Chapter Twenty-Eight: Clues and Foresight
Deep within the headquarters of the Xuyue Organization lies an area rarely visited even by most core members. The air here maintains a constant low temperature year-round, permeated with the scents of old paper, chemical reagents, and a faint, icy aura of fine metal.
The walls were covered with a dark, sound-absorbing material, which swallowed up any slightest sound, leaving only an almost vacuum-like silence. This was the domain of "Raven" Muya—the intelligence hub.
In stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the banquet hall, here there are only the faint green or dark red lights of the instrument indicator lights, like eyes peering into the darkness.
Rows of massive metal cabinets hummed incessantly. Huge maps of London and the surrounding area hung on the walls, marked with intricate information flows and spheres of influence using thin lines of different colors and pins.
Mu sat at the control panel in the center of the room. She was still dressed in plain black clothes, her dark hair tied up in a tight bun, revealing her smooth but slightly pale forehead.
Before her were several oscilloscopes flashing different waveforms, several telegraph machines slowly spitting out paper tape, and several receiving devices with headphones connected by complex circuits.
Her hands moved quickly and precisely between the keyboard, knobs, and switches, requiring almost no visual confirmation, as if these cold machines were an extension of her limbs.
Silver-gray eyes were fixed on the constantly scrolling data and jumping dots of light, like the most sophisticated scanner, filtering out massive amounts of useless information and capturing those fleeting abnormal signals.
Gongyang's worries and Xuyue's unease were like ripples in a deep pool, but they did not disrupt her established work rhythm. She trusted Gongyang's intuition about security and respected Xuyue's keen awareness of potential threats.
But she only trusts evidence, only data that has been repeatedly verified. Emotions are variables, distractors, while intelligence work requires absolute rationality and precision.
After the banquet, she intensified surveillance of several specific frequency bands. These bands were not used for everyday communications, but rather for highly secretive channels that might be used by organizations with advanced encryption technologies.
At the same time, she also mobilized her informants stationed in the financial district, parliamentary district, and several sensitive ports, instructing them to pay attention to any subtle or unusual personnel changes, capital flows, or abnormal gatherings or dispersals of goods.
For the first few days, everything seemed normal. Most of the signals captured were commercially encrypted telegrams, trivial social messages, or pure electromagnetic noise. The reports from the informants were mostly mundane daily occurrences, and everything seemed calm and peaceful.
However, Mu Ye's brows furrowed slightly. Such excessive "calmness" could itself be abnormal, especially after Xu Yue clearly sensed being spied on. Like a bird sensing a subtle change in air pressure, she instinctively felt uneasy.
She began to adjust her strategy, no longer passively receiving signals, but actively sending out carefully disguised, low-intensity probe signals, like throwing a few tiny pebbles in the dark and listening for the echoes. These signals themselves were harmless, but enough to probe whether other "listeners" were lurking in the darkness.
On the third day, in the early morning, when London was still shrouded in the deepest darkness before dawn, a very faint abnormal waveform on the oscilloscope, almost blending into the background noise, caught Mu Ye's attention.
This waveform lasted for less than 0.5 seconds, its frequency fluctuating like a cautious breath, before disappearing completely. It carried no interpretable information and seemed more like... a confirmation response, or an evasive maneuver against the probe signal.
Mu immediately recorded the waveform, slowed it down, filtered it, and enhanced it, comparing it with all known signal patterns in the database. There was no perfect match.
However, this concise, efficient, and almost seamless response reveals the operator's high level of professionalism and a style that is... unofficial and shrouded in secrecy.
Almost simultaneously, an encrypted text message from an informant planted in the Thames port area was delivered through special channels.
The brief statement reads: "The 'Albatross' cargo ship departed two days early, without loading all its cargo as planned. The departure procedures were unusually swift, and non-port officials boarded the ship to supervise the process."
The Albatross, nominally belonging to a trading company registered in Gibraltar, had already been flagged by Muya's intelligence network as being linked to several gray-market shipments of rare chemicals, with the shadow of a low-profile member of parliament looming behind it.
For ships of this class, changes in itinerary are usually not so hasty and secretive.
