Book 4, Chapter 77: Aftermath

Half an hour later, cars drove into the tunnel, and they were followed by rapid footsteps.

The Resolution Department and City Patrol had finally arrived.

When they got closer to the large space in the tunnel, they saw Chen Chuan sitting on a cement structural support with a saber laid on his lap. There was a corpse lying in a pit of blood near him. Their breaths froze. Then, they saluted him respectfully.

“Sir!”

Chen Chuan stood up and saluted them back before instructing, “Proceed according to procedure.”

“Roger!”

They immediately spread out and locked down the area before pushing over a high-power lamp to light up the area. They not only inspected Fan Mo’s corpse, but also violently shook the gang members in the area to interrogate them.

Once they examined everything, they gave a report to Chen Chuan. Apparently, they found a dark brown substance on Fan Mo’s skin, which resembled paint, but after examining it, they found that it was a special kind of explosive that would explode when exposed to a special frequency.

Aside from that, they also found items that they couldn’t identify for the time being due to limited equipment. They intended to bring his corpse back to the department for further inspection.

Chen Chuan checked the photos they took and found that the paint formed diagrams. The inspection team may have been unable to tell what they were, but Chen Chuan could. It was some kind of old and traditional ritual array.

After some thinking, he asked for copies of the photos so that he could send them to the Cult Investigation Bureau to see whether they could learn anything useful from them.

He also asked the intelligence unit to locate Fan Mo’s base according to his remaining biofield and his tracks.

If they could find it, he was sure that they would get more clues and direct proof of United Might’s crimes. That would make everything easier.

Once things were mostly finished up, he hitched a ride out of the lower city district. During the ride, he used a cloth to clean the Frost King Saber’s sheath.

He finally understood the benefits of having a good weapon. It gave him a great advantage in battle. The weapon could withstand the enemy’s Heartborn Force, and that was just its defensive capabilities.

Since weapons were used to kill, its true benefits should show when it was used to attack. For example, when Talu used her staff, her strength grew by several degrees. If the Frost King Saber could let Chen Chuan deliver even stronger refined forces, it would go without saying that this would be a boost in fighting power.

Before this, Chen Chuan had put his focus on polishing his hand-to-hand refined forces, but he couldn’t overlook training the refined forces related to his weapon.

While he had the Heavy Slash Force, it was given to him by Cheng Zitong as a beginner-level saber-type refined force. There was a limit to how strong it could be, and it only used a small amount of his mutated tissue. By now, it was unable to keep up with his growth.

Hence, Chen Chuan intended to develop a saber-type refined force based on the unique characteristics of his fighting style and refined force. This would make it easier to integrate it with his hand-to-hand refined forces.

After thinking quietly for a while, he got some ideas.

Suddenly, the area around the car lit up. They had left the tunnel and returned to the surface.

When Chen Chuan looked up, he saw Dawncall soaring in the sky. Upon seeing him, it chirped.

Just then, he received a report from an inspector.

“Sir, as you requested, we investigated all the places marked by Safe Shield. We found explosives in some of them.

“Upon inspection, we noticed that they’re all privately modified explosives. They have been altered in such a way that once the safety devices are removed, rapid tremors or loud soundwaves would explode them.”

“Have you figured out where he got the explosives?” he asked.

“We’re tracking down the source, but we’re basically certain that most of the materials didn’t come from Jibei Road.”

“Okay.” Chen Chuan knew that further investigation wouldn’t yield results. After all, United Might was a logistics and private security company. It was far too easy for any of its employees to get these things.

The patrol guards inspecting employees of large companies coming into the city weren’t too strict. Fan Mo also had a lot of alternative channels to get those materials.

“Sweep through the places a few more times to make sure no more explosives are left behind,” he instructed.

“Roger!”

***

Six hours after Fan Mo’s death, Yang Ling sat alone in her big office in United Might’s branch with her hands on her too-tall chair. Her feet were suspended.

When she was alone, she didn’t bother sitting properly and acted her age.

It was drizzling outside. She watched the rain slide down the glass walls. The raindrops left behind trails of water, but soon, more rain fell on the glass and replaced the original trails with their own.

She watched the water trails flow past her blurry reflection on the glass.

Beep!

Just then, she heard the grating sound of a notification.

Immediately, Yang Ling got out of her chair and faced the door. It opened, and her assistant came inside and bowed. “Miss.”

Yang Ling stared at her without saying anything.

The assistant produced a telegram and handed it to her. “The headquarters sent it.”

