the island’s new rule zone. Several other large computing devices were performing high-speed massive comparisons. Soon, red warning lights lit up. Huo Ting opened the file, and after just one glance, frowned.
Based on this rule zone’s data and building complex characteristics, this island seemed to already be a regular on the conference tables of various countries’ order maintenance departments.
“Over the past five years, at least seven evolver research scientists have been kidnapped to that island. Their whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Their research directions were all similar to Pei Zheng’s parents, focusing on non-evolvers,” Huo Ting said on the phone.
Zhuang Ningyu asked, “Were these seven people kidnapped at the same location?”
“No,” Huo Ting said. “Seven locations: two in Europe, two in the Americas, one in Australia, one in Africa, one in East Asia, plus yours makes eight locations.”
Each location was a passage, which meant Liam had created at least eight passages worldwide to transport scholars from all over the globe to this experimental island. In a sense, he had indeed taken the first step in realizing what the Invisible Giant had been vigorously promoting in the “upper circle”—a utopian private rule zone. Most people on the dark web called it Eden, while others directly called it a lawless land, no longer with any constraints, only “my” absolute freedom.
Me and no one else—few people could resist this top-level temptation.
Zhuang Ningyu roughly looked through the materials of the seven missing persons: one C-class evolver, six non-evolvers, ages ranging from 30 to 80. Qing Gang’s teeth hurt just looking at it. How unethical! Getting some young and strong people would be fine, but why even kidnap someone’s 80-year-old grandpa?
“This mission may need to change from simply breaking the rule zone to a higher-level rescue operation,” Zhuang Ningyu said to Zhong Mu. “Have the drones go in from the southeast corner, supplement some details, and also see if there are any traces of human or monster activity.”
“Okay.” Zhong Mu released the micro drones again. Ye Jiaoyue used this time to organize the passage positions where the seven scholars were transmitted in. Zhuang Ningyu asked for a box of camouflage paint, pulled Yi Ke to the side, and used his fingers to help apply it on his face. As he applied, he probably found this matter a bit amusing himself. The corners of his lips pressed together slightly. Yi Ke also looked at him with pleasure. Taking advantage of no one paying attention, he hooked his arm around his wife’s waist with one hand, bringing him closer to himself, humming softly, “Told you my luck is good.”
“That’s right,” Zhuang Ningyu acknowledged. “Fools have fool’s fortune.”
His finger movements were very light. His fingertips slid across the face like a kitten’s paws scratching—cool and very comfortable. Teammates passing by one after another seemed to glance over inadvertently but actually super deliberately, then sighed in their hearts. It’s still love—look at how Team Leader Zhuang painted Little Yi, simply like a painted art piece, with the nose being a nose and eyes being eyes.
Yi Ke said, “But the access control system should have already recorded my face just now. Does doing camouflage now still have meaning?”
Zhuang Ningyu made an “mm” sound. “Of course it does. Otherwise who do you think those few downed Hundred-Armed Giant HKC08s were targeting? Your face will most likely be recorded by the security system as an ‘intruder.’ Be more careful yourself in subsequent actions—they’ll definitely chase after you.”
Yi Ke casually replied, “Then I can just wash my face and attract fire for everyone.”
Zhuang Ningyu’s hand paused. He frowned and looked at him.
Yi Ke knew his mistake and quickly corrected himself, rapidly pulling out a smile. “Just kidding. Wife, don’t worry, I’ll definitely protect myself well!”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t pay him any more attention. He screwed the paint lid tight and wiped his hands on the tree trunk beside him.
Yi Ke: Why didn’t he pull out his banana handkerchief from my pocket this time or directly wipe his hands on my clothes!
“I really was just speaking casually,” Yi Ke chased after him, crouching beside his wife, pitifully apologizing. “Don’t worry.”
Zhuang Ningyu pulled the backpack zipper closed. “I know you were just speaking casually, but you should still mute yourself. It’s fine if you don’t say anything—the more you talk, the less confident I feel.”
Yi Ke obediently shut his mouth. Zhuang Ningyu sat down to rest with his back to him. After thinking about it, he casually pulled out his phone from his pocket and continued clicking on the super-long video he hadn’t finished watching the other day, trying to conduct a round of self-brainwashing to obtain inner peace. This time he wanted to persist a bit longer—a full two minutes. As for why he closed it later, it had nothing to do with the screen full of muscles. It was purely because Zhong Mu had already released the drones and come back, suddenly asking from behind, “Hey, Team Leader Zhuang, what are you watching?”
Zhuang Ningyu’s breathing hitched. Rarely did he feel a bit of guilty panic like a thief. His phone almost fell to the ground. Fortunately, in the end he still remained composed in the face of danger and stabilized the situation. He didn’t let the team leader’s dignity get completely taken away by “husband is very strong.” He stood up and asked calmly, “Any discoveries?”
“The southeast corner should be a warehouse,” Zhong Mu said. “Also, the entire building area is equipped with extremely covert infrared detection heads, almost woven into an impenetrable net. If we just barge in like this, we’ll definitely trigger the security system.”
“Can’t find any breakthrough at all?”
Zhong Mu handed the computer screen to him. All the detection heads were marked out. At first glance, forget “impenetrable”—it was simply like directly adding an infrared roof to the building complex.
“We can try to interfere, but the time is very short. We can only find a gap of less than one second,” Zhong Mu said. “So my proposal is, I’ll go in with Qing Gang first to take a look.”
Yi Ke took the initiative to speak. “I’ll go. My movements are faster.”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. “Good, Little Yi and I will go in first. Everyone else stands by outside.”
Yi Ke: “I meant I—”
Zhuang Ningyu’s gaze swept toward him.
Yi Ke persisted, “Qing Gang and I will go in.”
Why is this suddenly my business? Qing Gang decisively said, “I’ll listen to Team Leader Zhuang!”
