Jiang Da
Shi Youchen noticed an unusual gathering of people at the foot of the mountain, and with a bad feeling, he asked Lan, "Apart from this way, is there any other way to go up the mountain?" Lan glanced at the four-dimensional map and said, "There is a small road to the east." So he turned the car around and headed east.
The villagers at the foot of the mountain began to kneel down in groups and kowtow towards the top of the mountain. Their empty eyes revealed absolute piety, like the most loyal believers.
Lan slowed down and drove into the mountain. He looked around and asked Shi Youchen, "Can you confirm where they are?" The thin and smooth profile of his face was reflected in the rearview mirror, sinking below his collar. He was looking at the scene outside the window with a thoughtful look on his face.
This place is very close to He Xian's manor. Maybe we can get there by crossing a few more mountains, but I don't know how He Xian is doing now. "No, I can't contact him."
Lan braked the car, and after a few seconds of silence, he said to Wuyan, "Go ask around and see if you can get any clues." Wuyan nodded obediently, opened the car door, and jumped out. He looked at the surrounding flowers, plants, and trees, walked to the most vigorous tree, and placed his palm on the trunk.
"His ability allows him to communicate with plants," Lan explained.
After a while, Wuyan came back and typed to tell the two: "Laoshu said he saw a group of people going up the mountain, they should be going to the southeast, but he never saw them coming down." The two looked at each other.
"I'll go by myself."
"Let's go together."
Shi Youchen and Lan spoke at the same time, but their opinions differed. Lan said coldly, "With the situation at the base, they could find us at any time. Do you think it would be safer to separate?" Putting aside her lack of special abilities, Wuyan was still a minor, and wouldn't be able to fight if she encountered an enemy.
Shi Youchen's first concern was that if the task force had already encountered an accident, going alone might buy Lan and Wuyan some time. Lan's concerns were not without reason. After some thought, he said, "I don't know what the situation is with the villagers at the foot of the mountain and those above. It's best if we walk up."
Lan didn't hesitate. He went to the rear cabin, retrieved a miniature gun and several potions, and said, "These are for injections, but there are no bullets. These are emergency hypnotic, anesthetic, and adrenaline injections. It's best if you don't encounter the enemy, but you must be prepared for the worst. While these might be of limited use against high-level psychics, having them on hand is always a safer bet."
She deftly placed her equipment into her inner pocket and tucked the mission vehicle's controller into a hole in the back of a nearby tree. She tossed her hair to Shi Youchen and Wuyan, "Let's go."
So the trio climbed up carefully all the way, and Wuyan used his ability to "ask for directions" every few steps. Before they knew it, they had successfully arrived at the entrance of the cliff cave.
Shi Youchen: "That last grass just said that many people went in here and didn't come out. They are most likely Ying Yungui and his group. This time you must stay outside. I'll go in alone." Lan wiped the sweat from his neck with the back of his hand: "I also said that it would be more dangerous if we separated. Why did you insist on going in alone?"
"..." Shi Youchen looked at the cliff cave with a hesitant look in silence. Lan scoffed, "You don't think they were crushed to death by the rubble that collapsed in the cliff cave in 169, do you?" Seeing that Shi Youchen didn't answer, she sighed softly, "Although I couldn't see it clearly at the time, based on the shape of the severed limbs and the way the bodies were pieced together, it's a 99% chance that a fight took place there."
"So, don't dwell on it. If something really happened, do you think we could escape?" Lan pulled out her lighting equipment, turned it on, and headed straight into the cave, with Wuyan following behind her. Shi Youchen knew he couldn't stop her, and the situation was urgent; he had to find Ying Yungui and the others as soon as possible, so he had no choice but to follow.
Lan was in the front, walking slowly and steadily. After the three of them had walked for about six or seven minutes, Lan asked with a hint of doubt, "There hasn't been a fork in the road. Is there only one path here?" Shi Youchen, who had been walking with his head down to observe the trail, replied, "The trails are very concentrated. It doesn't look like they've dispersed or turned back halfway."
