Chapter 1000-1025
(TL: woohoo Chapter 1000)
(ED: !!!!!!!!!)
“There’s no doubt that Nicholas’ secret lies in his body.”
Sheyan placed his hands on the table and swept his gaze across everyone’s face as he said so confidently.
“Regardless of whether Nicholas is dead or alive , as long as his body is still there, we can uncover the secret from it.”
Reef earnestly asked, “Do you mean the scars on his body? The marks left by surgery?”
“There’s probably more than that, my friend. I feel that finding the person who operated on Nicholas is one clue, and it’s the obvious clue given by the mission, but Nicholas’ corpse may very well be another important clue in itself. Besides that, the stuff Nicholas had with him before he went to prison also has great research value,” answered Sheyan.
“Nicholas’ corpse is an important clue?” asked Mogensha in bewilderment, “How so?”
Sheyan smiled. “Corpses can speak too – when they’re in the hands of certain professionals. Professionals such as forensic doctors, who have a lot of experience looking for evidence on dead bodies.”
The bait which Sanzi habitually placed at the stern of the boat had surprisingly caught a tuna. There were only some simple ingredients on the boat, so Sheyan and his brother showed off their skills with a knife and treated everyone to some tuna sashimi.
With Sheyan keeping watch, everyone else relaxed and had a good rest. Eight hours of sleep pretty much restored everyone to their optimum condition. After that, Sheyan steered the boat back to Los Angeles. Although they did meet with coast patrol along the way, they were superior both in terms of boat and skill,so they managed to escape from their pursuers without any danger.
It was evident that the aftermath of their fine work in Los Angeles had yet to die down, but the tension among the citizens of Los Angeles were not as high as one would expect. The terror in Hollywood had only affected the safety of the rich. As for the prison riot, as long as the prisoners did not escaped, everything was fine.
On the contrary, the threat of invasion by a large number of cold-blooded Terminators was more worrying, because although these steel monsters did not actively hunt humans, they harbored no goodwill towards humans either. They would kill all the humans they met along the way. (Of course, if a human was too far away, a Terminator would not bother chasing the person down.)
Therefore, although there were strict inspections being performed all over the city, most of them were to catch robots. In truth, Sheyan had overestimated the consequence of his previous reckless act.
Sheyan and Sanzi had to undergo inspection when they infiltrated the prison previously, so they had had to use their real appearances, unlike the others who had altered their appearances during the operation. Now, the two of them needed to put on some simple disguises
After returning to Los Angeles, the team once again split up for the sake of efficiency.
Sheyan and Sanzi would investigate the clues regarding to the scars on Nicholas’ body, while Zi and Mogensha would “invite” a forensic doctor over to dissect the body. Of course, the best way to do that was to tempt the doctor with cash. The money would make sure the client remained tight-lipped afterwards.
After some investigation, Zi and Mogensha chose a forensic doctor named Dr. Smith who had been in practice for twenty years. He was about 40 years old and was in a bad financial state. A person who had 20 years of experience in a field surely could not be that bad.
The task was done without much difficulty. Dr. Smith was easily tempted by a hundred thousand dollars to violate the loosely-enforced rules. He agreed to all the conditions, then brought over all his tools and started the examination.
The whole forensic examination process was quite gory and unpleasant, so Zi naturally did not stay to watch. She left Mogensha there to watch over Dr. Smith. Mogensha just smoked his cigar without any expression.
Compared to how smooth-sailing the operation was on Zi’s side, Sheyan’s side met with a rather huge problem.
They first contacted Mr. Dursley, whom they had worked with before. Apparently, the bribe given to the workshop supervisor was still in effect as he was very cooperative in answering Sheyan’s questions.
Nicholas had always had some problems with his health. He had a bout of illness five years ago, which was apparently quite serious. The hospital had even issued a notice of critical illness, but after a surgery, not only did he miraculously recover, he recovered very thoroughly. Since then, Nicholas started to drink and smoke heavily.
Sheyan immediately pointed out the crux of the problem.
“Since you’re his direct superior, Mr. Dursley, surely you must know what kind of illness he suffered from.”
Dursley replied in a confident tone, “Of course. He has a very serious case of congenital heart disease. It’s precisely because of his condition that he was transferred to our workshop’s quality control department, since it’s the only job that’s suitable for him.”
Sheyan’s spidey sense tingled as soon as he heard that. Not only was severe congenital heart disease difficult to cure, but more importantly, the best time for treatment is when the patient is younger than 10 years old. Beyond this age, the increase in height will cause more burden on the heart, leading to more and more heart damage! And yet, the scars on Nicholas’ body could confirm that his heart was indeed operated on.
According to Dursley, Nicholas was completely cured after the operation and started drinking, smoking and eating wantonly like a healthy man. That was nothing short of a medical miracle!
Something smelled fishy!
With some excitement, Sheyan enquired from Mr. Dursley the place where Nicholas had the operation done.
Mr. Dursley simply answered, “It was District 8 Community Hospital, and I remember it very well, because Nicholas didn’t have the money to choose the hospital when his condition worsened, so the entire treatment was done in the community hospital.”
And District 8 Community Hospital was exactly where Sheyan and his party members were stuck.
The quality of the hospital was comparable to the district level hospitals in China in the real world. Be it the facilities, the equipments or the personnel, they were far inferior to higher grade hospitals. What were the chances for a doctor from this kind of place to completely cure Nicholas’ severe congenital heart disease?
Armed with the power of money, Sheyan had no trouble finding out the identity of the main doctor responsible for the operation, but the doctor had retired and emigrated to Canada. A bit of snooping around revealed that the doctor did not have the reputation nor the history to suggest that he was capable of performing a miracle like that. He had had 11 infringements of differing severity throughout his career – even his retirement was due to a serious medical accident. But, the doctor had a rich son, who hired the best lawyer for him. He was able to retire and move to Canada after paying a hefty amount in compensation.
All the signs showed that the secret lay in that miraculous surgery. How did the magic happen?! How did a mediocre doctor suddenly become a miracle worker, conquering the fatal illness that had baffled all the doctors around the world?
At a corridor in the hospital, Sanzi kept dialing the phone, but every call he made failed to connect. Sheyan lit a cigarette, took a deep puff, and spewed out the smoke.
He pondered carefully and said,”A heart surgery is absolutely not as simple as a circumcision operation.(ED: Wow) There must be a first assistant and a second assistant, and the third assistant as well as the anesthesiologist must be present as well. If we really can’t find the doctor, there are still four others who had witnessed the operation. Maybe they wouldn’t know the details, but if we can combine all four of the testimonies, we might be able to somewhat restore the scene.”
Sanzi’s eyes lit up when he heard that. “That’s right! I’ll go take care of it right away!”
Sanzi’s ability in carrying out orders was as strong as always. After a busy period of time, he succeeded in getting the list of people who took part in Nicholas’ surgery. The first assistant and anesthesiologist back then were still working in the community hospital right now, so Sanzi went to talk to them.
“The surgery? Oh, I remember! That surgery was messier than our general election this year! Doctor Didi made at least a dozen mistakes during the operation! And I’ll tell you what, the most unfortunate person was not the guy lying on the operating table, but me! I was the one who had to correct all those mistakes!”
“Unusual incidents? I don’t recall any. The only thing unusual was that the patient was really lucky not to die on the operating table. In fact, with that severe a heart defect, the pacemaker and the restoration we did wouldn’t have helped much. He would live for two more years at most.”
“Oh, before the operation, Dr. Didi spoke with the patient for a really long time. They had a most agreeable chat from 2pm all the way until the time the doctor got off work, but that’s no big deal. Doctors are obliged to relieve the psychological depression of patients. In this respect, Dr. Didi is actually pretty outstanding. I always thought he should be a lawyer or a politician instead with his eloquence.
“….”
As Sanzi was telling Sheyan all this, the public phone next to Sheyan rang. This was the temporary mode of communication he and Zi agreed upon.
“Hello?” Sheyan waited calmly for a moment before he picked up the receiver. He could hear from the voice transmitted over that the mood of the caller must be agitated and urgent.
“Seaman, come back quickly!” The one speaking was Zi. She usually had a calm demeanor, but right now, she sounded short of breath, and there was a trace of surprise and shock in her voice!
“We discovered something amazing during the autopsy! You’d better come back and see it for yourself!”
After receiving the call from Zi, Sheyan immediately had a premonition that something big was about to go down.
He rushed back to the basement where the autopsy took place without another word. From a distance away, he could already smell the terrible odor of blood in the air. Sheyan initially thought it was the normal smell of an autopsy, but when he opened the door, he was immediately rooted to the spot.
Dr. Smith, who came under the temptation of $100,000, was down on the ground covering his throat with helpless hands. Blood trickled out from a neat wound on his throat. It slowly accumulated and solidified on the ground, forming a bright red pool.
It could be seen from Dr. Smith’s expression that he did not suffer much before his death. Rather than pain, he looked to be more in shock and dismay. However, no matter how dismayed he was, the shadow of death had quickly enshrouded his body, and life had trickled out of him rapidly.
“What happened?” asked Sheyan solemnly, but before he got an answer, he already saw a very strange thing.
In Zi’s hand was a transparent test tube, in which there was a small drop of something weird. That something was crawling slowly in the test tube.
It looked like a drop of dew, but it had a mercury-like texture. It was silver in colour and gave off a futuristic, science fiction feel as it reflected the faint incandescent light.
No matter how Sheyan looked at it, it did not fall into any category of living things, but right now it was creeping slowly in the test tube without any external force acting on it, like a snail trying to crawl to the top of the test tube. That was a gravity-defying act.
“This is the murderer,” Zi gave the thing a strange look.
“When Dr. Smith cut open Mr. Nicholas’ chest, he was surprised to find that Mr. Nicholas’ heart was on the verge of becoming completely useless. So when Dr. Smith learned that Mr. Nicholas had died from poisonous gas, Dr. Smith was very surprised. He began to study Mr. Nicholas’ heart intently.”
Sheyan gazed at the thing in the test tube. “What’s the result of his study?”
“He found an obsolete pacemaker in Mr. Nicholas’ heart. In fact, Dr. Smith firmly believed that the pacemaker had already exceeded its life span before it was even implanted into Mr. Nicholas. The proof was the date of production inscribed on the pacemaker. The pacemaker was over twenty years old. It’s probably older than Sanzi,” answered Mogensha while he puffed on his cigar.
Sheyan said heavily, “A obsolete cardiac pacemaker has given Mr. Nicholas a new lease of life. Doesn’t sound very believable.”
“Dr. Smith thought so too, so he tried to unravel the mystery. After he took the pacemaker out, he cut open the outer layer with a scalpel – and what happened next was a blur. The whole room was basked in a bright light for a moment, as if lightning had descended into the room.”
“Dr. Smith was shocked, too. He stayed still for a moment. After he confirmed that there were no other problems, he proceeded with the dissection – and then the tragedy occurred.”
Mogensha sighed and said, “I saw something suddenly rush out from the pacemaker. I don’t know how to describe it. It was something viscous, like creamy mushroom soup. Like water turning into ice, it solidified into a silver knife in the air and stuck into Dr. Smith’s throat!!!”
“Then, the knife melted down into the liquid drop that you see now, wriggling on the table like a snail, trying to escape. Zi quickly covered it with a test tube. That was the whole cause, process and result of the incident.”
Sheyan looked again at the wriggling thing in the test tube, then looked at the bloodstained cardiac pacemaker.
“We need to do three things right now.”
“First, before the news of Dr. Smith’s death spread, invite another forensic doctor to examine Mr. Nicholas.”
“Second, find an expert on pacemakers to see what’s unusual about this device.”
“Third, make sure the vicious little fellow inside the test tube doesn’t escape. We must also be careful of our own safety while doing so. I propose to let Reef hang on to the test tube.”
**
Not long after, Sheyan’s demands were met. Another forensic doctor was tempted to make a little extra money.
At the same time, in a company called Imeo Advanced Medical Devices, a technical director named Tom received Sheyan. He took the pacemaker and asked with some doubt, “This is an old model made a long time ago. I still remember that it was only suitable for a very limited number of people, mainly patients with severe coronary heart disease…. Wait, what’s this? ”
Mr. Tom’s fingers pried open the part that was cut and showed a look of surprise.
“See here, such a dense coil, and this strange parallel structure, as well as the closed cavity. These are all really peculiar modification techniques and ideas.”
“You mean this pacemaker has been modified?” asked Sheyan in obvious concern.
Tom answered affirmatively. “Definitely. I can guarantee it with my forty years of experience. But I can’t see any positive aspect of these modifications besides adding extra weight to the pacemaker.”
Of course, Sheyan could not tell Tom that there was a strange drop of silvery…monster in the pacemaker before this. Based on the data they have collected, the thing that the monster resembled most was a slime.
Sheyan thanked Tom politely and took his leave. He had also received news from the latest autopsy – they did not discover any new clues.
So far, Sheyan had not found anything suspicious from the pack of clothes Nicholas brought with him into prison either.
That was to say, two of the three trails of clues had led to dead ends.
Their only gain was the “slime” in the test tube.
When Sheyan returned, he received another unfortunate news. The “slime” in the test tube had stopped crawling and had began to roll under the effect gravity. It looked like it was dead and had completely turned mercury-like.
At that moment, the phone rang.
Normally, contestants would not use native communication tools in nightmare worlds. Even satellites were often hijacked by other contestants; monitoring phones was just a piece of cake. However, Sheyan’s phone was not used to contact his team, but rather to contact Mr. Dursley, the workshop supervisor. He had planned to throw it away after using it, so he was not too concerned about it.
“Hello?” Sheyan picked up the phone. The voice transmitted over was the shrill voice of a woman he was not familiar with.
“I heard you’re enquiring about a certain surgery a few years ago, and you’re someone very generous? ”
Sheyan was instantly intrigued.
“Who are you?”
The shrill voice at the other end of the phone said, “Although that old man, Didi, had gone to Canada and had passed away, not every one who knows the details of that operation has died. Besides the lucky guy in the prison, the only one who knows is me.”
Sheyan was secretly moved, but he merely repeated his question with a calm voice.
“Who are you?”
“I was the nurse who was next to Dr. Didi at the time. To be more precise, that old man took advantage of me and then helped me get the job in the hospital. During that period of time, he was totally infatuated with me, so I even know private things about him like his atm card pin number – unfortunately, that atm card was always with his wife. Well, let’s not waste each other’s time. I heard that you’re quite generous. You asked that slut, Katrina a few questions and gave her three thousand dollars? If I tell you everything, how much will you pay me?”
Sheyan could, of course, hear the naked greed in the woman’s words, as well as her intent to demand an exorbitant price. If he agreed right away, the woman may very well name a price high enough to tempt Lebron James to play in the China.
Fortunately, Sheyan had a lot of experience in dealing with this kind of people. He put a smile on his lips, and his tone became business-like and plain.
“Ma’am, it’s a pity that our investigation is over. We’ve obtained five thorough and accurate testimonies from witnesses that can be verified at any time. Our superior can’t find any faults at all.”
The owner of the shrill voice on the other end of the phone apparently did not expect such an answer. Her mind that was blinded by greed felt like it had been doused by a bucket of cold water.
She could not help yelling, “That’s not possible… Do you know what you’re missing out on? A possible miracle in the history of medicine!”
Sheyan’s reply was firm.
“Well, ma’am, so far, my heart has been very healthy. More importantly, the only miracle I need is to get promoted tomorrow. But…it’s not a bad thing to make the report more informative. We still have nine thousand dollars left in the budget for this case. If we don’t spend it, we have to turn it in anyway, so if you’re willing to give me a thousand dollars out of those nine thousand…. let’s have some coffee in the cafe at the entrance of District 8 Community Hospital in fifteen minutes. The latte there is pretty good. To show my sincerity, it’s my treat.”
“You’re a sly and cheap devil! I want their signature Welsh milk tea, roasted grape and apple pie, natural strawberry dried cream, chicken salad sandwich, Welsh apple pie…..”
“Excuse me, ma’am, are you reciting the cafe menu?”
“Eight thousand dollars is better than not getting any at all.”
Sheyan made such a speech to begin the conversation.
The woman sitting in front of him seemed to be of Russian descent. She was called Josina and was very thin.
The woman had thin lips, pale cheeks, and a black hat with a translucent veil which tactfully covered most of her face. If you looked past the dense wrinkles in the corner of her eyes and the pale, flabby skin, she was actually quite the beauty. Sheyan had to admit that if this woman were 10 years younger, she indeed had the qualification to rely on her body to get a job.
On the whole, she gave Sheyan the vibe of a widow – a widow who, despite her financial difficulties, was still struggling to keep up appearances.
But the woman’s response to his sentence was very strange. She did not immediately answer him, but had started to eat instead. She looked like she had not eaten in days.
It was not until she ate the food of two people that she sigh comfortably and say, “Surprised? You’ve guessed right, I am in a terrible financial state. I’ve skipped two meals. And the reason is — ”
Josina raised her arm and pulled up the sleeve to reveal the needle marks.
” — drugs. And the reason I’m taking drugs is to resist the pain from terminal cancer.”
Sheyan raised his eyebrows. He did not know what to say to that. But Josina flashed a smile that showed that she was unconcerned.
“So you can rest assured. A dying person will have no qualms about revealing the whole truth to you.”
Sheyan smiled.
“So what’s your price?”
“The doctor said I have six months left. I hope I can eat enough in these six months, and have enough money to buy the medicine to alleviate the severe pain. That will definitely take way more than $9,000, but don’t worry, it’s not an outrageous figure. $100,000 – that’s my bottom line. If you refuse me, I’ll just end my life and be done with it. I no longer want to be tortured by this damn world,” said Josina.
Sheyan had booked a private room for this meeting (TL: in a cafe?). He simply fished out $50,000 from a suitcase beside him and threw it in front of her.
“This is the advance payment. After I confirm that you’re telling me the truth, I’ll give you the rest.”
Josina looked at the money that had been thrown onto the table indifferently. Instead of eagerly reaching for it, she asked Sheyan for a cigarette, took a deep puff, and began her story.
It was a rainy day, cold enough for the chills to creep into the bones. That old pervert, Didi still asked to f*ck me in that kind of weather. We had just finished our business when someone knocked on the door of the diagnosis room.
The person who knocked was a middle-aged man with a hooked nose. He looked very sinister. As soon as he entered, he made me leave, then shut the door. It was the typical behaviour of a salesman. I was way too familiar with it.
Normally, Didi would receive an envelope with some cash inside, and the envelope usually had to go through me before he handed it to his old lady back home. So even though I appeared to have gone out and have closed the door as I was told to do, I was in fact closely monitoring the process in the adjacent diagnosis room.
The middle-aged man sat across from Didi at the desk, then reached into his briefcase and took out a stack of money.
A HUGE stack of money!
At first, I thought that the guy would request for an important transaction, but what he said overturned my assumption.
“Dr. Didi, I wish to see the list of patients who need cardiac surgery in this hospital. The more serious the condition, the better.”
For the sake of the cash, Didi was very cooperative. He immediately provided the list. I’m sure you can guess the identity of the patient chosen by the middle-aged man. That’s right, it’s Nicholas.
The only reason Nicholas was chosen was that his condition is truly severe. But, he had a really strong desire to live. Even though he knew that the surgery had only a 30% chance of prolonging his life, he still insisted on doing it.
Because of this, even Nicholas himself believed that it would not be surprising to die on the operating table. Thus, the man convinced Didi to experiment on Nicholas – something about testing a new pacemaker developed by his company – so that even if something happened to Nicholas, others would not suspect anything.
For this, the guy paid a lot of money to Didi.
I’m sure you know what happened after that. A miracle was born. Nicholas recovered and Didi’s reputation soared, but an occasional miracle could not cover up his bad medical skills, and he eventually retired early.
The middle-aged man with a hooked nose never appeared again.
Josina’s story came to an abrupt end. She finally provided a large piece of the jigsaw puzzle which made the whole incident much clearer.
Sheyan stared at Josina coldly.
“You left out something important.”
Josina was very calm.
“I only got half the money.”
Sheyan broke into a smile and threw the rest of the sum on the table.
Josina held out her fingers that were so thin they looked like bamboos and deftly counted the money. Finally, she told Sheyan, “The hook-nosed guy introduced himself as Dolittle. He had a pale face, probably due to a coronary heart disease. His right foot was disabled so he walked with a limp, probably due to polio.”
The facial symptoms of coronary heart disease were very obvious, so it was not unusual for Josina to recognise them at a glance. As for the second point, anyone would be able to tell.
Sheyan stared into his palm and asked, “Anything else?”
A trace of fear flashed across Josina’s eyes, but she was someone who was about to die, so it did not matter to her anymore. She gritted her teeth and told Sheyan, “The man called Dolittle had a terrifying power.”
“Tell me about it,” Sheyan was intrigued.
Josina asked for another cigarette. She took a few slow puffs and, after a while, finally said, “I assumed Dolittle was a very rich man, so I wanted to wait for him at the entrance of the hospital.”
At this point, Josina laughed bitterly at herself. Sheyan knew that this ambitious woman must have wanted to half-threaten and half-seduce her way to the rich Dolittle. It was nothing special. Everyone has their own way of life. Was it wrong for Josina to try to climb up?
“It was raining that day. I was stopped for a while when I was going downstairs, so I didn’t catch up to him when he left the hospital. I watched the guy get on a taxi. Another taxi happened to pass by soon afterwards… I’m a very stubborn person. What I wanted to say to Dolittle couldn’t be said in public anyway, so I got on the second taxi and followed him.”
“After travelling through half of Los Angeles, Dolittle finally got down from the taxi on a small street. He was 50 or 60 metres away from me, so I didn’t call out to him right away because he probably couldn’t hear me from that distance anyway. After he turned into an alley, I saw him being surrounded by a group of people. They were the FBI….and those FBI agents died in only a few seconds! I saw some weird rays of light criss-crossing, weaving themselves into a scary-looking net. When the net sweep past, all the FBI agents were cut apart like they had been dissected by a bunch of knives!”
