Young master Lung exaggerated how tight-lipped Aikenseth was during their conversations.
In fact, the atmosphere was reasonably amiable when they were talking about business matters and the cooperation between the Andrea Family and the Free Army. It cooled only when the subject of Miracle was brought up. No matter what Lung promised him, Aikenseth firmly refused to open his mouth.
That said, he didn’t shut down Lung completely. Specifically, he reacted when Lung brought up Cillin. Considering that this man hadn’t batted an eyelid when Lung brought up the Food King, it was saying something. This was why Lung hurried to contact Ci Jincheng. It was because Cillin wasn’t with the Eleventh Squad right now, and the communication signals of Sector C were somewhat special. Lung did not dare to contact anyone in Sector C willy-nilly unless they possessed specialized anti-eavesdropping facilities that allowed for positional communication just like Ci Jincheng.
“Okay, I’ll speak to him later. I cannot guarantee that I’ll successfully obtain the information regarding Dream Tapir from him though,” Cillin emphasized so as not to disappoint them down the line.
“You know what I think?” Lung asked while rubbing his chin. “I’m sure he knows some secrets even if he doesn’t have the Dream Tapir samples.”
After breaking off communications with Lung, Cillin borrowed Ci Jincheng’s comms equipment and contacted Aikenseth. As Lung had notified Aikenseth about the call beforehand, it didn’t take long for the communication to be established.
“Are you sure you want that thing?” Aikenseth went straight to the point. He more or less guessed what their goal was from his conversation with Lung.
“Yeah. I have to try,” Cillin replied.
“Assuming it erupts, how many people do you think will survive?”
“I can’t say. One thing for certain, it will be a terrible disaster.”No one could escape this disaster. Sector V was no exception.
“I have it, and I can give it to you. In exchange, once you’ve found a solution, I want you to help Sector V as soon as you can. Please don't put us off until the very end like everyone else.”
As Aikenseth owed Cillin not one, but several favors, the leader was speaking a bit more diplomatically than normal. If this was Lung he was talking to, he would be making demands and offering no compromises.
“But of course.”
The fact that Aikenseth actually possessed a sample was great news. Besides, Cillin wouldn’t ignore the Free Army. Right now, the Free Army was looking like they would become the head of Sector V. Barring exceptional circumstances, there was no way Aikenseth would give up on everything he had built. This was a good thing for Cillin.
Aikenseth did not trust anyone but Cillin, so the young man was going to retrieve the sample himself. However, he thought better and asked if he could send Czedow instead. Czedow was the second person who left the deepest impression in Aikenseth besides Cillin. Cillin also had absolute trust in Czedow. So, Aikenseth agreed to the arrangement after some quick thinking.
“Oh right, there’s one more thing I need to tell you about. Do you remember that we were being hunted the first time we ran into each other? The main force chasing after us was the Sixth Army, and the poison Blue was afflicted with was produced by Miracle. During the escape, I saw someone standing together with the people of the Sixth Army. A long, long time ago, I saw him speaking with my adopted father as well. He was the one who gave my adopted father the box. It is likely that he was the one who took the box away as well.”
Aikenseth did not give Cillin the full story or truth. Anna Blue was the one who recognized the person, not him. At the time, Aikenseth did not possess the chance or the ability to interact with such events at all. Blue could though. Her disguise and concealment skills were outstanding. To this day, no one recognized her for who she was despite how long she had been acting the role of Blue.
Cillin recognized that there was a deeper story behind this, but he also knew Aikenseth probably wasn’t going to give him the full truth judging from his appearance and knowing his personality. So, he did not prod deeper.
“Do you have his photo?” Cillin asked.
“No, but I have a hand drawn portrait.” Aikenseth brought up the portrait right after saying that. “This is him. Perhaps you can find some information from him.”
After memorizing the man’s appearance, Cillin thanked Aikenseth and hashed out the details of the upcoming exchange. Then, he bade him goodbye and hung up.