Lan felt slightly more at ease as she continued deeper. Aside from their deliberately quiet footsteps, there was no other movement in the cliff cave. After a moment, she paused. Across the flat, circular ground ahead, where the light illuminated her, lay a number of people. They were the members of the S-rank task force who had lost contact. "Here." Perhaps it was the chill of the deep mountain, Lan's voice trembled slightly.
Shi Youchen took two steps forward and saw thirteen people lying on the ground, neatly arranged like the bodies in the video from a while ago. They all had their eyes closed, and a silvery light flickered intermittently between their foreheads. Using Lan's hand as a light, Shi Youchen carefully observed the space.
Aside from the people lying there, this place looked like an ordinary cave. There were no side paths, no unusual creatures, and even the colors and patterns of the rocks were commonplace. So he approached Ying Yungui, who stood out significantly from the others in the row of people, and checked his breathing and pulse.
His breathing was long and his pulse was strong; he didn't look injured. Shi Youchen rolled up his left sleeve again and noticed that the psychic bracelet was always dark. "No wonder I couldn't get in touch with him," he thought, and then observed Yan Zhiyuan and the others. Their vital signs were all normal.
Even Shi Youchen himself hadn't noticed that the tension in his shoulders and arms, which had been so tense the entire journey, had relaxed considerably. Lan had Wuyan search the cave for any plants that could communicate with her. She crouched beside Lusa, who lay at the edge. She expertly and swiftly checked her body for any injuries, then pulled out a blood sampling device. Just as she was about to open it, she was drawn to the glittering pattern on Lusa's forehead.
At that moment, she seemed to see a pair of silver-white pupils staring at her. In a trance, she reached out to touch Lusha's forehead. With a snap, Shi Youchen grabbed her wrist. "Don't move, don't make a sound," a whisper came from her ear.
"Drip," "drip," "drip"—the sound of water drops falling to the ground and then splashing everywhere could be heard from a distance. Lan and Shi Youchen exchanged a glance—they hadn't heard this sound since they came in.
Suddenly, a hand was placed on each of their shoulders. Wu Yan anxiously pulled at the corners of their clothes and walked deeper into the darkness.
...
The woman and the masked man stopped in front of the thirteen people lying down. "Oh, that's all the people there are," the woman said emotionlessly, a puff of smoke drifting from her nose. She circled around the group, examining them. "Tell me about their abilities."
The masked man coughed lightly. "Thirteen in total, one level 7 energy transfer healer, ten level 6s, and two level 5s."
Woman: "Level 5?" Masked man: "Yes, 'Concrete Molecular Reorganization' and 'One-Second Delay'." Seeing the woman remained silent, he continued, "Rare Level 6 attributes include 'Grafting', 'Telekinesis', and 'Teleportation'. The others are basic attributes."
The woman hummed, stopping in front of Yan Zhiyuan. "This person..." She ran the tip of her tongue across the roof of her mouth. "I remember he was the applicant for this mission?" The masked man was stunned, not understanding what she meant. The woman chuckled. "Except for the few you just mentioned, kill all the others."
"Yes." The masked man said obediently. Just as he was about to take action, he heard another sentence, "There are a few more little mice that you can take care of as well."
Lan was crouching when she suddenly felt a chill on the back of her neck. The sting of the needle was followed by a numbing sensation that spread like wildfire. She stiffly turned her head, staring at the frail sixteen-year-old in disbelief. "You..." Then her consciousness fell into darkness. Shi Youchen, despite his intense state of alertness, was still incredibly sharp, yet the sharp needle still left a long, thin scar on the back of his neck.
He turned around and kicked Wuyan hard in the chest, sending him back several steps. Then, without any pause, he bent over and took out the miniature gun and injection from Lan's inner pocket. Without even taking a closer look, he pushed one and fired it at Wuyan.
The woman looked with interest at the handsome man who came out from the darkness and pointed a gun at her head.
"This gun is not worthy of you." She said teasingly, her eyes swaying playfully as Shi Youchen kept changing positions, and her heels tapped the ground with a crisp sound, "Don't move." Shi Youchen bit the tip of his tongue before speaking, and the pain made his voice more steady and fearless.
The woman paused, not because of the threat from the gunman, but because she keenly noticed that the fingertips of someone lying on the ground curled up.