When he heard Josina’s words, Sheyan sprang to his feet despite himself. Cutting apart a group of FBI elites in a few seconds was absolutely beyond the capability of a Terminator. The only people who could do this were contestants.
A really powerful contestant!
How could Sheyan not feel surprised when he found out that this incident was related to a contestant? More importantly, if this mysterious, weird, but rewarding mission involved other contestants, it would be a HUGE problem!
But when Sheyan thought about it again, he realised that the incident Josina saw happened years ago. Obviously, the contestant by Dolittle’s side at that time would not be in this world anymore, so there was zero chance of a head-on conflict.
After thinking about it for a while, Sheyan took out another $50,000 and threw it in front of Josina, at the same time speaking to her slowly, “Where did Dolittle go? Answer this question, and the money is yours.
*
Third Avenue, Long Beach, Los Angeles.
That was the location provided by Josina.
At this moment, Sheyan was on a car heading to that location. He lost himself in the scenery outside the window. Mogensha drove the car fast but steadily; the passengers could not feel any shaking.
So far, the secret on Nicholas had pretty much been unraveled.
Since the mysterious Dolittle decided to experiment with Nicholas, and since Nicholas turned out to be a successful experiment, it was impossible for Dolittle not to contact Nicholas afterwards.
Dolittle had long been eyed by the FBI, which must have caused Nicholas trouble.
Nicholas was a timid guy, but the secret lay right inside his heart. If he did not say anything, the FBI were at most suspicious of him, but if he spilled the secret, he would die for sure. Under the strong desire to live, Nicholas naturally kept his mouth shut.
The metal nut engraved with the SOS distress signal was probably Nicholas’ last resort to ask Dolittle for help, which showed that Nicholas knew a little of Dolittle’s power.
The death of Nicholas showed that Dolittle likely possessed an earth-shaking secret. The secret was so important that anyone who were remotely related to it would be killed as soon as they escaped from the government’s control. The government would rather kill 10 innocents than let 1 guilty person slip away!
“Was it here?” asked Sheyan as he walked out from the back seat of the car.
It was a place with complex terrain where multiple streets and alleys intersected with each other. The shops on both sides were mostly deserted. The pedestrians were hurrying around in their large coats, and drug addicts with pale, thin faces were everywhere. One could imagine the desolate, mysterious and gloomy atmosphere when it was nighttime. It was no wonder that Josina could hide behind an electric pole when she saw the killing and not get discovered.
Sheyan came here for the hook-nosed man, Dolittle, of course.
When Josina was following Dolittle, the latter should have been unaware of her. At that time, it was raining, so the surroundings were cold and wet, and Dolittle had just obtained some very important research material. For both work and personal reasons, Dolittle should be heading home.
This place was full of small streets and alleys, and the police coverage in this run-down area was relatively sparse. It was a good place to hide.
The FBI had probably grasped Dolittle’s whereabouts at that time, so they lay here in ambush, but the power supporting Dolittle was out of the FBI’s expectation. They were completely wiped out as a result.
A key point identified by Sheyan was the place where Dolittle was ambushed.
On a street.
For the police, if they had a choice, this was definitely not a good location for an ambush. Whether it be the social impact, the escape routes for the criminal, or other factors like finding evidence.
If the police had found Dolittle’s lair, the location of the ambush would have been in his hiding place, beyond a doubt.
That could only mean one thing.
The FBI agents that ambushed Dolittle back then probably didn’t find the man’s lair. He was probably detected by surveillance, or they had received report from informants that Dolittle had appeared around here, after which the FBI hurried over to lie in ambush.
According to Sheyan’s guess, the FBI must have carried out a furious cleaning-up operation in this area after the bizarre death of their men. If Dolittle’s lair was still not found during the cleanup, there was no doubt that Dolittle will continue to use the place even after the contestant backing him had left the world. This was obvious.
Therefore, Sheyan thought that if he was somewhat lucky, he could find the lair that Dolittle had used and various many clues from there. If he was really lucky, he might be able to find the man himself in the lair.
Mogensha looked around while puffing on his cigar and asked, “There’s a bar over there. Maybe we should go for a drink?”
Sheyan shifted his attention to the bar with a signboard that showed the outline of a naked woman, sketched with neon lights. The place was probably filled with the dregs of society, but they could probably get some good information there. He nodded and walked in with Mogensha.
There was a musty smell in the bar. It was, of course, masked by the strong smell of liquor, but the musty smell was still uncomfortable. There was still quite some time before peak hours, so the inside of the bar was brightly lit, to better help the waitresses clean the place.
Like most bars in this era, there were two billiard tables. The colour of the flannel on them had faded, and the surface was covered with scratches. The cue sticks had cracks on them and were covered with black dust.
Around the billiard tables were several men with tattoos and unkempt hair. Their biceps and chest were bare, as if they were showing off, and looked over with provoking and vigilant eyes. A queer looking fellow even showed them a lewd look. He blew a smoke ring in Sheyan’s direction before finishing his drink in one gulp and placing the glass upside down on the table.
When Mogensha was called a “black lass” previously, he had really taken it to heart. Now that he saw this situation, he immediately turned to Sheyan and exclaimed in glee, “Boss, looks like someone has fallen for your beauty.”
Sheyan glared at Mogensha. Just as he was about to retort, a prostitute who imitated Britney Spears’ silver hairstyle came up to them with a cigarette in her mouth and asked, “Hello, gentlemen, are you here to drink or to have some fun?”
Sheyan smiled and sat down on the nearest table. He noticed that the table was a clean, round wooden table. A jack-o-lantern hung beside it.
“I’m here to give out money.”
Sheyan once again launched a financial attack, which was undoubtedly a very simple but effective method. Of course, he could not rule out the possibility that some would weave out lies for the sake of profit, but Sheyan believed that it would not be difficult for his sharp eyes to identify these lies.
And so, when two men who had lied for the sake of money held their broken hands and screamed beside the table, no one else dared to risk it.
After gaining nothing, Sheyan and Mogensha left the bar and went to another bar. They were like hardworking bees rushing in between flowers. Several bars later, finally, the owner of the bar called out to Sheyan.
“Hey, you, stranger. Come here.”
Sheyan walked over and leaned against the simple bar. Next to him was a rolled-up poster and a coin-operated telephone. The boss was a bearded man. As he wiped a glass with a towel, he casually said, “I heard you’re enquiring the whereabouts of a man who walks with a limp, has a hook nose and has problems with his heart?”
“That’s right,” answered Sheyan.
The bar owner said slowly, “I know a fella with a hook nose who only drinks soda when he comes here for women. I’ve seen him take heart medicine before too. But both his legs are healthy, he doesn’t have a limp.”
That caught Sheyan’s attention. He threw out a stack of bills.
“I’m interested.”
The bar owner who got his cash smiled in satisfaction.
“This fella is famous among the girls working under me, first because he’s generous, and second, because he’s lazy in bed.”
Mogensha immediately asked with keen interest, “Lazy in bed? What do you mean by that?”
The bar owner showed them a lewd look.
“His lust is strong, but because he has heart problems, he has to avoid strenuous exercises as much as possible. That’s why, every time he takes a girl out, he always lies down on the bed and lets the girl do all the work on top. Every girl who goes with him complains about an aching back and sore legs, but the next time he comes to pick someone, all the girls will still scramble for the chance because he’s generous in tipping.”
Mogensha lifted his eyebrows a few times as he said, “He sure knows how to enjoy life. I might just try that out myself….”
Sheyan asked the bar owner, “Do you know where he lives?”
The bar owner shrugged his shoulders.
“Heck, I only sell cigarettes and alcohol, I don’t do registrations. Why don’t you ask the girls. They should know something about that.”
“Where are your girls?”
“Why don’t you order a brandy and have a seat. By the time you finish the brandy, it should be about time for the girls to come to work.”
There was naught to do next but wait. Waiting sure was annoying.
But this time, Sheyan’s patience was rewarded by Lady Luck! Although the guy in question would always bring the prostitutes to motels, one of the prostitutes actually saw him buy medicine at a pharmacy, then walk into an alley!
Sheyan, who had received this information, was about to follow the clue and find the alley when the door of the bar was suddenly pushed open and a man came in. The man had a hooked nose and dark eyes, with faint signs of cyanosis on his lips and skin.
As soon as he appeared, both the bar owner and the prostitutes gave him a strange look, then shifted their gazes to Sheyan’s group.
No doubt, the man they were looking for had come to patronise the prostitutes again today.
Sheyan could not help but feel that his luck was truly amazing today. He gave Mogensha a look to warn him to be careful. Then, he stood up with a laugh and went up to the guy.
Under the gaze of the man that was filled with suspicion, Sheyan smiled and asked, “Mr. Dolittle?”
The man visibly trembled all over, but he tried to ask back in a casual tone.
“What did you say?”
Then, something unexpected happened. The very next second, Dolittle suddenly pulled out a large caliber M500 gun and shot Sheyan! The shot hit Sheyan’s chest with a loud bang!
Sheyan staggered back a few steps while looking at the M500 gun with a little melancholy. When he had first entered the Terminator world, he had also relied on this powerful weapon to carve a path for himself. He did not expect to see the same weapon again today, but it had basically become useless against him.
After Dolittle fired the shot and saw Sheyan standing there as if nothing had happened, his pupils shrank. He immediately wanted to make the next move. But at that instant, Sheyan stepped in front of him and flashed him a smile.
“My patience has a limit, Mr. Dolittle.”
Unexpectedly, Dolittle’s action after that was even more surprising. When he saw the look on Sheyan’s face, he suddenly showed an expression of ecstasy.
“You’re….smiling? The damn Terminators don’t have any facial expression programs, which means you’re either a new model, or you’re not a Terminator at all. And since you can withstand a direct shot from the M500 and still talk to me normally, you’re not those fools from the FBI either. Are you one of those outsiders with superhuman abilities?”
Dolittle’s reaction was undoubtedly beyond Sheyan’s expectation, but what mattered to him was that despite all the twists and turns and all the suffering, he finally found the hidden man. That was definitely good news.
The lights were bright, and all was quiet.
In the spacious living room, Sheyan and his allies crowded around Dolittle like stars surrounding the moon.
Although Dolittle knew very well that any one of the people in front of him had enough power to kill him with a single finger without a care for the law, he still appeared very calm. He had obviously dealt with contestants many times before and had learned a lot of things about them.
Facing Dolittle, Sheyan received a series of notifications:
[ Congratulations on finding the key person in the storyline, Dolittle. ]
[ Warning: The conversation you are about to have with Dolittle will be affected by the completion rate of the previous prerequisite tasks in the mission. Please respond with caution. ]
Since the nightmare imprint reminded Sheyan to “respond with caution”, he certainly would not take the reminder lightly. Clearly, now was the time to check whether he had done his preparation work thoroughly in the early stages.
Dolittle stared at Sheyan and his group with a strange gleam in his eyes. He was suspicious and delighted at the same time, but more than that, he was wary.
“Are you outsiders? Those people who possess immense power, traveling here from another dimension to perform the tasks given by their gods?”
“We are,” Sheyan was unwilling to say too much right now. He knew that the more he spoke, the higher his chances of saying something wrong. He hoped to discover as much of Dolittle’s secret as he could from this conversation .
Dolittle simply asked, “I wish to know one thing. How did you find me?”
Instead of answering Dolittle, Sheyan narrowed his eyes and asked in return, “What do you think?”
Dolittle just shrugged and replied, “Probably through the FBI. As far as I know, those idiots have been looking for me for five years. They’ve been trudging forward relentlessly like they’re Terminators.”
Sheyan stared at Dolittle, various thoughts running through his mind. In the end, he decided to tell Dolittle the truth.
“No, that’s not it.”
While he said that, he took out a metal nut.
“We obtained this nut by chance and unexpectedly found the letters SOS on it after thousands of times of magnification. Out of curiosity, we followed the trail of clues left on the nut and finally tracked them to you.”
“With only this nut to go on?” asked Dolittle in disbelief.
“That’s right,” answered Sheyan seriously.
Next, Sheyan told him all the steps they had gone through. When Sheyan took out the clothes Nicholas were wearing before he went to prison, Dolittle immediately showed his interest. He took the clothes and inspected the collar carefully.
Sheyan was secretly relieved. He now knew that the package of clothes did contain some information, but the information was not meant for contestants; it was for Dolittle!
When Dolittle put down the clothes, he finally nodded and said, “Seems like you really did break into the prison.”
At that moment, Sheyan received another notification:
[ You submitted the relevant important item and have gained a little of Dolittle’s trust. The completion rate of prerequisite tasks increased by 20%.]
After receiving this prompt, Sheyan silently screamed in joy. If he had lied to Dolittle in order to gain more information and said that he obtained Dolittle’s details from the FBI, it would have been tragic. He would not get the chance to present this important storyline item. He may very well increase Dolittle’s enmity instead of Dolittle’s trust.
Next, Dolittle inspected the metal nut and confirmed the letters SOS on it. He could not help but sigh.
“I knew making contact with Nicholas would drag this friend of mine into my troubles, so I gave him an address. Nicholas said that if he ran into any problems, he’ll ask for help in a way I wouldn’t expect. Well, he’s right, it was a way I didn’t expect. Unfortunately, the nut did not reach me in time.”
The metal nut increased Dolittle’s trust by a further 30%.
Sheyan saved the best for the last. First, he took out the damaged pacemaker and asked, “Do you recognise this?”
When Dolittle saw the pacemaker, his expression instantly changed.
“Where did you get this from?”
“You should know very well where I got it from,” answered Sheyan calmly.
Dolittle eyes bulged. “You killed him?”
Sheyan smiled and replied, “We’re not executioners, brother. When we found him, he was already a corpse.”
Dolittle shook his head fiercely.
“That’s impossible! Based on my calculation….the remaining energy can keep him alive for at least 30 years! Since he didn’t die on the operating table, he’s bound to live for another 30 years!”
To that, Sheyan could only sigh and say, “Mr. Dolittle, being able to live for 30 years in theory is completely different from being able to live for 30 years in reality. Take John F. Kennedy for example. He’s only 46, but he’s dead too.”
“You mean Nicholas committed suicide?” asked Dolittle with some suspicion.
Sheyan shook his head.
“No, he didn’t. The government probably thought that his secret was too shocking, so once he showed the slightest possibility of being out of their control, a nerve gas was released in his prison cell. We did our best, but unfortunately we were a step late.”
Dolittle was silent for a moment, but for some reason, Sheyan did not feel much sadness from him. Dolittle then raised his head and asked, “Did you find anything else?”
“We did find something which piqued our interest. And that was why we came here looking for you.”
Sheyan turned to look at Zi, who took the hint and held out the test tube.
“This drop of liquid was hidden inside the pacemaker. As soon as it was exposed, it immediately turned into a silver needle and killed the forensic doctor who was performing the autopsy, but it no longer displayed such ability afterwards. Now, it has become mercury-like. It appears to be dead.”
Dolittle took the test tube from Zi. His eyes when he looked at the drop of liquid were filled with a complex emotion. There were both expectation and fear. He could not stop his hand from shaking.
After a long time, he slowly said, “Its energy is very limited to begin with, and after being released, its instinct was awakened and it transformed to kill. The energy in the liquid particle battery is completely spent, so of course it would fall into a dormant state.”
After Dolittle said all these, the nightmare imprint prompted Sheyan again. Dolittle’s trust has increased by 50% further! Together with the previous increments, that made 100%! At that instant, a series of notifications emerged on Sheyan’s retina.
[ Respected Lieutenant Colonel No. 1018. ]
[ You have obtained the highest level of evaluation (Max) for the prerequisite tasks of this mission. ]
[ You have triggered the relevant subsequent task. ]
[ Calculating…. ]
[ Programming…. ]
[ Performing relevant checks…. ]
[ You have obtained the first chapter of a silver series mission, “Dolittle’s Wish”! ]
[ Hint: Silver Series Side Missions are the mission series of the highest difficulty level. These kind of missions are often very long, spanning across multiple nightmare worlds. They are divided into numerous steps, labelled A, B, C, D and so on. After the completion of each step, you can either choose to receive the reward or accumulate it until the next step. Of course, if you manage to complete the final step, you will receive the ultimate reward. ]
Sheyan heaved a long breath. No wonder Drubal could not get the perfect reward. This mission was crazy hard. Merely triggering the mission was already a monumental task. Not only must they discover all the clues, they must also have the key item! They were lucky that the mastermind behind the scenes was gone, otherwise Sheyan probably would not have been able to get the maximum level of evaluation if he had to deal with the mastermind at the same time.
They had now gained Dolittle’s complete trust. Dolittle looked around at the people surrounding him and quietly said, “The name Dolittle is actually just an alias. My real name is…..”
“WHAT!!!”
In this instant, be it Sheyan, Mogensha, Zi or Reef, they were all shocked out of their wits. The name Dolittle had just uttered possessed astonishing prestige even in the world they came from. The person who possessed that name was hailed as the most famous thinker and theoretician since Einstein, and the greatest scientist in the world!
Zi was the first to recover from the shock. She instantly exclaimed, “That’s impossible! If you’re him, there’s no way you can sit here and talk to us like this. That man has already lost his ability to speak!”
“Indeed. That would’ve been the case if you outsiders didn’t appear in this world,” Dolittle calmly replied.
Sheyan suddenly thought of a shocking possibility. Although the probability was very minute, it was undoubtedly the most logical. He couldn’t help exclaiming, “Did….did an outsider like us cure your disease?”
Dolittle looked at him with a hint of admiration.
“Bingo! You people possess very advanced medical technology. An outsider brought me a kind of medicine; the level of technology contained in that medicine was thousands of years ahead of the current era! The medicine enabled brain transplantation! It enabled me to shed my previous damaged body like I was taking off a ragged shirt, and take a new body!”
“But your current body doesn’t look that healthy either,” said Sheyan with a frown.
Dolittle could only sigh to that.
“A brain transplant isn’t as simple as chopping open another person’s skull and then stuffing my brain inside. The key requirement is the resonance of brainwaves. Only a recipient body that resonates with my brainwaves can accept the transplant of my brain. The problem is, there are simply too few recipients that fit the requirement. This body, despite all its faults, is the best one I could find.”
In response to Dolittle’s explanation, Sheyan asked a little tentatively, “If I remember correctly, there’s still a really long time before you’ll die from your illness, so you should have enough time to choose a healthier body, right?”
Dolittle – or more precisely, the great scientist – let out a wry smile.
“Yes, I do have enough time to wait, but…the medicine has a shelf life. My friends, you should know the condition of my previous body. That’s why, although this current body of mine suffers from an excessive sex drive, a rheumatic heart disease, polio, elevated blood viscosity, vitiligo and beriberi, it was still an irresistible temptation to me. I couldn’t wait….”
“You’re right,” replied Reef earnestly, “To be able to escape from that body is a supreme temptation for anyone, sir. That body was simply a God-given cage!”
Dolittle nodded gratefully.
“Thank you for your understanding. In my opinion, I’m a new person and has a new life now, so you should just call me Dolittle.”
Everyone in Party Ace was simply awed by his previous status and identity. They nodded respectfully. Meanwhile, Dolittle started to tell them the subsequent story.
“At that time, news of the Terminator’s invasion had began to appear in the confidential files of certain countries. Due to the special identity of my previous body, and because I had a little achievement in the subject of space-time wormhole theory, I was able to get an all-around access to these materials.”
“Therefore, when an outsider appeared before me and told me that the Terminators we were facing back then were just the small fries, I wasn’t surprised at all. Next, he provided me with a slew of information which opened up a whole new horizon for me. If the knowledge I acquired in the first half of my life could only let me wander before the Door of Truth, the information he provided me not only opened the door for me, but also let me step into it and walk to the second floor!”
Dolittle waved his hands around excitedly as he told his story.
“This knowledge made me realise that the productivity and technological capabilities of humans are actually adequate; what’s lacking is the knowledge of how to use them! The technologies now are full of chaos, waste, and disorder! Like a giant who can’t use his strength properly, our left leg takes a step forward, but our right leg wants to take two steps back! The information the outsider provided me with was new ways of thought and application of skills that were not so far apart from the technology possessed by humans, but they were so clever that they must have been derived from the devil’s mind!”
Sheyan interrupted him at that moment.
“With all due respect, Mr. Dolittle, there’s definitely no free lunch in this world. The outsider must have his own reason for helping you, right?”
Dolittle nodded in agreement.
“You’re right. After I’ve absorbed all that knowledge, he handed me another stack of information, the name of which was the ‘Research Report on The TERMINATOR-1000 Machine’.”
“The TERMINATOR-1000 Machine?” Sanzi was puzzled. “What’s that?”
Unlike Sanzi, the mention of Terminator-1000 cause Sheyan and Zi to look at each other in surprise. Their hearts were beating violently. They immediately understood that this mission was actually related to that “thing”!
“The TERMINATOR-1000 machine”, abbreviated as T-1000, could be said to be the representative model of the Terminators. It was a terrifying liquid metal assassin, an almost indestructible monster!
Dolittle sighed when he saw their response.
“It seems like you already know what that is. When I first saw its detailed parameters and information, the first thought in my brain was: It’s impossible! Skynet is only 20 years ahead of human technology. How can such a bizarre killing machine that has such a high IQ come into being?”
“But after some careful research and deduction, I realised that my first impression was wrong. Yes, that outsider has done so much for me. The only requirement he made was for me to try to control, analyse and modify the T-1000.”
“He’s someone with great vision. He felt that using the liquid metal technology of the T-1000 to manufacture robots is a waste of technology! It’s possible, in theory, to make it a self-evolving metal that has the power to swallow other powerful metals and completely recreate weapons suitable for combat in various environments!”
Sheyan involuntarily drew in a sharp breath. By now, he had almost completely understood what the contestant wanted. That man was truly an amazing guy. If one thought about it carefully, his train of thought would lead to something very powerful indeed.
