739: Chapter 739: Research Records from the Original Federation (Super Long Chapter, Seeking Monthly Tickets) 739: Chapter 739: Research Records from the Original Federation (Super Long Chapter, Seeking Monthly Tickets) “Where are you now?”
A questioning voice ca through the walkie-talkie.
“On the helicopter,”
Kodo, holding onto the edge of the helicopter, lifted his head and glanced at the roaring propellers against the pitch-black night sky above, “The situation over at Wenlan Island seems to be much more serious, so I’m going over to check.”
“The lives of everyone in this city are in our hands,” the voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie paused for a mont, speaking in a low tone, “Don’t give up.”
“Mm.”
Kodo nodded slightly and turned off the walkie-talkie.
He looked down at the silent sea surface beneath his feet and the city ahead under the night sky, then sat back down in the helicopter seat.
“The view on this journey is quite nice, isn’t it?”
A light laugh ca from beside him.
He turned his head and looked toward the seat beside him, where another ‘figure’ identical to him was sitting, gazing at the unchanging starry sky outside the helicopter.
“Relax a bit,”
The figure slowly turned its head to look at Kodo, the corners of his mouth stretched into a seemingly gentle but sohow twisted and sinister smile,
“We are changing the world, everything will move in the right direction, won’t it?
You will beco the leader of the new world, crushing all vermin under your feet.
“You have always been diligently doing your work, but what recognition have you received?
Wells, a twisted and chaotic cultist, has sidelined you, rampaging through the city at will.
“Feiya, she’s never worked a day in this city, yet she can directly beco your supervisor.
“Listen to that voice just now, even a D-level from the research institute is bossing you around?
“What gives them the right?
No one sees your accomplishnts, no one understands what you’ve truly sacrificed, can you really manage the world with these idiots surrounding you?
“It’s ti to do sothing for yourself, you can change the world, reshape it into a brand new, perfect one, a world that belongs to you!”
“Shut up!”
Kodo grabbed his head, fingers digging into the gaps of his hair, eyes bloodshot as he roared angrily.
“We are marching towards final victory.”
Rebuked with anger, the figure didn’t take offense, maintaining that sinister smile, and sighed.
“Boss, what’s wrong?”
The helicopter pilot in the front seed to hear the commotion behind and turned his head, asking loudly.
“It’s nothing.”
Kodo covered his face with his hand, rubbed his cheeks forcefully, and looked to the side.
The seat next to him was empty, as if no one had ever been there.
“Boss, are we heading back to headquarters?”
Feeling that sothing was off with his boss, the pilot asked again.
“Yes!”
Kodo put down his hand and glanced outside.
The cold night wind brushed his cheeks, lifting the disheveled strands of his hair.
…
On a secluded coast near Wenlan Island, He Ao looked up at the helicopter passing in the distance in the sky.
“You sure made it hard for to find you,”
A light laugh ca from behind, “How does it feel to save the world?”
A middle-aged man who seed honest and straightforward walked slowly out from the deserted coastal path.
He lifted his head, took steps toward He Ao, and stood beside him, “Let introduce myself, my na is Robert.
I rember seeing your profile, Lunke?
Wasn’t it only C-level in your file?
Have you been hiding your strength?”
“Have you always been lurking within the Moonlight organization?”
He Ao glanced at the Moonlight uniform on him and asked casually.
“Of course, I am a legitimate employee of Moonlight.
How else could I bypass your vigilance and follow you all this way?”
Robert grinned and said, “Those idiots from Moonlight and the Research Institute actually believe they’re protecting this city.
How would those fools know that if it weren’t for you blocking our plans, they’d already be dead.”
“Unfortunately, that ‘Higher Being’s ability can only sense who has died, not who the killer is.
To find you, I really had to put in so effort.”
He glanced at He Ao, “You’ve killed so many of our people from Daybreak, did you ever expect this mont?
In this world, if you want to be a savior, you’d better be prepared to be killed.”
“Let correct you; I just happened to help out when they were committing cris.
I never took the initiative to kill anyone.
