Chapter 421: Xu Jiali and His Psionic Attendant |
Xuan Che kept tight control of his expression and showed no hint of surprise.
He rapidly focused his divine sense, swept the entire City Lord’s residence again, then circled the whole room.
There really were only two people here: he and Mo Ran. No third mind lurked nearby, and no foreign art was weaving an illusion.
Mo Ran’s expression was normal, her aura steady, and her mind untroubled.
Yet she clearly believed she had brought Elder Dao Heng here, and that he stood at her side now.
Xuan Che inclined his head without changing expression. He did not stop Mo Ran from leaving, and she, suspecting nothing, withdrew with a bow.
Silence settled over the room.
Xuan Che remained by the window, his divine sense extended as he faced the hush. His thoughts, however, were far from placid.
He thought quickly. For a moment, an absurd self-doubt flickered in him as he wondered: [Is Elder Dao Heng truly standing in the room, and is it my perception that fails me?]
…
On the surface of Garrison-3, the engineering crew led by Sun Gong was digging through thick layers of soil under Yu Sheng’s guidance. The large machines rushed over from the Black Forest were efficient, and they soon doubled the size of the hole Foxy had made when she crashed down, then started cutting deeper.
Around that primary excavation pit were several smaller collection points.
These were sites Sun’s team had identified as suitable for sampling. Inert crystalline branches were wedged, dull and dead, in gaps between soil and rock. By luck they had not been crushed into powder by the impact of Foxy’s fall. The shallow crystalline material below their fissures was intact and unpolluted.
Wearing heavy yellow engineering power armor, the seasoned hands used small digging arms to carefully widen the cracks around those crystal branches, then pried out intact blocks of underlying crystal and carried them to a temporary staging platform at the edge of the dig. Around the platform waited recovery teams the Special Affairs Bureau had just dispatched.
These hazardous-material specialists, trained to handle uncanny substances, wore white protective armor marked with the Bureau’s insignia. They worked in trios. Two handled the samples while a third monitored the operators’ mental state; a leader with red trim on the armor stood by to direct and to confirm that each trio’s words and actions showed no anomaly.
Near the recovery teams stood several Deep Dive operatives in heavy combat armor. Each was fully armed with a walking tactical robot at their back; every one of them looked tense and ready.
One of the operatives was an old acquaintance.
Xu Jiali had opened the outer metal layer of his helmet. Behind the transparent visor, his stubbly face looked relaxed. Among all the operatives, he seemed the most at ease. He even left his formation to chat with Yu Sheng rather than radiate the urgency one might expect when handling samples possibly linked to the Dark Angels.
Xu Jiali glanced back at his team before turning to Yu Sheng and said: “They’re all recruits. The moment they heard the sample might involve the Dark Angels, they tensed up like bowstrings. You though… it’s been a while, and the moment we meet you’re in the middle of something big again.”
Yu Sheng spread his hands and said: “You make it sound like I did it on purpose. How was I supposed to know something like that would suddenly crawl out of the ground?”
Xu Jiali swept his gaze over the scarred battlefield and sighed as he said: “If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have believed it. Hard to think this was caused by that young lady Foxy. It looks like the Atlas nova cannon fired a shot. Good thing she’s on our side.”
Yu Sheng gave a rueful smile, then let his eyes drift past Xu Jiali to the figure behind him as he said: “She told me she had a trump card; I didn’t expect it to be this big. Who’s the young lady who keeps following you?”
He pointed at a figure not easy to notice—a petite girl barely over one and a half meters. Next to the two-meter-tall Xu Jiali, she looked like a kid. She wore protective gear somewhat like power armor, yet it was several times lighter than a Deep Dive operative’s equipment. She carried no weapon, only a strange orb with mechanical tracery and a blue lattice cradled in her hands.
Where Xu Jiali went, the unfamiliar petite young woman followed.
Yu Sheng also noticed a similar figure behind each Deep Dive operative—some male, some female, tall and short. What they shared was that seemingly flimsy light armor that did not look like combat gear and the mechanical orb in their hands.