The most amazing aspect of T-1000 lay not in its endurance and indestructibility, but in the fact that every drop of liquid metal in the T-1000 was its own CPU. A CPU had no independent thoughts, but it had the ability to self-assemble and to cooperate with other CPUs. Be it the shapeshifting or the movement of the T-1000, it was the result of the CPU’s processing.
More importantly, it could assume the appearance of most objects or living things it came into contact with, as long as they were somewhat similar in volume!
Which means that it could shapeshift into any type of cold weapons it came into contact with!
For the Terminators, not being able to shapeshift into firearms was a huge weakness, which was why the improved T-X model was introduced later on. The T-X model was a more advanced model which had built-in particle weapons enclosed by a liquid metal exterior.
But the shapeshifting-into-weapon function which Skynet had almost completely abandoned was a treasure for contestants! Moreover, Dolittle seemed to be able to give this liquid alloy the ability to devour and evolve!
Sheyan was positive that if Dolittle’s mission was done well, he may be able to glimpse the deepest secrets of the Terminator world.
He immediately asked, “So how far have you gone in your research?”
“I’m very close to success. And yes, as you’ve probably guessed, the mysterious sticky liquid injected into Nicholas’ pacemaker is a drop of liquid alloy taken from a T-1000 Terminator. I set up a high-energy interference source in the pacemaker, and by utilising the properties of helium…(a thousand words of explanation omitted)…I managed to suppress the ability of that drop of liquid alloy to the limit, just enough to fill in for Nicholas’ heart defects, and provide it with regular twitching. Nicholas proved to be my most successful experiment,” answered Dolittle.
“Then why do you still have a heart disease?” Mogensha asked in doubt.
To that, Dolittle could only sigh. “Because an accident happened. You should know that this new body of mine was a cripple before this due to polio. After Nicholas’ experiment was successful, I used the rest of the material on my legs to treat them because the FBI were chasing after me. I had to recover my mobility first.”
“And then… And then, just as I was preparing for the next experiment, Gore died. ”
“Before I talk about Gore’s death, you must know something – presently, it’s impossible for human technology to produce liquid alloys. Even Skynet, who’s decades ahead in technology and has gathered the knowledge of the entire world, can’t mass produce liquid alloys. That’s why a T-1000 isn’t that easy to find.”
“In addition, T-1000s are highly intelligent Terminators. As soon as they realise that they’re in danger, they will immediately flee. Skynet will also spare no effort in saving them. We only managed to get our first research material, a T-1000 finger, after painstaking effort from Gore.”
Gore was naturally the contestant with great vision who cooperated with Dolittle.
It was evident from Dolittle’s recounting that Gore must have gone through very thorough planning and arrangement to carry out this plan by himself. Such a grand plan was definitely not something that could be completed in one nightmare world visit.
This was enough to show that not only was Gore meticulous and powerful, he also had a certain amount of influence. It was surprising that such an amazing man would die so abruptly.
Dolittle seemed to have kept the matter in his heart for far too long. Without waiting for Sheyan to ask, he blurted everything out.
“I saw Gore die with my own eyes. So many things happened on that day, strange things….”
“That morning, Gore received news of a T-1000 sighting. He hurried over at once. At first, everything was going smoothly. Gore successfully cleared the Terminators around the T-1000 and then fought it head-on.
“According to the data we’ve collected, a T-1000 does not have the energy to last for decades like other terminators do. Its energy consumption is astonishing, so it has to be recharged after every mission. Shapeshifting is especially energy-consuming. That said, even in a constant battle state, it can still last for over a week, so it’s still more durable than you’d expect.”
“Gore tried his best to exhaust the T-1000’s energy. According to my research, the energy of a T-1000 must be reduced to less than 40%, otherwise, even if we successfully obtain the severed part of the Terminator, it will explode!”
“Just as Gore’s fierce battle with the T-1000 entered its most critical stage, Skynet sent its reinforcement. Gore chose to grit his teeth and weather through it because no one knows when a T-1000 will appear again.”
Dolittle was suddenly furious.
“Who would’ve thought that at such a critical moment, the weather would suddenly turn bad. A storm swept across the area. There was a high-voltage electric tower nearby which suspiciously collapsed. The intense electrical current severely limited Gore’s range of activities. Using the high-intensity current, Skynet detonated the energy storage of the Terminators who were sent over to help, causing them to explode. Gore immediately fell into a very dangerous situation. He suffered considerable injuries from that wave of explosion.”
“But even so, Gore still managed to bring the energy level of the T-1000 to below 40% before cutting off its left hand and bringing it back in a hurry. I still remember the situation back then like it was yesterday. Gore had just stepped through the door with his body completely covered in wounds, but he was smiling. He was just about to say something but the next second, he suddenly exploded with a loud bang! The sight of his body exploding into pieces was so gory that I still have nightmares of it!”
Sheyan frowned and asked, “Did the arm of the T-1000 explode? The power of the explosion was so strong that it immediately killed him? Mr. Dolittle, you should know that we outsiders have some strange power.”
To that, Dolittle let out a wry smile in response. He said, “That kind of explosion was not an ordinary explosion. It’s called a local fission explosion. Its principle – forget it, you won’t understand even if I explain it (Sheyan: Damn you, how would I understand if you don’t explain it?). A simple analogy is to confine the power of an atomic bomb to a space the size of a soda can. The energy will not leak out of this space, but the destruction inside the space will increase to a terrifying level!”
“Wait a minute!” interrupted Zi, “Gore should have been a very cautious man; he would never joke with his life. That is to say, he must’ve made sure that he’d brought the energy reserve of the T-1000 to below 40%. Why would the arm still explode?”
Dolittle sighed. “The only explanation is that the T-1000 had received a sudden injection of energy, but the problem is, Skynet has not mastered such technology yet. After all, it exists 30 years in the future, so there’s an insurmountable barrier of space and time!”
What Dolittle implied with his words was obvious. Even now, Skynet has yet to master this technology, let alone a few years ago. That means the culprit was not Skynet. But who could it be?
Sheyan couldn’t help thinking about the “strange” collapse of the high-voltage pylon. He suddenly he had a familiar feeling.
Dolittle remained silent for a moment, and then suddenly said something that seemed to have nothing to do with the current topic.
“Gentlemen, and ladies, do you believe in fate? Do you believe in the fact that the path of a person’s life is already pre-arranged beforehand?”
Sheyan pondered about it and answered, “I do not deny such a possibility.”
Dolittle took two deep breaths before he said, “Gore’s death gave me the feeling that someone had changed his fate! This change may not be fatal, but at the same time, the person has also changed the fate of the T-1000. The combination of the two was like a harmless fuse encountering a harmless cigarette butt; it immediately resulted in horrible consequences!”
Party Ace exchanged glances. They could feel chills creeping down their backs. The one they thought of was undoubtedly the “mastermind behind the scenes”. If Sheyan had not forcefully led them out of his entrapment, they would have shaven off piece by piece until they die a horrible death.
Dolittle obviously was not expecting a response from Party Ace. He continued, “It’s precisely the strange traces left by the local fission explosion that aroused the strong concern of the Ministry of Defense and caused me to be listed by the FBI as an extremely dangerous, red-level terrorist. Because although there’s no such technology on earth yet, the relevant theory has already been proposed.”
“When this technology matures, it can easily avoid radar and other surveillance methods, and flatten the White House or any important infrastructure with just an object the size of a chewing gum – without the destruction spilling over to other areas around it! This kind of precision strike weapon was originally an idea put forth by the US Ministry of Defense, but now, it might be used against them instead! You can imagine their panic.”
“The FBI had only paid some attention to Gore before, but that explosion was the reason the FBI refused to leave me alone even after Gore’s death. They’ve been after me all these years. It was also because of me that Nicholas was dragged into this mess. They would rather kill him than let him fall under the power of another party.”
When Dolittle finished his story, the whole incident was finally laid bare in front of them. Even now, Sheyan still felt like it was all a dream. This long and arduous mission series was actually a mission that was discontinued after another powerful contestant had been halfway through it, then placed in his hands after a succession of prerequisite tasks!
Now, there was a reasonable explanation for the Stockholm party’s relentless pursuit of Party Ace despite having to pay a huge price to do so.
The first reason was revenge for the loss in the world of the Lord of the Rings.
The second reason was the competition between realms. They probably wanted to eliminate Party Ace, who had tremendous potential, before it could grow strong.
The third, and the most important reason – why did the mastermind behind the scenes plot against Gore? It must be because this mission of Gore’s had the potential to cause a lot of trouble for them and harm their interests. Sheyan, who currently held the key mission item, was naturally a thorn in the flesh to them!
The only mystery left was “Fate”, who was killed by Sheyan in the Bloody World. What relationship did he have with the mastermind behind the scenes? Why were their attacking methods so similar?
At that moment, Zi suddenly turned to Dolittle and said, “Well, Mr. Dolittle, as you can see, we’re also powerful outsiders, so is there anything we can do for you?”
Dolittle was silent for a moment as he contemplated. He then replied, “There’s a fatal defect in my body, and that’s the problem with my heart. Left by itself, I will only have seven months to live, at most. I can’t accept that! Not that I’m afraid of death, but because I now possess so much advanced knowledge. A new door has been opened for me, and yet…yet…”
Dolittle’s voice had become fanatical.
“There is a tremendous wealth of knowledge! These are things that transcend mere problems of life and death! I wish to be able to systematically organise these things and leave them to the future generations, but I need at least 20 years to do this work! So…please bring back to me the liquid metal of a T-1000! With it, I can give myself a strong heart, and fulfill my dream for the sake of mankind! Please, I beg you! ”
Sheyan immediately received a series of notifications:
[ The first chapter of the Silver Series mission, “Dolittle’s Wish”, has officially started! ]
[ Mission Objective: Obtain at least five grams of liquid metal from a T-1000! ]
[ Mission Briefing: Dolittle’s fragile heart will not hold out for much longer, so you have to obtain the liquid metal in time to repair his heart. ]
[ Mission Hint: The more liquid metal you bring back, the higher the completion rate of this mission. ]
[ Mission Deadline: 7 days. ]
[ Mission Difficulty: Not available. ]
Sheyan had just received the mission he had been dreaming about all this time, but his brows furrowed instead. That’s because he had no clue at all on what he should do next. According to Dolittle, it was not easy for Skynet to produce a T-1000. Even TX models had a higher rate of production because the production rate of liquid metal was astonishingly low.
This means that it would not be an easy task to encounter a T-1000.
Mogensha was puffing on a cigar as usual. He said, “The plot in this damn world has changed completely. The Terminators are invading everywhere. Logically speaking, the human governments should’ve sensed the threat and stopped the research on Skynet by now, but they just seem indifferent to the danger.”
“The future will only be delayed, but no radical changes will happen. Terminator 3 has given a very clear explanation for this,” replied Zi faintly.
“In Terminator 2, the T-800 wreckage acquired by Cyberdyne Systems, namely the main CPU chip and the arm, as well as all of the company’s research data were destroyed. They were the basis of Skynet’s research. The lead researcher, Dyson, was also killed. That should’ve been the end of Skynet, but the momentum of history still gave birth to it.”
“It reappeared at 6:18 p.m. on July 24, 2003. Skynet, which exists on the internet network, has no main server. Be it the computer in offices, schools or factories, as long as it’s connected to the internet, it becomes the carrier of Skynet!”
Reef was stunned.
“Since humans were already alerted to the danger and had eliminated the source, how did Skynet appear again?”
Zi said seriously, “That’s the reason Skynet is sending so many Terminators to invade the present time – it wants to use a new Terminator model, the T-950, to try to create itself in the present world.”
“That’s crazy. It’s incredible that Skynet is sending its underlings 30 years back to the past to recreate itself.” Reef was visibly stunned.
“In fact, it’s plan will succeed. Skynet has much more advanced technologies in its grasp compared to today’s humans, so unless the whole world gives up on the internet from now on, Skynet will slowly build itself. Judgement Day is inevitable,” said Zi.
“As for the legendary saviour John Connor, do you really think the politicians in power will recognise his status in the present circumstances? If his status is exposed, what awaits him will be imprisonment, or possibly even death.”
Indeed, in times when the government was stable in power, there was another name for the so-called human saviours – political prisoners. Regardless of which form of government was in power, or which era it was, all rulers pay more attention to political prisoners than murderers. Correspondingly, the punishment dished out to the political prisoners is also particularly harsh. In Ancient China, there was the punishment of executing every relative of a political criminal, for instance. Even in the twentieth century, the punishments were shocking. One could refer to the 1973 edition of the book “Red Crag” for an example.
Mogensha was still smoking his cigar. He said, “I get it. The future can only be delayed and slightly altered, but the main events will still occur due to the momentum of time. Similarly, if we had failed our mission and the saviour, John Connor, was murdered, there will still be another saviour leading the Rebellion. A Jack Connor, perhaps.”
Sheyan did not participate in the discussion. He just stood there frowning while appearing deep in thought. All signs pointed to the T-1000 being an absolute pain to deal with. Finding one would be hard, and preventing it from escaping would be even harder. It even had the ability to self-destruct instantaneously!
There were only 2 good news.
First, Sheyan had a whole week for this mission.
Second, he did not have to worry about that mastermind behind the scenes.
Naturally, Party Ace assumed the responsibility of protecting Mr. Dolittle. After proper arrangements were made for him, Sanzi secretly went to Sheyan and said, “Bro, there’s actually another benefit we can get from Dolittle.”
“What benefit?” asked Sheyan.
Sanzi was baffled. “Didn’t you see the strange glow on the watch he’s wearing?”
“…..No.” Sheyan asked with a hint of surprise, “You can see a glow on his watch?”
Sanzi nodded. “Yup, a dark gold glow. What does that remind you of?”
Sheyan was quick to react. “You mean it’s a soul equipment? Are you kidding me? A Chosen has this kind of privilege?! The realm gives you such an obvious hint?!?!”
Sheyan and Sanzi’s deduction was logical. Even though the local fission explosion was powerful, the possibility of destroying an equipment directly was still minute. Therefore, they could not rule out the possibility that Dolittle had picked up a piece of equipment which contained Gore’s enormous grievance as a memento.
Despite that, Sheyan did not dare extend his claws towards this equipment. The key to serial missions was the accumulation done along the way in preparation for a huge climax in the end. If he took advantage of Dolittle now, it was equivalent to shooting himself in the foot at the very beginning.
Well, it might be inconvenient for Sheyan, but that did not mean the others could not try to trigger the mission related to the soul equipment. The party took turns trying and in the end, Reef won the lucky draw. He received a mission titled “Dolittle’s Request”. Dolittle said that he did not have any regrets, but he had an old friend who had asked Dolittle to take care of his daughter, and the daughter was apparently not doing so well right now. They were asked to take a look.
Sheyan went to Dolittle and enquired with him, “Have you collected any information about the T-1000?”
Dolittle nodded and replied, “I have. I’ve been following the movement of the T-1000 for quite some time, hoping to find a pattern in its movement, but during the last FBI operation, my residence was ransacked. Fortunately, I was out taking a break. I managed to escape, but most of my valuable information and research instruments were confiscated, including the information about the T-1000.”
Sheyan heaved a heavy sigh when he heard that.
“Do we have to go to the FBI headquarters this time?”
Dolittle shook his head with a bit of pride.
“It’s not that much trouble. From what I understand, Cyberdyne Systems is very interested in all my research documents because my research should be more than ten years ahead of theirs. The data is probably in Cyberdyne Systems’ secure database.”
Sheyan exchanged a look with Zi. They did not expect things to go back to that company again.
Cyberdyne Systems was presently receiving a strong backing from the military because their scientific and technological research had successfully helped the US to lead the world in the research on unmanned aerial vehicles. The cooperation between money and political power had formed a large monster. Cyberdyne Systems was close to gaining a status comparable to the Umbrella Corps in Resident Evil before the biohazard outbreak.
So even if Sheyan had become strong now, he still tried his best to avoid a confrontation with Cyberdyne Systems. As for the fact that Sarah and John Connor as well as the Terminator could fight their way in and out of the company as they pleased, Sheyan simply ignore. That’s the privilege reserved for main characters!
He did not expect that he would have an inevitable confrontation with the company even after avoiding them all this time.
Dolittle continued, “If you decided to go to Cyberdyne Systems, please help me bring back some experimental devices.”
He made a list for Sheyan. Although the items on the list were not a part of the mission, Sheyan did not dare take the task lightly since it would likely affect the final evaluation of the mission. He committed each item to his memory.
After some preparation, Sheyan left for the mission. He decided to infiltrate the company with just Zi. Too many people would increase the risk of exposure.
Considering that they might have to fight in narrow corridors in this operation, Zi was, without a doubt, a better candidate than Mogensha with her ‘Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier’ and versatile Force.
The maximum evaluation achieved by Sheyan for the prerequisite tasks had provided him with some extra help. Thanks to Dolittle’s trust in him, he was given a USB flash drive which contained the latest virus programmed by Dolittle himself. If they stick the USB flash drive into a computer in Cyberdyne Systems, the virus would paralyse the company’s network and buy them ample amount of time.
Another thing worth mentioning was that Gore’s investment in Dolittle was really quite astonishing. Considering that Dolittle was more familiar with theoretical rather than practical work, he specifically exchanged a personal handheld computer from the realm for Dolittle. Dolittle can use this smart computer to complete a lot of practical work.
Sheyan had inquired with the nightmare imprint and found that a technologically-advanced computer which could be used by storyline characters such as this needed 150,000 utility points and 5 achievement points. That was a testament to Gore’s determination.
It was true that Sheyan did not wish to clash with Cyberdyne, but that did not mean he had not investigated the company. Besides, they even had an ex-director of a department in Cyberdyne by their side. Of course they would have a deep understanding of the company.
At 8:10 the next morning, Sheyan stood neatly-dressed outside the huge building of Cyberdyne Systems. He had to lean back to catch a glimpse of the logo on top of the skyscraper.
The last time Sheyan went near this place, he could feel a strong sense of danger as if he was standing on the top of a skyscraper and looking down the edge without a guard rail. The closer he got to the company, the more dangerous he felt.
With his current strength, Sheyan of course no longer felt so intimidated, but there was still a sense of danger. The sense of danger was not just due to the taser guns installed inside, but also an unknown threat. If Sheyan was careless, he might very well meet his demise here.
Sheyan turned his head to the side. Zi was standing over ten meters away in a close-fitting professional attire, her hair tied in a bun above her head. She looked sharp and professional, and her outstanding appearance successfully attracted a lot of attention.
Sheyan adjusted his tie and walked towards the revolving door at the ground floor of the Cyberdyne Systems building with a calm and confident look on his face.
He was stopped by the guard at the door because he was not wearing a employee tag.
The bulky guard asked vigilantly, “What business do you have here, sir?”
“Mr. Detas called me yesterday to express his interest in my resume. He asked me to come here for an interview today.”
Sheyan was lying, of course, but it was true that Manager Detas was looking to hire. More than 200 young people had come for an interview today, so the guards did not have the energy to verify each of their identities. The guard in front of Sheyan let him in after giving him a temporary visitor pass.
Cyberdyne Systems had grown to be a giant company with more than 10,000 employees in its headquarters alone. On the spacious ground floor, as many as 14 elevators were busily handling the traveling employees. Sheyan’s temporary visitor pass only allowed him to move around in the dining area on the ground floor and the second floor where the interviews were conducted, but for those with ulterior motives, that was enough.
(TL: The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.)
Despite having successfully infiltrated Cyberdyne Systems, Sheyan did not go to the interview area on the second floor. Instead, he went straight to the dining area on the ground floor.
Providing food to such a large number of employees was always going to be a big problem. In order to let the employees enjoy a variety of delicious food, many restaurants were allowed inside the company building. These restaurants would receive additional subsidies from Cyberdyne. Of course, the higher ups could go out to eat.
Sheyan looked around and saw a group of beautiful office ladies sitting around a table in a nearby cafe called St. Lorraine. All of them had tired looks on their faces and some would yawn from time to time. They appeared to either have just finished a night shift, or they had not been able to get much sleep last night. There were two men next to them who were talking excitedly. The non-speakers seemed lacking in interest; they were just drinking their cereals quietly.
Sheyan was not interested in the office ladies, nor was he interested in the passionate men. The only thing he was interested in was the employee tag worn by the taller of the two men, which had a red background. The red background meant that anyone wearing this employee tag had access up to the eighth floor of Cyberdyne Systems.
As for the ninth floor and above, an employee tag was no longer enough. There were fingerprint scans and retina scans.
Sheyan immediately headed towards St. Lorraine cafe. He was currently dressed in a suit that made him look bright, clean, neat and tidy, so he was quite in-tune with the atmosphere in the cafe. As such, his appearance was not that conspicuous.
He went in, ordered a cup of coffee, sat in an empty seat, and took out a proposal that he had prepared beforehand, pretending to go over it carefully.
The group of people who had just finished a night shift obviously would not stay here for long. They left soon afterwards to take the elevator that would bring them to the underground parking lot. Sheyan patiently followed them until he saw the man he was targeting get on a car and drive away.
He then spoke into the party channel, “The licence plate ends in CK77. The model is Cadillac CLS.”
“Roger,” replied Mogensha on the other end.
Less than five minutes later, Mogensha’s voice transmitted over again.
“It’s done.”
Sheyan checked the party storage and saw a red employee tag that was not there before. They were within the effective range of the shared party storage so they could achieve this instantaneous transmission effect. It was very convenient.
Sheyan did not dare to make a move on the man inside the building because he had already received various insider information from Vincent. The security and surveillance here was so strict that it was impossible to find a blind spot as long as the firewall was active! That applied to the toilets too! As soon as he made a move, he would be discovered for sure!
What’s that? Human rights and privacy?
Unfortunately, the police would not accept any charges against Cyberdyne Systems. If you still refused to give up on the matter, the NSA might come to you for a chat.
Therefore, Sheyan must play it safe. He first entered the company to find a target, then Mogensha would act outside.
Cyberdyne was powerful, yes, but it was impossible for them to expand their surveillance to the entire Los Angeles city.
