Chapter 473 - Chapter 473: 473 (1/2)
Chapter 473: 473
By sensing the rabbit wood carving, Xiang Kun’s senses successfully descend near the carving while in the “Super Sensory State”.
Most of the surrounding sensory information has not changed, it’s still that space with many metal partitions and electronic devices which he has sensed many times before.
He also immediately locked onto the cognitive information of the “mutant” that took the rabbit woodcarving earlier, as well as the cognitive information of the other three “mutants” that he could also perceive each time before.
But this time, he instantly felt a difference — there were five “mutants” around him, not four!
In his previous perception and interpretation of spatial structural information, apart from the “mutant” that took the rabbit woodcarving, the other three “mutants” were all confined in separate spaces, indicating they were imprisoned or held captive.
It seemed that the “mutant” who had taken the rabbit woodcarving had caught another one?
However, Xiang Kun found out through the perception and interpretation of the cognitive information of this newly appeared “mutant” that this new “mutant” had a great overlap with humans in terms of cognitive information, and according to his interpretation, it was wearing clothes.
Although when he first faced Guo Tianxiang, he had not yet acquired the ability to enter the “Super Sensory State” and therefore could not record such cognitive information of a human-shaped “mutant”. He himself couldn’t deeply interpret his own cognitive information, but this “mutant” with a lot of human-like cognitive information instantly let him judge — it was a “mutant” transformed from a human.
Was it a confederate of the “mutant” who took the rabbit woodcarving? Was it also from “Divine Technology”?
Could this be “Mr. Liang”?
But Xiang Kun sensed something was not right. Although his “Super Sensory State” still couldn’t interpret human voice information or restore actual images, his ability to distinguish human emotional cognizance information had improved significantly since he returned from Myitkyina. He was already able to discern many negative emotional cognitive information, especially those related to fear.
At this moment, he found that this “human-shaped mutant” was experiencing intense fear, as if it was under a great threat to its life.
This puzzled him. Could it be that this “human-shaped mutant” was not an ally of the previous “mutant”? Was this one, like the other three confined in enclosed spaces, also captured?
Based on the environment and other cognitive information, Xiang Kun believed the latter was more likely. The object of fear for this “human-shaped mutant” should be the “mutant” who had taken the rabbit woodcarving and was standing in front of it.
After exiting the “Super Sensory State”, Xiang Kun turned his head to glance at Old Xia, still asleep on the bed, and the black night sky outside the gap in the curtains. He thought for a moment and decided to try to find the location of the ball or the rabbit woodcarving before going to Peng City.
Just now, in the “Super Sensory State”, he had sensed the ball lodged in the damaged unmanned drone. He got a very faint feedback but couldn’t directly perceive cognitive information.
So he could basically judge that the location of the rabbit woodcarving wasn’t very far from that of the ball, confirming that they were both in Peng City, and probably even within the same building complex.
Maybe determining the location of one could reveal the other.
Xiang Kun weighed his options and had Alice search for enterprises and properties related to “Divine Technology” in the previously designated area. The goal was to find a target that had a large number of industrial components delivered, or had a large amount of confidential transportation back and forth.
If there was a place to repair or handle those drones, there would be traces to follow. After all, dozens of drones that were far superior in performance to commercially available ones had appeared around that “flying mutated creature” that night alone. Whether it’s research, manufacturing, assembly, or repair, recycling, and disposal, it can’t be done by one or two people in a few rooms. There must be corresponding transportation and material procurement to and fro.
Following this direction, Xiang Kun continuously provided Alice with new search rules and conditions. Twenty minutes later, there were only three possibilities left for verification.
All three targets were in factory locations, which was an evident indication that according to Alice’s judgment based on numerous rules and conditions, only these factories could be the targets.
One of the factories was even a drone assembly factory under “Divine Technology”.
“Divine Technology” already had commercial drone products, and was even previously promoting the pilot stage of an unmanned aerial property system. They also had leading products for professional drones in the delivery and film industries, with a non-negligible market share.
This place, being a site used to collect these special drones, seemed logical to most. But Xiang Kun felt that something was off.
