Chapter 128: The Work of Council Members |
It was already afternoon by the time Shi Rang returned to the villa, and he had no intention of going out again today.
He needed to figure out how to hunt anomalies without getting himself killed.
His physical body was simply too fragile. Deep down, he knew the Ascension Society was just a platform for him. Even with The Head temporarily acting as his backer, it was not a fully trustworthy sanctuary. Only his own abilities could never be taken away.
After sending Jing Zi away, he dropped Leader Jack off in the Mini-Humans' room along with a bucket of popcorn he had bought on the way back, and then returned to his bedroom.
The villa was spacious and comfortable, and he did not even have to handle the chores himself. But this was merely a residence; he still preferred the cozy little home he shared with Ying Shang.
With the Three Plans laid out before him, Shi Rang deliberated for a long time before deciding to start with the "Impersonating a Councilor" plan.
Plan One, the "Emergency Armory", was progressing rather slowly. He was not a computer; he had to manually evaluate the Anomaly Projects one by one, determining which ones he could use without arousing The Bureau's suspicion once triggered. That required time.
Plan Three, the "Deer Hunter Doppelganger", aimed to hand the broadcasting work over to The Sheriff, creating an alibi for Shi Rang at crucial moments. However, Shi Rang still had to fabricate the core intelligence himself, and he also needed to cobble together an input device that the Mini-Humans could actually use. That also took time.
At present, the only one he could effectively push forward was Plan Two.
Shi Rang could easily be one of those absent Council Members.
The true identities of the Council Members were strictly kept secret from the middle and lower ranks of The Bureau. Shi Rang even doubted whether the department heads knew their real backgrounds. This intense secrecy painted the Council Members as profoundly terrifying figures, but it also gave him an opportunity.
If he could find a chance to infiltrate their ranks, he might be able to bypass Tian Ying's obstruction, uncover the real reason The Bureau was hiding Ying Shang's whereabouts, and ultimately find her.
First, he needed to understand his enemies.
Just like last time, he pulled up the account for Assistant Harvey, the Assistant Director of Intelligence, and clicked into his recently viewed entries.
On a data level, Shi Rang noticed that "Harvey", this Alt Account, was linked to an invisible profile, which was then used as a relay to access those Meeting Minutes.
In this record storage area, he found numerous Meeting Minutes. All of them had been generated within the last thirty minutes and were set to auto-destroy upon expiration.
'The Council Members are quite busy,' he thought.
'Let me see what kind of earth-shattering conspiracies the Council Members of the top organization in the anomalous world discuss every day.'
[S6-Autumn Chrysanthemum: (Containment Object Link) Do you have anything else to say about the massive personnel defection in the Second District, 11?]
[S11-Black Lightning: If bickering could magically conjure up money for The Bureau, I would surrender my seat to you immediately. The economic downturn is a global issue. You probably only know how to crash the human economy with infinite gold. Unless you understand economics, stop pointing fingers at me.]
[S4-Zinc: Do not bring the Ethics Committee's tone into this meeting, Autumn Chrysanthemum. We are all colleagues here. And Black Lightning, the widespread Wage Arrears in the Second District is indeed the primary issue we need to resolve next. We can discuss a plan.]
[S6-Autumn Chrysanthemum: Do not bring empty words into this meeting!]
[S11-Black Lightning: We do not need you playing peacemaker here!]
[S4-Zinc: ......]
[S5-Scorpion: No one could have predicted such a massive Funding Gap. Wage Arrears are the inevitable result of emergency liquidity transfers, but the personnel defections were caused by Memetic Contamination. Now that the Subject is contained, the Alliance refuses to acknowledge it, and we cannot launch an attack against them over this. I highly suspect the Library is behind this mess. Let us just drop the matter. Besides, since the personnel have defected, we do not have to pay their delayed salaries anyway. Problem solved.]
[S3-Dream Idol: But you cannot deny that this will cause the operating efficiency of the grassroots departments in the Second District to drop by 25%
.]
[S5-Scorpion: Do we not still have you?]
Shi Rang:
"
""
He had always imagined the Council Members as shadowy, cold, and ruthless conspirators. He never expected them to have such a human side.
Was this really how they normally decided the life trajectories of millions of people around the world?
If no one mentioned it, who would have guessed that these were all "centenarians"?
Driven by curiosity, Shi Rang went to take a look at the Containment Object that had sparked this argument.
It turned out to be a Flyer that had appeared out of thin air at many sites in the Second District. Originally treated as a harmless Anomaly Project, its Records Analysis progressed slowly due to a lack of intelligence. Because of its humorous content, the employees joked about it as they tore it up. However, a few days later, the uncleaned flyers suddenly exhibited a Cognitohazard, causing employees suffering from Wage Arrears to defect after reading them.
Merely reading the text record was safe, however.
Shi Rang began to read the contents of the Flyer.
To all Bureau employees who see this paper!
Please look at this message—the Pan-Continent Alliance is holding a Recruitment drive!
Friend, are you tired of keeping and even adopting things that threaten human reproduction?
Tired of tolerating things that take human lives?
(Approximately 200 words of parallel sentences omitted)
Tired of your payroll card being completely empty every payday, just like at the end of last month?
In short—come here!
We are!
Cooler! Stronger! More direct!
More handsome! More manly! More humane!
We are the police of the anomalous world, the big brother of all anomalous organizations!
And we!
ARE! EXTREMELY! RICH!
AND! NEVER! DELAY! PAYMENTS!
Come and join the Pan-Continent Alliance right now!
(The remaining content recorded a large amount of slander against The Bureau, with detailed registration instructions printed on the back. The location was listed as the nearest Alliance Offices to where the Flyer was dropped.)
'It's hard not to suspect the Pan-Continent Alliance of doing this...' he mused.
'Though it's more likely a frame-up.'
'The Alliance disdains using such methods. They inherently despise anomalies anyway.'
Shi Rang then read through a few more Online Meeting Minutes, all of which were discussions and resolutions regarding major internal events within The Bureau. The Council Members' task seemed to be an eternal loop of meetings and decision-making—even if their communication style was not exactly serious. Soon, only a handful of Council Member ID numbers remained on his list of those who had never appeared in the meetings.
The Council Member he had been mistaken for was definitely among them.
After working for a while, Shi Rang could not resist going back to look at that rather hilarious Flyer again. As he laughed, he suddenly froze.
'Safe... harmless... sudden mutation...'
With his current level of strength, even with the Emergency Armory, facing Anomaly Projects directly would be extremely risky.
Tampering with existing Anomaly Projects required far too many prerequisites to operate recklessly. The Divine Corpse was a bloody example of that.
As for creating something out of thin air, it was no different from pushing a stationary Pendulum; the uncontrollability was too vast, making it equally inadvisable.
In that case, could he seek out a relatively safe Distortion Phenomenon and then nurture it in his desired direction? Just like Tampering with The Sheriff, who was on good terms with him, he could grant it the exact abilities he needed, essentially creating a "self-produced and self-consumed" asset.