bioinnovel Chapter 307, Piece 5!
Chapter 307, Piece 5!
The gray-eyed man did not react.
"This scale is sufficient to form a complete anti-submarine network in the exercise area." Ito's fingers tapped lightly on the table. "If the target happens to pass through that sea area during this time period—"
"He won't come," the gray-eyed man said, his voice hoarse, as if he hadn't used his throat in a long time.
Ito showed no surprise. "Tell me your judgment."
"His mechanical body has a speed exceeding 45 knots, and its maximum diving depth is unknown but far exceeds 1,000 meters. Your anti-submarine net is ineffective against him."
"I know."
"So you still want to hold this exercise?"
Ito's lips curled up slightly.
It was a human expression, but it looked somewhat out of place on his face now.
"The exercise is for show."
"The Ministry of Defense, the Cabinet, the media—they need a reason to explain why I mobilized so many troops."
"As for the actual actions..."
He opened the drawer and took out a USB flash drive.
"The intelligence department's undercover agents in Jinghai have sent back something."
Ito inserted the USB drive into the tablet.
A surveillance video popped up on the screen. The image quality was poor, and the angle was taken from a commercial camera on a street corner.
In the video, a dark-colored Maybach is parked on the side of the road.
A young man got out of the car; he was thin and dressed in a plain gray sweatshirt and black trousers.
He was facing the camera sideways, looking down at his phone.
A faint smile played at the corners of his lips.
Zhang Yan.
"This footage was taken three days ago," Ito said calmly. "The location is a commercial street in the old town of Jinghai City."
"He had no bodyguards, no motorcade, he walked."
The gray-eyed man stared at the face on the screen.
"Whose car is that next to us?"
"Nie Qingcheng, the CEO of Qingcheng International, is also his woman."
There was silence for a few seconds.
"You want to use her as bait." The gray-eyed man wasn't asking a question.
"I've thought about it," Ito shook his head, "but the people in Tanaka already tried it last time."
"His defensive measures are far more effective than expected, making a direct confrontation impossible."
"Moreover, his mech can appear and disappear out of thin air—meaning he can fight back no matter where he ambushes you."
"So what do you plan to do?"
Ito turned off the screen.
"I'm not going to Jinghai." He stood up. "Let him come here by himself."
The woman with the ponytail moved for the first time.
She tilted her head slightly, as if she had heard something interesting.
Ito walked to the tactical screen and pulled up a nautical chart of the Western Pacific.
"This is the second intelligence your 'master' gave me." He pointed to a coordinate marked with a red circle on the nautical chart.
That location is 400 kilometers east of the Miyako Strait, deep in the Pacific Ocean.
"What's there?" the gray-eyed man asked.
"The master said that there is something Zhang Yan urgently needs three thousand meters below the sea."
A faint blush appeared around the mark between Ito's eyebrows in the shadows.
"He will definitely come to collect it."
……
Jinghai.
It's 6:30 in the evening.
Nie Qingcheng arrived home on time.
As soon as I entered, the sweet and sour aroma of sweet and sour pork ribs filled the entire living room.
Zhang Yan was in the kitchen, wearing an apron—not the pink one, he insisted on using the black one.
"Change clothes and eat."
Nie Qingcheng kicked off her high heels and walked barefoot to the kitchen door. "Let's get down to business first."
Zhang Yan brought out the last dish. "Let's talk after we finish eating."
"Then don't make it so delicious." Nie Qingcheng sat down, her chopsticks already reaching for the ribs.
Zhang Yan didn't mention anything about work during the meal.
Nie Qingcheng, chewing on a rib, recounted a distressing incident at the company—the head of an overseas branch had falsified data in his monthly report, and she caught him red-handed. During the meeting, the man's face was "as red as a pig's liver."
Zhang Yan listened, occasionally responding with a word.
After the meal.
The two people were sitting on the sofa.
"Go ahead and say it." Nie Qingcheng held a glass of warm water and leaned on his shoulder.
Zhang Yan read out the information he had compiled in the afternoon, one by one.
The village disappearances reported by Ang Tun.
Unusual military mobilization in the Sakura Kingdom.
Takehiko Ito's unusual promotion.
And—on the global monitoring heat map, there's that abnormally "clean" area in the Japan region.
After listening, Nie Qingcheng put her water glass on the coffee table and didn't say anything.
About ten seconds passed.
"You think Ito has been taken control of."
"It's not that I think so," Zhang Yan said. "The unknown protein in his blood is homologous to the energy sample I previously extracted from the polluter. It's just that the concentration is higher."
"There are no pollution signals over in Japan—"
"Because the thing controlling Itoh is of a much higher level than ordinary Ruins Familiars."
"It has the ability to shield against energy leakage within the area."
Nie Qingcheng drew a circle on his forearm with her finger.
"So what do you plan to do?"
Zhang Yan did not answer immediately.
He looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room.
The night view of Jinghai is brilliantly lit, and the outlines of the high-rise buildings look like a row of silent chess pieces.
"The devastation is accelerating. Northern Myanmar is expanding, and Japan is infiltrating. It's playing two games simultaneously."
"Which two steps?"
"The first step is to establish energy bases in Southeast Asia to feed more high-ranking followers. The second step—"
Zhang Yan turned to look at Nie Qingcheng.
"Plant a knife next to me."
Nie Qingcheng narrowed her eyes slightly, and the beauty mark under the light shone faintly.
"Ito's Exercise—"
"They're not after me," Zhang Yan said. "They're after the Heart of Heaven's Craftsmanship."
The phone rang.
Qin Xiao's encrypted channel.
Zhang Yan answered the call.
Qin Xiao's voice was a notch tighter than usual: "Boss, we just intercepted an internal communication from the Yokosuka base."
"Takehiko Ito issued a secret order to the intelligence department."
"What content?"
"All underwater detection resources were mobilized to continuously monitor a specific coordinate located 400 kilometers east of the Miyako Strait."
Zhang Yan's pupils contracted slightly.
"Those coordinates..."
Qin Xiao paused for two seconds.
"I've checked."
"The water at that location is over 3,000 meters deep, and publicly available marine geological data indicates it's an ordinary deep-sea plain. But..."
"but?"
"I performed a deep scan using your upgraded remote detection protocol."
Qin Xiao's voice turned somber.
"At that coordinate, there is an energy echo from the fragments of the Heart of Heaven."
Zhang Yan hung up the phone.
Nie Qingcheng remained silent, just watching him.
"Fragments of the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship"
Zhang Yan leaned back on the sofa and tapped his knee twice with his right index finger.
"The fifth piece."
"Didn't you say there were four pieces in total?"
"I think so too."
The system panel pops up.
Zhang Yan flipped to the attribute page of the Heavenly Craftsmanship Heart, where it clearly stated that the completion rate was 87%.
The four fragments, plus the energy accumulated from killing familiars and destroying the nest's core, total 87%.
However, the system never stated that "the total number of fragments is four".
He only managed to collect four pieces along the way.