Chapter 55: The Bizarre Aquarium (Part 12)

Cleaning Center.

"M-Minister Xuan," the technician asked uncertainly, "is she blackmailing you?"

No matter how one looked at it, it was extortion. The Grey Eagle Team was still holding out in the mechanical jellyfish pavilion, and Zhu Ning had led her team straight to the upper level of the pavilion and simply stopped moving.

It seemed as though she refused to take action until she received Xuan Qing's reply.

They were still operating on a time lag with the contaminated zone, and the thought of Zhu Ning standing stubbornly at the door doing nothing just to demand money during this time—how was this any different from a local tyrant?

Xuan Qing smiled. In all her years alive, having witnessed so much of the Federation's history, she had never once been blackmailed.

Xuan Qing stood with her arms crossed, pondering for all of three seconds.

"Reply to her: ten times the reward for task completion. Deduct anything exceeding the standard from my salary."

T-Ten times?

The technician stared at her in utter shock. Lu Qiqin was not around, and nobody could keep Minister Xuan in check.

This was simply too outrageous.

The reward for a Class B mission was already exceptionally generous, and on top of that, Xuan Qing was offering a tenfold increase directly?

The other Cleaning Center employees nearby were in an uproar. While they were still debating whether this complied with regulations, they wore expressions of profound heartache—why wasn't it them out on this mission?

With that kind of money, a person could stop working for a year; those with low expenses could practically retire on the spot.

Even as they sighed in amazement, they heard Xuan Qing add leisurely, "Capture a Transparent Alive, twenty times the bounty."

The sound of their discussion cut off instantly, plunging the entire hall into an eerie silence.

What had Minister Xuan just said? She wanted to capture a Transparent alive?

The employees who had previously regretted not entering the contaminated zone suddenly found themselves unable to speak, knowing deep down that this was a job they simply could not handle.

Zhu Ning had blackmailed Xuan Qing, and Xuan Qing had upped the stakes in return.

She wanted a living Transparent; the research value of a Transparent far surpassed anything else.

And yet, over on Zhu Ning's end, they had actually agreed.

...

Chu Ling could not figure out why she had agreed to such an absurd plan.

Yet Zhu Ning did not care. In Zhu Ning's own words: At the very least, I secured the money for you.

Previously, they worked for the Cleaning Center; now, they were working for their own lives and a massive payout.

Zhu Ning rather liked money—who didn't?

However, she was not reckless enough to throw her life away for it. Having lived long in a world of zombies, her understanding of money was that having enough was sufficient. The funds she possessed only needed to be enough to afford her genetic serums and allow her to live a comfortable little life, which would be utterly perfect.

Once that target amount was reached, she would lose the drive to strive further.

Yet this group of people needed the money. Chu Ling required millions in funds to sustain her mechanized operations; Xu Meng also needed a hefty sum for life-support expenses when uploading her consciousness; Li Nianchuan only worked so he could retire, open a restaurant, and become a cook.

The other demon hunters felt the same way.

In the wasteland world, unless you were a favored son of heaven or a first-class citizen, maintaining one's own operational functions required heavy financial investments.

She needed to rapidly boost team cohesion, ensuring that regardless of any ulterior motives they might harbor, completing the mission remained their primary objective.

Xuan Qing's promise was the carrot dangling just above everyone's heads.

Sure enough, money—acting as a panacea—began to get this team moving.

They would simply suppress any doubts they held toward Zhu Ning in their hearts and focus entirely on executing their mission.

The eight-member squad was re-divided into three groups. Chu Ling, Li Nianchuan, and Xu Meng formed a three-person unit left behind on the surface.

The back doors of the mechanical jellyfish pavilion had been sealed shut. Ninety-five percent of the backstage area was filled with water, leaving merely five percent for the aquarium staff to operate in.

They stood within a circle formed of their own blood and paint, awaiting the unknown danger.

Now that the backstage exits of the mechanical jellyfish pavilion were locked down, if there were any Transparents in here, it meant they were trapped together with them.

Either they completed the mission and left with a colossal bonus, or they failed the mission and died together.

The total mission duration was only twenty minutes.

Under Zhu Ning's orchestration, this mission had been turned into a cooperative team game, complete with a time limit and clear clearance rewards.

Li Nianchuan and Xu Meng gripped forearm-length military sabers. Though they carried self-defense tools, Li Nianchuan had barely had any occasion to use them in all his years of running missions.

Staring into the shadows, Li Nianchuan felt as though countless eyes were fixed upon him.

They did not know the number of enemies, nor their exact locations; they could come from anywhere.

One of the Transparents stepped into a pool of blood, leaving a bloody footprint on the ground. Chu Ling reacted with extreme speed, firing her weapon immediately.

This time, she fired tracking bullets, having saved twenty of them for the critical moment.

The tracking rounds detonated instantly, proving far more effective than a fire extinguisher; once hit, the paint could never be washed away.

The green tracking liquid outlined a humanoid figure—a human standing three and a half meters tall.

Catching sight of its exposed form left them all momentarily stunned. At three and a half meters tall, standing upright, it was about to touch the ceiling of the backstage hall, and Li Nianchuan even had to tilt his head back just to see its face.

The Transparent was soaked through with green liquid for the most part, resembling an ancient monster of the deep forest.

Realizing instantly that it had been exposed, it lunged fiercely toward them. According to the intelligence compiled by Zhu Ning and Chu Ling, Transparents moved at high speeds and possessed enormous strength capable of snapping human bones in an instant.

Their only weakness was poor defense; their outer skin layer was very fragile, and a single bullet to the head would cause them to go limp rapidly like jelly.

Logically speaking, the moment they saw the Transparent materialize, firing immediately would have killed it, but they did not do so.