After obtaining the employee tag, Sheyan pretended to take off his suit like he was feeling hot, but when the suit came off, his grey visitor pass had turned into a red employee tag. Although surveillance was everywhere, no one would notice such a small discrepancy unless someone was specifically monitoring Sheyan.
Sheyan spoke in the party channel.
“I’m all set. What about you?”
“I’ll be done soon,” replied Zi’s emotionless voice.
Ten minutes later, the two of them walked into an elevator together.
Now, if you think having an employee tag means everything is solved, then you’re way too naive.
According to Vincent’s insider information, before pressing the floor button, they needed to scan their employee tag on the scanning screen to obtain the required permission. The visitor pass Sheyan wore before would only allow him to go to the 1st floor, the 2nd floor and the underground parking lot on the B1 floor.
If someone entered the elevator and immediately pressed the button for the 3rd floor and above without having scanned their employee tag, they would be closely monitored from then on.
Besides that, there was an infrared scanning device outside every elevator entrance. If someone followed another person to a higher floor without the corresponding authority, they would be detected and security would be alerted. The consequence was very severe. The person would be handed to the NSA.
To go to the 8th floor and above, unless you’re a high-ranking executive boarding a special elevator, the mid- and lower-ranked employees would have to transfer to another elevator. There were no loopholes that could be exploited.
Sheyan and Zi went straight to the 7th floor.
Right at the moment they reached the 7th floor, a man arrived outside Cyberdyne Systems.
The man constantly wore a faint smile on his face. If one were to stare at him for a while, the smile would seem a little fake, just like the expression on a mannequin or a doll.
He was wearing sunglasses so no one could see what his eyes looked like. If his eyes were exposed, they would cause quite a shock.
That’s because his two eyeballs had been dug out! Even the eyelids were cut away. The blood-red skin rolled outwards but there was no bleeding, only two dark, horrible holes!
In the depths of those two holes, a strange light would occasionally shine.
The lobby of Cyberdyne Systems was clean and spotless, and no trace could be seen on the shiny marble floor that had been trampled on by thousands of people, but Zi’s footprints from more than ten minutes ago were clearly imprinted in this man’s vision, as if she had walked through a layer of snow. In his vision, the footprints were deep and clear, and they were even emitting a steam-like white vapour.
Every step he took happened to be right on the spot that Zi had stepped on.
If someone were to X-ray the man, they would find that his head was actually hollow. A blood-red tumour resided inside. The tumour was constantly beating and its surface was full of twisted, protruding blood vessels. A large number of choroidal ligaments spread out like a spider web with the tumour as the core.
Approximately a hundred meters behind him, two people walked side by side. They looked no different from the rushing office workers around them, but the content of their conversation had absolutely nothing to do with life inside the city.
“The target has appeared in this place just as we expected. Her strength is shocking. She had left for quite some time, but the remnant of her power is still easily detected by your filth-devouring puppet.”
“Of course! As if a weak person could make Boji suffer such a heavy loss! Even the top quality specimen to be made into a familiar was taken away. Boji had even used her final trump card, but when the miasma from the realm of death hit the target, it could not erode the magic barrier on her in the slightest!”
“She’s that strong?”
“Uh-huh. The magic barrier on that woman is quite special. There seems to be an inner layer of net supporting it. Also, based on Boji’s injuries, it appears that she’s a practitioner of the Force from the Star Wars universe, which is a very troublesome neutral energy.”
“Sounds like a real hassle. By the way, do we really have to go into the headquarters of Cyberdyne to complete this mission?”
“We have to. Cyberdyne had been granted the permission to test their weapons on death row criminals as early as two years ago. All these criminals would display a strong ferocity before they died. Before their tests, in order to get the best test result, Cyberdyne would lie to them and told them that they could go home if they could pass the test. Their grievances must linger there still after they died. There’s no doubt that this is the place to gather vengeful spirits of the highest quality in the entire city of Los Angeles! This is an important part of our mission to upgrade to an Awakener, Corina. We must not fail!”
“I know.”
Meanwhile, the ‘Filth-Devouring Puppet’ they were controlling had reached the main entrance of Cyberdyne Systems. He stared at the guard outside the entrance.
The guard looked at his chest and found no employee tag. He blocked the path of the puppet and asked coldly, “What business do you have here, sir?”
At that moment, the crimson tumour inside the head of the ‘Filth-Devouring Puppet’ suddenly contracted in a weird way. A pair of greyish-white eyes popped out from his empty eye sockets. The strange thing about the pair of eyes was that they were compound eyes composed of multiple tiny eyes, like the eyes of a dragonfly!
Fortunately, his sunglasses hid the eyes, or the guard would have fainted on the spot.
They silently stared at each other for about five seconds.
The puppet then said in a calm voice, “Sorry, I took a wrong turn.”
After which, he turned around and left. The guard simply let him walk away. This was not an uncommon occurrence at the main entrance of Cyberdyne Systems.
The guard went back to his spot without saying anything. His expression was a bit dull, but other than that, there was nothing unusual.
That afternoon, the guard suddenly fell dead in the toilet. He was foaming at the mouth and his pupils were reduced to the size of needles. The cause of death on his death certificate was heart rupturing due to overdose, but in reality, the forensic doctor could not explain how he died.
At the moment he fell dead, Corina, who was a distance away, suddenly trembled. She opened her hand to reveal a bead which was filled with some kind of black mist. The black mist rolled non-stop, but it could not escape from the bead.
Looking at the bead in his hand, Corina felt quite distressed.
“Is this really necessary, Hill? Why don’t we just barge in instead of wasting a crystal bead worth 10,000 utility points to obtain the memory of a mere security guard? The puppet is now useless too; we can only dispose it.”
“Do you see any signs of a fight here?” asked Hill coldly.
“…No,” replied Corina in surprise.
Hill narrowed his eyes and said, “We must come to term with the fact that the woman who defeated Boji is much stronger than us. And yet, even she dared not barge into Cyberdyne head-on. And you want us to do it? You should use your brain a little, Corina.”
The ‘Filth-Devouring Puppet’ had taken a taxi to the beach, and after he sat on a bench there, he trembled violently from top to bottom. When the trembling reached its climax, the blood-red tumour in his head started to beat faster, and then exploded. Blood spilled out of every orifice on his head as he slowly fell into the sea.
In Los Angeles, a metropolis with tens of millions of people, hundreds of people went missing every day and dozens of floating corpses popped up from the ocean daily. They would be searched for identification or valuables. If they could not be identified, they would be cremated and that would be the end of it.
Unless someone of great importance was missing at the time or something similar to that, the police would not bother with these people who jumped into the sea to end their lives, let alone dissect them. Therefore, the secret of the puppet was almost guaranteed to get buried in the depths of the ocean.
At this time, Sheyan and Zi had successfully reached the 7th floor. According to their intel, below the 9th floor, only the three offices on the 7th floor had computers that were connected to the company’s internal network. There was little doubt that their best move right now was to paralyse the network with Dolittle’s virus to prevent their every action from being monitored.
“Room 107. This is it,” Sheyan spoke to Zi in the party channel.
Zi replied faintly, “I see it. Do you want me to do it?”
“No, I want you to stay away from me because you’re too attractive. Maybe a security guard is admiring your ass through the monitor as we speak. You’ll give me away,” answered Sheyan with a shrug.
Zi had a high status both in the real world and in the nightmare realm. No one would talk to her like this. The teasing caused a blush to rise on her pretty face. She gave Sheyan a fierce stare and looked like she was about to teach Sheyan a painful lesson using her Force!
Sheyan hastily appeased her with a few apologetic words and fortunately, managed to calm her down. Her chilly but embarrassed expression was truly captivating. He suppressed these evil thoughts and knocked on the door of room 107.
Someone quickly came over to open the door. He was a man with a big nose. Seeing Sheyan, he frowned.
“Can I help you?”
From the gap of the door, Sheyan could see the glow of a computer screen. In this era, LCD monitors were not yet common. The computer monitor on the table was the old-school kind that was like a box. It was very conspicuous.
With the target within sight, Sheyan smiled and asked, “Excuse me, is this Mr. Farawin’s office?”
“There’s no one called Farawin here. You’ve come to the wrong place!” The man with the big nose seemed very annoyed. He slammed the door with force.
However, the expected loud bang did not appear because Sheyan had extended his hand into the door gap at lightning speed. The anti-theft door made of steel slammed into his hand hard. The big-nosed man was stunned and his face twitched. He could feel the pain just looking at what happened.
He snarled in a deep, gruff voice, “Do you understand where this is? Leave.”
Instead of replying, Sheyan smiled and moved close to the man. Before his startled eyes, Sheyan’s knee was firmly planted on his stomach. The man’s face turned blue immediately. Before he could spill his guts out, Sheyan grabbed his hair and rotated his head 180 degrees before hitting the back of the head with the side of his palm.
If Mr. Big Nose had shown a better attitude, Sheyan would not have launched that knee. He would just knock the guy unconscious.
The attention of the guards in front of the security monitors may very well be on Zi’s ass like Sheyan had said because Sheyan’s action did not make the alarm go off. He managed to stick the USB flash drive into the computer in the office without any problem.
The computer virus made by Dolittle instantly started spreading. The screen suddenly went black, and then a knife appeared. It pointed towards the center of the monitor screen and stabbed towards it. A crack appeared in the center of the screen, and a simulated brush emerged from the crack. The brush wiped the screen so that it turned white bit by bit.
In a short few dozen seconds, all the computers in the building that were connected to the network began to display a similar animation. More importantly, because the security system here was connected to the building elevators, and the security system must be connected to the network database, even the elevators had been paralysed!
Sheyan stuffed the man with the big nose into a chair, pulled out the USB flash drive and went back to look for Zi. They immediately climbed up the fire escape to the 17th floor. For ordinary people, climbing from the 7th floor to the 17th floor was an arduous task, but for those two, it was something that could be done in merely dozens of seconds. The blinding pace of their movement would catch their opponent off guard.
***
By this time, the two contestants who had read the guard’s memory, Corina and Hill, were ready to blend into the first floor of Cyberdyne Systems. They had begun to search for their “prey”.
Corina also had the ability to enslave familiars, so it was easy for her to control an ordinary storyline character. With the help of someone on the inside, they could achieve twice the result with half the effort.
At that moment, Corina saw a man wearing a black employee tag walk into the cafe she was sitting in. He was having an angry conversation with the person beside him. Black employee tags were worn by the lower management personnel in the company. Corina’s eyes lit up. Her finger made a beckoning motion under the table while she smiled at the man.
Corina’s fashion style was completely different from Zi. Zi had a style that was elegant but cold, while Corina’s was devilish. She wore purple lipstick and blue nail polish. With her upturned eyes, she exuded a dangerous charm.
So when the man saw Corina smiling at him, he couldn’t help but pause for a moment, then smile in return.
If someone were to squat down at that moment, they would see Corina’s fingernail scratching the bottom of the table so hard that it created trails after trails of sparks! In the end, the rapid sketching produced the figure of a sinister-looking devil’s head!
With a flick of her nail, a drop of blood immediately appeared on Corina’s finger. When she wiped the blood on the devil’s head, it instantly turned vivid and life-like.
At that moment, the man who was wearing a black employee tag approached with a cup of coffee.
His previous anger seemed to have completely dissipated. He politely gestured to the seat opposite Corina and asked, “Is this seat taken?”
Corina raised her eyebrows but did not speak. Her purple lips curled coquettishly as she shook her head.
The black-employee-tag man naturally sat down in the empty seat. Corina raised her cup at him like she was making a toast, flirtatious intent evident in her eyes. The man instinctively raised his own coffee cup and took a sip in response. Because the man had his full attention on Corina, he did not notice the sinister-looking ripple on the surface of his coffee — a ripple which looked eerily similar to the drawing of a devil’s head at the bottom of the table!
At that moment, the bottom of the table was smooth and clean. There was no trace of any drawing at all.
After taking a sip of coffee, the man smiled and tried to initiate conversation, but his face suddenly stiffened. His pupils actually shattered in an instant like glass being crushed, then slowly return to their original appearance.
After a while, he waved his hand towards the back as if nothing had happened, and told his companion, “You go first, Colt.”
The subordinate could obviously see that his superior was having a romantic encounter, so of course he knew what to do. He laughed and walked away. Right after he left, the voice of the black-employee-tag man became low and monotonous.
“Master, I do not have the permission to bring people to the 17th floor.”
Corina frowned.
“What’s the highest floor you can take us to?”
“The 11th floor. That’s where the designated reception room for the use of us management staff is located.”
“Then let’s go to the 11th floor first,” instructed Hill.
The three of took the elevator reserved for management level personnel. It was at that moment that Sheyan happened to insert the USB flash drive containing the virus into the computer, so a few seconds later, when those three had just reached the 8th floor, the elevator suddenly stopped moving!
The two contestants in the elevator instantly thought that they had been discovered. However, they did not panic. Hill waved his hand and a yellow paper talisman that had strange symbols on it appeared in the air. The talisman attached itself to the doors of the elevator and then started to burn. What was even more amazing was that as the talisman burned, the steel doors of the elevator started to melt like a candle!
After that, the group of three quickly stepped out of the elevator. They found that the whole floor was in an uproar, but they did not see any guards or snipers like they had expected.
The employee being controlled by Corina suddenly said, “It seems like we’re not discovered, master. It’s just a problem with the company computer network.”
Looking at the scene in front of him, Hill instantly made the most accurate judgement.
“What a timely problem! Let’s take the stairs, Corina. We must act before these guys activate their emergency plan!”
(TL: In case you couldn’t tell, all three of Hill, Corina and their friend Boji use supernatural powers and rituals from the Far East.)
When Hill and Corina stepped out from the elevator, the Cyberdyne employees they saw were actually not in that much of a panic, because after all, it was just a computer network problem, not a fatal disaster like 9-11 or a fire. Everything was still in order.
The two moved along a corridor and then climbed up the stairs of the fire escape with the “insider” leading the way. Cyberdyne was indeed a wealthy company. The stairs, that were normally used only by the janitors and those who liked to exercise, were kept very clean. Fresh flowers and luxuriant bonsai lined the sides, which made the air was very fresh.
When they climbed to the 10th floor, a group of guards were crowding the stairs and blocking their way. The guards were not actually there to intercept them. They were here because one of their colleagues was attacked in the fire escape, so they had come here to rescue him and investigate the matter.
The unfortunate guard was actually shoulder-rammed by Sheyan when he was dutifully interrogating Sheyan and Zi. He smashed into six pots of flowers and hit his head against the wall, knocking him unconscious.
The team of security guards so happened to see the two strangers, Hill and Corina, sprinting up from below at an alarming speed. Due to the sensitive circumstances, the guards immediately became vigilant. One of the guards questioned the two strangers loudly while the others aimed their taser guns.
This showed the impressive quality of the security forces in Cyberdyne Systems. Although the taser guns were developed by Cyberdyne Systems themselves, they were a strictly regulated weapon. And yet, the internal security team of Cyberdyne had received the authorisation from the Ministry of Defense to carry the guns! Outside of this place, the taser guns could only be used when dealing with Terminators. The strict level of security here was evident from this fact.
Even a monster like Sheyan had to be wary of the killer weapon that was the taser gun, so Hill and Corina naturally dared not take them lightly. They obediently put their hands up and stood facing the wall like the guards screamed at them to.
At that instant, however, Corina emitted a sudden cry of pain and stumbled as if she had sprained her feet. She bent down to touch her ankle. Her movements were not fast and her hands were obviously empty, so the guards did not react excessively. They just shouted at her to warn her not to play any tricks.
Corina’s action exposed the deep, alluring cleavage of her full breasts. Her chest was so exposed that it would take just a little more for her nipples to show. The eyes of the guards were naturally glued to her chest region. Little did they know that the most terrifying threats were those that seemed harmless!
While every guard’s eyes were on Corina’s boobs, an ordinary-looking accessory on her neck suddenly shined with a strange light! The light could only be described as strange because the light was actually black in colour!
Like a bright afternoon sun, the overwhelming black light instantly covered an area dozens of meters around Corina. The only difference was that the sun would emit a brilliant light, while the pendant had released a dense darkness!
The darkness was not a peaceful one; more like a viscous, surging, boiling venom that had a large amount of poisonous pests squirming inside.
In a darkness where one could not see their own outstretched hand, the guards completely lost their vision. Unspeakable fears crept into their hearts until they were completely taken over by fear. They felt as if they were experiencing the end of the world. Their mental fortitude completely collapsed. They cried and wailed, and some even pissed themselves.
From Hill’s point of view, he saw about eight black, twisted lights shoot out from Corina’s pendant. They slithered forward like serpents until they connected to the heads of the guards. A mysterious and powerful evil energy could be felt surging within the darkness.
This was a type of Secret Soul Art practiced by Corina – the ‘Group Fear’ spell.
This ability produced no damage, but it could paralyse the opponents to render them immobile, and could also absorb the opponents’ fear for Corina’s own use. After absorbing a certain amount of fear, she could even perform a follow-up ability!
Hill patted his clothes in a relaxed manner, then literally waltzed forward. He gently touched each frightened guard with his hand. The security guards who were caressed by his fingers instantly turned stiff. As if they had become statues made of clay, they cracked, shattered, and then collapsed.
The group of heavily-armed security guards did not even last ten seconds.
Corina did not straighten up until Hill had killed the last guard. The darkness retracted into her pendant like they were sucked back in. She did not display any joy on her face at all. Instead, she clasped her hands together. A cotton-like mass the size of a fist emerged from each of the corpses. Their colours were varied — there were grey, black, white and red ones. Corina rubbed all the cotton-like masses together to form a constantly squirming ball.
Corina clapped her hands, and the ball immediately burst into powder that flew everywhere. The powder rained down on the ground and was quickly absorbed by it. After that, the footprints left by Zi could be clearly seen!
Because the footprints were made not too long ago, the residual spiritual energy emanating from them still contained a sharp pressure.
This was another of Corina’s Secret Soul Art, the ‘Enslave Soul’ spell that would not let even the dead go.
“No wonder I felt that something was wrong. Turns out that woman with the suffocating power is right in front of us. Even the ghost powder is shivering.” A strange look suddenly appeared in Corina’s eyes, “Hill, could their goal be the same as ours?”
Hill had taken out a comb and was tidying his hair. He smiled and replied, “If that’s the case, we have to go say hello to them. Maybe we can make some easy profit.”
Corina stared at a taser gun glistening on the ground and said, “It’s too bad we can’t use the taser guns. If only they had dropped as loot. Although they’ll break after 5 shots, they can definitely sell for at least 200,000 utility points.”
Seeing the powerful weapon, Hill suddenly squatted down, bit hard on his middle finger, and wrote some strange symbols on a blank talisman paper.
The symbols were written in blood, but somehow, the blood did not dry up. Instead, they looked as though they were flowing on the talisman paper.
Hill pasted the talisman on the corpse of one of the guards that were more intact. The corpse slowly stood up and picked up the taser gun that could only be used by storyline characters. It then stood behind Hill.
“If we’re gonna party, let’s make it big,” said Hill with a smile. The dandily-dressed man suddenly exuded an indescribable sense of danger.
***
At this time, Sheyan was performing hard labour. To be precise, he was doing what the front-line employees of moving companies do — moving the various kinds of experimental devices on the list drawn up by Dolittle. There were quite a lot of them.
Although Sheyan had crammed everything on the list into his brain, the names of the devices were simply too professional. He would not recognise things like the “micro-particle wind tunnel model” or the “high-carbon titanium alloy curvy abrasives” even if they were in front of him.
Luckily, Sheyan could make use of his military rank privilege to make his life easier. After paying a fee, the items on the list were highlighted in his vision. It would have been a real hassle otherwise.
After Sheyan took possession of these things, he threw all of them into the party’s shared storage space. Meanwhile, Zi searched for all information related to the T-1000 in the database according to Dolittle’s instructions, and then downloaded it. Because a side effect of the computer virus was that it had split up the company’s computer network, to get the complete information, they would have to download it from several places. Their workload was rather heavy.
Sheyan brutally rammed his shoulder into the wall next to him. A human-sized hole instantly appeared on the partition board making up the wall. The reason the wall was so fragile was not because there was a problem with the quality of the construction materials, but because the materials were chosen more for their beauty than for their sturdiness.
Passing through the hole, Sheyan walked into a large hall.
In front of Sheyan was a circular spiral-shaped machine which was highlighted with a faint red glow in his vision. This means that it was not something on Dolittle’s list, but it may be something useful. Sheyan, who hoped to do the best job possible, would naturally not miss it.
But when Sheyan went to pick this machine up, he found to his surprise that it was unbelievably heavy. He tried once again to lift it with more strength. The moment the machine was lifted, Sheyan suddenly felt something bounce up below the machine. Then, four secret doors slid open on the walls of the hall. Four expressionless humans rigidly walked out from inside!
No, they were not humans!
Sheyan could tell from a glance that these four were similar to the T-300 Terminators made by Skynet! Skynet’s frantic invasion had no doubt provided more samples for Cyberdyne Systems to research on. Considering that, it was probably not too difficult for them to make a pirated version of their own!
The AI of these four robots were, of course, inferior to the original model created by Skynet, but their power was just as destructive!
Instead of feeling dismayed, Sheyan was actually delighted. The fact that there were Terminators guarding this room must mean that there was something worth guarding here.
The windows around the hall closed automatically. After that, a stinging white smoke was sprayed into the enclosed space. Sheyan also saw a “coffee table” nearby began to slowly rotate, trying to hide itself below the ground. The reason Sheyan paid attention to the “coffee table” was because it was glowing with a really strong red light, indicating that although it was not an item on Dolittle’s list, it was something extremely useful!
Sheyan immediately tore half of his clothes off to cover his mouth and nose with, but that was apparently not enough to stop the pungent gas from penetrating into his nostrils. He couldn’t help coughing loudly from the smoke. The four Terminators also started attacking!
If the one who broke in was an ordinary person, it would be absolutely impossible for them to break through the blockade even if they were a Navy SEAL elite. But for someone like Sheyan, although his HP continued to drop, he could still persist.
