Chapter 189 The Uprising Plan 2
The young girl, Lu Chan, revealed her plan.
Her plan can be divided into two parts—
First, infiltrate the cells where all the imprisoned witchers are held and persuade them to participate in your riot plan.
I will provide the key to open the cell. If you encounter a researcher conducting experiments upon entering the cell, Lu Chan will use a quick hypnotic spell to make him forget his presence. If the person is as determined as the young researcher, she will put him into a deep sleep.
This approach will be exposed over time, so we need to act quickly.
Secondly, I will place my "fireflies" into the magic-sealing locks of the Witchers and the keyholes of their cells. At the start of the riot plan, I will remotely manipulate the "fireflies" to transform them into key shapes, thus freeing all the Witchers at once.
Although this process requires me to control more than a hundred "fireflies" simultaneously, it's actually not necessary to do so all at once; releasing them ten at a time is also fine. Moreover, since I'm not controlling all the "fireflies" to perform their own different actions simultaneously, even if I were forced to control them all at the same time, it wouldn't be a big problem.
Just as it feels awkward and difficult for an ordinary person to simultaneously manipulate their left and right hands to perform different actions, while it is easy to do the opposite, it is relatively friendly to my mental processing ability to make all the fireflies perform the same action at the same time.
Furthermore, this infiltration operation will be carried out alone by the young girl, Lu Chan. The reason is simple: if she is discovered by Chen Long and the guards during the operation, the consequences will be relatively less severe if only she is exposed. In her place, I will remotely control "Fireflies" to accompany her and provide support, and they will be responsible for tasks such as route reconnaissance and lock picking.
Due to the confidentiality regulations of the experimental project, only the supervisor's office has the equipment to monitor the entire laboratory. Once Dr. Silver Mask returns to the supervisor's office, I will need to urgently contact Lu Chan, the girl, via "Firefly" to temporarily suspend the operation.
As for the current whereabouts of Dr. Silver Mask, according to Lu Chan's understanding, he has his own private laboratory within the base. Most of the time, he is not in the director's office, but is conducting his research in his private laboratory.
After the riot plan begins, I will use the "Fireflies" placed throughout the stronghold to observe Chenlong's battle. At the same time, the girl Lu Chan will also use a spell to synchronize her consciousness information to connect with me. With the help of my "Firefly" perspective and her own detection abilities, she will analyze Chenlong's mana fluctuations and figure out why he can use the power of the Great Perfection level inside the stronghold.
In addition, she added many details. The plan itself was quite concise; the difficulty lay in the numerous micro-level issues during the initial execution phase, and I also realized I wasn't good at handling such intricate details. After listening to her plan, I was deeply impressed by her ability to weave such a complete and practical solution in such a short time.
I've always had this feeling that Lu Chan (whether it's Lu Youxun or the young Lu Chan) is far more shrewd than Zhu Shi and I are. In the past, I just thought this quality stemmed from his deep cunning and identity as an intelligence operative. But after seeing the young Lu Chan's performance, I've started to feel that it's more likely because she's incredibly intelligent.
Unfortunately, although I don't dislike Lu Youxun, I find it difficult to genuinely trust him. This has to do with how well I understand his character; or rather, the more I know about his past, the harder it is for me to trust him now.
Zhu Shi is different. Even now, I can hardly say that I understand Zhu Shi, but I always can't help but regard him as someone I can trust.
“Well then, I should probably get going,” said the young girl, Lu Chan. “Please wait here patiently for me to finish. You can continue investigating the documents over there, or you can report the situation here to your friends in the real world.”
"Report the situation? Do you mean I need to go back to the real world first?" I asked, puzzled. "The signal connection between the base and the real world is unstable. I can't control the 'fireflies' here from the real world."
“No, you should be able to connect to the real world from the base,” she said. “The signal connection is unstable, but you can strengthen it. Your flame is your spirit, isn’t it? Since your flame can be used to strengthen your body, it should also be used to strengthen your connection with the outside world.”
Is there such a method? Upon closer examination, it actually seems to work.
"Thank you, I'll try to contact the outside world later," I said.
She nodded, but did not move immediately. Instead, she stood there, looking hesitant.
After a moment, she said, "...Also, you need to be careful of Lu Chan outside."
"Why?" I asked, surprised. "Do you mean he's plotting something?"
