Chapter 508: Chapter 508: The Buried Secret (Part 1)

In the basement of Brilliant Fortune Building, Mr. Liang was reading a periodic report sent back by Fang Pingfang’s investigative team.

Though they still had no definitive findings, evidence, or clues, Mr. Liang was particularly concerned about their group.

Their assignment was to investigate the giant raptor, a well-documented “blood-eating creature”. Moreover, Mijoe, who had a decent understanding of the fundamental qualities of “blood-eating creatures” and the unique new ant species “ghost beard ants” discovered by Zhou Rui, were both in their team.

Mr. Liang felt that Fang Pingfang’s team seemed particularly prone to encountering some “special events”.

These “special events” had been occurring continuously ever since they returned from their exploration of Qinling Uninhabited Area with a rabbit woodcarving last year.

Or rather, their troubles started the moment they came into contact with that woodcarving in a cave in Qinling.

Of course, for researchers, this could also be seen as a good thing.

After Zhou Rui sent one of the captured “Ghost Beard Ants” to the laboratory in Yangcheng for thorough examination, Mr. Liang also personally observed the ant directly.

Though this ant had a unique “antennae” and significantly different physiological habits from known ant species, he was pretty sure it was not a “blood-eating creature”. However, whether it had any correlation with “blood-eating creatures”, he was still unable to confirm.

After all, Mr. Liang was very clear that “blood-eating creatures” weren’t inherently such, but were all transformed from ordinary organisms.

However, when recalling the abrupt thunderstorm that appeared during their hunt for the “giant raptor” on Wushu Mountain, considering that Chongyun Mountain and Wushu Mountain weren’t far apart, and seeing a similar bizarre thunderstorm had occurred on Chongyun Mountain before, even uncannily striking dead two fugitives – Mr. Liang couldn’t help but conjure up a guess that made him slightly tremble.

Could the inconspicuous “Ghost Beard Ant” be connected to that…?

While reading the report, Mr. Liang faintly heard the sound of fine sand falling on metal from a ventilation duct not too far above.

The sound was very faint, almost indiscernible, and quickly disappeared. Mr. Liang paid it little mind. Such slight anomalies were common in the underground.

The various pipes, machinery, electronic equipment, and matching ventilation and cooling equipment could generate all sorts of noise during operation. His hearing was much better than the average person, so it was normal for him to hear some sounds.

He had great confidence in the security of this underground secret space. The entire security system was designed and built under his direction, and he knew the space here like the back of his hand.

Especially after “Teardrop” could be used maturely, this place was even more impregnable, in the literal sense, “not even a mosquito could fly in”.

He did not believe that anything – even a small special “blood-eating creature,” could infiltrate without alarming “Teardrop” or him.

As for the “blood-eating creatures,” he had a special way to detect them. If there were any “blood-eating creatures” here apart from himself, John Cavendish, and the remaining two creatures confined in a separate space, he would be sure to find out.

If John had mentioned the strange noises he heard when describing how he saw the hallucination of the “Rabbit Meat”, perhaps Mr. Liang would have paid more attention to it. However, he still wouldn’t have been able to locate the source of the sound, even if he deconstructed this place.

After all, the things causing the noises were not static.

For this underground space, the various crevices and tubes were now even better understood by Alice and her bald boss than its owner Mr. Liang.

…

In a hotel in Pengcheng City.

Xiang Kun, who was in his room, was waiting for the results of Alice’s mission execution.

Previously, when entering the “Super Sensory State” for the “Super-connected Objects” launch, he sensed the cognitive information representing Mr. Liang in the secret space under the building, knowing that Mr. Liang was underground at this moment.

So he specifically told Alice, if possible, to control the noise made during the mission execution, and not to stir up the “Emotion Infused Objects” characteristic of the rabbit woodcarving and produce a rabbit meat illusion that strongly affects electronic equipment and power supply like last time.

Although he thought that even if Mr. Liang felt and saw the hallucination like John did, there wouldn’t be any effects. After all, he knew it was related to the rabbit woodcarving, but couldn’t determine the cause or clues, and even more unlikely to think of what Alice is doing now.

But his main goal now was to get the data from the storage device underground. He wanted to avoid any potential complications as much as possible.

