Chapter 108 Perfection Through Refinement (7)
This is a small, single-person training room. The combat simulation system it's equipped with doesn't have internet connectivity, so the new teammates that appear here are undoubtedly NPCs.
...but it was that familiar yet unfamiliar voice.
Shu Ningmiao turned her head to look over, and the other person seemed to notice and looked at her as well.
A pair of clear, bright blue eyes reflected the dappled shadows of the reeds, varying in depth.
The boy wore an iron mask that covered most of his face. From the exposed skin, one could vaguely tell that he was not old. He was tall and slender, and slightly thin due to his height. His hair was loose, with a half-tied-up back. His glass-like eyes calmly gazed at her, as if he were not looking at anything at all.
He looks even younger than her.
Shu Ningmiao slightly tugged at the corners of her mouth, concealing a smile, and exhaled a cold breath. Snowflakes landed on her eyelashes, turning into a cloud of white mist: "Who are you?"
A chill ran down his neck, spreading rapidly like an electric current. He paused for two seconds before continuing, "I'm your partner on this mission. Call me 03."
As if a predetermined keyword had been triggered, he did not show any surprise and naturally began to introduce her.
"The mission is to be carried out in pairs, with one person in charge and the other in support. I am the support person in this mission, and I will follow your orders."
Two seconds later, the pop-up window in front of me seemed to load, revealing the full picture of the task.
Special Mission: Work with your partner to complete the mission, ensuring the survival of both. Failure occurs if your partner dies.
Shu Ningmiao had entered the combat simulation system once and already understood the logic of triggering tasks and guiding clues in the game.
She guessed that the requirement for missions to be carried out in pairs was probably the rule of the operators, so the combat simulation system was also made in the same mode to facilitate training.
03's attitude wasn't exactly cold, but she wasn't a particularly enthusiastic or talkative partner either. After a few brief introductions, the surroundings fell silent again, as if waiting for her to press the start button for the game.
Shu Ningmiao turned to observe the boy for a while, but couldn't resist her curiosity. She reached out and carefully lifted the mask a little.
The area beneath the mask was a patch of black, seemingly corroded and indistinct, revealing that there was no mask covering the face at all.
Shu Ningmiao inwardly criticized Weston's eccentric style. In the simulation system, even the model of a little girl on the roadside was made to look incredibly realistic, but when it came to the user, the system simply scanned the image data without making any modifications.
He grabbed her wrist and pressed it back without room for argument: "It's time to go."
If it weren't for seeing him, Shu Ningmiao wouldn't have been surprised.
No wonder Shu Changyan said he would teach her, but then directly put her into the combat simulation system. He must have known all along that his data was in there.
The venue and perspective of this practice simulation are very limited. It is probably just a random modification based on the video data. So, is she now playing the role that Shu Changyan previously partnered with?
This was the first time she had ever seen Shu Changyan like this.
Judging from the timeline, Shu Changyan is probably around fifteen or sixteen years old now. The image he resembles is too distant from my memory, and the T-sized doll has suddenly shrunk in size; I feel it would be a waste not to do something about it.
She thought for a moment and said, "You're younger than me, can you call me 'older sister'?"
03 gave her a faint smile, the light and shadow shifting on the metal mask, a coldness lingering between his brows. He ignored her and repeated what he had just said: "It's time to go."
The NPCs are still not intelligent enough. Shu Ningmiao was just saying that casually; as soon as she looked away from his face, she was already observing the route with her binoculars.
If you can't infiltrate within thirty seconds, given the tight security, it means that if you encounter just one enemy, you'll have to eliminate all the others.
He turned his head to the side: "What are you waiting for?"
"If it were you, how would you plan to get in?" Shu Ningmiao traced her finger from the main gate of the base towards her own location. The distance between her fingers looked very close, but in reality, it was quite far.
She mentally estimated the time. The surrounding area was flat and open, with no cover except for this reed field. It was impossible to rush in within thirty seconds. She didn't have any superpowers like invisibility. Even if she did, she would have a special teammate to "cooperate" with.
He said calmly, “Go inside.”
03's voice was soft, with a husky quality typical of young people: "Killing them all would be faster."
Shu Ningmiao slowly turned her head and stared straight at the kneeling boy beside her. His clear blue eyes were serious, and his gentle smile revealed pride and sharpness. He was completely different from the Shu Changyan she knew.
He stared at the guards in front of him, his fingers slowly resting on the hilt of his sword behind him. Facing so many people, his eyes were indifferent: "Why not make a scene?"
She looked away, and said thoughtfully, "Okay."
Shu Changyan drew the sword from his back with a backhand. It was a thin sword, the blade was as long as an arm, and it looked very light and thin. From the side, it looked like a piece of light paper. The hilt was exquisite, with something carved on it, like a work of art.
She deftly drew her training knife and suddenly asked, "Who's inside Base A197?"
Shu Changyan knelt calmly on one knee, his face devoid of any extra expression, more like a machine than the drones flying haphazardly in the sky. He pondered quietly, his fingertips tracing the slight indentation on the hilt of his sword: "I don't care."
Shu Ningmiao smiled inexplicably, picked up a pebble from under her feet, weighed it a couple of times, flicked it with her finger, and accurately hit the leader's gun from a distance of almost half the playground.
In the darkness, a particularly crisp click sounded. The lead patrolman's gun barrel tilted, his finger slipped, and the hammer struck the primer with a loud bang. The recoil caused several people to stagger back a few steps.
The next second, a piercing alarm sounded throughout the base, and a "whoosh" ripped through the sky as searchlights shone on the open ground, making it as bright as day.
Shu Ningmiao drew her training knife, swung it around, and instantly pierced the leader's chest.