Inside Ci Jincheng’s workshop, Cillin, Czedow, Ci Jincheng, and Lung—the young master hadn’t hung up yet—spent some time discussing how best to retrieve the sample It was decided that Lung would send someone to receive Czedow and secretly deliver him to Sector V. Aikenseth would take over from there. The Free Army leader would never allow anyone from the Andrea Family to venture deep inside the Free Army.
While the group was discussing, Wheeze grew so bored that it decided to head to the indoor forest and play. The environment was excellent and comparable to some of the natural habitats of a rank A planet. Meticulous calculations were performed before any species was put inside the forest, allowing a relatively stable ecosystem to be maintained. Even if a certain species encountered an unexpected accident, the small-scale food chain would not experience a breakdown.
At the training grounds, everyone except Prisa was lying on the floor, panting and exhausted. The woman wasn’t looking at them though. Instead, she was looking at a hologram popping out from her device with her back facing toward them.
While massaging his nearly dislocated elbow, Knight staggered toward the woman and asked, “What are you looking at?”
In the past, Prisa would have explained how they could do better and more after their training was complete. However, she did nothing of the sort today and focused on her own thing.
“Yeah, what are you looking at, senior?” Ruo Lin asked while moving toward Prisa. He was too tired to stand up, so he rolled across the floor instead.
They all addressed Prisa as “senior”. It was the term Hunters normally used when addressing someone with greater experience and seniority, and they decided that there was no harm in using the same term. Ci Jincheng called her auntie, but obviously they couldn’t do that.
“You want to see?” Prisa turned around to face them.
“Yep!” Everyone answered in unison.
Prisa had covered up her device when Knight was walking over to her, so the young man saw nothing at all. But now, knowing that Prisa was going to show them all what she was looking at, he immediately went back to his companions and sat on the floor.
The device Prisa was holding was about the size of a button It activated and displayed a hologram of a habitat inside the base. It was a lush forest of all kinds of trees and shrubs, and artificial light illuminated the whole area like natural light. Some small insects could be seen doing insect things here and there, and a couple of butterflies were adding shades of color to the flowers.
The group looked confused. They quickly turned back to Prisa once more.
In response, Prisa tapped at a corner of the hologram and widened it with her fingers.
The group widened their eyes and stared at the hologram for a while. Nothing happened. They waited a while longer. Still, nothing happened.
Knight was just about to say something when a shadow suddenly flitted across the hologram. It was so fast that it was almost indiscernible. They might have missed it if not for the fact that everyone was staring at the hologram right now.
“That’s…”
The corners of Knight’s eyes twitched. “It’s that fat cat.”
On the hologram, the gray cat was darting around like a ghost. One moment, it was sitting under a parasol tree. The next, it had jumped behind a shrub.
The same thought crossed everyone’s mind when they saw this: How the hell was it doing this with its size?
Right now, Wheeze was crouching on the floor. Its eyes were round and wide, its pupils were dilated, and it was staring in a certain direction. It was so quiet when it raised its paw that one might not hear its movement even when they were right next to it.
It was at this moment Wheeze’s ears flicked, and it turned its head. It was now staring at a couple of hidden cameras. The hologram Prisa was currently projecting was captured by one of these cameras.
“What a cautious little fellow,” Prisa said smilingly.
“Are you saying it noticed us, senior?” Knight asked.
“Yep.”
On the hologram, Wheeze was looking at them and curling its lips into a grin. Then, it returned to its previous position and slowly slunk forward.
“Something feels wrong about this cat,” Ruo Lin remarked while scratching his arm.
“What is it doing?” Feng Haichao tried to see what Wheeze was looking at and found nothing.
Everyone else shared the same opinion. They were literally looking at the hologram until their eyes ached, and still they found nothing.
“Maybe whatever it’s looking at is invisible?” Knight mumbled.
As soon as Knight said this, everyone froze and recalled a certain creature.
“Could it be…?”
The next moment, Wheeze pounced up the tree branch of a large tree like lightning. It was immediately followed by a loud screech.
“I knew it! Call Ci Jincheng now, or its long-eared owl is gonna end up in a cat’s stomach!”