Alice, acting as though she were a secret agent like 007 sneaking in to fulfill a mission, faithfully executed according to his demands and methods.

Now, a sufficient number of “Super-connected Objects” had been deployed in that underground space, and in theory, Alice could control them with more certainty when executing the task.

As time ticked away, Xiang Kun occasionally entered “Super Sensory State,” appearing beside the rabbit woodcarving to observe Alice’s operations.

This time, Alice finally didn’t disappoint him. At almost six in the morning, she finally began to transfer back the data she “dug”.

Alice was very proud of herself, and in Xiang Kun’s room, she flash the light a dozen times, and then a voice was heard from the laptop: “Boss, I’ve done it!”

Sitting in front of the computer, Xiang Kun nodded and smiled, “I know.” In fact, even if Alice didn’t make any gesture, Xiang Kun would know as soon as she began to transform the data through her ability invocation.

“I expect to complete all the data transfer by 18:50 today. Your laptop space is too small, boss, I’ll first save it to other devices,” Alice said.

Alice obtained the data from the storage device through the “Super-connected object matrix,” then directly “encoded” it onto some electronic devices in the Brilliant Fortune Building, transforming it back into digital information, and then sent this information back directly using the Brilliant Fortune Building’s network.

If I were to give an analogy, Alice would be like someone sneaking into someone else’s field to steal wheat, and after reaping the wheat, she would use the farmer’s thresher, bag the wheat with their sacks, temporarily store them in the farmer’s warehouse, and then use the farmer’s truck to transport it home…

“Alright, transfer part of the completed transformation to me first,” Xiang Kun said.

He had been curious about the data in the secret storage device beneath the Brilliant Fortune Building for quite a while, so he wanted to see it as soon as possible to see if it could clear up some of his doubts.

“Alright, boss!” After Alice responded, the transfer progress bar for the first document swiftly appeared on the desktop.

Xiang Kun poured himself a glass of water and sat down, expectantly rubbing his hands. While waiting for the progress bar, he picked up his phone and sent a message to Old Xia on WeChat: “Are you awake?”

He knew that Old Xia was definitely as interested as he was in the data that Divine Technology and Mr. Liang had kept so secret, like some sort of forbidden goods to be offline and sealed.

Alice’s voice, however, was heard first, “Do you want me to wake Old Xia?”

“No need…” Xiang Kun replied helplessly, of course knowing why Alice was so enthusiastic. She felt like she had completed a “big task” and wanted to show off a little bit, hoping Old Xia would compliment her.

After a while, the first document finished transmitting, and Xiang Kun started to review it. He discovered it was some data on new types of compounds. He had already known that many laboratories in the secret department of “Divine Technology” in QiCheng City were conducting research on new compounds when he was tracking Mijoe and spying on “Divine Technology”.

After Alice took complete control of the internal network and most of the servers of the “Divine Technology” secret department, this was verified. The expensive researchers hired by the “Divine Technology” secret department were all working on research of some special compounds, synthesizing some special new compounds under the specific instructions of Mr. Liang.

But they knew nothing about what these new compounds were used for.

Moreover, most of these new compounds are very unstable; maintaining stability at normal temperature and pressure is difficult, let alone applying them.

Xiang Kun couldn’t help but frown slightly. It can’t be that all the data they have gone through such great effort to retrieve is merely “backup”?

Luckily, with more documents being transmitted, data that was previously not on the intranet server began to appear. What caught Xiang Kun’s attention the most was the information about Mr. Liang himself.

He saw the photos and files of Mr. Liang before he mutated. As he had guessed before, Mr. Liang was the son of the founder and chairman of Divine Technology, Lu Cheng’an, named Lu Qinliang.

In the photo, Mr. Liang lay on the hospital bed, a tube inserted into his nose. His face was weary, body thin and frail, his eyes devoid of life.

Just as rumored, Mr. Liang had been paralyzed from the waist down since he was very young and could only move the upper half of his body.

But contrary to the rumor, Mr. Liang didn’t get paralyzed because of a car accident or a fall from stairs, but because of a rare disease.

As time passed, the paralyzed part of his body gradually moved upward, until everything below his neck was unable to move. This disease was somewhat similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but was more troublesome and almost impossible to cure, let alone suppress.