At the same time, the boy suddenly pulled up, and the few people who had just recovered from the sudden change hurriedly pulled the safety bolts off their guns. In the end, they only saw a cold glint of the blade in the moonlight, and a line of blood silently splattered from their throats.
A few drops of blood flew through the wind and hit her face. Shu Changyan stood in the middle, looking up at her. The blood splattered on her mask flowed down from top to bottom, like a vivid crack.
Only by watching him in action could one understand why he used such a light and thin rapier, which looked like a work of art—the blade cut through flesh as quickly as paper slicing through the air, so fast that it was imperceptible.
Shu Ningmiao held the knife horizontally in front of her, then swung it to knock away the person who was rushing at her from behind, without even turning around.
The man flew through the air, crashing solidly into the wall behind her. He collapsed limply, his pupils constricted, and he murmured weakly, "...Monster."
Shu Changyan and she acted faster than expected, creating a brief void around them. Despite the lingering alarm, people continued to approach one after another.
He slightly raised his chin in one direction, gesturing for her to go in first.
Shu Ningmiao had this idea all along and didn't intend to be polite with him. She turned around and left. The guards who tried to stop her couldn't. She picked up the ID card from the corpse on the ground and quickly swiped it to open several insulated metal security doors in the base.
The piercing alarm was shut out by the gradually closing security doors, and the surroundings instantly fell silent, as if stepping into a new world.
Shu Ningmiao looked around and found it strange. Outside, it was a scene of chaos and alarms were blaring everywhere, but inside, there was no precaution at all, and she couldn't even hear any sounds.
Entering the last door, there is a small, suspended platform inside. On the wall is a simple, embedded screen displaying the number of the twenty-seventh floor.
In other words, there are 27 more underground levels in this base, making it much larger than she had imagined.
On the bright side, it is indeed difficult to notify everyone of an intruder in such a large area.
The task was to "obtain relevant intelligence." There were no other clues, and the specifics of the intelligence remained to be discovered. Shu Ningmiao simply adjusted the numbers on the screen to a single layer and decided to start the investigation from the beginning.
A slight feeling of weightlessness washed over her, and Shu Ningmiao realized that the sealed, pure white space had begun to fall. The numbers on the screen kept jumping and decreasing, and then suddenly stopped on the seventeenth floor.
Shu Ningmiao raised her hand, curled a few fingers, and made a slight gunshot gesture.
The door opened with a ding, and a middle-aged man in a white coat stood at the elevator entrance, holding a terminal, his expression suddenly freezing.
[Golden Chain]
The translucent chain pierced his throat in an instant, and he forced his eyes open wide in terror.
As the gap gradually closed, the girl looked at him expressionlessly, the faint glow on her fingertips making her features appear even colder.
The person on the other end of the terminal asked in confusion when the voice abruptly stopped, "Hello, hello, what's wrong? Did you hear that? There's a problem with the door to the D6 lab. You need to get there right away."
The man wanted to speak, but felt a burning sensation in his throat. He instinctively covered his mouth and spat it out. He saw a bright red stain in his palm, and his knees buckled, causing him to faint.
Shu Ningmiao withdrew her hand, hoping the elevator wouldn't stop halfway through the journey.
She looked up at the clean ceiling, wondering what such a large base was used for. Was this still within Pinneco?
Various conspiracy theories and biohazard movies swirled in her mind. The elevator doors dinged and opened again. Fortunately, this time there was no one at the door, and it was especially quiet—almost deathly silent.
She had already sensed the silent danger lurking beneath the quiet. The air was thick with the salty, metallic smell of iron, and the stench of blood filled her nostrils, making it almost impossible to smell anything else.
Moreover, in this silence, she heard a sharp hissing sound of metal scraping against the surface.
After passing through several isolation doors, this place seemed to be a laboratory. After layers of protection, the doors opened and closed automatically, and half of a corpse rolled in front of her, a bloody mess. The boy stood in the center of the circular laboratory with his back to her, holding the hilt of his sword. His outer clothes were splattered with red and yellow bloodstains. The sword blade hung down naturally, scraping across the ground and making an unnatural friction sound.
The room was filled with the stench of death and blood.
He turned around, expressionlessly wiping the bloodstains off his mask, and his gaze fell on her.
Many thoughts flashed through Shu Ningmiao's mind intermittently, but in the end she only asked, "Why did you come down before me?"
“The first-floor laboratory is separate from the other floors, with the refrigeration room and transport pipelines above it.” He gently flicked the blood off the blade and walked towards her: “I punched through the wall and jumped down from upstairs.”
Shu Ningmiao looked up at the large hole in the ceiling. In the dark space above the laboratory, faint lights flickered from time to time. Countless pipes on the walls were arranged haphazardly, like the blood vessels of a giant, hard palate.
"Jump down from the 27th floor?" Shu Ningmiao glanced at the ceiling again, finding it somewhat absurd even for someone with superpowers.
“There’s a platform buffer.” Shu Changyan walked past her and went outside: “This is just for lab personnel, go upstairs.”
Shu Ningmiao followed behind him with her arms crossed. The fresh smell of blood was irresistible, gushing out as if it were a tangible entity.
Ultimately, wasn't this supposed to be her solo mission? Whose mission has it become now? Annoyed by this pointless killing, she kicked him: "You've killed everyone, what intelligence are you going to get?"
Shu Changyan stepped into the elevator unmoved, the overhead light reflecting off his calm eyes. He positioned his sword between the two men, creating a cold distance between them: "The mission operative warned that no survivors can be left in the laboratory."
Shu Ningmiao raised an eyebrow and glanced at her mission panel again. It still had a simple description: "Enter Base A197 and obtain relevant intelligence."
That's really interesting.
The tasks they carried out were actually different.
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