louisehourcade Chapter 338 Taming!
Chapter 338 Taming!
"Remove the restrictions."
Zhang Yan looked at the four words that popped up on the control panel, but did not act immediately.
This was not an order issued by the on-site guards.
It's not an automatic program either.
Someone is watching this from a distance.
He reduced the brightness of the reconnaissance robot's image to the lowest level and cut off its active signal, leaving only the passive transmission.
The footsteps on the basement level grew closer.
Someone was speaking in a low voice over the walkie-talkie.
"Underground anomaly."
"Seventh node output failed."
"Go down and confirm."
Zhang Yan heard it very clearly.
The seventh node.
These four words further deepened the nature of the whole matter.
If the Shanghai factory is the seventh, then there are at least six more ahead of it.
Zhang Yan's finger paused on the tube wall for a moment.
He didn't rush in.
If we charge in now, we can only destroy one point.
But what he wants is not just one point.
He needs to know exactly where this network extends.
Zhang Yan put away his ingenious plans and silently slid down through the maintenance opening.
The three underground levels are larger than they appear on the heat map.
This area was originally a wastewater treatment area for a chemical plant, but it has now been transformed into a circular chamber. The central space compression chamber is supported above the ground, resembling a semi-transparent black dome, with fine energy fibers extending outwards from its edges, connecting to underground water pipes and metal supports.
The dome was rising and falling slowly.
It is not mechanical movement.
It's more like a living thing breathing.
Inside the dome, the B+ rank familiar finally revealed its complete form.
It is not humanoid.
It was not any sea monster that Zhang Yan had seen before.
It resembled a giant sea anemone, its bloated body squeezed into the center of the dome, surrounded by numerous dark red tentacles. The ends of the tentacles pierced into energy channels in the ground, and with each twitching, a tiny wisp of polluting energy was drawn away by the compression chamber.
Four glowing metal shackles secured its main body.
The shackles emerged from the ground and fastened to the core shell of the retinue, its surface radiating a stable, pale golden light.
A system notification popped up.
Artificially synthesized energy confinement materials.
It contains a small amount of natural crystalline components.
Zhang Yan's gaze darkened as he looked at the message.
Mystic crystal.
This is not something that ordinary conglomerates can easily obtain with money.
The Zefeng Consortium has people behind it who provide technology, materials, and a process that allows them to use their relatives as batteries.
This was more troublesome than he had anticipated.
Ruins not only pollute people.
It is teaching humanity how to use pollution.
Zhang Yan moved close to the shadows, avoiding the dome.
The safe distance provided by the Qinglong module is still around 20 meters.
He looked at the worktable first.
In a corner of the third basement level, there was a makeshift worktable with several monitoring screens, a notebook, and a stack of handwritten notes. The notes were held in place by metal clips, with burn marks on the edges, clearly ready to be destroyed at any time.
Zhang Yan used the Thousand Machine Arm to reach over and pull out the first record.
The handwriting is messy.
But the content is very clear.
"At the seventh breeding node, the stability of the family members has decreased, and the output power needs to be reduced."
"The city-level trace pollution infiltration experiment has entered its second phase."
"Objective: To influence the human nervous system over a long period of time at extremely low concentrations through groundwater systems, prioritizing cities with high pressure, high mobility, and high industrial density."
Zhang Yan stopped pointing when he saw this.
High pressure.
High liquidity.
High industrial density.
This is not simply about creating monsters.
This is to influence the people of a city without them even realizing it.
Emotions, sleep, impulses, judgment.
Once the pollution concentration is kept at a sufficiently low level, people will not immediately become abnormal or show obvious symptoms.
But what about a few months later?
If even one in ten thousand people in a city suffers a mental breakdown, it is enough to create sustained chaos.
Zhang Yan continued flipping through the pages.
"The initial goal is not mass death."
"Death will lead to stricter regulation."
"Trace effects are more stable, more subtle, and more suitable for igniting subsequent lighthouses."
Project Lighthouse.
Zhang Yan saw this word at the bottom of the record.
The signature consists of only three letters.
TFC
The abbreviation for Zefeng Consortium.
It's not a ruin.
