Chapter 7 Let's set sail, ███! Just then, the white cat opened its eyes...
Pu Fengchun hesitated. Her abilities were not enough for her to take risks recklessly. She was used to thinking things through carefully and knowing when to retreat, prioritizing her life.
She unconsciously touched the white rose under her ear... But sometimes fate gives you a reason to take risks and overturn things, forcing you to grit your teeth and reshape yourself. Even the timid can burst into anger, and the hesitant can dare to be reckless, even if it is irrational and has no benefits, it can only bring peace of mind.
"You've told me so much important information," Pu Fengchun asked calmly, "what do you want from me?"
"I seem so selfish to you."
"I don't do business with selfless people either."
Xue Chao chuckled softly in a tone completely unlike that of "artificial intelligence," and said with great appreciation, "I need you to help me find someone."
Who is it?
"I don't know his name, who he is, or where he is. I only know what he looks like." Xue Chao recalled the measurements he received when he was taken to have a suit custom-made, leaving only half the information to ensure accuracy. "A man, between 20 and 25 years old, around 183 cm tall, two decimal places missing, weight missing, shoulder width estimated based on the measurements..."
"Wait a minute." Pu Fengchun, wearing a concealed communication earpiece in his left ear, interrupted the AI's inhuman speech. "My eyes have no scales, I can't mark a living person. Don't you have a photo?"
“Every place that needs AI management will have many encrypted files. Touching them rashly will bring trouble to us.” Xue Chao cleverly used “we” to pull the two into a camp. He wasn’t afraid of being exposed. This electronic body had many records deleted, so it wouldn’t make a difference if he added a little personal stuff.
A person whose information requires encryption is likely someone you need to be wary of. Pu Fengchun silently noted this down and compromised, "Is there a more easily understood description?"
The subtext is "speak like a human being".
Xue Chao paused for a moment. He had been praised for his face and figure since he was a child, so he was used to it. But when he was evaluating it from an outsider's perspective, it was a little strange. Fortunately, he was thick-skinned enough: "...His figure is okay, and he looks decent, but according to the people around him, he is 'too handsome to be trifled with,' and his eyes are very distinctive phoenix eyes, which look a bit bluish in the light."
"That's all?"
"I don't know him well; I only met him once."
Terminal 1 has floor-to-ceiling windows on all three floors, and the interior is entirely powered by machines, which gives it a "futuristic" feel. However, the hygiene is terrible. The machines are corroded and rusted, turning them into rigid old relics. They operate like the gasps of an old man on his deathbed, rattling and trembling. The entire terminal is a gray and dilapidated place, making it look like an abandoned factory encased in a clean glass dome.
But an abandoned factory is still a factory, and almost all the doors to the entrance are electronic locks that require fingerprints or passwords. If it is a passageway door such as a stairwell, at least two surveillance cameras will be installed at the entrance.
In contrast, the iron gate in front of me is rather incongruous with its rustic appearance. There is no electronic lock, no handle, no peephole, only a narrow keyhole, as if a whole thick sheet of iron has been embedded in the wall.
Xue Chao knew why: this door wasn't meant to keep out players, but rather to prevent AI that could easily open electronic locks and could only move around electronically.
He repeated it again: what a load of bull, this so-called "control of Hong Kong".
"Isn't this bulge out?" A head taller than Pu Fengchun, the sheet metal deformed and bulged outward with a small point, like a sharp object drilling into the door from the inside, but without breaking through.
"Watch your step," Xue Chao warned.
Pu Fengchun looked down and saw four or five streams of blood slowly seeping out from the crack in the door. She quickly dodged away, and then heard the artificial intelligence ask in a tone as if asking "How's the weather today?": "Can you pick locks?"
"...Isn't there any other way?"
"You can also just smash it open."
"..." Pu Fengchun took off one of her earrings, cut it into a thin needle, and turned it in the keyhole for a long time. Finally, she heard a click. She pushed the door open and noticed that it was unusually heavy. Then, an AI voice reminded her, "Look down."
Whoosh—Clang!
The sharp fishing gun grazed Pu Fengchun's lowered head and plunged straight into the back wall.
Then came the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground—a man's forehead had been pierced by a fishing gun, and he was originally stuck in the door panel. The blood was flowing from his body, almost all of it had been drained, leaving only a skin-covered skeleton with sunken, gaping facial features that outlined a terrified skull beneath the skin.
Through the hidden camera in Pu Fengchun's earpiece, Xue Chao looked into the warehouse with her. Three sides were filled with high-tech white cabinets, which looked like the cleanest machines in the entire terminal—but they were actually not powered on and were not machines at all.
Small compartment after small compartment, blood flows through the horizontal and vertical pipes between the compartments like a passageway, glowing with a dark, thick blood light in the dark warehouse, emitting a gurgling sound as if it were entering an internal organ and being surrounded by blood vessels.
In the center of the cabinet directly opposite, there is a golden statue of a serpentine goddess, one hand held high in a throwing posture, as if a fishing gun is being held in her hand.
The statues exuded a strong fishy smell, as if they had just been pulled from the sea, and even the gold seemed to shimmer with an eerie green light, like a disgusting green tide rising from the sea.
