Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1040
Cheng Xuansu stared at him for a long time. She then glanced at every officer with her rigorous eyes. The redness released by her artificial eyes suddenly turned gentle. She patted the old officer's shoulder heavily and said, "I understand that the situation is quite volatile right now. Tang Dingyuan's disguise was done too perfectly. Nobody is willing to believe that he is a traitor. All in all, please keep up the good work, everybody. As long as we persist for a while longer, we will be able to completely get rid of the mask of the Immortal Cultivator Tang Dingyuan with our undeniable proof!"
All the secret police held their heads high, their morale higher than ever. "Understood!"
"Let's move out!" Cheng Xuansu waved her hands toward the officers resolutely. She then moved the glass jar that stored the scarlet ball closer to her eyes and observed it for a moment. At last, she gave the glass jar to the old officer and said, "Send it to Professor Luo and ask the professor to analyze what it is exactly and what kind of techniques it entails. If it is activated, is it possible to trace the enemy's coordinates? If it is possible, can we locate the place where the item is produced and identify its producer? See that Professor Luo find the answers and report to me as soon as possible!"
"Understood!"
Holding the glass jar carefully, the old officer left in a hurry.
"Hu…"
It was not until all the officers left her eyesight that she finally took a deep breath. She could not help but pressed her tense shoulders.
Her eyes seemed to be piercing through the thick and heavy airtight gate into the dark, cold sea of stars.
But she did not catch the minor collision that took place in the periphery of the maintenance field of Firefly. She was in too much of a hurry to interrogate the prisoners and to report the latest updates to Speaker Cui Lingfeng. Nobody else thought much of the collision accident that everyone had become used to for anything abnormal, either.
It was indeed a very common collision accident.
Party A in the accident was the empty shell of a starship, which was slowly moving away from the big family of Firefly, pulled by two small barges. In the past hundred years, the total-loss starship had provided tremendous components for repair for the other parts of Firefly. Now, the last bit of the value had been used up, and it would be pulled to a dock in the periphery and completely dismantled.
Party B of the accident was a carrier that was fully loaded with raw materials.
The engine units of the carrier seemed to have experienced a minor problem after a long journey. When the two parties met in the complicated internal structure of Firefly, the carrier had suddenly accelerated, which led to the collision.
The empty shell of the starship to be dismantled did not have impetus in the first place but was only pulled by two tiny barges. As a result, both of the barges had been knocked out of place, and the wasted starship had been nudged toward the inside of Firefly precisely.
Thanks to the protection of the spiritual shield and the twisting field, no more serious collisions followed.
Despite the chaos caused, and although a lot of workers were thrown into the space under the blast, nothing exploded, and nobody was injured. Those people who were thrown off were quickly rescued, too. In little more than an hour, the transportation and maintenance were back in order.
It was an insignificant accident. During the maintenance over the past five years, similar accidents had taken place almost every other day.
However, the 'insignificant' accident did trigger enough confusion and attract enough attention for Li Yao to sneak into Firefly without alarming anyone under the cover of the broken pieces caused by the collision.
He did not directly sneak into the exploration experimental starship at the core, which, as the heart of Firefly where the parliament of the government-in-exile was located, would be at the highest level of alert. Chances were that three to five secret officers were squatting inside every tube. Crawling in that direction would be committing suicide.
Besides, his destination was not that place.
According to the map that Tang Xiaoxing had drawn two days ago, and based on Li Yao's own deduction about the overall structure of the starship, Li Yao passed through a jetting tube for the exhaust flames of the engine units which were under repair. He crawled in pitch dark for fifteen minutes and reached another tube, which was a cooling tube that was brimming with high-heated steam. Constricting his bones to the minimum, he slithered in the narrow space with a temperature of hundreds of degrees for more than ten minutes. Finally, he found the forsaken tube that Tang Xiaoxing had described. He took a brief rest at the entrance of the tube.
Come to think of it, it's been a hundred years since I last crawled in a ventilation tube. How I've missed this feeling! Li Yao thought to himself. At this moment, he finally retrieved his mini crystal processor and triggered a lackluster light beam.
There was nothing on the light beam. It was pitch-black.
The localizer that he had asked Tang Xiaoxing to swallow had been discovered.
There are indeed experts on Firefly.
Thinking for a moment, Li Yao pressed his earpiece and activated the communication channel.
"How is it doing on your end, fellow Cultivators? The localizer that I deployed on Tang Xiaoxing has been discovered. As we expected, we cannot find where Captain Tang Dingyuan is caged so easily. We have to activate Plan B now."
Meng Chixin's low voice came over. "We're fine. There are thousands of carriers, docks, maintenance stations, and remnants of scrap starships here. It is practically impossible for the enemy to locate twelve experts in the Nascent Soul Stage and the Divinity Transformation Stage!
"All in all, we will be waiting for the good news here, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture. As soon as you find out where Captain Tang is being held, we will immediately march in!"
