After meeting Ye Fengxue’s father during the day, the three of them took a short stroll through the nearby commercial street. Thus, time had arrived at dusk.
As the three were about to part, Ye Fengxue’s expression still showed reluctance. Although Ling Ling often annoyed her, she didn’t exactly hate that feeling.
Her only thought at parting was the hope that the next week would pass peacefully, that she wouldn’t have to continue worrying, and that her daily life would return to how it should be.
So now that they were separating, she suddenly didn’t know what to say. She paused for a moment, swallowed back the long string of words that would have sounded too cheesy if spoken, and only said a short sentence.
“…Next week, don’t be late.”
Having said that, Ye Fengxue turned around and continued walking toward the high-end apartment where she lived. After walking a short distance, she looked back and said to the two sisters in a rare, straightforward tone:
“I actually had a lot of fun today. Thank you.”
After speaking, Ye Fengxue continued walking toward the apartment.
Ling Ling watched the slowly departing Lady Ye and began to plan her operation for tonight in her mind. Tonight, she decided to raid, under the identity of Bai Ye, the abandoned warehouse that Hua Jianxi mentioned, which stored the “big guy.”
She had already asked Hua Jianxi to investigate the security deployment map over there when she woke up in the morning. However, her current question was whether to bring Xiao Jiu along for tonight’s operation.
The high-end combat power deployed at the warehouse consisted of only three A-rank espers. Although each A-rank esper was a considerable combat force on their own, they were still nothing in her eyes.
As long as the opponent didn’t have a very complex mechanism-type ability, she could use the cheat-like ability of Ability Adaptation to quickly adapt to their attacks, and then use her exquisite combat skills to beat them into a pulp in no time.
However, that “big guy” was what truly worried her. Her Beautiful Girl Early Warning Radar reminded her that the “big guy” was absolutely not something simple.
Lin Jiu watched Ye Fengxue walk far away, then noticed that her sister was still standing there in a daze.
“Sister, what are you thinking about?”
Lin Jiu’s voice pulled the contemplating Ling Ling back to reality. Ling Ling turned her head and looked at her sister’s face, then decided not to take her sister out with her tonight.
Although Xiao Jiu’s frontal combat ability was extremely strong, her escape skills were not so good. Her replication ability library still contained some abilities that, although never used before, were very useful for running away. So no matter how risky the night’s operation was, she had confidence in escaping danger.
“…Hmm, I’m thinking about going out to do something tonight.”
“Sister, do you want to take me along?”
“No, I’m planning to just scout tonight. It won’t involve much combat. Stay home well and wait for me.”
“Alright, sister, be careful.”
Although she felt a bit displeased that she couldn’t go with Ling Ling tonight, she still fully believed that her sister wouldn’t encounter any danger. After all, trust doesn’t need a reason.
At one in the morning, outside an abandoned underground warehouse in the Seventh District, Ling Ling was crouching on a streetlight, observing the surroundings.
Today, she was wearing the black skintight combat suit representing Bai Ye, with the iconic mask on her face. But differently, she used her ability to convert her conspicuous white hair to black, to blend better into the night.
And the existence of Aura Concealment allowed her to evade detection by most electronic reconnaissance equipment.
After scouting with infrared binoculars, she found that the patrol intervals around the warehouse were even denser than expected. Several mercenaries wearing Ode Group standard equipment were pacing back and forth at the main entrance, while drones in the air were doing fixed-point patrols around the top of the warehouse.
A security measure of this level would already be considered top-tier in some underground organizations. But for Ling Ling, none of this mattered.
She activated Aura Concealment, suppressing her own esper fluctuation and vital signs to the minimum, then quietly jumped down from the streetlight, her whole body turning into a silent black shadow.
Then, at an extremely fast speed, she dodged the drones’ patrol routes. The mercenaries pacing with guns did not notice Ling Ling’s existence; they just thought the fleeting black shadow was their eyes playing tricks on them.
Then Ling Ling moved quickly along the wall, and within a few breaths, she had arrived at the warehouse’s ventilation entrance. Then, like a black cat, she lightly leaped up to the ventilation duct entrance.
She activated the low-end version of Matter Reconstruction copied from her sister, silently changing the shape of the iron grating. Then that seemingly indestructible iron grating fell off from the duct entrance like a piece of paper.
The ventilation duct was even narrower than she had expected. If a normal adult crawled in, they would likely get their shoulders stuck and be unable to move an inch. And Ling Ling was of the smaller body type, so in such a narrow duct, she could move freely instead.
Ling Ling crawled quickly through the duct. While advancing, she took out her phone from the tactical pouch on her waist and began to check the architectural structure diagram that Hua Jianxi had sent her.
According to the diagram, this originally abandoned underground warehouse had been remodeled into three floors by the Ode Group. The first floor was the ground entrance, also the mercenaries’ station and rest area.
The second floor was the real core area of the warehouse, where the “big guy” emitting a huge heat source was located. The third floor was a place similar to a development laboratory.
After planning her movement route, her goal was clear: to go see what that “big guy” that even Hua Jianxi couldn’t make up her mind about actually was. She crawled a certain distance inside the duct and arrived at a fork. Ling Ling took out her phone again, opened the architectural diagram, checked the direction, and chose the branch that went downward.
As she continued climbing downward, she relied on the powerful esper detection ability brought by Ability Adaptation and felt a strong esper fluctuation coming from below, outside the metal wall of the duct.
That esper fluctuation didn’t seem like something a human could emit, but more like the resonance of some giant esper machinery. Ling Ling crawled along that strong esper fluctuation all the way to the end of the duct.
At the end of the duct was a ventilation opening with an iron grating. She looked down through the gaps in the iron grating. What came into view was a remodeled huge circular space.
Dozens of high-power industrial lamps hung from the ceiling, illuminating the entire space as bright as day. The walls were covered with dense cable interfaces and display screens for monitoring data.
On the screens, parameters that Ling Ling couldn’t understand were jumping. And right in the center of the huge circular space was the “big guy” that Hua Jianxi had mentioned.