Ci Jincheng had a pet, a long-eared owl to be exact. The bird was usually the king of the base’s natural habitats. It enjoyed showing off its comparably unique feathers and possessed a dirty mouth. Sometimes, it was such a wanker that Yue Lou wanted to give it an unforgettable lesson with his gun.
However, the long-eared owl wasn’t just an obnoxious motormouth. It was also highly intelligent thanks to Ci Jincheng’s training. It was an expert of many skills and once used Ci Jincheng’s microcomputer to hack an electronic magazine’s board.
Besides that, it could turn invisible. It normally stayed invisible while nesting on a tree and so was extremely difficult to detect barring certain special devices. A lot of people had been pranked by the owl because of this ability.
However, the arrogant bastard had been slapped right out of the sky and onto the grassy floor by a cat. There was so much force that it rolled a couple of times before it managed to arrest its momentum and fly—only to be slapped out of the sky again.
Wheeze was currently unfolding the owl’s gray wings and slapping it around like a toy. In response, the long-eared owl was screaming obscenities at Wheeze using different Sector languages. However, every time it yelled an obscenity, Wheeze would hit it a little harder. It eventually got to the point where one of its two ear tufts were nearly bitten off completely. Now, it looked like it only had one ear tuft.
When Ci Jincheng made it to the forest, he saw his pet screaming all sorts of obscenities while being pinned on the ground.
“Just try and call me names again. I’ll pluck out a feather for every abuse you throw at me. You think your grandfather doesn’t understand the languages you’re using?!” Wheeze talked down on the bird while curling its tail and flicking it from side to side.
One look was all Cillin needed to know that the fat cat was on the brink of forgetting itself. So, he ran over and seized it by the nape of its neck.
“I told you not to bully others,” Cillin chided Wheeze while flicking its ear.
Wheeze wiggled its claws and shook off the feathers trapped in the crevices. “Does it really count as bullying if I’m bullying a bird, not a person?”
Ci Jincheng looked at the long-eared owl pouncing toward him like its life depended on it and chuckled. “So? Have you learned your lesson?”
The long-eared owl screeched even louder and vented its grievances to its heart’s content. At the same time, it shook its ear tufts so that Ci Jincheng would know exactly how bald it had become.
Ci Jincheng’s long-eared owl was named “Ghost Talon”. It was because it possessed a pair of incredibly sharp talons. However, not only did its talons failed to do any damage to Wheeze, the SOSs it sent to Ci Jincheng were all intercepted as well. That was why Ci Jincheng had arrived so late. Near the end, it had no choice but to send a regular signal to a different location before converting it into an SOS.
Prisa did not make Knight and the others step up. Instead, she sent a message to Ci Jincheng and notified him about the “bullying”. After that, they just watched how the fat cat had bullied the crap out of Ghost Talon.
Ci Jincheng did not feel any anger over Ghost Talon’s mistreatment. The fact was that Ghost Talon was way over its head recently and needed the lesson in humility. Besides, Wheeze had clearly shown mercy. Otherwise, it could have carved up the bird to pieces in one strike.
Inside the training grounds, everyone was talking about the bullying of Ghost Talon with wide, shit-eating grins on their faces. Everyone of them had received verbal abuses from the bird in Sector languages that they didn’t know, so no one thought that its punishment was undeserved. Finally, karma had struck the motormouth!
“Heh. That was enjoyable to see. I’ve always heard that cats and birds cannot co-exist, and now I know for a fact that it is true,” Feng Haichao said.
Prisa set aside her device and looked at the group. “You think the cat attacked Ghost Talon because it didn’t like it? No, it is setting an example.”
“Setting an example? Oh, I get it. The natural habitats belong to Ghost Talon, and the cat knows this. That is why it cut down Ghost Talon to prove that it is the new boss. It’s a classic example of animals establishing their dominance via combat,” Ruo Lin declared, thinking that he figured out the truth.
However, Prisa denied his statement. “Not at all. Its goal was never to take over the natural habitats. Yes, it cut down Ghost Talon to set an example, but the target of the example is not the animals living in the natural habitat, but you lot.”