He immediately pounced towards the “coffee table” and smashed his knee into it, but unexpectedly, the legs of the table were rigidly fixed to the floor, so his attack was to no avail. Sheyan gritted his teeth as he withstood the bullets. With both hands, he grabbed one of the legs of the table and pulled hard! Over a dozen bolts were flung away as a result.
Amidst the stinging, suffocating smoke, the sight brought Sheyan joy. But the next second, a rifle grenade launched by one of the Terminators hit his back. The explosion instantly sent him flying.
The solid hit caused Sheyan to cough up a large mouthful of blood. After all, he was not made of steel. His back was burnt, and the meat there was probably well cooked too. Sheyan endured the pain and rolled away from most of the bullets that followed, then kicked the “coffee table” with one foot. Brute force from the kick mixed with his rolling momentum sent the table flying. It landed at the hole Sheyan made to come in here.
Sheyan naturally would not stay for a fight in this place filled with poison. He ran with all his strength. Just when he had reached the exit, he suddenly felt a strong threat flying towards him from behind. He did not hesitate to grab the “coffee table” in front of him and swing it back to block what was behind him, only to hear a loud bang immediately afterwards. It did not sound like an explosion, but more like an exploding water bag. Next, he felt a searing pain transmitted over from several spots on his body, including the hand holding onto the “coffee table”.
When Sheyan pulled back the “coffee table” to take a look, he was shocked out of his wits. The table was made of alloy steel, but even so, a foul-smelling white smoke rose from its surface. The thing that shot towards him just now was apparently something like sulphuric acid with terrifying corrosive power! If Sheyan had been hit by it, he would have lost a layer of skin for sure.
However, the corrosiveness of the liquid had also helped Sheyan a great deal. He immediately found that the dark red light had actually penetrated through the cracks made in the corroded “coffee table” from within. Exerting some force with his hands, Sheyan snapped the table in half to reveal the source of the dark red light inside. It was a machine shaped like an alarm clock.
Right after Sheyan had placed the machine into the party storage, the four T-400 Terminators caught up to him with rigid steps. Now that they had gotten close to him, forgoing their advantage in long-range weapons, Sheyan had no reason not to stay and fulfill their wish to die.
As soon as the first Terminator took a mechanical step through the hole, Sheyan grabbed its foot, making it lose its balance and fall to the ground. Before it could get up, Sheyan had already gripped its arm and twisted hard!
The hard alloy steel endoskeleton was not able to withstand Sheyan’s abnormal strength.
A dazzling blue electric spark shot out. Sheyan did not let his guard down because of the initial success. It would not be wise to treat the Terminator the same as humans. He did not hesitate to violently twist the Terminator’s head after that, and then kick it back to the other side through the hole.
Sure enough, as Sheyan suspected, the Terminator detonated the bomb in its body. After a series of muffled explosions, smoke and fire filled the air. The broken parts of the robot flew out, leaving bloodstained cuts on Sheyan’s face.
“These troublesome monsters….” Time was tight, so Sheyan had no intention of staying for the fight. He planned to continue searching for the other items on the list, so he took the opportunity to roll away. The other three Terminators were already on the verge of losing control. The only thing that restrained them, the computer network, was completely paralysed, which was bad news for the employees on this floor. Encountering Sheyan, they would be knocked unconscious at most, and would most likely be ignored, but if they encountered the three Terminators, the only fait awaiting them was being shot to death.
After collecting another mechanical device that had a dark red highlight, Sheyan contacted Zi.
“How’s the situation on your side?”
“I’ve collected all the information they obtained from Dolittle, but Cyberdyne also possess other information of the T-1000’s movements, which they got directly from the government. I think we should make a copy of that too,” answered Zi unhurriedly.
Sheyan carefully considered Zi’s suggestion before he replied, “The higher management have probably been alerted of what happened here. We have five minutes at most. Any later than that and we might face a strong counter-attack from them. Oh, right. Cyberdyne have found a way to manufacture older model Terminators. You better be careful.”
To that, Zi replied blandly, “I’ve already destroyed three.”
“If possible, try to preserve their numbers as best you can. Thanks to the computer virus, the robots will attack anyone indiscriminately. They can effectively help us delay the enemy’s reinforcement,” said Sheyan.
Zi snorted softly and did not say anything in reply. Sheyan understood her personality, so he just smiled and said nothing further. Although they were currently in a fight, but for some reason, there was a hint of romance in the air.
Five minutes passed by in the blink of an eye. The two quickly reunited. Behind them, gunfires rained down like a shower. They were all caused by the out-of-control Terminators. Sheyan could basically confirm that Cyberdyne’s counterattack was not a threat to them for the time being.
Instead, the most worrying thing was the possibility that the streets outside the building may be completely blocked with a horde of taser guns waiting for them, but considering that the streets outside were some of the busiest streets in Los Angeles, as well as the usual response speed of the government, such possibility was almost negligible.
But for some reason, Sheyan had an ominous premonition, which only got stronger while they prepared for their departure. It was for this reason that he asked Zi to stay a bit of a distance away from him as a precaution. They kept about seven or eight meters between them, pretending not to be acquainted with each other, so that they would not be wiped out in one attack while still being close enough to support each other at the first sign of danger.
“Why do I feel this way?” Sheyan frowned as mingled among the crowd running down the stairs of the fire escape. He still could not find any reason for the danger he sensed.
Just as they were passing the 8th floor, a seductively dressed woman suddenly stepped out and smiled at Zi. The seemingly plain pendant on her neck covered the surroundings in a black glow in an instant! But Zi’s reaction was fast too. Sheyan had warned her beforehand, so she was alert. At the same time that she was attacked with the ‘Group Fear’ spell, she pushed her palm out towards Corina!
‘Force Collision – Wall’!
The huge transparent wall issued a thunderous roar as it travelled through the air and hit Corina hard. She immediately saw stars and felt a sweetness in her throat, then coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her nose was numb at first before the pain transmitted over to her brain. For the next three days, Corina would have nightmares of crashing into a wall!
But Zi did not escape unscathed either. An terrible fear gripped her mind and she was instantly paralysed. She felt as if she was assaulted by a Nightmare.
Next, a dull, expressionless man stepped out and shot a taser gun at Zi.
The bullet carrying a blue electrical current accelerated towards her, but at this moment, a lightning-quick figure jumped out and valiantly shielded Zi with his broad back!
It was Sheyan!
The bullet of the taser gun pierced into Sheyan’s dorsal muscles, and the terrifying electric shock was triggered the next instant!
A blinding electric explosion blasted Sheyan’s back!
The attack did not stop at the burst. The current scattered into tens of blue snakes in the ground to electrocute every person in the radius of dozens of meters around Sheyan. If Sheyan hadn’t pushed Zi away in time, she would have taken the damage too.
At this time, Hill, with his graceful Waltz steps, entered the stage. He gracefully extended his slender pianist fingers towards the paralysed and electrocuted Sheyan as he usually did. The ordinary people who were touched by his fingers before had dried up and cracked like stone statues. What would happen when the fingers touched Sheyan?
Sheyan could clearly feel a great threat coming from behind him, but he was in a paralysed state at the moment, so he could not escape!
Hill’s cold fingers brushed against Sheyan’s back!
Not that Hill didn’t want to attack Zi first, but Zi had been pushed more than five meters away by Sheyan. If he stubbornly pursued Zi, he would probably suffer a strong counterattack from her. Hill was a very cautious person, so he chose to remove this underling of hers first. He would feel more secure going at her 2-on-1 afterwards.
Sheyan’s back and the clothes on it instantly turned numb. He could feel the part touched by the fingers going dry like it was coated in a layer of cement. What’s more, a series of notifications sounded in Sheyan’s ears.
[ You have been attacked with the ‘Touch of Medusa’! You will undergo a petrifaction check! Your Physique stat passed the check! You will only suffer some shallow petrifaction. ]
[ You have been attacked with the ‘Touch of Medusa’! You will undergo a petrifaction check! Your Physique stat passed the check! You will only suffer some shallow petrifaction. ]
[ You have been attacked with the ‘Touch of Medusa’! You will undergo a petrifaction check! Your Physique stat passed the check! You will only suffer some shallow petrifaction. ]
[ ….. ]
Although Sheyan was only petrified on the surface, it was enough to cause him a great amount of trouble. The surface of his skin turned into something like concrete. The slightest bit of movement would send his skin cracking and crashing down; it was really painful! The blood and raw flesh all over his body made him look like a fish that had been stripped of its scales. If shallow petrification was this bad, he was really worried about the consequences of deep petrification.
Sheyan was convinced that once a more severe petrification was successfully triggered, he would turn into a fragile stone statue that could be insta-killed. The probability of this happening should not be that high, but he must take caution against it!
At the same time, Corina, who was sent flying earlier with blood flowing out of her mouth, suddenly screamed. Purplish-black light balls appeared on her head, and their numbers increased rapidly from one to two to three to four! Faces distorted by fear could be seen on the surface of every light balls. All the faces were elongated and looked as if they were screaming in agony!
Corina pointed and five light balls were aimed in the direction of Sheyan. If Sheyan avoided them, they would hit Zi who was behind him!
Hill retreated amidst the swaying of his tuxedo and fell back quietly. His eyes sunk deep into their sockets, looking especially gloomy and mysterious. He exuded a strong sense of death.
At this time, clear white marks started appearing on the spot on Sheyan’s back that was brushed by Hill’s fingers to form a mysterious symbol. Sheyan’s blood flowed inside the ditch which formed the symbol but it did not drip down, as if the symbol was an independent life which had hatched and latched on to his body like a parasite!
Hill waved his hands and two black talismans appeared in his palms. The talismans then flew straight towards the huge symbol on Sheyan’s back. Their speed appeared slow, but were actually fast. They started burning when they got close to Sheyan. The red glow of the flame was like the eyes of a vicious beast, full of madness.
The purplish-black light balls hit Sheyan first. When they did, sounds of crying and wailing could be heard in the air. The elongated face of a vengeful spirit floated out from each light ball to gnaw fiercely on Sheyan’s flesh and burrow into his body!
Right after that, the black talismans attached themselves to Sheyan’s back. When they did, the air was filled with a sound that was like glasses cracking! The area 30 meters around Sheyan suddenly turned pitch black! Out of the air emerged a terrifying giant mouth which was stretched open to the limit, the two burning talismans forming its eyes. The mouth proceeded to swallow Sheyan whole!
Just like that, Sheyan mysterious vanished into thin air!
Was he insta-killed???
Hill and Corina were apparently very confident in their attack. They seemed sure that Sheyan would die from that. They split up and approached Zi from the left and right.
Zi finally recovered from the state of fear. A light blue magic barrier appeared all around her body. The inside of the magic barrier had a layer of mesh supporting it, which gave the barrier a very sturdy feel.
Her silver dagger cut vertically from top to bottom. However, she did not look like she was cutting through air. Instead, it looked like there were some resistance to her cutting motion, as if she was cutting through numerous sticky silk threads in the air!
With a flick of his wrist, Hill flung another talisman which appeared in front of Zi near instantaneously as if it teleported there. It immediately blew up. Hill was trying to interrupt Zi’s next spell with the talisman, but Zi completely ignored it. The explosion only managed to create some ripples on the ‘Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier’!
Hill’s expression darkened. He had a strong ominous feeling.
The spell he had just casted may have seemed ordinary, but it was in fact a rather powerful interrupting talisman. Its damage was not that high; rather, its value lay in its ability to teleport to a spellcasting opponent in an instant. This talisman had never failed him before. Even if the opponent’s spell was not completely interrupted, it would inevitably be delayed! Cases where the opponent could withstand the talisman without any effect like Zi did was virtually unprecedented!
Zi’s long hair blew madly in the wind.
As the tip of her silver dagger slowly slid down, more than ten rays of arcing light emerged from where it cut through!
These radiant arcs were like extensions from the void. When they broke through the cut in space, a strong tremor could be felt around the area, as if the space itself was wounded!
The power of Skywalker: The ‘Thread of Time’!
This skill of Zi’s actually did not contain much destructive power, but it could instantaneously sever the contact between the surroundings and outer dimensions, causing a violent tremor.
Corina and Hill were each borrowing the power of death and the power of curses from other dimensions to attack the enemies. It was impossible for this skill of Zi’s to completely cut off the source of their powers, but it would definitely weaken them significantly. Zi wanted to pull the rug out from under them!
Corina and Hill simultaneously felt the steady decline in their power. Hill immediately threw out a black talisman, then bowed down to worship with great respect. A large amount of black miasma emanated from his body. The miasma coalesced and condensed into a web of veins that attached itself to the black talisman.
Next, the talisman bared its teeth and exposed its claws in the air, turning into a giant wolf with needle-like fur all over its body. It pounced fiercely at Zi. Although it was blocked by Zi’s ‘Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier’, it kept attacking with its fangs and claws in a frenzy. A green flame lit up in its eyes.
Corina was more significantly weakened after being hit by the ‘Thread of Time’, so her retaliation was especially strong. She gritted her teeth and stubbornly shielded the few threads of light left, trying her hardest to prevent Zi from completely cutting off her contact with the realm of death.
Corina’s power was obviously inferior to Zi’s. In no time at all, sweat had trickled down her face and soaked all her makeup. The biggest motivation to keep enduring lay in the fact that she was not fighting alone – Hill was attacking Zi from the other side at the same time. Corina refused to believe that a mage-type contestant like Zi could hold out for much longer under Hill’s violent onslaught. There’s no way she’s that formidable.
The two sides fell into a stalemate, but after merely three seconds, a painful and prolonged groan resounded in the air. The sound was heavy, as if it echoed off all sides. Then, a huge phantom in the shape of a gigantic human ten meters tall emerged out of thin air. It was as thin as a stick, as if its bones were merely covered by a layer of heavily-wrinkled skin, but its belly, the surface of which was full of blood vessels, protruded like a pregnant woman, looking as if it would burst open at any moment.
This was the hungry ghost summoned by Hill. It was a weird creature that would constantly be tormented by an insatiable hunger, but could only consume soil. Legend had it that its stomach was as vast as the sea.
Right now, the face of the hungry ghost was distorted in panic and pain. The next instant, it opened its terrifying mouth and started vomiting! A horrible stink that could knock one unconscious instantly permeated through the air. It vomited a brown muddy substance which formed a small hill on the ground.
The sight shocked Hill out of his wits. He screamed in horror.
“That’s….that’s IMPOSSIBLE!”
Before Hill’s voice had faded away, a mass which looked like a meat bag slipped out of the hungry ghost’s mouth. After puking this thing out, the hungry ghost’s painful wailing finally subsided. The phantom gradually disappeared into thin air.
At that moment, a small team of security guards had rushed over after they sensed the disturbance here. They just happened to be sprayed by the vomit of the hungry ghost. The respiratory system of each guard was destroyed in an instant by the foul smell. They were completely decimated!
Every Cyberdyne employee who happened to be downwind from this location or within a hundred meters without a gas mask on, puked their guts out.
The meat bag that the hungry ghost had vomited out was actually its stomach. It started to wriggle violently. A shiny metal palm proceeded to tear through the stomach and reach outside!
Hill had a bad premonition as soon as the hand appeared.
For Sheyan, whose cleverness and cunning were far beyond Hill, to take such an action at this time, he had no doubt already taken into account the first reaction of everyone on the battlefield.
He ripped open the stomach of the hungry ghost, leaped up vigorously, and activated the ‘Hornrage’ ability on his ‘Barbaric-Demon Pupil’!
An illusion of a huge beast emerged from behind him and charged forward. Sheyan’s target was Corina in the distance! By this time, their battlefield had spread to the entire floor. Sheyan covered the distance of 20 meters in the blink of an eye and slammed into the head of the helpless Corina!
Only now did everyone there notice that Sheyan’s previous injuries had all miraculously healed. A layer of strange, sticky glow rippled above the surface of his body.
Seeing this, Hill could not help shouting.
“IMPOSSIBLE!!!”
The hungry ghost that Hill had summoned was actually his ultimate skill. It was very aggressive and was one of the rare abilities that could instantly kill an enemy.
After the summoned hungry ghost had devoured the enemy, three things could happen.
(1) If the enemy’s HP value was fairly low, they would be digested and killed by the hungry ghost, which could circumvent most life-saving party skills. That was also the craziest thing with the hungry ghost. To get the drop afterwards, Hill would have to brave the stench of dung and the danger of being swallowed by the ghost to find the dropped key in the excrement of the hungry ghost .
(2) If the enemy’s HP value was adequate, the hungry ghost will absorb a certain percentage of the enemy’s HP before throwing them back out. It goes without saying that the enemy in question would have been thoroughly corroded by gastric acid and would be in a rather pathetic state. More importantly, the enemy would be trapped in the ghost’s belly for a period of time, during which they would be completely isolated from their teammates. The hungry ghost thus became a powerful crowd control ability in addition to its offensive capability.
(3) The 3rd case was not beneficial to the summoner of the hungry ghost. Remember that the ghost would absorb the enemy’s HP by percentage. If the amount of HP absorbed was over a certain limit, the ghost would become too full. In such cases, not only would it completely return the absorbed HP to the enemy, it’s own HP would leak to the enemy too, thus healing the enemy.
That wasn’t all. If the hungry ghost gave back its own HP to the enemy, the enemy’s maximum HP would permanently increased by 10%, while its summoner, Hill, would have his HP permanently decreased by 5%!
The only reason Hill dared to unleash the hungry ghost on Sheyan was because he did not see Sheyan holding a shield. Otherwise, he would have definitely used this ability on Zi instead. How would he know that Sheyan was a bizarre MT who had no shield?!?
Corina could no longer restrain Zi after she was hit by Sheyan. Zi instantly took the opportunity to cut off most of her contact with the realm of death. After that, the edge of Zi’s silver curved dagger shined with a dazzling light, and the threads of time converged.
Corina instantly knew something terrible was going to happen. She screamed and, braving the risk of the spell rebounding back on her, forcefully casted another ‘Fear’ spell on Sheyan using her pendant. Unfortunately for her, resistance towards fear-type spells was closely related to the Physique stat. Sheyan did not fall for the ‘Group Fear’ spell the first time, and naturally did not succumb this time either.
He aimed a heavy punch towards Corina.
‘Strength of the Sky’, activate!
A cocoon-like shield appeared on Corina’s body, seemingly trying to block Sheyan’s punch, but under the effect of the ‘Strength of the Sky’, the punch simply shattered the cocoon shield and gave her no chance at all. He grabbed her arm, the metallic parts on his gloves spinning at high speed, then executed a shoulder throw using the ability ‘Tactical Throw’ to hurl Corina into the air!
By now, the wolf had bitten away most of the ‘Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier’, and its sharp black claws had scratched through the skin of Zi’s upper arm. The crimson blood that flowed down stood out in stark contrast to her snow-white skin; the sight was cruel but beautiful. Despite the dangerous situation, Zi remained as calm as ever, as if the injury was not inflicted on her at all.
A green light flashed continuously on her mask and gloves. The next second, a huge, weird-looking and mysterious phantom of a savage mask materialized before her. The special effect on the ‘Massive Ndipaya Augustmask’ had made an appearance!
(TL: Refer to chapter 629 for details on the Massive Ndipaya Augustmask.)
At this time Corina had just landed ten meters in front of Zi. She screamed in terror and her body started to vaporise – it seemed that she was ready to escape. But just then, Zi’s chanting was completed. She opened her eyes, and the national emblem of the Sith Empire from Star Wars floated in front of her. It then turned into a giant claw of a Sithspawn and ferociously grabbed Corina’s throat!
This was the ability derived from Zi’s Force: ‘Force Suffocation’!
Corina let out a scream. Half of her body had already turned into black smoke, but under the grip of the giant claw of the Sithspawn, she was still greatly damaged. She was already heavily injured after taking Zi’s ‘Force Collision – Wall’ previously, and now that she was assaulted again, she immediately felt a strong sense of crisis.
Sheyan took a deep breath. Behind him, the phantom image of the ‘Stairway of the Sun’ was wildly whipping and waving about. The bulging blood vessels on his right fist looked like the roots of a plant. He launched his right fist with full force, and a horrible black gas gushed forth from it. The gas took the form of a black cross and branded itself on Corina’s body.
‘Beast of Corrosion’!
No one could take this terrifying ability lightly!
When Hill witnessed Corina taking these attacks, he immediately closed his eyes and threw out six talismans with no regard for the cost. He then turned around and ran away. He had realised by now that they had bitten off more than they could chew. The loss this time was already great enough; if he stay here any longer, he might not be able to leave this place alive.
As for Corina….this was no time to be emotional. Hill was sure that even if he tried to save her, the chance of success was less than 1%. On the other hand, if he decisively ran away right now, he had 50% chance of escaping successfully.
Corina, whose body had half turned into black smoke, howled in hysteria. Light continuously flashed on what remained of her body, indicating the use of various items and medicines. Sheyan frowned seeing that. He took a step forward to finish her off, but Zi was faster than him. She sent another ‘Force Collision – Wall’ towards Corina. At the same time, the curved silver dagger had disappeared from her other hand, to be replaced by a glistening dark gold….camera!
While Corina was plastered to the wall by the Force, Zi calmly pressed the shutter of the camera!
Amidst a rich dark golden glow, the ‘Puppet of Photography’ displayed its power!
(TL: Refer to Chapter 971 for the Puppet of Photography)
A photograph slipped down from the sky. Seems like the photography was successful. It was, after all, the most common case out of the 3 possibilities.
Zi caught the photo, and immediately tore it up. Meanwhile, the Sithspawn claw on Corina’s neck also tightened. Corina once again screeched in pain. Her body had almost fully turned into black smoke by now. She suddenly inflated like a balloon, then exploded with a loud bang. A black ray of light shot away from where she was towards the distance. A red cloak which glowed with a silver light slowly floated to the ground.
Sheyan was not unfamiliar with this situation. Corina had obviously used a substitute item which could help its owner evade death once. However, the owner could not escape from the punishment for death. Not only would all their attributes decrease, they would also drop a piece of equipment they were wearing as the price! Because this was an ability contained in an item and had nothing to do with the power from the realm of death, Zi could not prevent it even if she had previously cut off Corina’s connection to other dimensions.