Two seemingly unrelated things collided rapidly in Mu Ye's mind. She pulled up a map of London's underground pipelines, her gaze settling on an old drainage tunnel system that had been abandoned for a long time but was still theoretically passable, connecting the port area with the city center.
A bold hypothesis formed in her mind.
Without the slightest hesitation, she immediately issued orders to several absolutely loyal members of the "Dark Raven" squad, who were skilled in stealth and reconnaissance: at all costs, infiltrate the designated section of the abandoned tunnel system, set up passive vibration sensors and sound wave acquisition devices, and withdraw within forty-eight hours.
Mission Priority: Highest. Confidentiality Level: Crow's Eye.
The ensuing wait was agonizing.
Mu Ye worked almost non-stop, guarding various monitoring devices. Her silver-gray eyes were tinged with a faint bluish-black tinge, but she was as focused as a fully drawn bow.
She repeatedly replayed the abnormal waveform, analyzing its possible technical characteristics and the level of power it represented.
She realized that the encryption technology and communication protocols used by her adversaries far exceeded current commercial or low-level military standards, and were closer to... technologies that were still in the experimental stage for some major powers' intelligence agencies, but with a unique, unofficial wildness.
Forty-two hours later, the "Dark Raven" team returned successfully, bringing back the data collection device set up deep inside the tunnel. The data reading process was slow and cautious.
When the sound wave recording was reproduced, even someone as calm as Mu Ye had a slight contraction in his pupils.
The background noise of the recording was dripping water and mice running around, but a short, very low-pitched conversation was clearly captured in the middle.
The speaker clearly believed they were in an absolutely safe environment, but the sound was still distinguishable after being reflected off the tunnel walls and amplified by the sound-collecting equipment.
"...Observation has concluded. Contact with the target 'salt crocodile' and its associated 'jackal' has been confirmed. Threat level assessment upgraded. It is recommended to activate the 'Scavenger' contingency plan for preliminary infiltration..."
The sound abruptly stopped, as if the speaker had been stopped by a companion or moved to another location. The conversation mentioned "saltwater crocodile" and "jackal," and used the code name "scavenger," which clearly implied a cleanup operation.
Most importantly, the tone and word choice of that voice matched by a 78% accuracy with the voice characteristics of a mid-level coordinator from BXX, which were accidentally captured during an unsuccessful attempt to eavesdrop on a foreign embassy three years ago, as recorded in Mu Ye's database.
At this moment, all the clues formed a complete chain of evidence. Abnormal signals, secret meetings, clearly pointed conversations, highly consistent voice characteristics... the conclusion was beyond doubt.
Mu also turned off the audio, leaving only the low hum of the equipment in the room. She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and rubbed her temples. The prolonged exhaustion left her feeling slightly tired, but deeper still, she felt a cold, clear-headed clarity after confirming the worst possible outcome.
She picked up a pen and, on a specially made strip of paper that dissolves in water, wrote her conclusion in extremely neat, emotionless handwriting. No embellishment, no speculation, only facts and inferences:
"Abnormal activity signal confirmed by BXX. Target has been locked onto our side and WV. 'Scavenger' contingency plan may be activated. Threat level: Extremely high. It is recommended to raise to full alert status."
After finishing writing, she rolled up the note, stuffed it into a small metal tube, then got up and walked to an inconspicuous opening in the study that resembled a ventilation duct. She gently tapped the tube three times, two long taps and one short tap.
A moment later, a soft clicking sound came from deep within the pipe in response. She inserted the metal tube, and then a faint hissing sound followed as the metal tube was sucked into the depths of the pipe and disappeared. This pipe led directly to a hidden receiving device in Xu Yue's study.
Having finished all this, Mu returned to the control panel and began methodically clearing all temporary data records related to the investigation, backing up only the final conclusions and key evidence to an offline encrypted terminal that required multiple keys for access. This was her work habit, like a crow erasing traces around its nest.
She walked up to the huge map of London, her gaze falling on several blurry areas that represented the possible activities of the BXX.
For the first time, the shadow of that massive and mysterious adversary was clearly reflected in those silver-gray eyes. It was no longer speculation, no longer intuition, but a cold, hard reality validated by rigorous logic.
The powerful enemy has already bared its fangs, and the first alarm is sounded by the most silent raven.
From this moment on, the countdown to war has quietly begun.
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