Chu Ling made her move. With eighty percent of her body mechanized, she raised her full-body defense hardening program, capable of withstanding attacks for fifteen minutes—making her the only one qualified to contend with the Transparent in terms of sheer strength.

Chu Ling kicked out toward the back of the Transparent's knee, and their hypothesis proved correct: Transparents knew nothing of hand-to-hand combat.

The Transparent staggered underfoot, but instinctively lashed out with a sweeping blow at that exact moment. Chu Ling was instantly sent flying, crashing heavily against the opposite wall with a loud thud that cracked the masonry.

The moment Chu Ling went down, Xu Meng stepped in seamlessly to cover her.

The four of them had previously been forged into a unit by Zhu Ning, and now, even with Zhu Ning absent, they were utilizing their respective abilities.

They had barely exchanged two or three words, yet driven by a single objective, they displayed a surprising degree of tacit coordination.

Xu Meng's performance far surpassed anything Li Nianchuan knew of her. Moving low to the ground with lightning speed, she left nothing behind but a blur of afterimages.

Before Li Nianchuan could even process what had happened, Xu Meng had cleanly and decisively severed the Transparent's left ankle.

The internal structure of the Transparent's body was largely similar to that of a human; fresh blood instantly gushed from its left ankle, accompanied by a gelatinous substance.

Next came Li Nianchuan's turn.

Exchanging a glance with her, Li Nianchuan tightened his grip on his military saber, drawing a deep breath as a thought echoed in his mind: "Are we really going to do this?"

Are we really going to do this?

The Grey Eagle Team shared the exact same doubt.

Zhu Ning required them to set demolition charges and detonate them directly at the optimal moment. Seeing the flashing Class A programmatic commands made it clear to them that they had no choice but to take the demolition route.

The explosive devices had to be installed manually, and with half of their team injured, they naturally felt disinclined to move.

Cao Wei's initial reaction at the time had been: Why on earth should they take orders from a Cleaner?

Yet every one of them had heard Xuan Qing's words.

Twenty times the bonus.

Those five words acted like a shot of adrenaline. If they had previously been on the verge of giving up, thinking of sacrificing themselves for the greater good...

Those five words felt like a new lease on life, as if... there was still hope?

Everything was not yet over. As long as a person remained alive, anything was possible.

They could leave this place carrying a twentyfold payout.

Prometheus held the ultimate governing authority over their bodies, yet remained inactive at this moment, leaving their bodies under their own control for the time being.

Cao Wei and Liu Zhiwei had just been administered high-efficiency healing agents, and they were leaning against the glass staircase to catch their breath.

Jellyfish swam within the pooled water of the glass staircase; they had just escaped death by a hair's breadth down there.

To install the demolition charges, they had to cross through the jellyfish and Transparents once more. They had only just managed to cheat death, and now Zhu Ning was telling them to go right back.

Tang Ke remained silent for a moment before finally speaking: "Re-form the combat plan."

They had nowhere left to run. They had to believe this plan could succeed—it had to succeed.

Prometheus was still inside their minds.

Prometheus was also inside Zhu Ning's mind. Armed with an artificial intelligence, it could calculate the optimal solution through big data simulations; the AI ought to serve as the "brain" of the entire team.

Yet this operation was entirely different. Zhu Ning was the brain of this eight-person squad.

Prometheus could have chosen to sacrifice three people to complete the task, boasting a high success rate while preserving the majority, taking charge of the members' life and death.

Zhu Ning had neither adopted its proposal nor handed over control of her body to an artificial intelligence.

She would never blindly obey an AI's commands.

Zhu Ning stood at the edge of the pool. The water below teemed with mechanical jellyfish and unknown pollutants. She drew a deep breath, leaned backward, and plunged without hesitation into the swirling black vortex.

The dark seawater swallowed Zhu Ning instantly, sending a long train of bubbles surging past her helmet. Strapped to Zhu Ning's back were two oxygen tanks.

She surmised that the oxygen consumption down below would be immense, and relying solely on the Cleaner work suit's oxygen supply might cause her to suffocate down there.

As the seawater filtration system engaged, she released a long stream of bubbles, moving with the agile grace of a marine creature.

The submarine vortex was ferocious; the moment she entered, she was swept away immediately. Zhu Ning offered no resistance, stretching out her arms and drifting along with the current.

The contamination source should be directly below.

Their plan required every single link in the chain to function without error, and as the most crucial executor, Zhu Ning could least afford any mishaps down here.

Zhu Ning had originally intended to bring Chu Ling down into the contaminated zone with her, but after Xuan Qing blurted out the promise of a twentyfold bonus, she altered her battle plan on the spot.

With her fully mechanized body, Chu Ling was the only one capable of contending with sheer brute strength, making her far better suited to execute the task of capturing a Transparent alive.

She would purify the contamination source alone.

It wasn't that Zhu Ning wasn't afraid to die, nor was she driven by any form of heroism.

From the perspective of maximizing efficiency, among all these people, she was simply the best suited to approach the contamination source. With the mechanical jellyfish being entirely metallic, Zhu Ning's metal manipulation range had already reached two meters.

Combining metal manipulation with danger prediction might not guarantee her survival, but it would certainly allow her to die a little slower than the others.

Furthermore, she had been under constant surveillance ever since the mission began; pulling off covert actions under the camera feeds of eight people would be exceedingly difficult.

Now, Zhu Ning was left with only her first-person perspective camera feed. The scene visible to the Cleaning Center was restricted to whatever fell within Zhu Ning's line of sight, meaning she could use a few harmless minor innate abilities without anyone noticing.

Such as right now.

Three minutes after Zhu Ning descended, she heard the system prompt.

[Primary talent 'Danger Prediction' triggered. A 30-second advance hazard warning has been dispatched. Please ensure your safety.]