Chapter 149: Isn’t that Gabriel’s voice?
“Let’s put this topic aside for now.”
An Wujiu cleared his throat awkwardly and steered the conversation back to the main issue, “The last time I reached the end of my cycle was around 4 p.m. tomorrow. At that moment, the sky suddenly went completely dark. Russell, the CEO of Sha Wen, initiated a mass sacrifice. According to him, once the mass sacrifice is completed, everything will be over.”
“So our top priority is to prevent the mass sacrifice from starting,” Yang Erci said calmly, as if the awkward moment had never happened and no one had just confessed to her. “Would destroying that system end it?”
Zhou Yijue smirked nonchalantly, “We’d also have to kill Russell, right? But if it’s true that Russell is being controlled by an evil god, there’s no way we ordinary humans can defeat them.”
What he said was realistic and indeed true.
“We’re not all ordinary humans. Shen Ti isn’t.”
An Wujiu revealed Shen Ti’s extraordinary nature and awakening to them. To become teammates who can fight side by side, the first step is to trust each other.
After hearing this, Zhou Yijue felt a bit more confident.
“Nothing can be done without a plan. Fighting an unprepared battle is a sure loss. I hate losing the most. Let’s discuss our next steps. We have quite a few enemies.”
They quickly discussed their plan.
“According to what you said, Russell appeared after kidnapping the little girl who played the game with us last time. This means that the little girl must play a very important role in their mass sacrifice.”
Zhou Yijue rested his chin on his hand, thinking, “So we need to find a way to get that girl, and it would be best to kill Russell too.”
“It’s not that simple,” Yang Erci said. “Russell is likely just a puppet or a decoy being used.”
“True. Sha Wen also has a system that tracks the pollution level of all humans. That must be crucial too, and it has to be destroyed. This means we’ll have to do some major sabotage at Sha Wen.”
As they were talking, An Wujiu suddenly experienced intense pain in his head. He shook his head, trying to hold on, but the pain seemed to persist and was accompanied by ringing in his ears.
It felt like a countdown in his head, with electronic beeps.
Zhong Yirou noticed his frown and moved closer to ask if he was okay.
“It’s nothing, just a headache.” An Wujiu shook his head slightly.
“A headache? How can that be nothing?” Zhong Yirou moved from the back seat to sit next to An Wujiu, offering to check on him. “Let me take a look.”
She lifted her skirt, took out a tool bag tied to her thigh, spread it open, and found the necessary tools.
“Wow, you’re a doctor,” Toudou Sakura exclaimed.
“You could say that,” Zhong Yirou instinctively tried to bite the small flashlight but didn’t get the chance as Yang Erci took it from her.
“Don’t put it in your mouth,” Yang Erci said, pressing the button on the flashlight. “I’ll hold it.”
Zhong Yirou felt a bit embarrassed and simply responded with an “okay” before continuing to examine An Wujiu.
“Our current weapons are clearly insufficient,” Zhou Yijue said, looking at the remaining bullets in his hand. “We need to get more, or we’ll be dead meat if surrounded by pollutants.”
“Yes.” An Wujiu felt a cool sensation behind his ear, as if the chip implanted there had been opened.
“Do we still need this chip? Didn’t you say the chip might be the carrier?” Zhong Yirou asked.
“Yes,” An Wujiu said. “I’ve already entered the altar as one of the players. Even without the chip, I can’t avoid it.”
Zhong Yirou nodded. With only one eye, her precision was much worse than when she performed surgeries before, but she still noticed that the chip’s installation was problematic. After asking, she learned that it was installed by the seller.
“It wasn’t installed properly,” Zhong Yirou complained, adjusting the chip with a fine magnetic rod. “It’s a good thing nothing serious happened.”
An Wujiu’s headache didn’t ease; instead, the pain became sharper as Zhong Yirou adjusted the chip.
Even Zhou Yijue heard An Wujiu’s sharp intake of breath and glanced over.
“Are you really a doctor? It sounds like you’re drilling through his head.”
Zhong Yirou gave him a partial glare and said, “Even though I’m beautiful, my skills are genuine.”
She leaned closer, temporarily removed the chip, and examined what went wrong.
With the chip removed, Zhong Yirou noticed something unusual. When she first met An Wujiu, she had treated his injuries and noticed that his external brain structure was different from theirs. Besides the space for the citizen chip, there was a very small space, about two millimeters square.
Zhong Yirou switched to a finer micro-magnetic rod and tried to approach that area, which caused An Wujiu to react even more intensely.
“Does it hurt that much? Sorry, sorry.” Zhong Yirou immediately pulled back, put on her portable surgical magnifying glasses, and carefully examined the structure inside.
“Wujiu, it seems there’s a micro storage device here. It’s physically encrypted and reacts strongly to the magnetic rod, probably using electromagnetic encryption. You didn’t feel pain before because the magnetic field was stable.”
From the driver’s seat, Matsubara Mori said, “Since last night, the magnetic field has been increasingly unstable, especially in the air. You didn’t react before because you were on the ground.”
That made sense.
