Chapter 149 The Incredible Secret Service
I have to say that although the riding experience of Xu Jiali's car was a bit poor, it was still quite interesting to listen to the other party's chattering of unpopular knowledge along the way.
It is much more vivid and descriptive than those dull and boring entries in the "Border Communications" database.
The scenery outside the car window kept receding. The broken Xiali drove from the old streets of the old city to the main road in the city, and then followed the main road through the bustling area with high-rise buildings and shopping malls. Hu Li lay on the car window with her eyes wide open and looked at the scenery outside curiously. Although her ears and tail were folded up, her excited and happy look always made Yu Sheng feel that there were a bunch of tails swinging behind her.
"By the way, how long does it take to get to your Secret Service Agency from here?" Yu Sheng asked curiously, "Is it to your headquarters... or should I call it the General Administration?"
"We're going to the headquarters," Xu Jiali nodded, looking at Yu Sheng and his two companions through the rearview mirror. "It will be quick. We'll be there in half an hour."
"So close?!" Yu Sheng exclaimed when he heard it. He thought of the city's incredible size and was amazed that it only took half an hour to drive there. "Your headquarters is near the old city?"
Xu Jiali shook her head: "No, the Secret Service headquarters is very far away - but from any point in this city to the Secret Service, the drive is within half an hour."
Yu Sheng was stunned: "...Ah?"
"Because we took a 'shortcut'," Xu Jiali laughed, with a hint of pride in her smile, as if she had finally surprised you. Then she turned the steering wheel and drove off the main road, along a secondary road on the edge of the commercial district and into a secluded area behind a shopping mall. "We in the Secret Service also have some 'tricks' of our own."
As Yu Sheng was talking, he saw the entrance to a parking lot in front of him. Xu Jiali drove in from the ramp at the entrance. The first floor seemed to be just a normal parking lot with many private cars parked inside. There were many signs leading to shopping malls, supermarkets or nearby intersections. But then, Xu Jiali turned around and turned into another ramp from the depths of the site.
Yu Sheng couldn't even tell how this ramp appeared. Before he got closer, it seemed to be just an open space at the end of the parking lot with some puddles of unknown origin on the space. But as soon as they got closer, a road sloping downward suddenly appeared in the puddles. A dim light illuminated this passage that looked a little bit strange. The passage sloping downward all the way, as if it could extend all the way to the underground.
As they went deeper, the colors of the lights on both sides of the passage gradually changed. A cold blue filled the outside of the car window. The surroundings became extremely quiet. Even the sound of the car engine sounded as if it was separated by a thick curtain, distant and muffled. Yu Sheng suddenly felt his spiritual intuition begin to jump. While he was still wondering what this feeling was, Irene had reacted faster than him: "Wait, are we falling into a foreign land?!"
"Strictly speaking, we are 'passing' through a foreign land," Xu Jiali turned her head slightly, "depth L-1, a foreign 'shortcut' that covers the entire border area. It will not generate entities and is basically harmless except for a little risk of getting lost. The Secret Service is located at the main intersection of the 'shortcut' and has 'borrowed' a little bit of the special power of this foreign land - here we are."
As soon as Xu Jiali finished speaking, Yu Sheng felt a shake under his body, and then the strange feeling of spiritual intuition jumping as if he had fallen into a foreign land quickly subsided. He noticed that the car had driven out of the passage and entered a brightly lit parking lot after passing through a gate.
"Get out of the car," Xu Jiali parked the car in a parking space and came over to help Yu Sheng open the door, "We will take the central elevator directly up."
Yu Sheng carried Irene on his shoulders, and then the fox girl followed Xu Jiali, the "guide", with a face full of curiosity and excitement. The group walked through the surprisingly large parking lot, went around several intersections in the maze-like underground space before reaching the elevator hall, and then followed Xu Jiali to swipe the card and get on the elevator.
As soon as he entered the elevator, Yu Sheng noticed the labeling papers pasted on the car and near the buttons.
There were many strange reminders and warnings printed or written on it.
"The elevator does not stop on floors 1-3."
"The lights on the 4th floor are off. If you enter the brightly lit 4th floor, please immediately return to the parking lot or go to the security floor on the 12th floor."
"The elevator will be under maintenance on Saturday. If you see the word 'maintenance' on the screen in the elevator outside of this time, press the blue button and leave. You can transfer to elevator No. 2 or No. 5."
"If you are an upper-level employee, you can only take this elevator to -1, -2 and above-ground floors. If the elevator prompts that you have reached -3 or deeper underground floors, please say hello to the deep-level staff taking the elevator, but do not leave the car."