This setup is very similar to a columbarium storage cabinet, except that the Buddha statue has been replaced with an unknown goddess statue. Instead of the compassionate "Amitabha Buddha," she coldly looks down at the undried blood on the ground, as if she has just watched her prey kill each other.
“It contains bottles of blood.” Pu Fengchun followed the label and found two columns of compartments in the corner. The dates were exactly today. More than half of the compartments were wide open and covered with messy bloody handprints, as if they had been scrambled by terrified people. There were also three bottles of blood lying on their sides in one of the half-open cabinets.
Xue Chao checked the number of passengers and compartments on the bus: "These are passengers who booked tickets but didn't come to the port today. Take them."
Pu Fengchun carefully put away the blood bottle to prevent missing any clues. Then she opened the last remaining closed cabinet, and a bloated dead fish fell out, startling her. The fish's belly was swollen and white, and it was covered in blood, especially around its mouth, where she could see sharp teeth stuck with flesh and blood.
She paused for a moment, then opened the other cabinets, which were similarly filled with dead, fat fish.
"Does blood come from these fish?" she stammered, somewhat incoherently.
“I’m afraid not—did you hear anything?” Xue Chao suddenly asked.
As soon as Pu Fengchun quieted down, he indeed heard a strange noise, like scratching something stiff and hissing—from behind the cabinet.
She circled around for a while and sure enough found two rows of cabinets that could be flipped up behind the statue. She was stunned when she went in. The floor was covered with dense fish scales, and the ceiling was covered with cat carcasses like a slaughterhouse. Most of them had broken arms and legs, and their appearances were grotesque and unrecognizable, as if they had been chewed up by something.
A long cat tail draped down, brushing right over Pu Fengchun's head. It was fluffy, light, and carried a nauseating fishy smell.
Directly below a row of dead cats, a man with a dragon tattoo on his arm knelt in devout worship, curled up in a small space, his limbs wrapped around his chest, motionless like a sculpture.
Before Jing Kou's forehead lay a dead fish, almost as wide as a man's shoulder, its scales clinging to its pale skin, layer upon layer.
Three red candles were placed in front of the fish, burning brightly.
The blood-painted, intricate incantations, originating from the dead fish, covered the ground, mercilessly enveloping these inanimate objects.
This tattooed man was the only player who didn't leave the ticket hall. Xue Chao noticed that he was acting a bit strangely on the train.
He carefully examined everything before him and had a bold idea: "As you can see, although you humans have a saying, 'Man is the butcher and I am the fish,' here, the fish are probably the predators. It is the fish that steal human blood. To prevent the blood from being stolen, someone let the cat in, but that only adds a little more food for the fish."
"Then who is he...?" Pu Fengchun also recognized the tattooed man as one of the passengers, "and the voice just now was..."
Suddenly, all three candles went out at once, as if someone had blown them out in one breath. The curled-up man suddenly opened his arms wide, as if to welcome someone's arrival, and then froze again, as if he had become a different person.
The scratching sound rang out again, accompanied by a weak but sharp meow, like a baby crying.
Pu Fengchun was startled and immediately looked toward the source of the sound—the belly of the kneeling dead fish had been ripped open from the inside, and a hairy animal was ramming into the opening, using its teeth and claws to tear open the belly, dripping with blood. It was the animal that had been scratching the fish's belly from inside!
The creature nimbly leaped to the ground, its body still covered in fish entrails and blood. After taking a few steps forward, Pu Fengchun recognized it as a cat.
Just then, the white cat opened its eyes, its pair of crimson, non-human pupils looking over coldly, while its mouth was smiling.
Those eyes were strangely inhuman, yet its smile was remarkably human, triggering the uncanny valley effect. Pu Fengchun didn't dare move, nor did the strange cat, which quietly watched her with a smile, as if observing whether she was still breathing. If not, it would pounce on her and tear her apart like it would a fish's belly.
Pu Fengchun actually saw a sense of smug oppression in a cat, and she tried to ease the tension with a joke: "It seems you were too absolute. One of the 'prey' has successfully turned the tables."
The white cat suddenly tilted its head, as if it were interested in what she was saying. Pu Fengchun tensed up, and the cat's smile widened, as if mocking human cowardice.
However, it was quite magnanimous, gracefully taking a few steps beside the statue-like tattooed man as an invitation.
Just as Pu Fengchun hesitated, a noisy, mechanical male voice came through her earphones, but she inexplicably detected a hint of laziness in it: "Go forward."
So Pu Fengchun stepped forward, and when she was half a meter away from the white cat, the white cat chased its tail, circled twice in place, and looked up to continue staring at her—it meant for her to bend down... and maybe it also meant for her to touch it?
She tentatively leaned closer, and just as she was about to touch the white cat, Xue Chao said, "Take off that man's watch."
At the same time, the white cat pushed off with its hind legs and suddenly leaped up, jumping over Pu Fengchun's knee and over her shoulder. She felt a tingling in her ears, and when she turned around, clutching the watch on the tattooed man's wrist, the cat had vanished in a flash.
She touched her left ear, and her earphone was gone.
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