Wu Suiyun, the other Divinity Transformation Stage Cultivator, observed, "On the other hand, it must be an arduous task for you to sneak into the depths of the heavily guarded starship and to search for the place where Captain Tang is hidden. Rest assured. We have locked onto the critical parts of Firefly. Should there be anything wrong on your end, we will be able to launch an assault!"
Long Yangjun's lighthearted voice interjected. "Exactly. It is indeed unfair to ask Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture to carry out such infiltration missions, but it cannot be helped. It concerns the next step of our operations, and you are the only one who is suitable for the task. Do you still remember the 'intensive training' that I did with you last night? Let's hope that such cramming proves to be more or less useful!"
"Thank you for your enlightenment, Lord Wang," Li Yao replied. "I have learned so many secret techniques of sneaking and infiltration under your tutelage. They were such a great eye-opener that I am now seeing a whole new world!"
"You're flattering me. After the session last night, I believe that you have the potential to be a spy or an assassin, Fellow Cultivator Spiritual Vulture. Perhaps, it is because the unpredictable battle techniques in the forests in the Southland of Sorcerers highlight camouflage, infiltration, and assassination in the first place?"
"In the case, fellow Cultivators, let's stick to the plan that we agreed on yesterday and continue locking onto the critical parts of Firefly. I'm certain that I'll have something for you soon!"
Li Yao turned off the communication channel. Rubbing his cheeks, he took a deep breath of the dark air.
Such an atmosphere made him feel both nostalgic and excited.
So far, he had merely crawled into the shell of Firefly.
The real infiltration had only just begun.
Chapter 1605: The Familiar but Strange Infiltration |
Li Yao shook the tactical crystal processor on his wrist softly. The picture on the light beam suddenly changed into a 3D map of the part of the starship that he was in.
As he quickly thought, the tubes and joints between most of the cabins were highlighted as half translucent shadows. They broke apart from the main map and combined with each other, evolving into many gaps that allowed him to sneak in.
It was a basic structure painting that he had inferred based on Tang Xiaoxing's description.
Naturally, such a preliminary map that was made based on oration and deduction was far from enough.
However, it could at least tell Li Yao where the oxygen tubes were.
Li Yao liked sneaking into the starships best. However complicated the starships were, as long as they were cruising in space, a system to make and transmit oxygen was definitely necessary. The oxygen tubes that were connected to every corner were required to deliver the fresh air to the entire starship.
The larger a starship and the more people on it, the greater the scale and quantity of the oxygen tubes needed. It was certainly not an easy task to provide oxygen for a hundred million people in a concealed environment, unless everybody living on a starship lived their life carrying oxygen bottles and wearing masks, which was absolutely impossible!
Firefly had been sailing in the sea of stars for a thousand years. Everywhere was ragged, and the oxygen tubes were no exceptions. A lot of holes and leakages had appeared on them. They were currently under full maintenance and renewal. Naturally, it was impossible to seal all of the oxygen tubes.
It gave Li Yao an opportunity that he could take advantage of.
Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
A dark red ring appeared on his finger. The light and shadows rolled on the surface of the ring. A series of runes seemed to have gotten rid of the boundary of the metal surface and moved into the air. Rotating quickly, they constituted a crimson dagger of spiritual energy.
No heat could be felt at all judging from the appearance of the dagger. However, despite the thinness of the dagger, the sawtooth-like fire that was burning at the periphery actually boasted a temperature of over a thousand degrees, allowing it to cut the wall of the tubes made of general metal or porcelain.
Li Yao cut on the tube of the cooling tube carefully. Very soon, he dug a hole that was no larger than a fist in diameter but enough for him to crawl through if he constricted his body.
After crawling out of the hole, Li Yao found himself faced with dozens of tubes that were densely combined with each other. It was truly a forest of tubes!
It's… here!
According to Tang Xiaoxing's guidance, Li Yao soon located one of the oxygen tubes.
However, he did not start working on the tube immediately. Instead, he slowly turned his ring, changing the fire from a scorching red into a cold blue.
The oxygen percentage inside the tube was quite high. It would certainly not be a joke if there was a deflagration accident.
In the meantime, he retrieved a piece of magical equipment that was as elastic as a preservative film from his Cosmos Ring. He covered himself with the gadget outside of the oxygen tube.
An automatic pressure test system had been installed inside the oxygen tube. If tremendous high-concentration oxygen escaped, alarms would be triggered, and maintenance personnel would arrive to check in less than five minutes. It would be impossible for the entrance that he was to cut on the wall of the tube to escape their attention.
After everything was set, Li Yao finally focused his attention on prudently cutting the wall of the tube.
After he snuck into the oxygen tube, he did not melt the round piece of the tube back to the wall. Instead, he 'pasted' it backward softly through a certain special gel.
Naturally, such a gel did not have a high glutinosity, and the tightness of the material was not very good, either. It could last half a month at best, but that was enough for Li Yao's plan.
If everything went well, they would be able to rescue Captain Tang Dingyuan in less than twenty-four hours.
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao crouched inside the narrow, zigzagging oxygen tube and observed the darkness inside the tube ahead of him and behind. Then, he did two things.
