Chapter Ninety-Six: A Turncoat’s Token of Loyalty (With thanks to Forever Yang, our Alliance Leader)

There was nothing more discreet, swift, and convenient than pigeon reconnaissance.

With the animals’ wide-area search, the team led by Forty-Seven had located Bai Huayue’s home in the villa district, or perhaps a safe house.

From the pheromones left behind, it seemed that after escaping from Zhou Shu’s family home last night, Bai Huayue had come straight here.

This was obviously no time to send people in openly, so the little animals continued the surveillance. One pigeon, especially, became a true reconnaissance drone.

With a tiny camera strapped to it, it first circled the villa once, then landed on a windowsill.

It was perfectly normal for a few cats to enter the villa district. They circled the villa carrying Bai Huayue’s scent, sniffing carefully to see whether she had fled from another direction.

Perched on the windowsill, the pigeon peered inside while its camera transmitted everything it could capture back to the Demon Suppression Bureau, where a large technical team analyzed it.

After checking one room, Liu Shuiling had it inspect the windows one by one, determined to see through everything.

No one was found inside, but in the bathroom they discovered quite a few bloodstained bandages. Combined with last night’s events, this further confirmed that Bai Huayue had indeed been here.

Since the person was nowhere to be seen, the Demon Suppression Bureau decided to send someone to examine the place in person.

Before long, a plumbing repair company van drove in carrying proper invoices and credentials.

Two people sat in the cab. Two more got out through the rear door, toolbox in hand, and walked to the villa entrance to ring the doorbell. As they pressed it, they called out, “Please open the door. Your scheduled plumbing repair service has arrived.”

After ringing a few times, and confirming through the pigeon that no one was inside, they said again, “All right, thank you for opening the door. We’re coming in.”

As one spoke, the other fitted a code breaker onto the electronic lock.

Beep-beep-beep... click.

The door opened.

The two of them walked into the yard as if nothing were amiss, went to the front door, and used the breaker directly. Before long, they were inside the villa.

Once they went in, the cats followed as well, assisting with the search.

In the end, they confirmed that Bai Huayue was not there, which left Zhou Shu a little depressed.

He had deliberately spent an entire night having a “nightmare,” making full preparations and planning to deal with the threat once and for all, only to find that the person was gone.

It was like swinging a sledgehammer and smashing nothing but cotton.

While he was still feeling frustrated, word came from the villa that said, “We found something. It’s hard to believe, but it looks like... we’ve found the Ascension Society’s nest.”

Everyone at the Demon Suppression Bureau: “???”

This villa was the Ascension Society’s lair?

No way. Was it really this shabby?

After careful investigation, it turned out the search team had found materials related to the Ascension Society’s headquarters. From those materials, one could determine the location of the headquarters, the locations of branches in each province, the approximate number of combat personnel, and their general quality...

Wait. Wasn’t this information a little too detailed?

The people from the Demon Suppression Bureau were stunned.

They instinctively suspected the documents were fake.

Since Bai Huayue could not be found at the villa, the Demon Suppression Bureau recalled its people and devoted all its effort to studying the materials they had obtained.

The investigation showed that they were real.

Could Bai Huayue be a traitor?

“No, we need to change the plan. The situation has completely exceeded our expectations. We need a meeting.”

The bureau chief came in person and summoned the key personnel to the conference room.

At that moment, Wang Kailun came over and said to Zhou Shu, “We’ve already started investigating the leak in secret. Don’t worry, we’ll definitely give you an explanation.”

“Mm.” Zhou Shu nodded, still somewhat gloomy.

Not finding Bai Huayue was truly a pity. It left him feeling braced with strength and nowhere to use it, so he very much hoped the higher-ups would make a big move based on those documents.

The monk may run, but the temple cannot.

If he could not beat Bai Huayue, then he would take the Ascension Society’s headquarters first as payment!

He glanced at his latest attributes and skill progress. Everything was prepared for a major battle.