If it weren’t for encountering such a chaotic magnetic field, who knows when this storage device would have been discovered?
“Possibly,” An Wujiu asked Zhong Yirou, “What might be stored in this device, and is there a way to decrypt it?”
“Stored content…” Zhong Yirou thought for a moment, “This is a very rare technology…”
Suddenly, she recalled childhood memories, “My dad seemed to work in this area. I remember him saying that people back then wanted to extract human consciousness…”
Her dad’s face appeared in her mind, and she remembered asking him, childishly, why they wanted to extract consciousness. Her dad smiled gently.
[So that even if Dad is no longer around one day, his consciousness will still be here and his memories will remain. Maybe one day he could talk to you through a small screen, Yirou.]
“Yes, memories,” Zhong Yirou told him. “It could be used to store memories. Wujiu, wasn’t your amnesia induced?”
Yang Erci thought about the mysterious death of Zhong Yirou’s father, which was also related to Sha Wen, and An Wujiu was a living experiment that came out of Sha Wen. Perhaps this yet-to-be-perfected technology was used on An Wujiu back then.
“But,” Zhong Yirou looked at the storage device, “to forcibly adjust an electromagnetically encrypted prosthetic part like this, we would need a high-power vortex electromagnetic device. I don’t have one, and even if I did, such a strong counterforce would certainly destroy your brain.”
Zhou Yijue squinted his eyes, “Tsk, that’s really dangerous.”
“Will it cause brain death?” Toudou Sakura looked at Zhong Yirou, then at An Wujiu, “Maybe we should leave it alone for now?”
Hearing Zhong Yirou’s words, An Wujiu roughly understood the cost of forcibly decryption.
The headache made his thoughts a bit sluggish, and the word “memory” kept repeating in his mind.
Memory.
Memory…
Suddenly, he recalled the electronic sound he heard when he woke up in the Red and Black dungeon.
That voice had told him that as long as he stayed alive and met him, his memories would return.
According to this, this storage device might not need him to forcibly decrypt it. When the time comes, the contents inside might come out.
If what this person said was true…
Suddenly, An Wujiu seemed to hear a familiar, intermittent sound.
At first, he thought it was an auditory hallucination, but when he turned his head, he remembered that he had taken a pair of headphones from the car when they switched vehicles, and they were now hanging around his neck.
An Wujiu put on the headphones, listened to the sound inside, and suddenly realized something was off.
Wasn’t this Gabriel’s voice?
An Wujiu switched to speaker mode so everyone could hear.
Due to electromagnetic interference, the sound coming through the headphones was always choppy.
“Can anyone hear my voice… anyone… my voice… I spent 800,000 to get a connection to the AI radio… my sister Sylvia is bedridden… and now she’s missing… I’m now at Sacred Heart Clinic in F City… please contact me, my radio will remain open… high reward…”
“Is this Gabriel?” Yang Erci also recognized his voice. “Didn’t you say he escaped to the Ark with his sister?”
An Wujiu frowned, “It might be because I changed my actions at the beginning of this cycle, so others were passively changed too.”
“The butterfly effect,” Zhou Yijue said casually. “It seems you’re not just an observer. You have the ability to influence the actions of everyone else in the cycle.”
“Maybe.” An Wujiu felt guilty, thinking that Gabriel might have been separated from his sister because of him. “His sister is still lying in a hospital bed.”
He thought about whether he could contact Gabriel through the radio, so he adjusted the headphones.
“Let me try.” Yang Erci took the headphones. “I used to have a pair like these. A colleague from another department developed them specifically for self-driving cars. I tested them for him.”
Saying this, she opened the settings on the headphones, clicked a few times, and adjusted the frequency.
“Gabriel seemed to mention a series of numbers just now,” Toudou Sakura said.
“Yes.” Yang Erci entered the long series of numbers and then slowly changed the frequency parameters.
The adjustment took over a minute.
Just when everyone thought there would be no result, Gabriel’s voice suddenly came through again.
“I found it,” Yang Erci said softly.
An Wujiu tried to communicate with the other side, “Gabriel? Can you hear me?”
After a few seconds, a choppy but surprised voice came through the quiet aircraft, “Damn! An… An Wujiu?”
An Wujiu looked up at Yang Erci with a delighted smile and continued communicating with Gabriel, “I heard your radio broadcast. Listen to me, don’t take the Ark to that deserted island. It will only get you killed faster.”
“What… my sister is missing… where are you… I’ll come find…”
“I’m on my way to Sha Wen now. I’ll give you an address, we’ll meet there.” An Wujiu was speaking when he noticed Zhou Yijue gesturing at him, pointing at their guns.
“Oh right, we might need weapons, something powerful. Can you get them now?”
After a moment, a voice came from the other side.
“OK… I’ll bring them… besides guns, what else do you need…”
“And…” An Wujiu thought for a moment, closing his eyes, then opening them again.
“We need explosives.”
The call abruptly ended. It was unclear which side had the issue, but fortunately, they had communicated most of what they needed.
Matsubara Mori increased the speed, “Shall we go meet him?”
