Chapter 481 - : Big Brother Knife
Chapter 481: Big Brother Knife
Meng Chao looked around.
The light signals on his retina danced like fireflies.
He immediately switched to Man-eating Shark Zhou Chong, Multi-armed Bear Hong Li, Snake Eye Mo Lan, Bullet Xue Rui, and the others’ fields of vision.
He minimized them to a small window and overlapped them together.
It would not interfere with his sight, but he could pay attention to his teammates at all times.
He heard the command center’s voice, which was, of course, located outside the lair. “Connection is normal. Communication is clear. Begin transmitting information about the two targets.”
When Meng Chao’s gaze went to the two red dots, a few scenes instantly appeared beside them.
They were from the CCTVs that were recording their looks.
The two robbers who had committed atrocious robberies outside had already changed to wide, hooded cloaks commonly seen in the lair. They also wore massive sunglasses and filtration masks to cover their faces completely.
If it were not for the locating chips, it would have been difficult to differentiate them from the millions of lair citizens.
“Begin operation,” Zhou Chong said. He then observed the situation for a while. “Based on how they’re fleeing, it seems that while the robbers are a little alarmed, they’re not running around like headless chickens. It’s clear that they’re searching for a place. Perhaps they have a handler. Through him or her, we might be able to find the mastermind!”
Everyone immediately took action.
They pushed open the garage door and snuck into the dark, winding alleys.
Even though their faces had completely changed, they still imitated the lair citizens and pulled their hoods down low.
Although they were not running fast, they were not slow either. They used their rich experience of hunting in forests and tracking prey to help them, and with the real-time 3D map that was constantly displayed in their vision, they soon discreetly approached the two robbers from all directions.
Despite the fact that the lair citizens were willing to share some of the authorization of the CCTVs, most of the lair areas were still sensitive topics, such as the monster coliseums, illegal gambling sites, black markets, and secret pharmacies. It was impossible for these places to have any CCTVs and tapping devices installed in them.
Even if some gang thought of ways to secretly install them, others would use high-power equipment to interfere with and destroy them.
Hence, the CCTVs were just support. There were plenty of times when the captors had to lurk in the dark and use their eyes to see whether the two robbers had any contact with other people.
This was where the value of veteran hunters came out.
The two robbers were gravely wounded and had lost a lot of blood. When they walked, they staggered a little. They could also not be bothered to pay attention as to whether there was anyone monitoring and tailing them.
The Heaven Realm superhumans focused spirit energy into their eyes and increased the functions of their retina and optic nerves, turning themselves into human telescopes.
Ace sharpshooters like Meng Chao and Bullet Xue Rui could also temporarily activate visual functions that gave them sharp vision akin to the scopes of sniper rifles, so they could find their target without a scope.
The two robbers did not notice them.
But a small problem appeared ahead of the hunters.
There was a huge monster coliseum in front of them.
And an exciting monster battle had just ended.
Nearly one thousand spectators and gamblers came out of the coliseum in a dense crowd. Some of them had not had their fun of gambling yet, while others patted their chests in satisfaction or walked full of excitement.
Plenty of them had just finished transferring their wealth in the monster coliseum.
The lucky ones who filled their pockets naturally did not want to become the targets of the unlucky souls who lost all their money and only had daggers and guns left to them.
Hence, they wore hooded cloaks that covered their faces, chips, and weapons, which instantly made them one with the crowd.
In ten seconds, the two robbers would enter the crowd.
They had locating chips in them, so the hunters were not afraid of losing them, but they were afraid that the handler would be hidden in the crowd and use the noise and collisions with other people to discreetly send them information and resources.
“Mo Lan, Xue Rui, both of you bypass the robbers and enter the crowd before them!” Zhou Chong commanded.
Snake Eye Mo Lan and Bullet Xue Rui immediately came out of the alleys and entered the crowd. They moved with the agility of loaches, but they did not cause dissatisfaction or a ruckus in the crowd. They soon got themselves in the path the robbers would definitely take.
The others kept their eyes fixed on the two robbers and the lair citizens that brushed shoulders with them, ensuring that they would not miss any tiny action.
Mo Lan and Xue Rui brushed past the two robbers.
Mo Lan even intentionally nudged one of the robbers gently.
If the handler of the robbers were really hidden here and wanted to give them information and resources by brushing their shoulders, the robbers would definitely react.
But the two robbers only hunched their bodies and obediently went in the opposite direction of the crowd. They did not even dare to look at Mo Lan, afraid that they would cause unnecessary conflict.
When the two robbers left the crowd, the hunters sighed in relief.
The two robbers bypassed the monster coliseum and arrived at a crossroad with alleys branching out of it, which made it look like a spiderweb. They stopped and observed it for a moment.