“No, I don’t know,” she said. “I told you before, I can only sync with Lu Chan’s memories outside in bits and pieces. And the more secret a memory is to him, the harder it is for me to sync with it.”
"He is now filled with secrets he cannot tell others, and there may really be some conspiracy involved, such as his attempt to mislead you about the concept of the supernatural."
“I wouldn’t say he’s become a ruthless villain—on the contrary, while he’s abandoned my dream, he hasn’t completely abandoned his conscience. It’s just that this conscience used to be directed towards everyone, but now it’s directed only towards Witchers, especially those he faces directly.”
"The evidence is that in the past, even though he knew the strange incidents were likely related to the Humanitarian Affairs Department, he was still worried about your and Zhu Shi's safety and asked you not to try to capture the strange people alive. This is because he still cared about the lives of people he knew, and even if he wanted revenge, he didn't want to drag you into his resentment."
"However, when his new sense of justice conflicts with his own conscience, he will not hesitate to suppress his conscience. And that is precisely what you need to be most wary of him."
"Thank you for reminding me, but..." I thought for a moment and then asked, "Does such a thing as a noble cause that requires abandoning one's conscience really exist in this world?"
"I believe it is not true."
After saying that, she took my "firefly" and left the supervisor's office.
-
While keeping an eye on the movements of the young girl Lu Chan, I also studied the connection between my body and the Luoshan office.
Then, I took out the Heretical Impermanence Sword, summoned a ball of flame, and tried to restore this ball of flame back to spirit to strengthen the signal connection that exists on the spiritual level.
Just as fire was used in the past to heal one's soul wounds, this current practice of using fire to strengthen mental connections has a certain humorous quality to it—a kind of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" approach. However, I increasingly feel that this practice isn't as funny as it sounds. The "robbing Peter to pay Paul" criticism is based on the principle of conservation of matter, but does consciousness really need to obey the laws of the material world?
When using superpowers, I often feel that perhaps consciousness is a kind of perpetual motion machine in disguise. Even if consciousness itself is not eternal, at least during its existence, it seems to be able to output its power without limit; the only real limitation is the power output.
In rare instances, I might feel a slight fatigue in my consciousness due to prolonged use of superpowers. However, this fatigue arises less from a depletion of conscious power and more from my belief that I should be tired. Human consciousness develops through the process of understanding the material world, and therefore cannot describe the infinity that does not exist in the material world. The more aware we are of the existence of limits, the more trapped we become within those limits.
So I decided not to think about it too much; perhaps it's better to follow my instincts when it comes to superpowers. Even if this instinct is accumulated from the material world, it's a very limited form of emotion.
Guided by my emotions, my flame transformed into a spiritual force. Don't overcomplicate it; just reconstruct the flame as you would your body, and then reconstruct it as your spirit. Then try to amplify the strength of the signal connection. Imagine watching a spider's thread swaying in the wind, intentionally mistaking it for four or five strands, and then in your imagination twisting these fragile threads into a thicker one, repeating the above steps…
After several repetitions, the strength of the spider silk seemed to have increased to 80% of the normal level.
The signal from the other end seemed to travel along the thin thread of the paper cup telephone. I slowly closed my eyes and faintly heard the voice on the other end.
"...Is everything going smoothly on his end?"
"He hasn't woken up for so long... has something happened to him?"
"The fact that she hasn't woken up means that nothing unexpected happened over there..."
"Did his eyelid twitch...?"
At first, it was hard to tell who was talking to whom, but gradually the voices became clearer, and it seemed that Zhu Shi was the one speaking last.
Before long, the mental connection returned to normal. I felt as if my body was lying on a sofa in the Luoshan office, even though I should be standing on the floor of the head of the secret Humanitarian Affairs Bureau's headquarters. It was like having a very realistic fantasy, but I couldn't distinguish between fantasy and reality. Of course, to me, both worlds were real.
I opened my eyes while lying down.
At first, what caught my eye was the white ceiling with light tubes hanging from it. Then a face peeked out from the edge of my vision. It was Asao's face. She looked at me with a puzzled and worried expression.
I did a sit-up and looked around. This was the Luoshan office, and I was lying on the sofa. Zhu Shi was standing next to me, and Lu Youxun was sitting on the sofa opposite me.
All eyes were on me.
(End of this chapter)
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