Strictly speaking, the only thing that could counteract against these live-saving items and abilities were the weapons dedicated to the slaughtering between contestants!
The weapons that were known as the Blood Weapons!
Zi coldly snorted.
“They got off easy.”
As she said that, she displayed the property of the red cloak. It turned out to be an equipment that had the rare ability to increase casting speed. To Sheyan, whose skills were almost all instantaneous, it was pretty useless, but to mage-type contestants who needed time to cast spells, any equipment which could increase casting speed were godly items.
Apart from the cloak, Sheyan also found that his maximum HP had increased considerably. Such extra reward was always a welcome surprise.
Sheyan stared forlornly at the direction where Hill had escaped and said to Zi, “If you had attacked the guy just now, he wouldn’t have escaped.”
Zi rolled her eyes.
“Of course I would’ve attacked him if I could. But I couldn’t! Yes, the ‘Titanium Mesh Magic Barrier’ has high defence, but it also has a fatal weakness, and that’s its shocking MP consumption while it was in use. Don’t forget that I’d been attacked by Hill’s demonic wolf for a full 30 seconds. Stopping the woman took almost all the MP I have left.”
The defensive forces of Cyberdyne Systems had a fairly high efficiency. They had begun to organise themselves and carry out investigations. Although the Terminators released by Sheyan had caused them a lot of trouble, they were only troubles and not exactly a threatening crisis. At best, they could buy some extra time for Sheyan and Zi’s retreat.
Sheyan and Zi hurried to the underground parking lot. Presently, the place had already been blockaded with police tapes. The people who fled the building crowded in the passage. In front of them stood about seven or eight security guards who stopped them from leaving. Some of the crowd were puzzled and questioned the guards loudly, and some were negotiating with the guards. The situation was noisy and chaotic.
Sheyan could not afford to waste time here. He identified the place where the quarrel with the guards was the most fierce, then went over to add fuel to the fire, and thus smoothly triggered a conflict.
The security guards must not be very popular among the employees of Cyberdyne Systems. As the conflict spread, those 8 guards or so found the situation completely slipping out of their control, yet they dared not stop the crowd with violence. Therefore, Sheyan and Zi effortlessly found a car and drove away in no time at all.
Sheyan heaved a sigh of relief when their car finally pull out of the Cyberdyne Systems headquarters. Then, he suddenly issued a groan. He let Zi take over the driving and pulled up his sleeve. A strange swelling could be seen on his right arm, almost making the sleeve burst. Above the biceps, the veins bulged like snakes, and a large mass of black and blue was rapidly spreading beneath the skin. The skin had thus become grotesquely bumpy.
“What’s going on?” Zi could not help but exclaim in worry.
Sheyan smiled while he took out a scalpel and answered, “The woman called Corina was pretty troublesome. Remember that skill where she used a few purplish-black floating light balls to bomb me? They were all filled with resentment and fear. I took all of them head on. What you’re seeing now is the residual effect from that skill.”
While he said that, Sheyan began to tie his arm tightly with his belt. The blood vessels on the arm became visibly swollen. Sheyan cut down on one with the scalpel in his hand.
A large amount of blood immediately oozed out from the wound. The bizarre thing was, the blood was in a gelatinous state. It completely melted while it was still in the air, and after landing on the ground, it formed small lumps as if it was mercury. The lumps were a mixture of red and black in colour and would move by themselves to merge into one.
It was not until Sheyan had squeezed out more than three liters of blood that all the contaminated blood was fully discarded from his body. The contaminated blood converged together into a large slime-like pile. A deformed face would float through the surface of the “slime” from time to time. Each time, the face would belong to a different person. It felt as if the pile of blood contained the resentment and agony of millions of people.
The contaminated blood rolled around on the ground for a long while before it evaporated. Countless ghosts floated up from the blood and flew around Sheyan for a while before they rose into the sky and disappeared from view. Only after that did Sheyan wiped the cold sweat on his forehead and relaxed.
He could not help laughing as he said, “Those two were actually pretty strong. Too bad… ….they met us.”
When Sheyan turned around and looked back towards the sunset, he was surprised to find smoke billowing out from several floors on the Cyberdyne Systems building. Who knew what could have caused them. Maybe there was a mistake in operation, maybe the Terminators were too difficult to handle, maybe there were people who took advantage of the chaos to plunder, maybe some other contestants had sneaked inside…. In any case, it was a clear sign that a disaster had befallen the LA city landmark building.
But by now, the Los Angeles citizens had already grown accustomed to Terminator invasions, so the incident did not cause widespread panic. Some people who were fed up with the top 1% in society were even secretly applauding in their hearts.
In contrast, the Los Angeles government responded like hornets that had their nest poked. A large number of helicopters rumbled over to the site, and the army was also dispatched. In some places, the roads were blocked for inspection. If all these had been planned beforehand, they may cause some troubles for Sheyan and Zi, but now, they were way too late.
After a while, Sheyan saw Mogensha beckoning towards him and Zi at the crossroads ahead in a black leather jacket and skeletal ornaments. They abandoned their car and followed Mogensha into a supermarket. After passing through the supermarket, they had successfully escaped the police blockade.
Two motorcycles were waiting for them at the other side of the supermarket. Sheyan’s arm was injured, so of course he could not drive a motorcycle and had to be a passenger instead. He climbed up the back seat of Zi’s motorcycle without any shame. Zi displayed no reaction to his action, so Sheyan simply wrapped his good arm around her waist and embraced her tightly. Her body felt tender and soft. While the motorcycles were moving, the bumpiness of the ride meant Sheyan could occasionally feel the elastic fullness above his hand.
This kind of behaviour was neither gentlemanly nor polite, but Zi remained as cold and as calm as usual. Emboldened by that, Sheyan’s hand kept getting naughtier until it was eventually pinched hard by Zi a few times. He finally behaved himself after that.
***
When they returned to their temporary base, Sheyan fished out the things he obtained one by one in front of the expectant Dolittle. Dolittle was initially quite calm, but after a while, he started to be surprised. In the end, his jaw had dropped to the floor.
“Oh, God. Is this a track tungsten steel accelerometer? Is that a radioactive particle target? And this! Is this a concentrated osteopeptide cavity compressor? I can hardly believe my eyes, my friend. Did you rob a top secret vault in Cyberdyne Systems?”
Sheyan looked at Dolittle’s reaction with satisfaction. He smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re satisfied. Apart from all these, there’s also a box I’d like to show you. I deliberately baited a Terminator that had lost control into a lab to wreck havoc. Not long after that, an old man rushed out holding the box. I guessed the box must contain something very important, so….”
Dolittle pried opened the box with trembling hands. When he saw the content, he screamed in excitement like a teenage boy who had just seen Kate Upton in bikini.
“This is clearly the acronym of old Hava! You’ve plundered all his research in one go! That’s brilliant! A problem that has been bugging me for three years will be solved with these! If you can get me some liquid alloy, I can instantly evolve it into the new type of alloy that has the ability to devour!”
After that, Sheyan and his party let Mr. Dolittle indulge himself in his ecstasy. He would probably need some time to recover from this semi-hysterical state. The party gathered in another room to read the information about the T-1000 on a computer.
The official information kept by Cyberdyne was indeed much more comprehensive.
According to the data obtained from their investigation, the T-1000 had made six possible appearances in recent years, but only two of those could be confirmed. Four videos had been recorded from those two incidents. Of those, the most memorable incident was when the T-1000 raided the Ritzway thermal power station. The T-1000 was surrounded by an army of over 300 soldiers which possessed 17 taser guns, but they ended up completely wiped out. The T-1000 had truly displayed its terrifying offensive power in this fight. A video was recorded of this battle.
Although the video material was quite fuzzy, it was enough to show how formidable the ruthless killing machine was. In front of the T-1000, the well-trained fighters armed to the teeth were just sheeps waiting for slaughter!
While Sheyan was watching the video of this fight, he suddenly pressed the pause button, then pulled out another video. After watching that video for a while, he frowned and asked, “Did you guys notice anything suspicious?”
No one spoke. Zi stirred her coffee a few times before she said, “We can now basically confirm that the extraction and synthesizing of the T-1000 liquid alloy is difficult even for Skynet, and the raw materials are quite scarce too. That’s why it’s impossible for this Terminator model to be mass produced. We can thus infer that the T-1000 will only be mobilised to play a key role in extremely important military operations, the kind that may even affect the survival of Skynet. But for some reason, the locations that the T-1000 has assaulted so far don’t seem to be very important.”
Sanzi suddenly said, “Maybe we can consider the problem from another angle. The time displacement sphere is a one-way portal. Since we can confirm that the T-1000 has invaded this era before, where did it go after it completed its mission?”
Sanzi’s train of thought made their eyes light up, but Zi immediately raised her doubt.
“Skynet likely gave it a self-destruct order. It’s true that one of the reasons Skynet sent Terminators to invade this world was that it hoped the humans in this era can grasp some basic theory from studying the Terminators in order to hasten the creation of the technologies which formed the foundation of Skynet, thus accelerating its growth in this world. However, the T-1000 was quite an advanced technology even for Skynet. There’s no way Skynet would want humans to possess that kind of technology. If the humans become too strong, it’s definitely not a good thing for Skynet.”
Sheyan narrowed his eyes in deep thought.
After a moment, he said, “Zi is right. In this era, Skynet is still a fetus that’s just starting to take shape. It’s absolutely not a good thing for it if the humans acquire technologies that are far too advanced. Skynet should be equally afraid of being eliminated before it has the chance to be born. Besides, even if a T-1000 was not destroyed after its mission, it can take the form of any human it touches, so it can safely hide among the humans. Searching for it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Mogensha frowned, “Then we can only be sure that a T-1000 will appear if we follow the plot of Terminator 2. But Sarah Connor’s dead now. John Connor survived, but he’s still a developing embryo right now. In such vastly different scenario, will Terminator 2’s plot still happen? Even if it does happen, it’ll be 12 years later….It’s not like we can wait for 12 years.”
“That’s why we have to figure out why those two locations were so important to Skynet that it would mobilise something as important as the T-1000 to raise the operations’ chances of success!” Sheyan said decisively.
“If we can understand the reasons behind this, we can lure the T-1000 out.”
“Understanding the reason behind the attacks” was easier said than done.
One should know that the top secret information they got must had been thoroughly researched and investigated by the US government. Hundreds of experts in this field had made a thorough and comprehensive study from every angle. There were no loopholes in the study. And yet, even they could not find the reason.
Sheyan believed that even an idiot could tell the danger posed by this kind of killing machine that could change into any form and possessed an exceptionally smart AI. Surely the US government was willing to pay any price to find out their secret.
To find out the secret that the US government could not uncover with its utmost effort was a hard ask of anyone. The only advantage Sheyan had was that he was very familiar with the history of the Terminator World. He might know some information that the people in this world, in this era, did not. Maybe that would help.
While he contemplated the problem, Sheyan turned on a projector. He carefully marked the places that had suffered T-1000 attacks on the projected map. In the end, not only did he mark the few confirmed places, he also marked the places that were only suspected of being attacked by T-1000.
Sheyan used threads to connect the various marked spots, trying to find a pattern, but unfortunately, he found nothing.
The only areas attacked by the T-1000 were industrial areas. The victims killed were of all ages. Sheyan could find no core members of the future Resistance army on the death list.
Sheyan regretfully could not deduce anything from these information. After all, he was only human, not God.
In truth, the T-1000’s purpose was to destroy the heavy industrial bases in these two areas, because the pollution produced there was seriously affecting the growth and spread of an aquatic plant called the Proehl algae in the local waters.
The reason these Proehl algae were important was that they would mutate after the nuclear war and become an essential ingredient in the production of liquid alloy. If those two heavy industrial bases were successfully destroyed, the Proehl algae would not go extinct in these two regions. That would significantly increase the output of liquid alloy in the future and give more opportunities for Skynet to become stronger.
It was no wonder that experts from the entire country could not guess the reason behind the T-1000’s action. Party Ace naturally could not either, unless they could get their hands on the formula of liquid alloy, which was obviously impossible.
So after contemplating for a long time, Sheyan came to the conclusion that this was a dead end.
All of them could not help feeling a little dejected. They went through so much danger to retrieve all these information from the enemy base, only to find that it was useless. Anyone would be frustrated.
However, Sheyan quickly realised that the operation this time was definitely not without gains. As far as the mission itself was concerned, they managed to bring back various kinds of lab instruments for Dolittle, thus further strengthening their friendship, which would lead to better rewards after the completion of the mission. Apart from that, they were able to profit off the fight with the contestants. The operation was by no means a waste of time.
“Well then, we can only carry out the more dangerous and more difficult Plan B,” Sheyan sighed.
Before the others could ask “what do you mean by more dangerous and more difficult?”, Sheyan asked them instead, “In the plot of Terminator II, why did Skynet choose to send a T-1000 here for the assassination mission? Also, why was the assassination target just John Connor and not his mother as well?”
Zi answered after some giving the questions some thoughts, “Because the assassination attempt by a T-800 failed. And John Connor was already twelve at that time, and had shown an amazing hacking talent. Without any privilege in his upbringing, he managed to use a self-made instrument to steal money from an ATM. Not only that, he even managed to crack the security code in Cyberdyne Systems’ computer network!”
“The level of threat he posed to Skynet when he was a kid may be even higher than the threat he posed as an adult in the future!”
Sheyan raised a finger and said earnestly, “Exactly, it’s because of his threat! Why did Skynet not assassinate John Connor while he was still an embryo? Because he wasn’t threatening enough!”
(TL: Flawless logic.)
Sheyan looked into everyone’s eyes in turn, and said solemnly, “So, what we have to do is to increase the threat level of the embryo that is Mr. John Connor, to the point where he will make Skynet shudder. I’m not kidding. This should be the only way we can lure a T-1000 out right now. I know it sounds far-fetched and virtually impossible to achieve – that’s why I only made it our backup plan – but it’s the only way now.”
Zi let our a wry smile as she said, “But how can we increase the threat of John Connor the embryo?”
Sheyan thought about it for a moment, and answered, “John Connor is no doubt a very talented person, whose talent should lean more towards the leadership and eloquence aspects. We can let Skynet discover that the moment John Connor is born, he will receive professional lessons in these fields from a team of dedicated experts specially-prepared for him. These professionals will even teach him knowledge that will endanger Skynet’s existence! I believe Skynet won’t stay quiet then.”
Upon hearing that, Sanzi voiced his doubt, “But human technology now is lagging far behind Skynet.”
Sheyan smiled in response and said, “That should’ve been the case, but….there are always unpredictable factors, such as the existence of contestants. Didn’t Gore teach a lot of advanced knowledge to Dolittle? Moreover, I believe everything Mr. Dolittle is researching is a huge threat to Skynet.”
The idea put forth by Sheyan was radical indeed. All the others fell into a moment of silence after they heard him out. To be honest, the idea was feasible. There was one tiny problem though — how would they let the future Skynet know about this?
Dolittle solved this problem for them. He informed them that the Skynet in the future actually had a way to collect information about the current world. Every time a time displacement sphere opened, there would be a window of about three to five seconds when the previous Terminators could send feedback to the future Skynet.
Based on the assumption that Skynet technology was 30 years more advanced than the current world, Dolittle deduced that the total amount of data that could be sent through a WiFi connection in three to five seconds exceeded 100 MB. The information contained in such amount of data was approximately equal to the content of more than ten webnovels of ten million words each. Which was to say, as long as Party Ace dared to make the bold plan a reality, passing it to Skynet’s “ears” would not be too difficult.
After some discussions, many of the difficulties Sheyan had anticipated beforehand easily solved themselves, especially with Dolittle providing full cooperation. The implementation of the backup plan was not that difficult after all.
However, no one could guarantee that Skynet would act like they expected it too. That was also one of the main reasons Sheyan merely had this plan as the backup. He was not 100% confident it would work.
But as far as the plot of Terminator 1 was concerned, one could see that Skynet’s logic process was capable of making pre-judgment. Sarah Connor was still a single woman in this era, and there was no John Connor yet, which means that John Connor’s threat value was 0. Sarah Connor did not live past Judgement Day, so her threat value was also 0. And yet, Skynet was able to make the decision to eliminate the current her.
Three hours later, at Sheyan’s behest, Dolittle paid a fee to publish a professional paper titled the “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” on a portal site. The word “Design” in the title of this thesis was quite confusing.
The paper indeed provided some codes that were related to Computer-Aided Design, and one could immediately tell that the codes were indeed written by an expert and were quite practical. But in the latter part of the codes, Dolittle slipped in a small, suspicious looking subroutine. This subroutine could not be said to be completely useless in Computer-Aided Design, but it was not that useful either. However! If this subroutine was slightly altered, it would become a virus program!
A virus program specifically for Terminators!
The virus program was as destructive to Terminators as SARS was to humans. Right now, there were not that many invading Terminators, so the program would not show its effect yet, but once a large number of Terminators appear, the loss caused by this virus program would be quite alarming, especially if Skynet was caught unprepared!
The “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” spread around the Internet like wildfire in no time at all. Not only were the hired Internet marketers hard at work promoting the program, the program was actually quite useful.
According to Sheyan’s deduction, Skynet should get this “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” in the next intelligence exchange, then feel threatened, and then send a Terminator to kill the author.
They could use that opportunity to leak the information that they wanted Skynet to know. Whether Skynet would take the bait could only be left to fate. Sheyan estimated that the chances of success were 50-50.
(TL’s note: The author has written a post titled “Background”, which explains the whole history behind the nightmare realm. I’ve translated the post and that shall be bonus chapter #6 for December. It’s available for free on my Patreon. Here’s the link: patreon.com/posts/background-23492368
Also, if you enjoyed The Ultimate Evolution, please consider showing your support on patreon.com/Sean88888 . You can get early access to advanced chapters!)
Zi was grinding some coffee beans at the moment.
Her hair fell down at the side to cover half her face. The dark colour of her hair stood out on her pale white skin, and coupled with her serious, concentrated look, she exuded a heart-stirring charm.
Sheyan held his chin in his hand as he stared at Zi. The sight of her was such a pleasure to the eyes. At that moment, he felt that coffee-grinding was just as elegant as a tea-brewing ceremony – probably because his attention was not on the coffee-grinding act but on the person grinding the coffee instead. He suddenly had the impulse to hear Zi’s voice, so he blurted out, “Is it strictly necessary to grind the beans for so long?”
Zi turned her head and spoke patiently like she was educating an ignorant child. “The grinding of the beans is the crucial step that determines whether a cup of coffee will taste good. Coffee beans are made up of fine fibroblasts; during the grinding process, the fibroblasts will be crushed and the coffee oil and the coffee’s aroma will be released. Therefore, in order to brew a cup of delicious coffee, the grinding process is very important. The grinding time will differ according to the type of coffee beans and the quality of the coffee machine. I’m far from done!”
Sheyan: （─o─ |||）
Zi stared at him one more time and said, “You know that faint sour taste left in your mouth after you finish a cup of coffee? Once instant coffee powder has come into contact with the air for too long, it’ll produce a sour taste due to oxidation. If you leave a cup of coffee in the air for too long before you drink it, it’ll also produce a sour taste. That’s why freshly ground coffee tastes best, and you should drink it right after it’s brewed. Only then will it leave a fragrant aftertaste in your mouth. You have to be patient to drink the best coffee.”
Sheyan had no authority in this field so he could only nod earnestly.
After a series of complicated processes, during which the carefully ground coffee powder was assaulted by high pressure and 90 degrees Celsius steam for 9 times in 20 seconds, Zi finally extracted 30 milliliters of strong coffee with a thick layer of coffee oil on top. After adding some fresh milk to it, the coffee was finally ready for consumption.
Sheyan took a sip. He could indeed feel the silky texture of the coffee spreading through the surface of his tongue. The strong aroma gave him a heartfelt pleasure both physically and mentally.
Zi herself was full of praise for Mr. Dolittle’s almond brownies. She cut them into small pieces and ate them one small piece at a time. She indulged herself in the sweet chocolatey taste that was in perfect harmony with the rich aroma of butter in the brownies. Zi rated them higher than the ones in the exclusive VIP stores in the real world.
While they were indulging themselves in delicious food, an alarm clock went off next to them. The expressions of Zi and Sheyan changed at the same time. They immediately rushed out.
The alarm clock was actually used to send a warning signal. The one who sent the signal was Dolittle!
Honestly, the first thought that came to Sheyan’s mind was that it must be an attack from the contestants who practiced Eastern mystical arts. Only their mysterious skills could launch such a covert attack. They really were hard to get rid of.
But after Sheyan rammed open the door to Dolittle’s room, he found the old man safely sitting on a chair. Seeing that, Sheyan even suspected Dolittle would stammer out an excuse like “I accidentally touched the alarm” in the next instant.
Of course, Dolittle did not. He was not someone who would joke about these things.
“Six of the eight temporary base stations I set up around this area have sent out abnormal signals. The Lurande signal has risen by three milliamperes and the Milligaussian index has risen by 7712%, which are very abnormal,” said Dolittle with a frown.
Seeing Sheyan’s confused face, Dolittle sighed and said, “Well, to put it in simple terms, Skynet has successfully tracked the the information we left on the Internet back to this place. In two minutes at most, three time displacement sphere will be activated around here. Three Terminators will be here to attack me.”
“What!!” the news shocked Sheyan. It had only been a little more than eight hours since Dolittle released the information. Sheyan had previously expected Skynet to only react more than twenty-four hours later. Skynet’s reaction was much faster and crazier than he imagined.
Dolittle remained frowning as he told them, “Such a rapid response speed can only mean one thing – the newly-developed TOK715 class Terminators have been officially put into use. These new models can mingle among human society to collect various kinds of news, so that Skynet can make timely responses against any changes.”
The TOK715 Terminators did not make an appearance in the main movie franchise and had only appeared in “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” spinoff. Their main function was to infiltrate human society, so all of them had the appearances of beautiful men and women in order to help them gain favour with humans easily.
