Chapter 56: The Theft Succeeds

by cnwebnovels

Around nine in the morning, Du Xiaoran’s pigeon landed on the roof.

He carried himself with the same easy confidence as before. When he saw that I had also come in pigeon form, he said, “Why are you in a pigeon body? How are you supposed to operate my equipment? Is your technician not here yet?”

“You came in a pigeon body too,” I pointed out. “Why didn’t you bring the equipment yourself?”

“I keep my word,” Du Xiaoran said. “When I say I’ll do something, it’s done. I placed the equipment here in advance — you just haven’t found it yet. And just now I slipped over to the wall outside the secure records room and set two sensors next to its network cables. That way we can use them to pull in more of the electromagnetic signals leaking out. Call your person up. We can run the operation from the roof right now.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll bring him up. You walk him through the device on site.”

I brought the bionic human up to the roof. The parasitic pigeon took the opportunity to slip away and return to the base.

The bionic human was still me — only wearing a different face.

The moment the bionic human appeared, Du Xiaoran startled. He clearly recognized the body. This particular bionic human had been produced by the Shadow Pavilion and carried a legal identity.

“Don’t be alarmed,” I said. “This body has already gone through a full system replacement. The soul inside is still me. I’m the owner of the pigeon you made the appointment with.”

Du Xiaoran hesitated. The bionic human was plainly making him uneasy.

“You’re an elite person,” I said. “How can you not sense it? Fine — only the two of us know about Yellow Hair Zhang Yu. Test me if you want.”

Hearing Zhang Yu’s name seemed to settle him. “Then tell me — what’s Zhang Yu’s younger sister’s name?”

“Her name is Zhang Li. She was thirteen when I met her. I treated her illness — she had tuberculosis, and I was the one who paid for her treatment. And yesterday you were boasting that following you meant I’d have meat to eat. The device you gave Zhang Yu was called an information intelligence processor. You said you gave it to him because he once saved your life.”

“All right, all right,” Du Xiaoran said. “I believe you. But the person I asked you to find was someone with exceptional electromagnetic sensing ability. Why did you come yourself?”

I laughed. “Because I am that person. I’ve also replicated a transmission-and-reception processing structure for electromagnetic waves. Stack the two together and I’m probably your best option. On top of that, I’ve already used that first-generation information intelligence processor you built, back when I was working with Zhang Yu.”

“If that’s true,” Du Xiaoran said, “this might actually work. Come with me.”

He flew to a water tank on the roof, pointed inside with his beak, and said, “Equipment’s in there. Help yourself.”

I reached into the side of the tank and pulled out a device — slightly larger than the one I had used with Zhang Yu, and with the two earphones replaced by electrode earbuds.

I carried it to a corner of the roof, sat beneath the parapet wall, fitted the electrode earbuds in place, and began calibrating the device.

Du Xiaoran stood beside me and connected the earbud electrodes to a recording key on the device, then talked me through which buttons to press and how to parse and break down the information stream.

The signals were immediate — a dense tangle of chaotic electromagnetic noise.

Following Du Xiaoran’s instructions, I began using my consciousness to tease apart those jumbled signal threads one by one, extending, analyzing, differentiating. Gradually, a complete information directory concerning the quantum materials took shape in my mind.

As the directory spread open, I pressed deeper, layer by layer. It was like the last time Zhang Yu had led me into the heart of the Sweepers’ supercomputing core — I seemed to step into a hidden world. Below the directory, the space was packed with countless electromagnetic threads. But these signals were far weaker than anything I had encountered before. I had to move with extreme care, slowly unspooling each hair-thin thread, selecting, and gently splicing in. Connections broke often. Each time they did, I had to rework the join before I could recover the data there.

It was nothing like that last time — that transcendent jungle, dense with informational texture and presence. These electromagnetic threads were so fragile that each one demanded my full concentration. I downloaded and reconnected over and over before anything coherent took shape.

I became aware that Du Xiaoran was transmitting the information stream in parallel with my work. Through the device’s send-receive function, he was routing whatever I analyzed, downloaded, and assembled directly outward, in real time.

I had no objection. The agreement had always been that both sides would benefit simultaneously. I had simply assumed I would receive everything first, organize it, and then share — I hadn’t expected him to stream it out as it arrived, unwilling to trust me to distribute it after the fact.

I let it go without comment.

After roughly an hour and a half, I finished analyzing, organizing, and downloading everything I judged to be useful. It included the quantum research institute’s core secrets: detailed files on quantum antimatter weapons, quantum directed-energy weapons, information-warfare weapons, and quantum teleportation weapons. I didn’t fully understand the technical content, but I could at least identify the relevant data sets, blueprints, and technical reports.

