The survivors of the mainship obtained the chance to rest at the Swift Dragon base. Given that the Jinglong mainship had no way to travel long distances, they could only wait for the Federation army to send a new military vessel to pick them up.
After resting peacefully for three days and two nights, when the new mainship members heard that a new military vessel was about to arrive for them in two days, they were ecstatic. Even though they had been treated pretty well overall in the Swift Dragon base, they had still felt significantly restrained. The mainship members had been restricted to a small living area; for many other places on the base, they simply could not even get close. This made the fleet soldiers who were accustomed to being able to freely move around to feel extremely inconvenienced.
On this night, in a highly-defended area within the Swift Dragon base, several figures appeared silently not too far from the entrance. They lurked at the blind spot in the distance ...
"You're sure this is the spot?" Someone who appeared to be the commanding officer gestured as he asked the person beside him.
This group of people were wearing advanced induction combat clothing of the Federation military, which could buffer the human body from the outside air and perfectly camouflage the soldiers according to their surrounding environment. Once the soldiers laid down and stopped moving, it would be nigh impossible for even the most advanced radar detectors, thermal monitors, and the human eye to discover them.The only reason we say 'nigh' is because there is nothing which can be guaranteed to be foolproof — there would always be the possibility of what if.
"Only this spot is most closely defended." The person beside the apparent commander returned a confident hand gesture.
"Have all the surveillance devices been blocked?" The commander turned to look towards another side, his gaze indicating that he wanted to confirm whether his men had completed the most critical step.
There were actually three people on his other side. One of them, who seemed to be their head, saw the question in the commander's eyes and nodded, signalling that it had been done.
It could be seen from their faces that it had not been easy to complete this step. Other than the one who had nodded, whose condition still seemed fine, the other two people had faint tracks of sweat on their foreheads and their faces were extremely grim. It looked like the two of them had already put forth all their energy to completely block off all the surveillance equipment and create false images.
"How long can it last?" After seeing the other's response, the commander then asked in a low voice.
"At most for only one hour and a quarter more. If possible, please try to come out within an hour," said the head grimly. He had not expected the defences of the Swift Dragon base to be so tight — in particular, there was an abnormal number of all kinds of advanced surveillance equipment. This had exceeded their estimation. If they had known earlier, they would have brought along the other two members of their team as well."One hour, is it? There should be enough time." The commander mused a little and felt that it was not a huge problem. Honestly, even if the problem was huge, he still had to go inside and investigate. Hadn't they already spent so much effort all for the sake of finding out what the hell was happening in the Swift Dragon base?
"Hollow Ground, I'll leave this to you," said the commander decisively to one of the others. His attitude was obviously much gentler than before with the others. In the virtual world, he truly did not dare to offend this Hollow Ground.
This man was outwardly different from others. His entire figure was enveloped in shadow, while his face was a complete fog of grey, his facial features forever indistinct. This was the appearance spectres held in the virtual world. They would never reveal their true face because as spectres, everyone who was an enemy would be out to kill them. This was because almost two-thirds of one's life was spent in the virtual world in this present world, and spectres were the terrifying group of people who were the only ones to hold the ability to decide true life and death in the virtual world.
Mind you, even the mainframes of the various great empires that maintained the entire virtual world were incapable of doing this.
Therefore, all the nations both loved and hated spectres — they wished to control the spectres in their borders, while they were extremely worried and jealous about the spectres of other nations. Besides spectres, equally feared by the enemy nations were those prodigiously gifted aberrant geniuses. These people, as long as their real identity was found out, if they were opponents, they would be prioritised for assassination, just like how Ling Lan had been attacked back when she had been younger ...
"Don't worry, no one can hurt them while I'm around." Hollow Ground's reply was brimming with confidence in himself. As one of the top elites in the central military spectre department, he had this confidence as well as his personal pride.
The commander frowned at those words. He knew spectres were, as a group, all strange and abnormal people. Known as death gods in the virtual world, they always had a sense of superiority as they looked down with contempt on the masses. However, since they were all Federation soldiers here, the commander did not take it to heart. He waved a hand at the men behind him, and two figures dashed out, using various areas of cover to hide themselves as they silently snuck over to an area not too far from the entrance.
At the entrance were two sentry soldiers facing outwards. Their eyes were alertly scanning everything before them — the two men who had snuck over just happened to position themselves in those sentries' blind spots, thus avoiding detection.
When they were only about ten meters away from the sentries, the two lurking men pulled out their weapons, which appeared similar to pistols, and aimed them at the two men on guard. Aware versus unaware — two muffled shots rang out as a cold light flashed at the muzzle of each pistol, and the two men on duty were hit accurately.
