Chapter 51: Revisiting the Main Station |
Being forced to wait while knowing you are in a dangerous situation is sheer torture.
Shi Rang casually picked out some vegetables and bread, entirely unsure of what else he should buy.
Remembering that his home was about to host around three hundred guests, he grabbed a carton of eggs before returning to his dazed, wandering state.
The cashier behind the counter, holding a shotgun, likely mistook him for a thief and kept a watchful eye on him from afar. Left with no other choice, Shi Rang sat down in the customer rest area. Cradling his helmet and gripping his electric bicycle's battery between his legs, he faced the wall-mounted public television, unable to process a single thing on the screen.
He had no idea what meaning any of this still held.
The Management Bureau had already arrived. Given their professional expertise, the agents coming to capture him were probably already on their way.
How long until his captors arrived?
Would the scouting team be able to escape?
"That guy just now was so mean!" Taking advantage of the empty surroundings and a blind spot in the security cameras, Jack peeked out from Shi Rang's cuff, fanning the air vigorously in front of his nose. "He almost swatted me!"
"No way. You are a good person, and the Management Bureau are the bad guys. You will definitely be fine."
Shi Rang wanted to continue persuading him, to discuss a plan to send them far away, but how far could Jack possibly escape on his own? Could he even survive out there?
...He could only pray that the miracle would continue.
The Management Bureau had not come to arrest him last night, nor had they come this morning. Ideally, they would never come for him at all.
He let out a long breath, trying to exhale all the fear welling up inside him to set a brave example for the little guy.
"Then let's keep waiting."
Only half an hour had passed, and the sky outside was still bright. The scouting team probably had not managed to explore much of the area yet, so it was best for Shi Rang to head back a little later.
He might as well leech off the air conditioning here for a while.
"...Thanks to an anonymous journalist who spent days deep undercover within the criminal organization, this horrific tragedy was finally brought to light."
Coincidentally, the television was broadcasting a report on the Pingyuan City smuggling case. He had seen the crime scene photographs shown on the screen with his own eyes. Looking at them now, they truly were terrifying; even a glance through the screen was enough to induce nightmares.
However, it was still a far cry from how it looked that night.
The process of uncovering the truth described in the news felt entirely foreign to Shi Rang. The details about infiltration, undercover work, and calling for backup sounded like the plot of a movie, clearly spinning the legend of an entirely different journalist.
Then again, who would believe that he had "personally experienced" being buried alive, chased, and tossed back into a deep pit by two lunatics just to obtain this firsthand information?
The adapted version actually sounded a bit more reasonable.
It was a miracle he had actually survived a situation like that...
Shi Rang slumped forward onto the table, closed his eyes, and tried to relax his mind.
He had endured too much torment over the past few days. If this continued, he was definitely going to break down.
But he was no longer alone. Many people needed him. He had to keep himself together and shoulder this responsibility.
As he slipped into the darkness behind his closed eyelids, that strange Sensing emerged once again—it was not as intense or obvious as before, but it felt incredibly close. After careful evaluation, Shi Rang noticed a slightly larger signal right on his pant leg, while the rest were scattered all over his body.
He cracked his eyes open just a sliver, aiming his gaze at that slightly larger cluster of "energy," and discovered it was Jack resting on his leg, trying to catch a quick break while Shi Rang blocked the security camera's view.
The bumpy ride had completely exhausted the little guy.
'Am I Sensing the Mini-Humans?'
'Could it be that the Management Bureau agents from before also had Mini-Humans on them? That's impossible...'
Shi Rang closed his eyes again, focusing his mind on this "sixth sense," striving to extend this peculiar new sensory organ.
In an instant, his mind exploded.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of coordinates flooded into his brain. Countless conversations, reports, explanations, and discussions piled together in one place, while an endless stream of documents, records, and summaries flashed ceaselessly... All this information was forcefully shoved into Shi Rang's head at once. The agonizing pain caused his body to snap rigidly upright, only for him to lose all strength in the very next second, his forehead crashing heavily onto the tabletop.
"Shi Rang!"
"He fainted!"
"Pinch his philtrum—wait, we can't pinch him!"
"Jack, take the smallest Tiny One to poke his nerves... Don't bring the drill! We aren't trying to drill into him!"
The Mini-Humans frantically leaped into action.
Jack swiftly jumped onto the helmet and scaled the drooping fabric of Shi Rang's shirt to reach his collar, acting as a transport vehicle to deliver the medical team to Shi Rang's head. The Mini-Humans in charge of the rescue operation scurried across his skin, quickly slipping into the gap between his eyeball and eye socket.
One second, two seconds...
Suddenly, with a panicked gasp, Shi Rang jolted awake.
He coughed violently, tears streaming down his face. The helmet slipped from his grasp and hit the floor, spinning and bouncing to the side.
The medical team was flushed out by the tears and rush of air, tumbling back beside their companions.
"He recovered too fast! He was fine before we even got there."
"We probably could have just waited."
"Someone is coming, hide!"
Almost the exact second the tiny specks of color retreated beneath his clothes, a shadow fell over Shi Rang.
"This isn't a place for you to 'relax'."
"Cough, cough, I—ugh, cough, cough... I wasn't..."
The clerk cast a suspicious glance around, but seeing no questionable drugs or paraphernalia, he had no choice but to walk away with his shotgun in hand. "Don't cause any trouble here."
Shi Rang lacked the energy to offer any further explanation. He clutched his throbbing head, groaning uncontrollably.
He had just taken another stroll past the gates of hell.
Faced with that lethal volume of information, his brain had briefly crashed, refusing to process the overwhelming neural stimulation. This induced a state of shock, which, paired with his Rapid Regeneration, had directly saved his life.
'What on earth was that?'
He no longer dared to fully unleash his "sixth sense" to absorb everything it could perceive. As his mind gradually recovered, he noticed that apart from the locations of the Mini-Humans, a gentle presence remained.
Astonishingly, it was a door.
Or rather, something resembling a door.
When Shi Rang conceptualized it as a door, its outline transformed into a door. When he pictured it as an entrance, it became a void leading into the unknown.
Ultimately, he chose to let it take the shape of a door, so it solidified completely, morphing into the familiar style of his own front door.
There was something on the other side.
Having learned his lesson, Shi Rang cautiously nudged closer to it bit by bit, fully prepared to yank his consciousness back to reality at any given moment. He pushed the door open just a crack.
The amount of information drifting out from the other side was sparse enough to digest. He read numerous words; some formed coherent sentences, others were isolated phrases, and a few could be interpreted as images.
"Latest Search Report on C-888," "Temporary Communication Channel Logs," "Warning: Management Bureau Archive—"...
'This feels so familiar.'
Shi Rang carefully extended his mind through the door, attempting to assemble them into a format he could easily comprehend.
However, there were far too many phrases. It felt like a scrambled puzzle composed of hundreds of thousands of pieces, and he had no idea where to even begin—
'Wait.'
He knew of a precedent.
Shi Rang retrieved that specific case from his memory, allowing the scattered information to neatly slot into the designated template.
Gradually, he realized he wasn't dictating their arrangement; rather, he was comprehending the original form of this information. The process was incredibly similar to learning—once the initially dry and tedious material had been digested and understood, looking back at the original text brought a sudden, blinding clarity.
Before long, he succeeded.
Revealed on the other side of the door was the homepage of the Management Bureau Main Station.
[Welcome back, "Dump Truck"]
He had used his own consciousness to connect to the Main Station.