They had living tissue as coverings and even had body odours, so they were hard to tell apart from humans. Their frames consisted of a superalloy mechanical skeleton controlled by a microprocessor, and they possessed a high degree of artificial intelligence. They had stronger learning function compared to other Terminators and detailed programming of social behaviour. Their only weakness was that their fighting ability was not that strong.
Sheyan’s brows furrowed when he heard about the TOK715.
“The Terminators are doing infiltrations now? Future Skynet is interfering so heavily with the progress of this era. Will that lead to the coming of Judgment Day before John Connor matures?”
Dolittle shook his head. “That’s absolutely impossible. With so many Terminators invading, do you think the government are idiots? We can already glean lots of useful information from the data you brought back from Cyberdyne. Future Skynet’s attempt to recreate itself in the current world’s Internet network has already attracted a lot of attention from the government. They’ve even set up a special task force to scan and destroy it.”
“Although Skynet is still assiduously trying to create itself in this era, the government’s interference so far has already shown some significant result. According to my calculations, Skynet’s awakening will be delayed rather than brought forward.”
In truth, future Skynet was also caught in a dilemma.
When human beings are on guard, it was very difficult to accomplish anything by sending low-end Terminators. When the people or things Skynet targeted in this age grew up, they would become major threats to it. On the contrary, if Skynet sent high-end Terminators, although they could kill the targets and eliminate the hidden dangers, they run the risk of being captured or destroyed. In such cases, the technology they contain would enable the humans to get stronger. The humans would then become more effective in clearing the traces of Skynet on the Internet….
Dolittle pressed a few keys on the computer keyboard and three progress bars that were slowly lengthening appeared on the monitor.
Dolittle explained that the three progress bars were showing the completion of the time displacement spheres. Once they reached 100%, the three Terminators would appear and launch a fanatical assault on Dolittle. They would not stop until they were destroyed!
Dolittle started to pack up all kinds of stuff. Sheyan asked in confusion, “What’re you doing?”
Dolittle seemed surprised Sheyan would ask that.
“I’m getting ready to leave, of course! Every one of these devices is invaluable to me; I can’t afford to lose them! Surely you know how destructive the Terminators are! That’s why, I’m leaving this place with my stuff so that they won’t be destroyed in the fight!”
Sheyan smiled in response. “There’s no need for that. Just stay put and continue your experiment. Since future Skynet is opening three time displacement sphere in one go, it shows how much importance future Skynet places on you, but that also means it won’t be sending a T-1000.”
“Of course it won’t. Skynet won’t send a trump card like the T-1000 unless it’s to perform a particularly important tactical mission. The program I wrote was only a one-time virus that can’t evolve into new virus types, so Skynet will only need to slightly tweak the Terminators’ firewall to guard against it. It won’t think that highly of me,” said Dolittle with a shrug of his shoulders.
Sheyan smiled reassuringly. “Since we won’t be facing a T-1000, you have nothing to worry about.”
Dolittle had not witnessed the strength of Party Ace for himself, but he did know that the Cyberdyne headquarters was a heavily guarded place. Since they managed to bring out all kinds of equipments that could be regarded as important national secrets from there by force, their strength was beyond doubt. His hands that were packing things stopped. A fanatical scientist like him would definitely prefer not to waste any time on things not related to his research if he could.
But at this time, Sheyan started to ponder something.
He then said, “Mr. Dolittle, based on previous Terminator entries into this era, the time displacement spheres can only be opened at an approximate area, and not directly at a target’s house like they are now. More importantly, the Terminators who’ve just entered this world won’t have too much information of the target. They usually have to look for photos of the target and other information in order to locate the target accurately!”
Dolittle thought about what Sheyan said in silence, then asked, “What’re you trying to say?”
Sheyan continued, “The way the Terminators located you this time was as precise as a scalpel during a surgery. You mentioned the new Terminator class, the TOK715, before. Could they be involved somehow?”
Dolittle nodded.
“It’s very likely.”
Sheyan mumbled distractedly, “In that case, I predict that a TOK715 will probably make an appearance during the fight later to collect information. If possible, I hope you can try looking for the TOK715.”
Dolittle replied with his brows furrowed, “It’ll be hard, unless the TOK715 maintains data-sharing connections with the Terminators in the fight for a prolonged period of time; but I’ll try my best.”
Sheyan nodded. He then turned to his grown creature (TL: Which was still alive apparently) and passed down an order.
“Stay here and protect Mr. Dolittle.”
The monster quietly blended into the darkness after receiving the order.
Sheyan walked out at that moment because he could already see some long, twisted and violent electrical currents breaking through the sky! The electrical currents jumped around wildly like living snakes, and then intertwined together!
In order to hide themselves from public eyes, the base that Party Ace and Dolittle had chosen was in a relatively desolate industrial area. The industrial area could also provide ample electrical supply for Dolittle’s experiments. Besides the workers on night shifts, there was almost no one in the area at the moment. Otherwise, the appearance of the Terminators would surely cause widespread panic.
“Come on,” Sheyan folded his hands in front of his chest and said in a cynical tone to the slowly forming time displacement sphere, “I’m really looking forward to seeing you guys again.”
According to the plan they came up with, Reef and Sheyan would each take a Terminator on their own. Their task was simple — to stall for time.
Zi, Mogensha and Sanzi would work together to finish the remaining Terminator as fast as they could, then rush over to support the two MTs. Sanzi’s Anaconda had rather decent defence so it should have no problem tanking a Terminator on its own.
The plan means that Sheyan needed to face a Terminator on his own without any support for a certain period of time.
It did not take long for a Terminator to appear from the sphere. It was naked all over and, when it appeared, it was half-squatting on the ground like the famous work of the great artist Auguste Rodin, The Thinker. The Terminator might seem like it was posing for a photograph, but it actually did that to reduce the size of its body as much as possible while it traveled through the space-time wormhole, so as to save on energy consumption.
The Terminator’s face was very ordinary-looking; it’s just that the outline and contour of his face did not look articial at all. Besides having no facial expression whatsoever and the scary red light shining in his electronic eyes which gave of a cruel, merciless and ruthless vibe, it looked no different from an ordinary human being!
Sheyan’s helmet initially came with a probing ability, but because the helmet was acquired at a relatively low level, its probing capability had gradually lost its effectiveness over time. But this time, thanks to Dolittle’s help, Sheyan managed to obtain some information on the Terminator using the probing ability:
[T-910 Terminator (combat type)
Basic Parameters:
Height: 184 cm
Weight: 220 kg
Strength: ???
Agility: 30
Intelligence: ???
Spirit: 0
Charm: 15
Physique: 20
Perceptive Sense: 10
Power Support System: Manganese silicon ion fission battery
Standby Time: 10 years
Base HP: 20,000
Innate Ability: ‘Steel’ — 10% reduction to any type of damage sustained.
*
Weapon parameters:
Weapon 1: Cobalt steel alloy defensive shield, type III.
Weapon 2: 442-RT type magnetic adsorption system.
Weapon 3: Cobalt steel alloy exoskeleton, type III.
Weapon 4: High frequency slicing dagger.
*
Defensive capability (list of installed equipment):
Armour: Ammonia hydroxyl extra-thick living tissue (loaded)
Effect: Absorbs 15% of all damage. Easily destroyed, after which it will need 24 hours to regenerate.
Add-ons:
Simple thermal imager (loaded, comes with night vision)
GPS (loaded, needs adjusting before being ready for use)
Light weapon detection device (loaded, can detect light weapons and firearms within two hundred meters)
Self-maintenance data package (loaded)
Installed combat programs:
Close-Combat Mastery (loaded)
Light Firearm (handgun / submachine gun) Mastery (loaded)
Mechanical Maintenance Technology Mastery (loaded)
Simulated Voice Throat Oscillator (loaded)]
*
It was immediately obvious to Sheyan that this Terminator model was much stronger than its predecessors, as could be seen from its built-in offensive and defensive weapons.
After the Terminator stepped out of the time displacement sphere, it just stood there unmoving. The red light in its eyes continuously flashed like a hard drive activity light does when a computer retrieves data. An antenna-like object extended out of its ear hole. The Terminator seemed to be receiving some sort of signal with it.
The Terminator’s action caught Sheyan’s attention, but he decided to stand back and observe first. The T-910 had never appeared before; it should be the most advanced model among the conventional Terminators (all Terminator models requiring liquid alloy technology could not be mass produced, so they were referred to as unconventional Terminators).
The whole process of receiving signal lasted for about five seconds. Then, the Terminator started taking large steps forward, only to find the annoying pest that was Sheyan standing in its way.
The dark surroundings was no obstacle to the T-910. In the Terminator’s bright red vision, a circle similar to an aiming indicator had locked-on to Sheyan, after which a list of numbers popped up. The final result of the investigation was that Sheyan’s threat value was a lowly 5.
For the Terminator, creatures of this threat value belonged to the category of things not worth wasting its energy on. The Terminator may step on him if he happened to be in the way, but it would not go out of its way to deal with him. Normally, only enemies wielding a taser gun would have a threat value of more than 100.
So this T-910 placed Sheyan on the list of “enemies that can be easily killed”. It’s CPU provided two solutions to deal with Sheyan – either to walk past him or to step over his dead body. However, this time, the Terminator was doomed to pay a heavy price for “judging a book by its cover”!
When the T-910 walked past Sheyan, Sheyan grabbed its arm while simultaneously placing a foot forward to pin his left foot to the Terminator’s right. This was actually a fairly simple grappling technique. In a lot of movies, this was how the police would often arrest suspects.
Sheyan immediately pushed the T-910’s mechanical arm back against its joint. Against a normal person, this move would have definitely subdued the enemy, but what Sheyan did not take into account was that the T-910’s joint could actually bend freely forward and backward! The Terminator did not resist Sheyan’s force which pushed its arm backward, and instead borrowed the momentum to land a literal iron fist on Sheyan’s face.
This punch caused Sheyan to see stars. Blood flowed freely out of his nose. Fortunately, he was quick to react. He let himself fall to the ground after the punch and in the process, hooked the Terminator’s ankle with his toes.
It so happened that the robot was trying to follow up with its next attack. It had just lifted its left foot, looking to trample on Sheyan’s head, when its right pivot foot was swept by Sheyan. It lost its balance and fell heavily to the ground.
The Terminator struggled to get up but Sheyan had already grabbed its hair and then smashed its face into the cement stairs next to them.
If any onlookers were watching the fight, they would surely be horrified at the way that the assailant was completely treating the enemy’s head like a walnut that was intended to be cracked open!
According to Dolittle, a Terminator’s head was one of its weaknesses. A violent tremor of the head could cause the microchip inside to shake, thus stunning the Terminator. That’s why Sheyan was so ferocious on the T-910’s head.
The cement staircase was crushed into pieces, revealing the broken red bricks inside, after the Terminator’s head was bashed on it a few times.
A large piece of stainless steel skull, smooth and shiny, showed through the damaged skin on the T-910’s head. The surprising thing was that, on the Terminator’s cranium, there was a piece of transparent plastic the size of a fingernail. Through the plastic, he could clearly see the various interlaced circuits inside its head. He even saw some pink matter which looked suspiciously like the organic tissue of a brain!
“W…What is this?” Sheyan silently exclaimed in shock, “A combination of flesh and machine?”
The temporary pause caused him to lose his hold on the struggling Terminator. All the joints on the steel monster could bend in both directions, giving it extreme flexibility. It kicked Sheyan’s lower abdomen and sent him flying two to three meters high above the ground.
Sheyan groaned in agony. He forced himself to endure the pain as he grabbed a tree branch above him, then somersaulted away from the enemy’s pursuit.
Seeing that it had lost its chance to follow up with another attack, the Terminator did not mindlessly charged in pursuit. Instead, it stood back up and pried open its abdomen. It performed the action with such ease that it looked as natural as an ordinary person opening the door of a cabinet. And yet, in Sheyan’s eyes, it looked almost as if the Terminator was committing seppuku.
When the Terminator retrieved from inside its stomach a rhombus shield and an ordinary-looking dagger, Sheyan instantly knew things were about to get serious.
Although the shield was small, it was tailored to fit snugly on the arm of the T-910, giving off a really sturdy feel. As for the dagger, it constantly emitted a buzzing noise in the Terminator’s hand. Its edges were foggy and blurred. That was the indication that the high-frequency vibration function had been activated!
According to the information Dolittle gave them, so long as the high-frequency slicing weapon was given enough time, there was nothing it could not cut!
The T-910 Terminator took a step forward, raised its arm, and ferociously slashed its dagger across Sheyan’s front!
The high-frequency vibration of the dagger created a buzzing noise which permeated through the air like violent ripples on water, overwhelming anyone who heard it.
The Terminator T-910 may appear mechanical and rigid, but in truth, it was very agile. The dagger flashed past and, before blood could even gush out from the wound it made, it had already returned to the original position.
Faced with such an attack, Sheyan could only take a step back, but he was still a bit too late. A chill immediately crept up from his chest. Through the shattered clothes, he could see a strange cut emerging there. Blood oozed out from it.
The power of the high frequency dagger was truly terrifying! Sheyan could have sworn that he had evaded the dagger with some space to spare, and yet he was still injured. And upon closer inspection, the wound the dagger made was actually a little strange.
Usually, a wound created by a sharp weapon would just result in a parting of the flesh, but the long, narrow wound on Sheyan’s chest looked like there was a strip of flesh torn away there!
That’s because, not only was the high-frequency dagger virtually unstoppable, its blade was also constantly vibrating at a high speed. A slash from this dagger would not just cut through an object like other ordinary daggers; it would damage a small area! Everything in the area of the vibration, be they objects, flesh or steel, would be crushed into powder in an instant!
However, such a high-frequency vibration was also quite destructive to the weapon itself. Dolittle had confirmed that even with the advanced technology possessed by Skynet, the cumulative service life of each high-frequency dagger would not exceed two hours in total. If the dagger was used continuously without breaks in between, it would last for one and a half hours at most. The dagger could be said to be a type of expensive disposable item.
Seeing Sheyan forced back from their first exchange of blows, the Terminator continued to march forward with tyrannical steps. Due to its immense weight, every step it took left a deep footprint in the wet soil. What was even stranger was that it held the high-frequency dagger in a backhand grip and hid it behind its wrist, away from Sheyan’s line of sight. Then, it fiercely charged shoulder-first towards Sheyan!
The T-910’s battle technique caused quite a bit of shock in Sheyan because all the Terminators he met before had employed very simple, direct attack patterns. On the other hand, the T-910’s actions were like those of a well-trained member of the special forces, perhaps even deadlier than that.
It must be known that the move of sinking the shoulder low to ram it into an opponent was a suicidal move in modern warfare, unless it was used in select occasions such as within narrow passages.
A shoulder charge like this in the modern world would only result in being shot head on by a gun. That was why it was a suicidal move. It relied on the attacker taking a bullet with their body, then killing the enemy with the dagger that was hidden behind them once they got close!
But the Terminators did not care about being shot at. Their terrifying survivability meant they could not be easily destroyed on the battlefield. Besides, their mission was to kill! Thusly, this behaviour of exchanging blow for blow, life for life, was perfectly acceptable when they were the ones to do it.
As far as human weapons were concerned, the only thing that could pose a threat to them was the recently-developed taser gun. Since the humans were constantly upgrading their weapons, how could Skynet not make any progress itself? The T-910, being the latest mass-produced terminator model, were equipped with the latest insulated living tissue for their skin. Although taser guns were still a threat to them, the threat was already not as deadly as before.
During the latest round of testings, a T-850 Terminator’s CPU chip would be fried after taking four shots from taser guns, but the current T-910 could withstand more than 20 taser shots!
Sheyan could instantly sense the danger from the T-910’s fierce charging momentum. However, he was in an awkward position. 20 meters behind him was Dolittle’s lab.
Since he had promised Dolittle those valuable lab instruments of his would be perfectly fine during the fight, Sheyan naturally could not let this abominable steel monster in front of him to charge into the lab. His pride simply would not allow it. Besides, those precious instruments were all personally seized by Sheyan from Cyberdyne. If they were damaged, it could very well affect the final evaluation of the mission — all the more reason Sheyan could not allow that to happen!
The only thing Sheyan could do was to keep retreating, but the problem was, the longer the charging distance of the T-910, the greater the force of the resulting collision, and the more difficult it would be for Sheyan to deal with! Think about it. A huge pile of steel 200 kilograms in weight rushing at you with unimaginable speed. Anyone would feel the impulse to dodge to the side.
After retreating for about eight meters, a fierce light entered Sheyan’s eyes. Using the distance he pulled from retreating, he suddenly reversed his direction and accelerated towards the crazy machine that was the T-910!
Both of them rushed at each other with their body lowered. They moved with such force that the surrounding air became turbulent like a raging sea. The intense flow of air even made it hard for Sheyan to breath.
Right when they were about to collide, Sheyan abruptly leaned back and slid forward with his feet in the lead like a baseball player! His feet left two deep ravines on the loose, wet ground.
He was taking a gamble. If the T-910 could jump up in time, Sheyan’s move would completely expose his injured chest to the mercy of the enemy. The reason Sheyan dared to make this gamble was because he could tell that it was almost impossible for a heavy robot like the T-910 to grasp the timing of battle so precisely.
This weakness did not come about from Skynet’s negligence, but due to a fundamental reason — this time period was already the era of firearms, not the era of cold weapons!
For Skynet to develop the T-910’s melee combat skills to such an extent was already a bit of an extreme, even a waste! The hypothetical enemies in Skynet’s research were undoubtedly the humans, and this level of melee fighting skills was more than enough to handle the humans since it would only take the slightest touch from a Terminator to kill one. Moreover, most of the fights with humans should be gun fights.
Therefore, Sheyan managed to make use of this weakness. His feet successfully dug into the T-910’s shin! No matter how strong the Terminator was, it could not stop itself from losing its balance from such an attack. It flew forward and fell to the ground with a thunderous crash!
The T-910 executed a roll and got back up almost instantly. Although it was a robot, there was no clumsiness in its action. Its face was covered with dirt, but the red rays in its eyes still shined with the usual calmness and ruthlessness.
As it stared at Sheyan, the powerful engine inside it began to rev up. Its strong mechanical legs slightly squatted to accumulate energy, and then with a strong step, it launched itself once again towards Sheyan.
Sheyan dodged to the side. When the Terminator went past him, it lashed out with the high-frequency dagger again. This time, Sheyan had learned his lesson. He leaped further backwards to avoid the damage area of the dagger. He then grabbed a cement column beside him and, with a sudden burst of force, snapped off a two-metre-long section of the cement column. He aimed the cement column at the fearsome high-frequency dagger in the T-910’s hand, and swung it hard!
The resulting collision sent smoke and dust flying everywhere. With a frantic slicing sound, a huge chunk of the broken cement column was cut away by the high-frequency dagger! A strong smell of cement permeated through the air.
Right after Sheyan finished his swinging motion, he immediately stabbed the column at the T-910’s chest!
The shield embedded in the T-910’s arm was obviously not just for show. Unfortunately, Skynet never expected the T-910 to engage in close combat with the humans to such an extent, so it did not prepare the T-910 for it. The T-910’s shield could guard against strong acid, firearms, electric shock, and even laser weapons that were yet to be produced in this era, but Skynet did not take the violent impact from a cement column into consideration when it designed the shield!
Of course, a bulletproof shield was certainly not that easy to destroy, but don’t forget that Sheyan had abnormal strength. The T-910 inevitably lost its balance and stumbled backwards after the collision. Sheyan immediately rushed forward to grab the wrist of the T-910’s arm that was holding onto the high-frequency dagger!
The two of them started a contest of strength! The sleeve on Sheyan’s right arm burst and showed the bulging iron-like muscles inside, as well as the popping veins on them. On the other side, the T-910 pumped the power output of the nuclear battery inside it to full capacity, using everything it had to stop Sheyan.
At that moment, the gloves on Sheyan’s hands suddenly glowed with a metallic luster. The mechanical parts on them started spinning at a high speed in different directions. A huge power rushed out from the gloves.
Sheyan used his free hand to seize the T-910’s throat.
“Sorry, Mr. Terminator, if we’re talking technology, my gloves seem to be a lot more advanced than you!”
“‘Tactical Throw’, activate!”
The gigantic body of the T-910 Terminator was lifted off the ground by Sheyan. He then threw the Terminator hard into a nearby pond.
Sheyan had long recognised that utilising the terrain was a very effective way of dealing with Terminators, so the environment Sheyan deliberately created fully emphasized this aspect. In truth, the area they were in was originally a dry highland, but Party Ace had turned the environment around their temporary base muddy and full of holes using two sprinklers and a bulldozer. They had even dug a few ponds, thus completely turning the surrounding area into a marsh.
The T-910 crashed into the pond with a splash. More surprising was the fact that electrical current could be seen flowing through the water. A large amount of smoke rose from the T-910’s body — there seemed to be a severe malfunction of some sort.
Sheyan was also shocked by this. There’s no way Skynet did not make the Terminators waterproof, right? If that was the case, would the Terminators not turn useless when it rained? But after taking a closer look, he finally understood what happened.
In the process of being lifted during ‘Tactical Throw’, the T-910’s strength was suppressed by his gloves, so it was unable to move, but it still instinctively and fiercely struggled to resist the gloves’ strength. As a result, when it was flung away, the force suppressing it disappeared, but the T-910’s counter-force was still there, so when it was falling, it accidentally stabbed itself in the right side of its chest with the high-frequency dagger. After that, the muddy water in the pond rushed into the wound, creating multiple short circuits….
In order to help the T-910 malfunction further, Sheyan plunged it back into the muddy water. Electrical currents were still flowing freely in the water, causing waves of numbness and tingling on Sheyan’s skin. While the Terminator was still paralysed by the short-circuits inside it, Sheyan once again gripped its wrist to prevent it from pulling the high-frequency dagger out of the wound. Instead, Sheyan ruthlessly pushed it deeper inside.