The two sentries had no chance to react at all, instantly falling over. It turned out that the men who had snuck over were using the highest level Federation silent tranquillizer gun. Even a relatively stronger C-class demonbeast in this universe would topple over from the anaesthetic in three seconds after being shot by this gun, not to mention these on-duty soldiers who were completely incomparable to a C-class demonbeast. As long as their skin had been scratched, they would be instantly down for the count.
Seeing that they had succeeded, the two men silently dashed over to the opponents' sides and held them up, and then swiftly gripped their heads and twisted forcefully. There was a crack, and the necks of those sentries were broken with no fuss at all. The two men then carefully laid their two victims down on the ground, and without making any noise, they turned their head to signal behind them with a wave.
The commander nodded at Hollow Ground and the other two men with him, then led the others to move stealthily over. Meanwhile, the one who had answered the commander earlier, the head of the three men, followed the commander as well.
To enter, they had to go through an electronic door. This had to be cracked by a hacker, which was why the head had followed. That person's skill level was very high; he only took a few seconds to crack the electronic door. The door opened silently — the inside was extremely dark, but these people all had night vision goggles so their eyesight was not affected much by it.
A warehouse came into sight. Inside it were stacks of military supplies. It looked like the other countless warehouses on the base, extremely normal. However, these people would not be discouraged just because of this surface appearance. They had specifically chosen this place because neither hackers nor spectres could see this area clearly, unlike other places where things could be taken in with one glance.
The commander made a hand gesture beckoning his men in and they all entered in succession. Everyone began to search the warehouse, hoping to find anything suspicious.
About five minutes later, one of their members suddenly waved to the others. It looked like he had found something. The commander immediately led the hacker with them over to the man and began to carefully examine what the other had discovered.
The hacker touched the spot, closed his eyes, and began to examine it with his senses. Very soon, he opened his eyes and nodded to the commander, confirming that this was the right spot.
The commander waved his hand and everyone took cover, hiding in a circle around the hacker. Seeing that everyone had taken cover, the hacker took three brisk steps back, took in a deep breath, and closed his eyes as his hands made various different gestures. He murmured, and then a soft click could be heard — the ground silently opened up, exposing a dark hole only capable of letting one person through at a time.
The commander looked at the hacker, and the hacker shook his head firmly, indicating that there was no perceptible movement below. Only then did the commander signal for his subordinates to scout the way.
After the first man went down the hole, the hacker's face became serious. Three minutes later, he nodded to the commander. This was to tell him that there was no problem below.
The commander motioned for everyone to go down. Once the last person went down, the ground once again returned to normal. It was as if the black hole did not exist, while the electronic door they had initially entered through closed again.
In the meantime, of the three men left at the doorway, two of them had simulated the uniforms of those officers on duty and taken up the sentries' spots at the door. It was just as if nothing major had happened here. And as the one protecting this area, Hollow Ground suddenly merged with the darkness, as if he had never been there at all.
********
Right then, in a secret room in the control centre of the Swift Dragon base, eight black-robed people had their eyes closed. D1 and D9 who had appeared at the start were among them, while the remaining six people appeared almost no different from them.
"These tiny ants finally could not resist taking action." D9 suddenly opened his eyes and smiled sinisterly. He cracked his fingers, rather eager to indulge in a grand fight. After waiting for two days, this group of investigators sent by the Federation mainframe had finally shown themselves.
In fact, the moment the command mainship had arrived at the Swift Dragon base, they had already been monitoring everyone from that ship and set aside a few key suspects. For this purpose, they had not hesitated to transfer several top-class spectres over from their own country. They had to be sure they could keep these people here.
They definitely could not allow the Federation to reclaim this sole foothold in the Federation which had taken them so much trouble to obtain. Moreover, their Project T was at its most critical period now — they could not afford the slightest bit of carelessness.
As long as Project T succeeded, the Chinese Federation would descend into chaos, and they would then be able to take advantage to take over the most central and resource-rich supreme nation in their galaxy. In order to achieve this objective, their empire had spent countless generations worth of sweat and blood to only complete the early stage preparations of Project T ...
"Who'd have expected the other side to send so many people too. Tsk tsk tsk, three top hackers plus a top-class spectre ... we've managed to bait some big fish here." D1 was looking at those people sneaking up to that basement room where they had set up a trap. Right then, those people were slowly approaching — although they were extremely cautious, they had no idea that their every move was already being captured by comprehensive surveillance.
"Keep a close eye on those other suspects." Seeing everyone becoming excited, D1 could not help but warn coldly. He did not wish for them to succeed here only to result in their most essential secret base being discovered, thus causing them to fall short of success at this final stage.