I’m not so savior, just a passerby doing good,”
He Ao shook his head and turned his gaze to the silent sea, casually asking, “The person who ambushed Chen Lin, was he bait you intentionally threw out?”
“You’re really clever,”
Robert looked at He Ao and lit a cigarette, “After all, you move so quickly every ti; by the ti I get there, everything is already over.
So, I only had to set so traps to lure you in,”
Thick smoke billowed from his mouth as he watched the disappearing drone in the sky with a smug smile, “Even so, you really do run fast.
I almost didn’t catch up with you,”
“I have a question,”
He Ao asked slowly, “I’ve asked many of your people, and none of them have ever seen what your Deputy Leader looks like.
Have you?
Or do you not have the privilege either?”
Robert’s smug expression froze for a mont, then he took a deep drag on his cigarette, “No one has the privilege of seeing the Deputy Leader’s true face.
Maybe the Leader has seen it, but none of us have.”
“Is that so…”
He Ao paused and sighed, “I thought you would bring so different information.”
“What do you an?”
Robert looked at He Ao and flinched slightly, sensing sothing was wrong.
He then shook his head and removed the cigarette from his hand, “You’re on death’s door, and still trying to bluff?
I’ve seen the wounds you leave behind; you’re experienced, but your strength is barely that of a low C-level,”
He twisted his neck and stretched himself, “I didn’t tell you,”
The still-smoldering cigarette butt was flicked from his hand, and in the next second, a spike shot out from his sleeve into his palm, “I’m also C-level, and my strength is much greater than yours.
You’ve already wasted enough of my ti.
After I finish you off, I still have to go back and kill those nuisances at the Research Institute.”
The dark spike thrust towards He Ao’s neck against the night sky.
However, at the instant the spike was thrust out, a hand had already grasped his neck.
He Ao had sohow appeared in front of Robert.
He gripped Robert’s throat and lowered his head, whispering in Robert’s ear, “Lend your fate.”
As he spoke, Robert’s muscles tensed instantly, and his expression twisted into sothing horrific.
The next second, his body began to fade away slowly, as if being erased by an eraser, along with his clothes and a bone radiating orange light wrapped in the fabric, and the spike fell from the air.
He Ao slowly crouched down and fished out Robert’s phone from the clothes.
By the ti he stood up, he had completely taken on Robert’s appearance.
Unlocking the phone with a fingerprint, a ssage instantly popped up, [Boss, when will you return to the branch?]
Fragnts of broken mories surfaced in He Ao’s mind.
The origin of the ssage seed to be a mber of Daybreak who was ‘infiltrating’ Moonlight alongside Robert.
He Ao sorted through the scant mories he had acquired and sent a brief reply, [Soon].
At the sa ti, a series of chaotic, enthralling whispers echoed in his mind.
The ‘order’ that had sent Robert to assassinate He Ao was descended by these enthralling whispers.
After He Ao ‘took over’ Robert’s life, the mystical signals that had been targeting Robert now pointed to He Ao.
In the mystical sense, Robert would continue to be ‘alive’ until He Ao gave up this identity.
He Ao waited for a mont, and the whispers showed no sign of change, maintaining their eerie calm.
It seed the ‘master’ of these whispers was not paying attention here.
He Ao covered his surface thoughts and then straightened his clothes.
Having been in the Newland City-State for so long, he had naturally been ‘bewitched’ before, but he quickly figured out how these bewitching voices worked.
By distorting the thoughts of those ‘infected’, it steered their way of thinking towards what the source desired.
Its influence was over the surface layer of consciousness and couldn’t directly twist the infected’s sense of self.
Therefore, as long as one’s will was strong enough, they could resist for a considerable ti.
Simply put, as long as you hold onto yourself and ignore these bewitching voices, you can resist the bewitchnt, though achieving this is difficult.
Beyond that, He Ao deduced that the bewitchnt’s power held a ‘Mind Reading’ ability sowhat similar to Super mory tags, only much weaker.
With a simple disguise, it was easy to hide from it.
Once everything was in order, He Ao looked up at the profound night sky.
It was still not enough.
——
Underground Palace · Fourth Layer
The first thing to enter He Ao’s sight was a white ‘pyramid’ several ters tall.