There are several more tips like this.
Yu Sheng looked at the notes on the car for a few seconds before turning to look at Xu Jiali: "... Your work environment is quite risky, right? Do I have to pass a round of rules check to come to work?"
"It's okay once you get used to it," Xu Jiali said calmly, "It's mainly because there are many special 'nodes' in the Secret Service headquarters building, connecting many places, and some floors are simply set up in different spaces. In addition to offices, there are also some strange 'natives'. But it's not as dangerous as outsiders think. Most of the places and rules here are not fatal, and there are special help devices or shortcuts to return after getting lost. There is also a special 'Safe Work Division' in the building, which works in conjunction with the Security Department and is responsible for bringing colleagues who get lost in the building back to their workstations..."
It would have been fine if he hadn't explained it, but once he did, it made things seem even weirder. Even Irene couldn't help but grumble, "What the hell is this Peaceful Work Division... So here, if I just want to sneak into an empty corner to fish, I'll be considered 'lost' and caught by a group of security guards and taken back to my workstation?"
Xu Jiali shrugged. "That can't be helped. After all, the nature of our work and the working environment are special, especially near special floors. If you leave your post for 30 minutes and don't come back, who knows whether you went out to fish or got swallowed up by the office next door. But it's actually not bad. Most floors here are very stable, and some of the more stressful positions don't have long working hours. For the specially trained Secret Service employees, this environment is no different from ordinary people working in an office building."
"Do you also work in this building?" Yu Sheng asked curiously.
"No, I'm out on the field most of the time," Xu Jiali waved her hand, "When I come back, I'm basically on standby at the annex building. In addition, there are some facilities such as 'duty stations' and 'stations' for regular action troops to use. They are not directly connected to the headquarters building, but can be quickly accessed through shortcut floors or special 'passages'."
As they were talking, the elevator had stopped at a floor marked 54-1/2. Along with a gentle announcement of the door opening on the car broadcast, the elevator door opened and a brightly lit corridor appeared in front of the group.
Yu Sheng and the other two followed Xu Jiali into the corridor and noticed that this floor was very deserted. Only occasionally could they see a few people in uniform walking by, and each of them looked hurried and serious.
On one side of the corridor are tightly closed doors, and on the other side is a row of neat and wide windows, through which you can see the scenery outside -
Outside the window is a thick and depressing rock formation. Dark-colored stone pillars and huge stalagmites crisscross and fill the entire space. At the end of the rock formation in the distance, there is a huge crack. Outside the crack seems to be a forest. The forest is covered with snow, and the sunlight shining on the snow is dazzlingly bright.
Yu Sheng: "...What the hell is this scenery!"
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Xu Jiali, however, had a normal expression on her face. She looked outside and seemed quite happy: "Oh, it's sunny outside on the 54.5th floor today. The weather is quite good. It has been snowing outside the crack on this floor for half a year."
Hu Li opened her eyes wide, and finally even she couldn't help but ask: "Is each floor of this building a world of its own?"
"Not every floor," Xu Jiali waved her hand. "Didn't I just say that most of the floors here are quite stable. Only about one-third of the floors have some strange scenery. And they are not self-contained, they just happen to be not at the intersection."
Yu Sheng was stunned. What the hell, “only one-third of the floor” and “just not at the junction”! Is this place so weird? Xu Jiali didn’t seem to notice the wonderful expressions on Yu Sheng’s faces, and she continued to explain calmly: “The headquarters building of the Secret Service is like a huge ‘space-time rift sampling needle’, with many ‘special locations’ running through the floors. If the junction is the ‘space hub’ of this world, then the headquarters of the Secret Service is built at the busiest N-shaped intersection of this hub, so we even have two small customs and a border transportation station in this building. I can take you to visit it when I have the chance. It’s quite interesting for those who come here for the first time.”
"It's interesting enough for me to hear now," Yu Sheng's tone was already a little numb, "How did you build this building?!"
"It's just some magical civil engineering. I don't know the details," Xu Jiali shrugged. "But now you should know why our entire Secret Service will be in chaos as soon as you 'open the door', right?"
The expression on Yu Sheng's face froze instantly.
"When the time-space dislocation was detected, the entire building sounded the alarm from top to bottom," Xu Jiali sighed, with a tone that sounded like she was recalling the past. "Even the annex building and several satellite facilities connected to the main building were also on the alert. Although we later discovered that there was actually no damage, when the alarm went off it was like the headquarters had fallen. On the busiest night, half of the people in the building were evacuated urgently..."
What else could Yu Sheng say? He could only remain frozen: "..."
(End of this chapter)
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