Hunter System

User: Zhou Shu (Recruit)

Spirit: 2.71 (max)

Strength: 1.20 (+0.40)

Agility: 1.20 (+0.49)

Endurance: 1.10 (+0.39)

Physique: 1.20 (+0.53)

Special Abilities: Slow-Motion Vision (Advanced 98%), Anomaly Sense (Beginner 1%)

Weapon Proficiency: Firearms Use (Mastery 42%), Powered Exoskeleton Operation (Mastery 29%)

Support Equipment: one elite powered exoskeleton suit (good condition)

Source Essence: 0.36

Although this training had been horrifying, the results were indeed excellent. So excellent, in fact, that the remaining 1.42 units of source essence were nowhere near enough, and he had only selectively added some attributes.

He had also left some source essence in reserve, intending to summon the powered exoskeleton suit if necessary.

He had poured everything into spirit, because all of his special abilities relied on it, so the higher the spirit attribute, the better.

As for the rest, he used the least amount of energy possible to bring them up to round numbers.

Because the battles in The Thing: Prequel scenario were basically short, intense engagements, his endurance had not increased much, and his strength was a little lacking. On the other hand, since he had spent much of his time dodging attacks with constant evasive movement, his agility had risen considerably.

Overall, however, the growth in his basic three attributes had not matched the actual number of loops he had gone through, while his spirit had far exceeded that number.

It had all been “scared” out of him.

Beyond attribute growth, the increase in his special abilities was what made him happiest.

Slow-Motion Vision had nearly advanced into Bullet Time, while Alertness had fully evolved into Anomaly Sense.

In The Thing: Prequel, guns were basically useless. You needed a flamethrower to kill the monsters, and the powered exoskeleton was the same, so he had not added anything to his weapon proficiency.

Still, Zhou Shu felt that was enough. The growth in his spirit made him feel stronger than ever before.

Right now, his “mini-map” could display monsters within a 27-meter radius in radar form.

At a distance of 27 meters, he could take a powerful firearm, trigger slow motion, and wipe out dozens of monsters in one go.

“No, I’m frustrated. I’m going to practice my shooting.”

He said it out loud, but what he really meant was: almost there, just a hair away from upgrading Slow-Motion Vision to Bullet Time. I need to grind it up.

Meanwhile, Bai Huayue, whom they were searching for, was video-chatting with a foreign woman.

“Yes. Zhou Shu will definitely become a huge problem for you. You’ve probably seen the videos of the powered exoskeleton suit he supervised modifying. Its power speaks for itself. He’s only eighteen now, and he’ll only get stronger in the future.”

“The informant I left at my residence told me the Demon Suppression Bureau raided the place. They must have already taken the documents. Based on my understanding of the Great Qin Empire, they absolutely will not allow the Ascension Society to exist within the country. They’re bound to make a major move.”

“I don’t know what you’ve been hiding in lately, but that will be an excellent opportunity to kill Zhou Shu. He’s a supernatural sniper, and his close-combat ability is weak. More than a month ago, his physical condition was only at the level of a second-tier athlete. In just over a month, he still wouldn’t have reached the minimum time required to take enhancement drugs, so his physical strength basically won’t have improved much.”

“As a sniper, he’ll definitely be fighting far from the main battlefield, with at most ordinary soldiers protecting him. If you use an ambush, you can kill him very easily.”

After hearing all this, the foreign woman in the video smiled. “You really will do anything to get stronger, won’t you? You’d even betray your own organization.”

“If I can’t control it, then it has little reason to exist. The current chairman is already senile. The Ascension Society is heading toward destruction. If it can help me grow stronger now, then that is its honor. And with your assistance, I can always build another one.”

Bai Huayue said this with a blank expression.

“Heh!”

This time, the woman in the video actually laughed out loud.

“We’ll see whether or not we help you. First, we need to verify whether your intelligence is real. If it is, we naturally won’t be stingy.”

“But if the intelligence is fake, then I remember clearly that one of our bronze-level directors died because he cooperated with you~”

Bai Huayue’s face darkened, but she still said, “Don’t worry. My intelligence is absolutely correct.”

“Heh. It had better be~”