The edges of the pyramid were particularly sharp, with a smooth, cut surface that exhibited so kind of strange ‘symtry’.
Strictly speaking, rather than resembling structures such as pyramids, it was more akin to a “regular tetrahedron” that had been laid flat on the ground, and a particularly orderly “regular tetrahedron” at that.
He Ao slowly approached the white tetrahedron, gazing at its even surface.
Then, he began to faintly discern so shallow “grooves” on the surface, the grooves before him vaguely outlining the shape of a “femur.”
He paused for a mont, stepping back a bit to look at the dense web of grooves.
The grooves intertwined tightly, sketching the twisted shapes of various bones.
Among them were bones of humans as well as non-human creatures.
Soone had closely stacked these bones together, then sheared the surface flat and filled in the gaps to form this orderly tetrahedral “bone mountain.”
He Ao stared at the “bone mountain,” paused for a mont and then walked around to the other side, reaching the back of the bone mountain.
Then, one by one, the orderly “bone mountains” arranged in lines ca into view.
This entire fourth layer had no walls to impede sight, forming an open circular structure where “lines” created by the arrangent of the bone mountains seed like radial dashed lines stretching from the periter to the center of the circle.
The distance between two adjacent bone mountains on the sa line was uniform, and the ‘angles’ ford between different lines of bone mountains were also the sa, dividing the circle into nine equal parts.
These uniformly arranged “bone mountains” were like pale arrows, each with a sharp point directed towards the very center of the circular structure, the “end point” of all the bone mountains.
There, a giant yellow “octahedron” hovered.
Its surface wasn’t smooth; strictly speaking, it didn’t resemble an orderly “crystal octahedron” but more like a structure built from stacking blocks, so each “facet” consisted of layered steps as if made from countless tiny blocks.
Yet, this complex structural composition exuded a strange simplicity and an “orderly beauty.”
There it hovered, at the very center of the hall, slowly rotating.
Below this octahedron was a ring of consoles, their screens glowing with a faint light.
The bone mountains, the blocky octahedron, and the circular consoles ford the main structure of the hall.
Standing amidst the stark white bones, everything was so quiet, devoid of monster attacks or distorted murmurs, as still as an ancient tomb slumbering for centuries.
After a brief contemplation, He Ao followed the lines ford by the bone mountains, slowly making his way towards the circular console.
anwhile, he also took in the details of this circular hall on the fourth underground level.
Unlike the three levels above, the air in the fourth underground level didn’t have that distinctive stench of blood; in fact, He Ao couldn’t detect any sll in the surrounding air at all—neither fragrant nor foul, completely devoid of anything pungent.
It was as clean as a blend of pure nitrogen and oxygen.
Apart from the air, the walls and floors of this level were also very clean, free from any bloodstains and spotless, as if soone had been constantly wiping them down.
In contrast to the clean walls and floors were the dense “gun barrels” hanging from the ceiling, interweaved with the ceiling lights to construct an intimidating radiance.
His solitary footsteps echoed in the silent hall.
Although He Ao remained vigilant, no “monsters” had attacked him by the ti he reached the circular control panel.
The bone hills and the central blocky octahedron of the hall had shown no reaction to his movents.
The circular console was directly below the blocky octahedron; as He Ao stood before the console, he also stood in front of the octahedron.
He looked up at the massive octahedron, observing its motionless rotating form.
A sense of quiet, orderly beauty surged within him, involuntarily tempting him to praise this order.
However, he did not make any gesture of admiration, instead lowering his head to examine the console in front of him.
On this circular console was also engraved a symbol of the “Eye of Truth.”
The mark of a wizard existed within the relics, within the remnants of the Original Federation, perhaps proving that the Original Federation once had a profound collaboration with the now-disappeared group of “wizards.”
These wizards, active during the period of the great catastrophe, seed to have anciently altered the fate of the Copy World and even involved nurous Higher Beings.
From what He Ao knew at this mont, at least two Divine Beings were related to the wizards: one was the God of Knowledge, a symbol of ultimate knowledge and a very good friend of his, and the other was the Grim Reaper, who directly used the open Eye of Truth as his emblem.