That fat cat is… setting an example for us? But why?
Suddenly, the group recalled the bizarre grin the cat had given them through the hologram.
Meanwhile, Wheeze was leisurely licking its claws beside Cillin, while Ghost Talon was standing on a nearby table and looking pitiful. It had learned its lesson and stopped trying to hurl obscenities at Wheeze using uncommon Sector languages.
Ci Jincheng sent it back to the natural habitat after tidying its feathers and comforting it for a bit.
Although Ghost Talon looked terrible, it didn’t actually suffer any injury. It was because Wheeze had taken great pains to control its strength and aim. Czedow once said that teaching someone a physical lesson took skill, so Wheeze did just that and learned a bit of technique.
Czedow had already left the base. Ci Jincheng would help him leave Sector C without being detected. As for the rest, Cillin was sure that Czedow could handle them well.
“Gleyre is with the Sixth Army, but I currently don’t have much information on him. It would take time and effort to pry them out. All I know for certain is that he’s definitely holding a post in the Sixth Army,” said Ci Jincheng while pointing at the photo and the few lines of information underneath it on the holoscreen.
Gleyre was the person Aikenseth spoke of. Ci Jincheng tried to look into him after receiving the portrait from Cillin, but he was unable to uncover much information despite employing many methods. This proved that something was definitely strange about Gleyre.
“If he truly was the one who entrusted Aikenseth’s adopted father with the safekeeping of the Dream Tapir sample, then I can think of one possibility,” said Ci Jincheng.
“A spy,” Cillin arrived at the same conclusion.
“That’s right. After Miracle’s supporters changed their stances one after another, the Armies who used to support them had also turned on them. They were no less ruthless than Miracle’s actual enemies as well. The Sixth Army was one of the representatives leading the extermination. Although they cooperated many times in the past, the Sixth Army completely changed their tune and took out several Miracle bases from the get go after their fall.”
Ci Jincheng didn’t say everything, but Cillin didn’t need him to do so to understand what he was talking about. The reason the Armies were rushing to take action wasn’t necessarily because Miracle was a threat, but more because they wished to plunder some valuables. The Dream Tapir was one such example.
Gleyre was probably dispatched by Kachira, admiral of the Sixth Squadron, to spy on Miracle. He was planted very early and deeply as well. That was the only reason why Kachira could receive a mission as important as transferring the Dream Tapir sample.
“It’s still too early to say if the Sixth Army owns a successfully activated Mother,” Ci Jincheng remarked. Although it was generally believed that none of the Eight Armies were able to obtain an activated version of the Mother, Ci Jincheng could not help but be suspicious after finding out about Gleyre.
It was just a suspicion though. The chances that Kachira, one of the eight great admirals and admiral of the Sixth Army owned the Mother was not high.
Cillin did not believe that the Sixth Army was the only one who planted a mole in Miracle. Maybe the moles were exposed, or maybe they never climbed high enough to make contact with that level of secret. Did this mean that all eight Armies were suspect then? Not necessarily. After all, they did not act like they owned the Mother.
Regardless of their suspicions, the group readied themselves to pay the Sixth Army a visit.
“This is the area Gleyre often frequents,” Ci Jincheng drew a circle on a star map. This was the information he obtained after employing many methods, and it was all he got. It was hardly comprehensive and required their own investigation to complete.
“Can’t we perform a characteristic filtering on the comms network?” Cillin asked.
“It won’t work. The military areas of Sector C are all protected by a special defense network. The closer to the center, the greater the limitations, and this area is pretty close to the Sixth Army’s headquarters,” Ci Jincheng explained.
“In that case, we have no choice but to filter after we get there. It should be possible to acquire a layout of the base then.”
“I believe so.” Ci Jincheng began searching for the latest information regarding the Sixth Army and the best entry points.
In the end, Ci Jincheng chose a path and created an action plan with the others. Prisa would not be participating in this operation as her identity was too sensitive. There were unwritten rules preventing her from taking action immediately. If she was discovered, some people would be able to exploit her mistake to their advantage.