“Pay attention, their destination should be nearby,” Zhou Chong reminded them.
Just as he predicted, the two robbers went into a dark alley, and just after a few steps, they entered a small door.
The sides of the alley had the stereotypical residential buildings of the lair.
The alley was at most 1.5m wide. Forget about a heavy fighting vehicle, not even a normal sedan could enter the place.
The residential buildings originally had eight floors, but as the people continued building on top of them, the illegal floors continued stacking up until they reached a height of a building that was around thirty floors tall. To make the building steady, countless steel pipes and steel beams stretched out of it, and they were like Xs that stood between the residential buildings to support them.
The citizens also used every bit of space they could find to add steel plates between the steel beams, so the buildings that were already really large and swaying had multiple bulges that devoured the 1.5m width of space above the alley.
The people staying in the apartments on either side could shake hands through their windows or climb to another building on the other side.
Also, the buildings in the lair usually had underground components that were just as bad as the surface. They spread out everywhere like an insect’s nest.
If the buildings on the surface had twenty floors, then there were at least twelve floors below as well. Even though it was dark and humid, the rent was cheap, so there were usually more people staying in those places compared to the surface, which led to the shelters and air raid shelters built decades ago. They also led to other places, so they were like a maze.
In conclusion, this was a heaven for escapees and an absolute nightmare for captors.
There were naturally a lot of surveillance blind spots in this sort of place.
Besides, it was among the Three Unmanaged Areas between two gangs, so no one knew the internal structure of the buildings nearby.
Even if they brought out the original blueprint from decades ago, after the citizens built illegally, added layers, set up partitions, and did all sorts of simple, crude, and crazy modifications for decades, the internal structures had changed to the point that they were unrecognizable.
Zhou Chong could only ask the hunters to spread out as much as possible to monitor the entrances of the buildings around them.
Fortunately, the two robbers had locating chips and tapping devices.
It allowed the hunters to see that once they entered a building, they went to the third level of the basement. It was a facility modified from an air raid shelter.
Fortunately, they were not too far from the surface, so the signal still went to their interactors.
Even though based on the tremors from the robbers’ muscles and bones, the voices they heard were a little distorted, they could still hear the general content.
First came the conversation between the two robbers.
“Is this the place?”
“That’s right. The email stated very clearly that we need to bypass Bloody Claw Coliseum and enter the third alley. Then, we are to search for a graffiti of a tiger with wings on a door.”
Then, they tapped the door gently.
First, they knocked on it urgently five times, waited for half a second, then knocked urgently four times, stopped again, then knocked another three times.
The door opened with a creak.
The sounds of guns cocking could be heard from inside.
The two robbers’ heartbeats quickened.
“Big Brother Knife?” they asked a little nervously.
The person inside was silent for a moment. Then, a hoarse voice spoke. “You’re late by a full three hours.”
“The secret police has increased their guard, so we spent a lot of effort to succeed,” one of the robbers defended himself. “In the end, while we were on the run, we crossed fire with the secret police, and quite a number of our friends were captured.
“We’re the only ones who got knocked away by the impact. Fortunately, we landed at a blind spot of a surveillance camera by the road, so the secret police didn’t notice us. We then took extra care to avoid suspicion while coming to the lair!”
“That’s right!” the other robber said nervously. “Even though we’re a little late, our haul is pretty good. We’ve gotten more than ten Nightmarish Beasts’ crystalized neurospheres, one Hell Beast’s active spinal cord, and one refined supreme-grade crystal. We’ve obtained everything that the email asked us to bring!”
“It’s not a problem of your haul,” the hoarse voice said coldly. “How am I to know that you weren’t captured by the secret police during the three hours, then betrayed your friends due to coercion and ended up as spies for the enemy?”
“That’s… There’s absolutely nothing like that, Big Brother Knife, trust me!”
“We’ve stolen so many things, the secret police would definitely not spare us! We won’t betray our friends!” the two robbers shouted.
“Then, hold this and repeat what you said just now,” the hoarse voice said.
“Is this… a lie detector?” The two robbers were stunned.
Then, there was the sound of guns cocking. “What? Is there a problem?”
“N-No.”
The two robbers obediently repeated the entire story of them fleeing to the lair after they robbed their target.
While Meng Chao listened, he thought, ‘Thank goodness Shen Yupeng chose the right strategy.’
When the two robbers were unconscious, he did a minimally invasive surgery to implant the chips inside them. The wounds blended with their other injuries.
They did not know that they had become the secret police’s spies, so the problem of them not passing the lie detector did not exist.
As expected, the lie detector did not make any sound.
The two robbers sighed in relief. “Big Brother Knife, you should trust us now, right?”
“Wait,” Big Brother Knife said. “Come and stand here. We’ll scan you to see if you’ve brought something you shouldn’t have brought.”