However, at the age of 19, Mr. Liang mutated.

The document detailed his own mutation process. It was not personal observation because no photos of his post-mutation were attached. It appeared that a considerable amount of time had passed between the actual time of mutation and when the record was made.

After his mutation, Mr. Liang first bit his caregiver, then was controlled by the caregiver. Finally, he was compelled by Lu Cheng’an to drink 200 milliliters of fresh chicken blood.

There was no detailed record on how Mr. Liang, whose body was mostly paralyzed at the time, persuaded his father. Presumably, it wasn’t easy.

There were photos of the caregiver’s wound in the document. The caregiver’s injury was not severe, but he was obviously frightened.

The subsequent information was not arranged in order and had some gaps. It seems that Alice did not transmit the data in the original order.

Xiang Kun was not worried. As long as Alice transferred all the data, he would see it eventually.

Next, he saw detailed data and research reports about many “mutants”, or as they were referred to in the documents, “blood-eating creatures.”

The format of these research reports showed that some were obviously transcribed from paper materials and looked very professional. Yet there were some in electronic format that were very casual.

Xiang Kun found Guo Tianxiang’s file. There was very little information. The only annotations were “highly dangerous” and “location uncertain”. The last recording and storage date was in January of this year. In other words, as of January, Mr. Liang was still updating information on Guo Tianxiang.

Besides Guo Tianxiang, Xiang Kun found data on two other mutants, both documented on the same day in January.

One of them was the “mutated spider” in the Qinling Uninhabited Area. Of course, the word “spider” did not appear in Mr. Liang’s data, only “unknown blood-eating creature”. The information was minimal and only consisted of some photos taken by Fang Pingfang’s and Li Shibao’s initial research team, including a photo of the rabbit wood carving, were attached.

However, it was not Fang Pingfang’s team that confirmed the appearance of the “blood-eating creature”. Rather, it was Mr. Liang who visited the scene later and confirmed it with his unique identification method.

Another “blood-eating creature” recorded in another document is currently being held in an underground space, and it is a mutated butterfly. There was a lot more information about it, including various clear close-range photos, lists of various properties, and recorded experiments for each property.

Next, he read several more records about “mutants”. The majority didn’t have any specific information and only had the “unknown blood-eating creature” label. The recorded time was in January of 2019.

From the looks of it, Mr. Liang would open the power to the storage device periodically, possibly once a year, to input certain information about “mutants”.

The mutated big bird and mutated ants found in Wushu Mountain were discovered after that day and might not have been recorded yet, right?

But why do this?

Why not let the researchers from the secret department of “Divine Technology” do it? Hadn’t they all signed confidentiality agreements?

It is clear that if they did it, they would do a much better job than Mr. Liang, who was producing what seemed to be perfunctory and random reports.

Why not store these data on the intranet and make it available to relevant researchers?

Does he also not trust the people from the secret department?

But surely he trusts at least one researcher. Normally, the proper operation is to set viewing permissions and let a portion of trustworthy researchers view and participate in the research. Otherwise, what would be the point of spending all that money and assembling a huge team?

Even Xiang Kun, who was less than a year into his mutation and hadn’t even had his lab built yet, had Old Xia to help him!

As Xiang Kun continued to review the transmitted documents, he also continually thought and made sense of Mr. Liang’s actions from his perspective.

He noticed that some of the transcribed data in the scanned paper materials had specific dates, and those were even before Mr. Liang’s mutation.

Obviously, Mr. Liang didn’t record it.

Then where did he get it?

Xiang Kun thought of the “Abnormal Biology Research Center” behind “Divine Technology”.

While viewing the documents, his phone vibrated; Old Xia’s reply came, an absent-minded emoji, indicating she was already awake.

Xiang Kun replied, “Alice got it. Do you want to join me in reviewing the documents she transferred?”

Old Xia returned an “OK” sign.

After that, Xiang Kun didn’t need to do anything more. He knew that once Old Xia opened her laptop, Alice, eager to earn merits, would immediately prepare everything.

He continued to browse the new documents transferred back. After looking at a few simple documents of “unknown blood-eating creatures”, an document biasing towards a form of investigation report appeared, immediately catching his attention and making him sit up straight. The chair under his buttocks even squeaked from the sudden movement.