Only when the download was nearly complete did Du Xiaoran look up at me. His expression was one of genuine surprise.

“Your electromagnetic sensing ability may be the strongest I’ve ever encountered,” he said. “I know this device’s receiving limits precisely. Being able to parse at the microwatt-and-hertz scale is already remarkable. What I didn’t expect was that you could sustain a complete, unbroken information stream. This far exceeded anything I anticipated.”

“Then give me your assessment,” I said. “How complete and reliable are these materials? Data accuracy matters enormously here — a tiny error at the source compounds into catastrophe down the line.”

“In terms of the technical library as a whole, we’ve pulled less than ten percent,” Du Xiaoran said. “But for any individual technical file, each one is roughly eighty percent complete. As for reliability — let your resistance technicians make that call. No one can verify accuracy without a physical sample.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Then I’d say we’ve settled our accounts. I take the copy; you take your equipment. Until next time.”

Du Xiaoran nodded. “Pleasure doing business. One more thing — would you be willing to give me a name to call you? We may well work together again. I told you: follow me, and you’ll have meat to eat. I know quite a few treasure sites scattered through the Elite World — high-value technological assets, the kind your people would find very compelling. I’ll be straight with you: like Yellow Hair Zhang Yu, I make my living selling information. Ever since I ended up on the margins, I lost any appetite for research. You seem like a reliable person. Why not establish a line of contact? We might be able to look out for each other down the road.”

“I’m not much of a liar,” I said, “so I don’t carry a fake name. Call me Gucheng. I only just smuggled myself in — no main account, no alt. If you need to reach me, leave a message under the water tank on this roof. If I need you, I have your alt.”

“Works for me,” Du Xiaoran said. “You go first. I’ll get a drone up here to move the equipment.”

I took the copy and headed downstairs without looking back.

I still had reservations about how the whole thing had gone. Everything had made sense, and yet — it had been too smooth. The quantum research institute was only five hundred meters away. If I could see it, it could see this building. Yet nothing had come from that direction. Maybe it was simply because neither of us had lifted our heads above the parapet, huddled as we were in a corner.

I was still turning that over in my mind when I heard a hum from somewhere above.

I looked out through the stairwell window. Three pitch-black mechanical disks were bearing down on the roof of our building.

Sky-Eye systems?

The research institute must have picked something up and sent them to investigate. Fortunately, I had already come downstairs. If I could reach the safe house, I could get the data to the base.

Then one of the Sky-Eye disks seemed to register that I was watching it. It punched through the stairwell window, drove straight toward me, and started broadcasting a warning.

I don’t know where the strength came from. I lunged upward and swung at the disk with everything I had. It hit the floor with a crash.

Having already committed, I didn’t stop to think. I snatched up the disk and hurled it through the door of the neighboring room, punching a ragged hole clean through the panel.

Then I ran for the safe house.

The first thing I did after entering the safe house was begin the transmission. I plugged the data copy into the equipment and started pushing the files up to the base. Then I didn’t linger — I bolted back outside, leaped from the building to the next, and kept jumping until I landed on a busy street.

My movements drew immediate attention. Patrol cats and security dogs began converging on me from every direction.

The remaining two Sky-Eye systems tracked me without letup, diving toward me and blaring warnings.

I ignored them.

I had one objective: pull every reconnaissance hunter toward me and buy the transmission time it needed to complete.

As I fled, I shot a glance back toward the roof where Du Xiaoran and I had been working.

It was already empty.

Fast mover. I had no idea whether they’d spotted him or not. In any case, all three reconnaissance Sky-Eye systems had locked onto me.

When I moved to jump from the building down to the street, I found dozens of security dogs already massed on the pavement below, hurling themselves upward in a frenzy.

I had no choice. I sprang back up and — on instinct — landed behind the rider of a flying motorcycle that had drifted close, apparently drawn by the commotion. The rider lurched and began spinning in place. I wrapped one hand around the rider’s neck and said sharply, “Cut the crap. You’ve been hijacked! Fly me toward the sea.”

The rider had no choice but to swing the motorcycle toward the sea outside the city.

The rider wore a helmet, but my hand was against her neck and hair. She was a woman.

The motorcycle hadn’t traveled far before roughly twenty patrol members in aerial shuttle boots came surging toward me. The two Sky-Eye disks kept pace on either side, circling and shouting warnings.

I had already made peace with abandoning this parasitic host if it came to that. I only wanted to draw the pursuit farther out.

Parasitic hosts were precious, and the modification work on this one hadn’t been simple. If I could get away, all the better. If not, the intelligence was worth the loss.