They are not family members.
It is a human being.
Zhang Yan put the record into a sealed bag.
He was not surprised.
The killing intent was just a little colder.
Monsters that eat people are at least monsters.
If people lock up the monster and use it to poison the city's waterways, then there's no room for compromise.
The walkie-talkie voice had reached the basement level.
"The door lock is working properly."
"Group Two, go down to basement level two."
"receive."
Zhang Yan opened his notebook.
No password.
Or rather, the other side never expected that someone could get here right under the guards' noses.
There was an encrypted directory on the screen. Zhang Yan didn't waste time cracking it. He directly had the Thousand Arm connect to the interface and drag away the entire data from the hard drive.
The progress bar was jumping around rapidly.
Thirty seconds.
enough.
As he copied, he quickly glanced at the folder name.
"The seventh node".
"Low concentration of nerve effects."
"Jinghai Water Culture".
"Port City as an alternative."
When Zhang Yan saw the words "Jinghai", his expression finally changed.
It's not panic.
It has completely cooled down.
They've already put their hands on his doorstep.
Nie Qingcheng is in Jinghai.
Qin Xiao is in Jinghai.
Tianji Security is located in Beijing.
That city holds everything he can no longer return.
Data copy complete.
Zhang Yan unplugged the connector and took the laptop with him.
He left no original documents.
He rolled up all the handwritten notes on the workbench and stuffed them into a sealed bag. From the real-time data on the monitoring screen, he only extracted the core parameters.
The door to the basement level opened.
The metal hinge clicked softly.
The guards began to descend.
Zhang Yan looked up at the space compression chamber.
It cannot be purified directly now.
The compression chamber is still outputting a stable amount; interrupting it abruptly would trigger a one-time backflow. Although it can withstand the pressure, the underground water network might not.
Let it get chaotic first.
Only when things get chaotic will the guards reveal the hidden process.
Zhang Yan walked to the energy convergence point of the four shackles.
A ray of blue and white light shone from the heart of nature.
He didn't purify his relatives; he simply suppressed the pulse to a very low level and swept it over the tiny amount of mystic crystal within the shackles.
The system notification is flashing.
The constraint field is disturbed.
Stability decreased to 74%.
Zhang Yan continued.
69%.
61%.
Inside the dome, the giant sea anemone suddenly twitched.
The entire core chamber shuddered.
Immediately, someone on the basement level shouted, "There's a reaction in the core area!"
Zhang Yan withdrew the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship.
The light on the shackles began to distort, flickering between bright and dim.
Having been subjected to excessive restraint for so long, the creature was instinctively extremely sensitive to the oppressive force of the shackles. Upon noticing the bindings loosening, it immediately began to struggle.
The tentacles slapped against the inner wall of the dome.
The black dome heaved violently.
The monitoring screen on the workbench simultaneously turned red.
"Constraint anomaly".
"Compression chamber misalignment".
"Output interrupted".
The audio on the walkie-talkie was garbled.
"Get down now."
"Request remote takeover."
"Don't let it break free."
Zhang Yan did not stop.
He retracted the pipe from the other side of the inspection port, and the boom pressed the stretched pipe wall back into place.
No footprints were left during the entire process.
The door lock was not damaged.
When the guards rushed into the third basement level, all they found were out-of-control relatives and empty worktables.
Zhang Yan retreated along the pipeline to the outer edge of the factory area and stopped below the drainage ditch.
He did not leave immediately.
The best position now is not far away.
It depends on how the other party makes amends.
A heavy impact came from underground a dozen seconds later.
The B+ rank familiar hadn't completely broken free yet, but it was enough to make the guards on site panic.
Zhang Yan opened the data he had copied from his laptop, and the system began to quickly filter keywords.
Numerous filenames slid across my field of vision.
"Project Lighthouse".
"Node sorting".
"Compatible with domestic water networks."
"Kyokai."
"Kyokai."
"Kyokai."
The system prompted a pause.
The next target cities for the Lighthouse Project have been sorted.
First target: Jinghai.
Zhang Yan stared at those two words, his fingers slowly tightening.
This time, he wasn't going to wait.