Chapter 116: Dark Night Watch
"You...you are not human..." Hunter struggled to back away, fear finally showing in his eyes.
Xiaobai walked slowly forward, and with every step new vines "grew" out of the steel.
"How can you guess the five thousand years of Chinese heritage?" Xiaobai looked down at Hunter, the vines wrapped around his throat like a living snake.
Just as she was about to kill him, Tang Jingmo's mental message suddenly rang in her mind: "Leave him alive, there's something in his brain!"
Xiaobai understood and used the vine to tighten gently, causing Hunter to faint immediately.
At the same time, Tang Jingmo had used his psychic powers to create a three-second "cognitive stagnation" for the entire audience - in the eyes of everyone, they just saw Xiaobai using a delicate technique to hit Hunter's sleeping point.
In the eyes of the audience, Hunter was defeated step by step, and some of the beating scenes looked inexplicable, as if countless invisible people were attacking him.
But considering the mystery of ancient Chinese martial arts, everything seems to make sense.
The audience saw what the so-called "nutrients" brought by Hunter and his friends were, but due to the tyranny of the United States, no one dared to say anything openly, but no one knew what they did in private.
"The Chinese team wins!"
The referee's announcement set off cheers from the entire audience. Xiao Bai and Tang Jingmo stood in the center of the ring, receiving thunderous applause.
No one noticed that the mechanical interface behind Hunter's ear was oozing blue blood, and a micro data chip was self-destructing inside...
On the podium, the Northern Federation Defense Minister personally put the gold medal on Xiaobai.
As he leaned forward, he said in a voice that only the two of them could hear: "We know what that is... Your Chinese 'Superpower Project' is progressing faster than we expected."
Xiao Bai remained calm and responded in a low voice: "Mr. Minister, you must have watched too many movies. These are just some tricks passed down from our ancestors."
At the celebration banquet that night, representatives from various countries vied to toast the Chinese team.
However, Xiaobai and Tang Jingmo quietly left the table and went to the observatory on the top floor of the base.
The aurora flowed in the night sky, making the faces of the two people flicker.
"The chip in Hunter's brain self-destructed." Tang Jingmo looked at the starry sky, "But I still captured some fragments... The American Federation's 'God of War Project' has been going on for ten years. They have been collecting genetic samples from top warriors from various countries."
Xiao Bai played with the gold medal: "So this competition is basically a hunt... and we are the prey?"
"Not entirely." Tang Jingmo suddenly turned around, "I saw something even more terrifying - the American Federation is just an executor, the real mastermind behind the scenes is -"
His words were interrupted by the sudden sound of an alarm.
An urgent announcement came from the base radio: "All personnel evacuate immediately! Unknown radioactive objects have been found around the camp! Repeat, all personnel..."
The two looked at each other and rushed to the elevator at the same time.
The moment the elevator door closed, Xiaobai saw a strange blue mist rising from the Hunter camp in the distance, and its shape vaguely resembled a...human face?
The gold medal suddenly became hot in Xiaobai's pocket. She took it out and saw a line of tiny words appearing on the originally smooth surface:
"Congratulations on qualifying. The real competition begins now. - Watcher"
"Jingmo, hurry!" Xiaobai shook the gold medal in his hand.
Tang Jingmo's psychic ability can track the source of the signal.
"The signal is blocked." Tang Jingmo's fingertips slid quickly across the gold medal, feeling the flickering and chaotic waveforms emitted by the gold medal in his mind, "But it sent out a coordinate in the last three seconds."
Xiaobai took out a world map from his pocket, and Tang Jingmo pointed at a certain place.
Xiaobai leaned over to take a look—somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, there was no island marked, only a deep blue.
"No place name is marked. Nameless island? Where's Hunter?"
"What a coincidence." Tang Jingmo's spiritual power just happened to monitor their secret conversation, "His plane applied for refueling permission in Greenland, but they actually planned to go this way."
He traced his finger across the map. The two dotted lines almost overlapped near the Arctic Circle. Then Hunter's route turned strangely toward the nameless deep blue.
"It seems that we can't return home for the time being. My intuition tells me that the plan behind Hunter is related to us."
Xiaobai and Tang Jingmo decided at the same time to do something secretive. On the surface, they boarded the plane back home with their teammates, but turned to an unnamed island halfway.
The temperature in the cabin seemed to drop by several degrees. Xiaobai looked out the window at the rolling sea of clouds. The sky before dawn was a sickly purple-gray color.
"What do you think of that blue mist..."
"It comes from the same source as what's in Sato's blood vessels." Tang Jingmo lowered his voice very low, even though there were only them and two absolutely loyal crew members on the special plane.
"But it's more dangerous. When I read Hunter's memory fragments, I saw the laboratory... those things can reconstruct DNA."
The plane suddenly jolted, and Xiaobai's fingertips unconsciously tapped out Morse code on the armrest: "Tracking?"
Tang Jingmo nodded imperceptibly and took out two "peace charms" from his pocket: "Chief Gu gave them to me. They are the latest 'Mirage' system developed by the military and can be used as an emergency communication device."
He handed one of them to Xiao Bai, "You don't need it, but you should wear it if you don't want to worry Chief Gu."
Xiaobai hung the jade talisman around her neck. The cold white jade stuck to the skin below her collarbone and gradually became the same temperature as her body.
"Father Gu is too unconfident in our abilities. He even uses this thing to locate us. Even if something happens to us, they can't help us."
She turned to the porthole, and the window glass reflected the green light that flashed in her eyes. "Whatever the Watcher is, the experimental data must be destroyed."
Eight hours later, an unmarked transport plane landed at an abandoned military airport at the northernmost tip of Greenland.
Xiaobai and Tang Jingmo wore thick polar camouflage suits and carried standard scientific research equipment, perfectly acting as a pair of glacier researchers.
"Hunter's plane went northwest." Tang Jingmo's mental power expanded over a thousand miles and quickly locked onto the other party.
"But the strange thing is... the altitude is maintained at 300 meters, it's almost like..."
"What are you searching for?" Xiao Bai answered him, suddenly squatting down, brushing away the newly fallen snow with his gloves, revealing the ice crystals underneath that were shining with blue light, "Look at this."
Tang Jingmo's pupils suddenly shrank.
Those hexagonal crystals were definitely not formed naturally, and the regular vein structure inside them looks very much like a neural network.
What's even more strange is that when Xiaobai's shadow blocked the sunlight, the crystal actually began to wriggle slightly!
"Don't touch it!" Tang Jingmo pulled her away and took out a sampling bottle from his backpack.
As soon as the bottle approached the crystal, the blue substance spontaneously gathered inward, as if it had consciousness and "jumped" into the container.
Xiao Bai gasped: "They...are alive?"
Tang Jingmo quickly sealed the bottle. The blue substance in the bottle had formed a strange symbol - a perfect equilateral triangle with an eye pattern in the center.
"The Watcher's symbol." His voice was dry. "It's exactly the same as Hunter remembered."
Before nightfall, they tracked to the edge of an ice rift valley.
In the bottomless ice abyss, a faint blue light pulsation can be vaguely seen, like the heartbeat of some giant creature.
"Underground facility." Tang Jingmo adjusted the focus of the night vision goggles. "The entrance should be..."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