“Are there no suitable targets in the office building area?” Xiang Kun asked Alice.
Alice: “The office building area was excluded as a priority. According to the search criteria, places where the drones are repaired and collected can generate a significant amount of noise, and they also require lorries for loading and unloading – making the office building area unsuitable. Industrial areas can easily meet the related needs.”
However, Xiang Kun carefully recalled all kinds of cognitive information under the “Super Sensory State”, saying, “Include the office building as well, see if we can find blueprints for construction, with a deep enough basement space. This underground space should be much deeper than a three-story car park. We can start by examining the records of elevator installations.”
Xiang Kun had sensed, countless times under the “Super Sensory State”, the cognitive information near the rabbit wood carving. He was quite sure that the space where those “mutants” were was underground, but not just any underground. It was extremely deep, with a complicated structure and lots of electronic devices installed. The range of his senses, with the rabbit wood carving at the center, could not even reach the surface of the ground.
However, in the process of exploring upwards, based on his understanding of some of the cognitive information within the ground that he still could not fully comprehend, he had an intuition that the location should be in the urban area, surrounded by tall buildings.
Moreover, from his previous investigations of several secret research bases of “Divine Technology,” he believed that if it were in an industrial area, they would likely not hide it so deep underground.
After some time, Alice found results. The target was located within a building financed by “Divine Technology”.
This building, owned by the Pengcheng branch of “Divine Technology”, had over 20 floors. Among the numerous skyscrapers in Pengcheng, it didn’t stand out much, and it was also named “Brilliant Fortune Building”, a somewhat earthy name that seemed to have nothing to do with “Divine Technology”.
The building had only recently been completed and put into use. Alice found the blueprints; there were apparently no other structures underground beyond the three levels of parking garage and there were no areas deeper than the third floor of the underground parking garage.
However, under Xiang Kun’s guidance, from the various related information and some details of the blueprints, Alice noticed that this was not simply a 20-plus story office building. Many things weren’t just for this building. The large plaza and green zone behind the building were also quite abrupt, and there were many problems with the planning blueprints.
After shifting their attention to this building, Xiang Kun and Alice began to reveal more issues with the “Brilliant Fortune Building” — one constantly adjusted the approach and gained knowledge, while the other conducted divergent implementations and collected resources.
Firstly, there was an issue with the power consumption;
secondly, the surveillance of the underground parking was only until the second underground floor. The third floor wasn’t open to any staff member, and the elevator did not go down there either. It was as if the building didn’t have a third basement floor;
thirdly, there was a special entrance and exit that directly led to the third floor of the basement parking, also not open to any staff member. There was an electric door at the entrance.
No matter whether the rabbit wood carving, the tungsten steel ball, or the collected drone were in the “Brilliant Fortune Building”, there was no doubt that the third basement floor and areas deeper within the building held secrets of “Divine Technology”.
Xiang Kun compared the street map of where the “Brilliant Fortune Building” was located and asked Alice to send over surveillance footage from inside part of the underground parking garage, on the surface, and around the area.
There was surveillance facing the entrance that directly led to the third floor of the car park, but it wasn’t part of the building’s security system and Alice did not control it yet. So, she pulled up surveillance from a fruit store across the street — while this camera angle didn’t capture the entrance, any vehicle driving into the area would be captured by the camera.
If a vehicle was seen turning in that direction, then it must’ve entered through that entrance, as there was no other road or place to park after making that turn.
Xiang Kun didn’t try to monitor in real time, as the current network conditions did not support it and transmission was too lagging. Alice only sent him some clips of the video as per his request, which helped him to determine the camera angles and set up search rules accordingly.
After examining the camera angles in a few clips, Xiang Kun instructed Alice not to quickly look for ways to infiltrate other dedicated lines inside the “Brilliant Fortune Building”. Instead, she should first filter the surveillance footage of the fruit store to see which vehicles had used that entrance in the last 72 hours.
Alice quickly filtered the footage from the computer where the fruit store stored their surveillance video and sent back 68 clips.