“Yes,” An Wujiu nodded.
They checked each other’s remaining time, using Zhong Yirou’s time as the reference since it was the least.
“Report to us when there’s fifteen minutes left,” An Wujiu said. “We’ll stop flying and land to replenish the time.”
Zhong Yirou nodded, thinking An Wujiu worried too much about everyone, carrying too heavy a burden.
“Don’t worry too much, Wujiu. We have more experience now, this time will definitely have a good outcome.”
An Wujiu responded softly, “Hmm.”
Hopefully so.
Under Matsubara Mori’s steady flight, they reached the agreed location in less than an hour. It was a university playground, now desolate and empty.
They landed the aircraft in the middle of the playground, got out one by one, and waited for Gabriel’s arrival.
The campus in the early morning was eerie, with rustling noises everywhere. Everyone remained vigilant, holding their weapons.
An Wujiu spoke softly, sharing what he sensed with them, “Be careful, there are pollutants here.”
Sure enough, some pollutants appeared one after another, attracted by the noise, and were dealt with by the group. With everyone’s help, Zhong Yirou’s time increased by another half hour.
“A bit sleepy,” Toudou Sakura yawned.
“You can take a nap, Miss Toudou,” Matsubara Mori offered. “I can hold your gun for you.”
“No, thank you, Matsubara,” Toudou Sakura patted her face to stay alert. “But now is not the time to sleep.”
At that moment, the sound of an engine running came from the sky, getting closer and louder.
Everyone looked up at the sky, shielding their eyes from the blinding light.
The descending aircraft was enormous, almost like a small plane. They could gradually see the cockpit windows. Inside the glass, a guy with sunglasses and a pink afro was sitting, saluting them with his index and middle fingers together at his temple.
Toudou Sakura was awestruck by the scene, “Being rich is great.”
Yang Erci, on the other hand, found it exasperating.
At a time like this, he’s still trying to look cool. Definitely not someone she could get along with.
The somewhat lengthy landing process ended, and Gabriel finally stepped out of the cockpit, “This big toy, it’s my first time using it since I bought it. Not bad at all.”
He walked over to An Wujiu, “Why do you look so battered? Covered in blood.”
An Wujiu sighed at his appearance, “You don’t seem very anxious.”
“No, after you contacted me, someone else found me, one of my boys. He found my sister.”
Hearing this, An Wujiu felt a bit relieved.
Gabriel pushed his sunglasses up to his head, his fluffy curls held back like a headband, revealing his eyes, “What about you, did you find anything?”
An Wujiu shook his head, “Let’s not talk about that now. What did you bring?”
“Almost forgot,” Gabriel led them over, remotely opening the cargo bay door of the aircraft. “These, are they enough?”
The spacious cargo bay was filled with a large amount of firearms, ammunition, and a mountain of explosives.
“Where did you get all this?” Yang Erci frowned.
“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Gabriel smiled confidently, “I’ve been dabbling a bit in the arms trade.”
Impressive, all his money made on a knife’s edge.
“This is too much,” Zhong Yirou had never seen so many explosives in her life.
“I thought you might need to blow up a mountain, so I brought everything,” Gabriel looked at the calm An Wujiu, nudging his shoulder, “What’s the plan needing all this?”
“Talk on the way,” An Wujiu said decisively. “Let’s head to Sha Wen and meet up with Shen Ti.”
“Shen Ti,” Zhou Yijue repeated the name, deliberately teasing him, “What if he’s dead?”
An Wujiu’s expression remained unchanged as he headed into the cabin. “He’s not dead. I can feel it.”
His feeling was not just talk. From the initial subtle perception to later understanding the thoughts of the pollutants, and now, it was as if there was an invisible thread in his mind, connecting him to Shen Ti. He could always feel this thread’s slight movements, as if Shen Ti’s breath was at the other end.
“That’s nice. Why don’t I have any special abilities?” Zhou Yijue laughed self-deprecatingly.
Matsubara Mori asked, “I’ll still pilot the original one, right?”
“Sure,” Gabriel said generously. “Handsome, you be my co-pilot.”
They set off from there towards Sha Wen, taking a short break along the way to conserve energy for the upcoming actions.
An Wujiu also tried to close his eyes.
But the moment he closed them, the scene before his eyes suddenly returned to his childhood.
Last time, his memory stopped in a hospital room, with the prolonged beep of the heart monitor signaling death.
This time, the gears of time seemed to move forward a bit. The child version of him saw another monster, enveloped in eerie blue light, filling the entire room. That was obviously not Shen Ti.
He even heard his father’s voice calling him from outside the door.
So, before his father’s suicide, had he already faced the evil god?
The version of himself in the scene completely lost his human consciousness. Just before his humanity was entirely obliterated, a green light appeared before his eyes.
Scales shimmering with faint light and green pupils.
Two immense, conflicting forces clashed, and blue tentacles suddenly appeared behind him, piercing through his chest.
The moment they were pulled out, his blood splattered out, and death approached rapidly.
A drop of blood passed over those green eyes.
It landed on his forehead.