"There is no one like you in this task force. Who are you?" She was clearly having a gun pointed at her head, but she asked condescendingly, not worrying at all that her head would explode. She even kept her hands in her coat pockets and never took them out.
Shi Youchen moved half a step to the right and front, his eyes fixed on the woman. He glanced at the masked man with the corner of his eye and found that the other party had no reaction. His guess was confirmed to some extent.
Seeing that he didn't reply for a long time, the woman quickly lost her patience: "Forget it, I'm too lazy to waste time with you." She was about to give the masked man a look, but she heard Shi Youchen say: "I'm a friend of Song Yao and Jiang Rucheng."
The woman asked suspiciously, "Who is that?"
Shi Youchen ignored her and continued, "You haven't forgotten who they are, have you?"
"Uncle Jiang."
The masked man still showed no reaction. Shi Youchen swallowed his blood and added fuel to the fire: "Of all the people on camera, you're the only one who covered your face. You're the only one who holds the deepest grudge against the branch director, and you're the only one... who mentioned Lu Shen with such particular concern."
"You're so eager to get the branch commander to tell the truth. Aren't you trying to restore their reputation? If you value your companions so much, why did you betray them and stand against them?"
Shi Youchen was thinking all the way, why the invaders, who obviously had such overwhelming strength, still went to so much trouble to destroy the branch base and even put on a live broadcast to show the scene of the S-level mission that year.
And why are those scenes so real - like the first-person perspective of a person involved.
The moment he saw the villagers at the foot of the mountain, fragmented memories converged towards the center: the village at the junction of the three southwest districts, the old woman in the pavilion, the uncle and nephew in the reddish-brown house, that rainy night decades ago, and the message He had given him—
"Jiang Da, a level 6 memory extraction user."
The woman tutted, "Stop talking to him!" and made a move to take something out of her pocket. The masked man stopped her and said, "Leave this guy to me. You go ahead. I'll clean up here and report back."
After the invasion of the Sector 9 branch's base, they were the only two who received instructions to search for and bring back the victims in the southern border mountains; the other members had already returned. While the woman was the nominal leader of the operation, they all knew she was merely an ordinary person without special abilities, and therefore didn't hold her in high esteem. Only the masked man treated her with respect, treating her as a true superior.
The sinister eyes under the mask were fixed on the black muzzle of the gun. He added, "I'm not sure if you're here. If you get hurt, it will be hard to explain when you go back." The woman snorted and turned away unwillingly and helplessly.
After the woman left, he took off the strange mask and revealed his true face, which was Jiang Da.
"Put it down. She can't tell, but I know it all too well. That's the Association's injection. There's no bullet in it." Jiang Da threw the mask aside and waved his hands to indicate he was unarmed. "Tell me, how did you recognize me, and how did you know A Shen?"
Even so, Shi Youchen did not completely let down his guard. He just lowered his hands and said, "I recognize that you are guessing. I admit that there is an element of gambling, but I do know about Lu Shen's affairs."
Jiang Da's voice was actually much hoarser than before, so he only covered his appearance without changing his voice, and was curious about Shi Youchen recognizing him, but the young man in front of him said calmly that he was just guessing.
The young man continued, "Since you haven't lost your memory or been brainwashed, you must be doing this to protect your family." When Jiang Da was mentioned, his face remained expressionless: "The family member named Jiang Da is dead. I have nothing to do with them now."
Shi Youchen: "You never went back to check on me once, or to pass on any information?" "So you don't know why Song Yao and Jiang Rucheng have been trying to find your whereabouts?"
Jiang Da rubbed his wrist: "I didn't kill you now because I wanted to hear you talk about A Shen, not these insignificant things." Shi Youchen felt that he was no match for Jiang Da in terms of strength, and he failed to play the emotional card. He felt that he was not suitable for dealing with people. At the same time, he glanced at Ying Yungui who was lying on the ground and said, "I found a woman who had an emotional entanglement with Lu Shen in District 10. I investigated all the way here and happened to be attacked by you." He concealed a lot of things and spoke half true and half false.
Jiang Da frowned and said in disbelief, "A woman with a romantic entanglement?" He stared into Shi Youchen's eyes and said, "If you don't tell the truth, I'll send you packing anytime."
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