She took it.

The assistant continued, “They lost contact with Captain Mo’s resonance implant a few hours ago. His liaison officer also lost all traces of him.

“According to the information sent by the liaison officer, Captain Fan had set up a plan to ambush Lead Investigator Chen. The last update they got was that Captain Fan was in the process of shaking off Lead Investigator Chen. Then, five hours ago, Lead Investigator Chen returned to the Resolution Department.

“While the Resolution Department hasn’t released anything, they did bring a corpse back. Based on all the information we got from various parties, we’re certain that the corpse belongs to Captain Fan.

“His team of martial artists is no more.

“We’ve used a secret telegram frequency to send the analysis to the headquarters, and they’ve given us new directions. They don’t want us to make any mistakes during this period of time and give the enemies a chance to attack us while we wait for the headquarters to send a new team over.”

“I understand,” Yang Ling said after lowering the telegram.

“Since we’ve lost this team, we need to make adjustments to our plans to go to the island nations. Before the headquarters sends another team, you are not to leave,” the assistant said.

“This will force us to give up on conducting business with the island nations. We already got everything ready. If we cancel our plans now, we’ll alert the Resolution Department and make them suspicious,” Yang Ling said seriously.

“That makes sense, but if the headquarters can’t send a team over in time, you should be working on your task, not putting your focus on that area,” the assistant said when she saw how determined Yang Ling was.

Yang Ling nodded and said nothing else.

“I hope you understand that this is all for the company.”

Once the assistant said that, she bowed and left.

Yang Ling stood alone and stared at her reflection on the glass wall. Behind her reflection were skyscrapers standing tall amid the dark sky and the pouring rain.

***

Once Chen Chuan was done with work, he returned to his house in Martial Order District. Some of the seized nutrition cans had already been transported.

He looked at the opened nutrition cans that were neatly arranged on the floor and drew the Frost King Saber. He pointed it at them.

In the beginning, nothing happened, but after waiting for a while, wisps of white smoke came out from the saber toward the cans.

Then, the contents started disappearing at a rather quick pace.

Chen Chuan could sense the mutated tissue in the Frost King Saber become active. Clearly, they were receptive toward the nutrition cans.

If even the Fu-Mu Entity needed nutrition and calorie-dense nutritional fluid to remain alive, it wasn’t strange for the entity that arguably shared some similarities with the Fu-Mu Entity in his saber to like it.

However, nutritional fluid came in different grades and types. The one taken by the Fu-Mu Entity was bound to be different from everything Chen Chuan had seen before. He was pretty sure that the Fu-Mu Entity’s nutritional fluid was much more effective, but he had no way to get that.

After around ten minutes, most of the nutrition cans were emptied, and the Frost King Saber went into dormancy. By the looks of it, it was going to take some time to digest what it ate.

This was a good thing. Whenever the Frost King Saber entered a period of dormancy to digest, it would wake up stronger. Chen Chuan looked forward to its performance in the future.

Once he returned the Frost King Saber to its sheath, he checked the report the inspector had sent to him just now. It was basically a confirmation of Fan Mo’s identity.

After confirming it, he opened the report he had written before coming back, added a conclusion, and submitted it.

The team United Might had intended to send into the merged space was wiped out.

Even though United Might could send more people, other parties were going to the merged space in the next few days. United Might wasn’t going to be part of the first batch, and when it came to retrieving an artifact, usually the ones who got the initiative were the ones who won.

Of course, the branch company could send a team into the merged space themselves. Then, things would be different.

But while the two Black Steel security guards were strong, they were useless when it came to the fight for artifacts.

Even if the branch company had an active biosentient entity, it was only an embryo.

While thinking about it, Chen Chuan suddenly realized something. He was missing something.

He brought up a report. “Safe Shield, is the amount of nutritional fluid and calorie units submitted by United Might normal?”

“Companies usually do some optimizations to the nutritional fluid used for active biosentient entities. The calorie amount provided is confidential information, and I am unable to check it based on the agreement between companies and the government.

“If I refer to the calorie amount provided by standard nutritional fluids, the amount can keep a mid-sized or small active biosentient entity alive. This would be normal, but United Might’s active biosentient entity is just an embryo, so this amount is too much.

“However, United Might could have brought more nutritional fluid for future use, because it is expensive, and all companies are stocking up on it. Most of the companies have some on standby.”

Chen Chuan pondered over this and came up with a theory. “I understand. Please contact Director Wu for me.”

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