He Ao withdrew his thoughts, shifting his gaze from the Eye of Truth symbol to the screen of the control panel.
There wasn’t just one screen on the console; these screens connected together to form a large circular screen.
At the mont, though the screens were lit up, they didn’t display any information.
All the screens showed the sa image: a scene filled with countless orderly regular tetrahedrons nested together across the entirety of the screens.
As he looked at this image, He Ao felt an unusual tranquility born from order.
Yet this tranquility did not affect his thinking or actions.
He stretched out his hand and fiddled with the lever on the control panel, but the screen remained unresponsive.
Then he touched the screen, which also seed to have no reaction whatsoever.
Although these screens were still ‘lit’, the main unit of the control panel appeared to be completely damaged.
There was no maintenance access beneath the control panel, so He Ao had no way to examine the main unit without destroying the panel.
He Ao thought for a mont, then began to rotate along the circular control panel.
Every ti he passed a screen, he would manipulate the control panel and touch the screen to see if it was still functioning.
By the ti he had made it halfway around the circle, he stopped and stared at the screen in front of him.
The screen was still covered with that strange pattern.
But unlike the patterns on the other screens, the patterns on this screen did not give off a clear sense of ‘the tranquility of order’.
If the patterns on the other screens felt to He Ao like the manifestation of so contaminated power,
then the pattern on this screen seed more like a simple screensaver wallpaper.
He Ao reached out and jiggled the joystick on the control panel and pressed the screen a few tis.
The screen still showed no response.
He attempted to press the button on the control panel that seed to be the power switch, but the content on the screen remained unchanged.
After a brief pause, He Ao went ahead and pressed all the buttons on the control panel one by one.
If this did not work, he would have to destroy the control panel and try to forcibly control it with the chanical Core ring.
The ring itself had no power; its unique ability to manipulate machinery ca from the contamination on it, allowing it to freely pass through that ‘door’.
When He Ao had passed through the ruins passage before, he had naturally brought the ring with him.
However, he did not know if the main computer was intelligent, and using the chanical Core ring directly could carry risks beyond his expectations.
While pondering, He Ao did not stop his movents.
Ding—
After He Ao pressed a black button, the screen in front of him suddenly flickered, then went out abruptly, and slowly lit up again.
This ti, once it lit up, the screen still displayed the pattern of nested tetrahedra, but now a circle resembling a progress bar began to appear across the entire screen.
It seed as if he had hit the restart button.
He Ao glanced at the button he had just pressed, and taking advantage of the screen displaying the progress bar, he quickly circled the control panel again.
So of the screens also had this button, but pressing them had no effect; the eerie tetrahedron pattern still filled the screens.
Finally, He Ao returned to the screen with the ‘restart’, which seed to be the only ‘normal’ one.
As He Ao pondered this, the progress bar on the screen began to flash violently.
Then the entire screen displayed a distorted ss of pixels.
Part of the screen showed a simple control interface, while the other part displayed the overlapping tetrahedron pattern.
He Ao glanced at the control interface and reached out to touch the ‘settings’ interface marked with a gear icon.
Then the screen flickered and a settings interface primarily filled with jumbled characters from the First District appeared in front of him.
He fumbled through each option and eventually, in the penultimate one, found sothing that appeared to be a language selection.
Then he changed the language option from the first to the second one.
Upon exiting, the entire interface was still jumbled, but it had changed from gibberish in the First District’s language to that of the Second District’s.
Success.
He Ao went back to the operation interface and looked at the icons there.
The icons’ text was sowhat garbled, but He Ao could still vaguely make out one marked with the word ‘records’.
He reached out and clicked on the icon.
The next second, the screen flickered and a file reading interface appeared.
Unlike the nearly incomprehensive jumble of the interaction interface, this file reading interface had much less gibberish, with only a few snippets of text and spots presumably for images displaying jumbled characters.
But it was still legible.
It seed that this file was stored on so special device and thus was minimally affected by the main unit’s interference.
He Ao’s gaze fell on the title of the file,
[Contamination%* Experint Record 009-2 (Angel Level)]
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