Firstly, he straightened his arm and aimed the tactical crystal processor on his wrist ahead. A round detector slowly rose out of the front end of the crystal processor.
It was a piece of magical equipment that he used to explore the structure of the tube.
The mechanism was simple. It did not adopt a supersonic wave feedback system or resort to telepathic thoughts for the search. Both of those two methods could be detected by the countermeasure magical equipment that possibly existed deep inside the tube.
In fact, he was not exploring the structure of the tube but the zones with a particularly high concentration of the oxygen up ahead.
In order to improve the efficiency in transmitting fresh air, the oxygen concentration in the tube was many times higher than that in the regular air and close to the pure oxygen for medical uses. Therefore, as long as one could perceive exactly where the high-concentration oxygen flowed to, they would be able to figure out the distribution of the entire tube and all its branches.
A moment later, on the light beam of the crystal processor, a super large map of the distribution of the tubes that looked like a combination of capillary vessels and a neural network slowly surfaced.
Li Yao softly whistled. It appeared that he was not old yet after all!
He overlapped the distribution chart with the 3D map that he had deducted based on Tang Xiaoxing's information. After rectifying the flaws and errors on the 3D map, Li Yao confirmed his destination again and calculated the shortest route from his location to his destination.
However, before he began, there was one more thing that he needed to do.
Li Yao took out a cylindrical piece of magical equipment the size of his palm with the more than ten antennae folded inside. Then, he stuck the tool to the wall of the tube with gel.
It was a single-threaded device that could send out and received telepathic thoughts.
It could also be compared to a super tiny 'spiritual tower' that employed a dedicated route.
The device would work as a tiny unmanned communication base. As Li Yao snuck into the depths of Firefly, he would leave more magical equipment of the same type, which would connect with each other into a secret communication route. In such a way, even if he was deep inside Firefly, Li Yao would still be able to communicate with Long Yangjun, Meng Chixin, and the rest of them freely without worrying about the signal of the communication channel.
After deploying four stealth rune arrays on the four corners of the super tiny 'spiritual tower', Li Yao released Neltharion for reconnaissance ahead of him and marched toward his destination.
Five minutes later, he encountered the first obstacle.
It was three pairs of crystal cameras that had been deployed at a turn of the oxygen tube.
What was most sordid was that they were also covered by stealth rune arrays, and they were monitoring the tube invisibly.
Had it not been for the fact that the anti-stealth probe magical equipment on Neltharion was of a higher level and that Li Yao had been paying attention to any possible surveillance equipment, he would have been caught.
But since he had already detected them, everything would be easier.
Neltharion was Li Yao's best partner in infiltrations and assassinations. In the past hundred years, Li Yao had performed full upgrades on it more than once. Even when he was in the Ancient Sages Sector, he had upgraded the tool with the brand-new techniques and technologies that he had learned from the Nuwa warship!
Neltharion was definitely no longer what it had been in the past.
Furthermore, as an experienced Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator, Li Yao was ten times more capable of manipulating Neltharion than when he had snuck into the Nether World in the Blood Demon Sector in the past!
Like a nonexistent ghost boat, Neltharion quietly detoured to the back of the surveillance cameras and extended more than ten soft tentacles that were thinner than a hair. The ends of the tentacles were emitting feeble light in red, orange, yellow, green, and all other colors.
Licking his lips, Li Yao spent three minutes in order to freeze the photosensor in the crystal cameras for thirty seconds. Then, during the thirty-second gap, he hurried to blink past the alert area.
After installing a second 'tiny spiritual tower', he went on. This time, he did not run into new trouble again until he moved forward almost one kilometer and installed the third 'tiny spiritual tower'.
The oxygen tube seemed utterly empty in front, but the air of extreme danger was surging nonstop.
Li Yao had covered his eyeball with a special stealth lens. By adjusting the trafficability of the light of the lens, he was able to see almost all the visible light and invisible light.
But right now, through the lens, he could see that the narrow channel up ahead had been dissected into narrow space that no human being could ever crawl through by dense, dark red rays of light.
If one were reckless enough to pass the area, no matter how fast they were, they would certainly block the rays of light briefly, and the alarms would certainly be triggered.
After pondering for a moment, Li Yao took out dozens of rhombic crystals large and small from his Cosmos Ring. They were all translucent and as clear as water, with a higher trafficability of light.
Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao calculated crazily. The dozens of rhombic crystals were dancing if not 'flowing' on the tip of his fingers agilely, allowing Li Yao to further understand their features and the angle between every two facets.
Half a minute later, Li Yao's hands suddenly froze. Then, his fingers turned into ten phantoms as he threw all of the rhombic crystals toward the dark red web of light!
Shua! Shua! Shua! Shua!
The rhombic crystals cut in between of the dark red rays of light steadily.
Those rhombic crystals had all been brought from the Ancient Sages Sector by Li Yao. They were of a high quality without the slightest impurities and as clear as any crystal could be. The dark red rays of light passed through them almost without meeting any hindrance.
However, because of the different facets of the rhombic crystals, the direction of the rays were subtly changed.