Where the operatives moved, those orb-bearers moved.
Xu Jiali tapped his helmet and pointed to the petite figure as he said: “Oh, she’s my psionic attendant. I forgot to introduce her. Her name is Bell.”
He paused, then added: “You remember I mentioned it, right? A Deep Dive operative’s full field composition includes a fire-support shuttle, two walking tactical robots, several light drones, and one psionic attendant. Strictly speaking, each Deep Dive operative in the field is a complete tactical squad. What you’re seeing now is our expedition configuration. Of course, this time we didn’t bring the shuttle because the call was sudden.”
Yu Sheng listened to this string of explanations for a few seconds before recalling that he had indeed heard something like it. His gaze settled on the young lady named Bell. She lifted her eyes to him and asked: “Are you friends with the boss?”
Xu Jiali chuckled and said: “We’re friends. His name is Yu Sheng, Borderland’s expert on countering angels. He’s kind of a big deal.”
Bell nodded, still cradling the orb with one hand, and extended the other as she said: “Oh. Hello.”
Yu Sheng shook the psionic attendant’s hand and suddenly noticed a peculiarity in her eyes: her pupils were vertical, like a cat’s.
Perhaps noticing his curiosity, Xu Jiali spoke before Yu could ask and said: “Bell is a Gyproian. Most psionic attendants are Gyproian. The Bureau has a long-term cooperation agreement with that alien species. They provide us with their most gifted psionics; we supply them with the strongest catnip in the universe.”
Yu Sheng’s expression went blank as he said: “Huh?”
He then noticed that the two pointed shapes on Bell’s helmet seemed not to be decoration.
Xu Jiali continued cheerfully and said: “Gyproians are from Terra. You’ve heard of Terra, right? The Academy is there, and the Forest Folk’s homeland as well. Gyproians have some feline traits. They’re very keen, especially in psionics.
“We Deep Dive operatives are good at fighting but not at mystic arts. Psionic attendants make up our shortfall there. If we run into mind-targeting attacks, the attendant is our first mental bulwark. That’s for expedition ops outside. When we’re in Borderland performing extra-dimensional dives, it’s a different protocol; the umbilical can substitute for a psionic attendant to some extent.”
Yu Sheng listened with keen interest; it was material he had heard a little about but never deeply understood.
Throughout this, Bell stood quietly behind Xu Jiali, saying nothing, only now and then fiddling with the orb in her hands as if uninterested in the outside world.
Just as Yu Sheng and Xu Jiali were chatting while waiting on Sun Gong’s excavation progress, a phone ringtone suddenly cut in.
Yu Sheng took out his phone and saw on the screen a fox’s head squinting as it grinned a mouthful of white teeth.
He picked up, and Foxy’s delighted voice came through as she said: “Benefactor! I’m full! Open the door, I want to come back!”
…
Boundary City, Special Affairs Bureau headquarters.
Li Lin, just returned from task leave and back at work on his first day, stood at the entrance to Canteen No. 2 with his meal card, looking a bit dazed.
The cafeteria doors were locked. An electronic display by the door was scrolling a line of text as it said: “Due to special circumstances, Canteen No. 2 is closed today. Employees in need of meals, please proceed to the third-floor main cafeteria.”
Li Lin blinked. In all his time at the Bureau, it was the first time he had seen this.
He craned his neck to peer through the glass and saw nothing out of the ordinary inside—just an impeccably clean, empty space.
A few Special Affairs Bureau operatives walked past in the corridor behind him, and snatches of their talk reached his ears as they said: “What’s going on? Why did it suddenly close?” and: “No idea. It was open this morning.” and: “I heard it got foxed.” and: “Huh?” and finally: “They said it was the fox from the Hotel. I don’t know what that means either.”
Li Lin listened in silence, looked down at his meal card, looked up at the cafeteria, and felt like crying as he said: “Then who’s going to make up for the discount drumstick I’m missing?”
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