In terms of appearance, the T-910 Terminator indeed had a very high degree of similarity with normal humans. In terms of touch, its skin felt just as soft and elastic as human skin. However, when Sheyan gripped the Terminator’s wrist hard, he could still feel the strange sensation of the robotic skeleton inside. In close contact, it was still easy to tell a fake product from a genuine one.
The high-frequency dagger made a metallic ringing sound as it fiercely vibrated in the wound, until it finally broke into several pieces. It was defeated in a battle of durability with the steel alloy body of the Terminator. This should be the Skynet version of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, Sheyan thought.
Now that the most threatening high-frequency dagger had been destroyed, Sheyan had nothing to fear. He hit the Terminator’s chest with a knee. As the T-910 staggered back from the impact, Sheyan grabbed a handful of mud and threw it at the Terminator’s eyes.
This move was vicious. Although the T-910 would not rub its eyes out of pain, the mud inevitably limited the Terminator’s vision greatly.
Of course, the T-910 was definitely not that easy to deal with. Seizing the moment, it lashed out with a pair of steel fists using every ounce of its strength! The fists landed squarely on Sheyan’s chest and sent him flying. After landing, Sheyan tumbled several times before he immediately righted himself and half-knelt on the ground. He covered his chest with a hand and coughed violently. Blood could be seen dripping down the corners of his mouth. Those punches almost forced all the breath out of his lungs.
But the T-910 was in a miserable state too. It fell into a muddy pit. The two cameras in its eyes were covered with mud. In fact, almost every inch of its body was covered in mud. Even though Skynet was able to make the Terminators very life-like, it was simply impossible to simulate some human functions such as the lacrimal glands in the Terminators. Despite having the thermal imaging ability of infrared rays, its vision would still be heavily impacted after its eyes were smeared with mud.
When the T-910 finally, after considerable effort, climbed out from the muddy pit wet and miserable, Sheyan charged at it again.
It was no doubt too difficult to maintain stability in such an environment. Sheyan had never planned to finish this robot by himself anyway. His task was only to stall for time.
*
Fifteen minutes later, the T-910 was laying on its back in the muddy ground. The skin and flesh on his face were rolled up all over due to the attacks he suffered, revealing the tough steel skeleton underneath. His face looked particularly ferocious in this state. The red light in his eyes had gone out. A part of his chest was protruding at a strange angle. Right before it was destroyed, it suddenly pulled apart its metal chest, seemingly trying to launch a final assault of some kind, but it was immediately interrupted by Zi’s ‘Force Collision – Wall’ and its hand that was pulling at its chest was amputated by Mogensha.
Sheyan walked over to the Terminator remnant and cut off the muscles on its body, then stuck his hand in. Amidst the warm flesh and blood, Sheyan’s fingers touched several places that were hard and cold. He groped around for a moment and when he pulled his hand back out, there was a shiny metal sphere in his grip. There were a few lines of words on the sphere — probably its model number.
The metal sphere emitted a cold glint in the dark, looking very threatening and mysterious.
All of a sudden, Dolittle’s panicking voice was heard from far away.
“Hey!!! Do you want to die?! That’s a hydroxyl ion nuclear battery! Every second you hold it in your hand, your cells will be exposed to nuclear radiation more than a million times over the safety limit! And the most crucial thing is that it’s unstable! It could erupt in a nuclear explosion at any moment! Skynet doesn’t care about radioactive contamination!”
Sheyan was not too concerned. He had defence and HP to spare, and he could also repair his body in the realm.
He flashed a sinister smile at Dolittle and said, “Just tell me if it’s useful to you.”
Dolittle immediately shouted back. “Of course it is! It’s as valuable as Archimedes’ lever! Go to the shelf in the room on the second floor. There should be a lead box there. Place the battery in the box.”
After he did as he was told, Zi handed something to him.
“The three visitors left us another little gift.”
When Sheyan saw what it was, he instantly exclaimed in surprise.
[ Carbon-Based Organism Detector, Type III ]
[Origin: 3rd production line, 9th workshop, Skynet, Michigan State ]
[ Rarity: Black ]
[ Equipment Effect: Ability to detect carbon based organisms within two hundred meters. ]
[ Equipment Effect: Charm -10 ]
[ Usage Requirements: 50 Perceptive Sense ]
[Equipment Position: Can be installed on breastplate/helmet ]
[ Material: Polycrystalline tube + Oxyhydrogen plastic ]
[ Weight: 0.8 kg ]
[ Description: The higher the Perceptive Sense of the wearer, the better the effect ]
[ Evaluation: Skynet has a plan to make this a standard equipment for every Terminator, because those despicable humans run away faster than antelopes, have stronger vitality than cockroaches, and hide better than mice! ]
Because this piece of equipment would reduce charm by 10, Sanzi definitely would not want it. Sheyan’s Perceptive Sense was the highest in the party at 77 points, so the device naturally ended up in his hands. After equipping and activating it, all carbon-based creatures in the surroundings were marked in Sheyan’s view. Sheyan found that it was not as useful as he had imagined, because the amount of information he needed to process was too large.
The Terminator’s N-core microprocessor could scan 30 thermal imaging targets at the same time, and confirm the identity of the targets through their shapes all in a few seconds, but Sheyan could not. The best places to use this device were desolate areas like the dense forests on Planet Pandora. With this object in hand, there was no longer any need to worry about being ambushed by the terrifying hidden creatures in the forests….but the creatures on Pandora were not carbon-based, were they?
Fortunately, Zi reminded Sheyan of something he had neglected. He checked how much energy the ‘Carbon-Based Organism Detector, Type III’ could provide to his money-sucking black hole, ie. the pair of ‘Planetary-Grade High-Energy Mechanical Power Gloves’. To his surprise, he found from the simulation that the detector could charge his gloves’ energy to the full 100%! This discovery filled him with joy.
In addition, after selling all the miscellaneous loots they got from killing those three invading T-910 Terminators, they obtained nearly 30,000 utility points.
After Sheyan took a shower to clean all the dirt on his body and changed into a clean set of clothes, he returned to Dolittle’s laboratory.
He told Dolittle earnestly, “When the T-910 stepped into this world through the time displacement sphere, the first thing it did was to stand still while extending an antenna out of its ear to receive information. I believe you must’ve traced the signal back to something. Hopefully it’s something interesting.”
Dolittle’s reply once again proved that all the honours bestowed upon him in his previous life were not without reason.
“It is. I can confirm that a TOK715 Terminator was watching the fight and was secretly providing support. Her social security number is XXXXXX, her name is Hannah, and she’s a model. She’s 5′ 9” tall and her bust/waist/hip measurements are 36, 25, 36….but that’s not important. The important thing is she managed to steal some confidential information from me too. She’s probably getting ready to transmit those information to Skynet.
Sheyan’s lips curled into a smile.
“And this information she took are the information we want her to take, yes?”
“Of course. The next time they establish communication, future Skynet will know that although John Connor is not born yet, there’s already a terrifying team of experts who have started to develop a comprehensive education plan for him — an education plan that even Skynet will feel be threatened by!” exclaimed Dolittle with pride.
“It’s time for you guys to find a way to deal with the monster called the T-1000 Terminator.”
After a short conversation with Party Ace, Dolittle showed them the door.
“I’m sorry, but I’m rather busy at the moment. You should know that those three Terminators you guys just eliminated are top class research materials! Almost all the Terminators that those fools in Cyberdyne could get their hands on had been turned into scrap iron after going through high-power electricity. It’ll be a sin if I don’t take the time to study them now!”
Sheyan sighed and said with a frown, “To be honest, I’m still not sure if future Skynet will send something as powerful as a T-1000.”
“Why?” Dolittle asked doubtfully.
“Because we’ve neglected a crucial point — information that’s sent back easily will not be taken seriously. If a piece of information is too easy to get, it’s likely to be a trap!” answered Sheyan earnestly.
When Zi heard that, she seemed to have realised something. She looked at Sheyan in surprise and said, “You mean, we should….”
Sheyan laughed in response. His laughter brimmed with a feeling of confidence in his scheme.
“The TOK715 Terminator probably hasn’t sent back the information yet, has it? The barrier of space and time is definitely not so easy to break through. If it wants to communicate with future Skynet, it must wait until the next time displacement sphere opens. Since that’s the case, we should go give it a bit of pressure.”
Zi pondered for a moment before she said, “If you want to pressure the TOK715, make sure to make it realistic. We’d better create an atmosphere of life and death so it can barely escape from a desperate situation. We’ll have to trouble Mr. Dolittle to provide us with more information about this Terminator class so that we can plan better.”
“You’re completely right,” agreed Sheyan.
Five minutes later, Sheyan and Mogensha drove away in a giant truck, the type used to haul containers. To give a more vivid description, it was the kind of truck that Optimus Prime was when he was not transformed.
Perhaps it was karma. In the plot of Terminator I, the T-800 drove the same kind of truck in pursuit of Sarah Connor. Now, it’s Ace Party’s turn to chase after Skynet’s spy in this truck.
Mogensha pressed a button on the headphone he was wearing and said, “Boss, according to the information Dolittle gave us, the single white double-storey building right in front is the target’s residence. Look at the water marks and footprints at the door. The target probably just went in.”
Sheyan smirked.
“I see… Sit tight. The show’s about to begin.”
Right after Sheyan said that, he shifted into 5th gear and put the pedal to the metal. The truck’s 1,500 horsepower diesel engine roared with a terrifying noise and the vehicle accelerated to nearly 100 kilometers per hour in seemingly no time at all. It charged towards the TOK715 Terminator, Hannah’s house with no intention of slowing down at all!!!
The truck crashed into Hannah’s house with a loud bang. Wall pieces and wooden boards shattered and burst everywhere together with dust as if an explosion had taken place. The debris flew as high as 30 meters before they rained down. The furnitures and electrical appliances behind the wall were smashed dozens of meters back. The main support of the small mansion was forcefully and completely broken through by the heavyweight truck! At this point, the house had to rely on the large body of the heavyweight truck for support, or it would instantly collapse.
The two men in the cab of the vehicle, Sheyan and Brother Black, were naturally dizzy and disoriented, as well as covered in debris. Brother Black coughed and patted the dust off his body as he yelled, “Godammit, I’m never riding in your car again. Ever.”
Sheyan just kicked Mogensha out (literally) and threw himself in the opposite direction, only to hear a series of muffled sounds, like the sound a machine gun with a silencer would make. He turned back and saw a row of neat bullet holes on the cab. After that, a numbness spread through Sheyan ‘s right arm. Blood was gushing out from three bullet wounds there.
Although the TOK715 Terminator could not obtain powerful future weapons from Skynet, it was able to utilise the knowledge in its microchip to modify the firearms in this era so as to greatly enhance their power. Otherwise, it would be impossible to cause such serious damage to Sheyan using a submachine gun.
Mogensha had also launched a quick counter-attack of his own. In the rolling process, he threw a smoking gun grenade without aiming properly at all. The storeroom next door collapsed in the violent explosion. However, it was not long before he was forced back again. His face was charred by smoke and the camouflage attire on his upper body was in tatters. He had definitely been shot quite a number of times.
Mogensha did not have Sheyan’s endurance, so he immediately took out some bandages to dress the wounds. He then gritted his teeth and began to fire back.
Of course Sheyan could not just sit back and watch Mogensha being suppressed by enemy fire. He saw a large stone to the side that must weigh at least fifty kilograms and rolled a few times to get to it. The muscles all over his body contracted like springs, then expanded in a sudden burst of force to enable him to forcefully lift the stone up!
At the same time, due to the intense muscle contraction and expansion, the bullets previously shot into his body were all forced out and fell to the ground. More blood spurted out from the wounds as a result. Sheyan aimed the stone at a distance, ignoring his injuries, and threw it!
The TOK715 did not dare to take the projectile head on; it disappeared into the darkness in a flash. The stone flew past the spot where the Terminator was and flattened the car at the back. Sheyan and Mogensha gave chase, but not eight meters later, the TOK715 suddenly emerged from a dark spot in the corner carrying a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It triggered the launcher, dropped it, and ran away!
A small scattershot missile traveled through the darkness, leaving behind it a long trail of smoke. It appeared deceptively slow, but it was actually travelling at a high speed. Sheyan could instantly tell that the missile would be deadly; he immediately shielded Mogensha with his own body and pushed Mogensha down!
The missile exploded in the air about six meters above them. The triangular iron pieces, steel beads and other shrapnels inside scattered at high speed towards every corner in the surrounding area. They made some terrible sparks in the darkness.
If a normal person was here, they would have had a thousand holes in their body right now. As formidable as Sheyan was, he groaned despite himself. Not only were his ears buzzing from the loud explosion, his back was also in terrible pain.
Although the Terminator Hannah managed to send Sheyan and Mogensha into a sorry state with her offensive strikes, Mogensha had also managed to fire a triple burst shot the moment the Terminator lifted the portable missile launcher. Two of the bullets hit the TOK715 Terminator in the face!
Such injuries were insignificant to the Terminator, but they would be effective in preventing the TOK715 to disappear into the crowd. This TOK715 Terminator took the form of a beautiful woman so it was originally not too difficult for it mix with a crowd and make its escape, but with the two gun wounds on her face, even a child would be alarmed when they saw her.
Sheyan climbed up like nothing had happened and continued his pursuit. The situation right now was rather strange; an authentic human like him was frantically hunting down an authentic Terminator, as if he was the monster made of metal instead. Mogensha followed after him.
It did not take long for Mogensha to catch up to Hannah. He used some precise shots aimed at specific places to slow down the opponent’s progress. Thanks to Mogensha’s interference, Sheyan soon chased Hannah down. He did not hesitate to activate ‘Hornrage’, charging at Hannah with tremendous speed!
Even after Sheyan caught up to it, Hannah still maintained the chilly demeanor of a Terminator. It instantly pulled out a sharp dagger and executed a backhand stab. However, her stab was mechanical and rigid as the TOK715 Terminator was not proficient at close combat.
Sheyan easily avoided it, then countered with a violent kick to Hannah’s abdomen. The sensation transmitted back through Sheyan’s foot felt no different from a normal person’s belly, unlike in the previous battle with the T-910 — the moment he grabbed the T-910’s wrist, he could instantly tell the difference.
According to the information provided by Dolittle, the TOK715 class Terminators were meant to imitate human beings as best they could, and would even use seduction to achieve their objectives. That was why even their internal parts were made to be similar to real humans.
Sheyan’s kick was heavy. The force completely penetrated through the outer layer of artificial skin protecting Hannah’s abdomen, as well as the inner artificial muscles, creating a deep depression in the Terminator’s belly! If it were not for the various extremely sturdy components in its body, its internal parts would be in a mess right now! Even so, one could see electric sparks leaking out from Hannah’s back due to the damage to its battery, as well as the blue smoke from the burning of various components.
Hannah was kicked about eight meters away. It still tried to escape after getting back up, but strong disturbances and fluctuations had started appearing in its infrared vision. The images its microprocessor received had also become distorted. Those were sure signs of power supply failure. The cooperation between Sheyan and Mogensha was truly destructive.
Hannah’s back was suddenly hit by a gun grenade. The skin on its back, which was originally pale and delicate, was instantly blackened by smoke and fire. The tremendous impact sent it tumbling into a deserted warehouse nearby. Sheyan wished to chase after it into the warehouse, but a strong sense of danger stopped him in his track!
(TL’s note: Bonus chapter coming later.)
The very next moment, the abandoned warehouse instantly exploded outwards, as if an invisible giant palm had pressed down on it hard. Shattered bricks and stones were blasted everywhere like scattered feathers! Fierce, turbulent airflow surged and formed a terrifying mushroom cloud that rose high into the sky. Sheyan staggered back with his arms covering his face, trying to prevent his eyes from being hurt by the high-temperature air waves.
This was the ultimate ability of the TOK715 Terminator — triggering the nuclear battery in its body to self-destruct!
Sheyan stared solemnly at the scene of the explosion and found that the warehouse was completely destroyed. Amidst the smoke and fire, a shocking crater could be seen on the ground. Even a Terminator could not survive such a violent explosion.
Sheyan and Mogensha exchanged glances and nodded. Sheyan then heaved a sigh of relief and said, “The secret of John Connor is safe.”
“Yeah. We must never let Skynet know about him. He’s the only hope for the future of mankind, we can’t take any risks!”
Unbeknownst to them (or so it appeared), their actions and expressions had been completely captured by a high-tech camera.
This high-tech camera was currently situated more than 50 meters above the ground!
To be more precise, the high-tech camera was the undamaged left eye of the TOK715 Terminator.
The explosion just now was the last-ditch defensive measure of the TOK-715, but it did not actually kill itself. The move was similar to the way a lizard or a crab would sever its own limb in order to escape. To survive in the face of death was the ultimate art of running away!
Creatures like lizards and crabs cut off their own tails and claws to escape death, but the TOK715 Terminator was more ruthless that that. It even confused the enemy by abandoning its entire body!
After the Terminator was blown into the warehouse, it activated a string of continuous flashes. These flashes only played the visual role of simulating an explosion. If someone were looking at the warehouse at that moment, they would be completely dazzled by the blinding light and their vision would be greatly affected.
After that, the head of the TOK715 Terminator rotated at a high speed, then detached itself from the body and was ejected upwards at a very high speed. Within a second after the ejection, a series of chain reactions occurred in the headless body, and a high-intensity current entered the hydrogen fusion battery to trigger a small-scale nuclear explosion!
The head that was launched into the air would automatically change its colour according to the environment at the time. If it was night time, it would become black. Against a backdrop of a blue sky and white clouds, it would become blue and white. The camouflage made it very difficult to detect. Moreover, the head had the ability to perform short-range flight for up to half an hour, as well as photography and video-recording functions, among others.
Of course, the whole series of functions had been fully analysed and researched by Dolittle. Sheyan and co. knew of them, that’s why they dared to force the TOK-715 into such a desperate situation. The reliability of the information transmitted under such a situation would no doubt be quite high.
Even if future Skynet was a sly old fox, Sheyan guessed that there was at least a 70% chance of it falling for the bait. Besides, Skynet was a monster that usually solved problems using logic and numbers…..
Half an hour later, in an alley next to a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, a strong wind suddenly raged and strands of electric currents started to tangle violently. A fire hydrant was forcefully cut in half, causing water to spray high into the air. Another TOK715 Terminator was delivered to this era. This time, it had the appearance of a handsome man who looked somewhat like David Beckham. Of course, it was naked.
At the same time, on a rooftop 400 meters away, Hannah’s head split in the middle, exposing the simple communicator inside. During the few seconds the time displacement sphere was open, a large amount of data was transmitted over. The data was labelled with a blue tag, signifying the highest warning level. Why was the highest warning level blue? Because when a computer crashes, it would show the blue screen of death. This situation was worthy of a high level of attention by the Terminators, just like a cardiac arrest or a cerebral infarction to a human.
After the data was sent out, the bizarre heard chose to self-destruct in order to erase the last trace of itself in this world.
**
At this time, in the place Party Ace chose to be their temporary base, Old Dolittle was not glued to his research like he normally was. He had come to Sheyan with a suitcase. Sheyan was currently resting by himself on a bed. His brows were knitted tight and he looked worried.
Yes, Sheyan was naturally clever and perceptive, but there were also times when he would be confused and troubled.
He was recalling the time when he first entered the nightmare realm. At that time, Sheyan was full of passion and motivation, brave and dedicated, struggling tenaciously in the face of life and death. Why? First, it was due to the novelty of possessing power beyond one’s imagination.
Second, he was hoping he could restore Uncle Dasi’s severed body parts through the help of the realm.
Third, he was hoping he could grow quickly and look for Huashan Fei for revenge! The outrage from being harassed, the humiliation of having his family’s fingers chopped off, and the anger from having their boat burned down were not things that he was willing to let go of!
But now, Sheyan just felt tired. While constantly being driven by the realm to grow strong, he found himself increasingly lacking in motivation.
Was this the feeling of emptiness after achieving one’s goal? He suddenly thought of something strange — Sanzi and himself had become contestants. Was this a mere coincidence or was there a special reason behind it?
And then there was Jinkuang. Sheyan could sense that this servant of his, who was now asleep almost all the time, was full of mystery. The process by which he obtained the service of Jinkuang was also full of unexplained oddities. But somehow, he had always felt an indescribable sense of familiarity in Jinkuang, and he had a hunch that Jinkuang’s background contained a huge secret that was related to him. Unfortunately, Jinkuang would not tell him what it was….
Dolittle’s unexpected arrival interrupted his chaotic thoughts. Dolittle was also looking worried.
“Your plan was successful, Seaman.”
“Huh? How do you know?” asked Sheyan curiously.
Dolittle showed him an analysis sheet and told him, “Using the instruments you got for me, I easily hacked into the the specialised network for matters related to the Terminators in the National Security Agency. In the last few hours, the Gate index in space has dropped by 3%, and the instability factor of wormholes has decreased by 11%… Well, to put it simply, future Skynet has reduced its infiltration frequency into the current era in the last few hours.”
“Did Skynet get attacked by the Panda Burning Incense Virus? Is it self-checking and updating its firewall? Or is there too much dust on the graphics card in its motherboard?” asked Sheyan as he took a sip of cola.
(TL: Panda Burning Incense Virus was a notorious computer virus a number of years ago – https://www.pcworld.com/article/183272/article.html )
“Not funny,” said Dolittle with a straight face, “This is a sure sign that Skynet is preserving energy in preparation for a large-scale transmission.”
Sheyan found that Dolittle’s expression was really dark, so he asked cautiously, “You mean, we might have overdone it? Future Skynet is now placing so much importance on this matter that it’s sending an incredibly powerful team over?”
Dolittle sighed.
“It’s very likely. And based on the amount of time Skynet is taking to preserve energy this time, I highly suspect that you may face as many as two T-1000 Terminators! Of course, they will have a dozen of the latest T-910 model as assistants too! Once they’re given 20 minutes to look for weapons, their destructive power is beyond your imagination!”
Zi happened to be passing by Sheyan’s room at that moment. She could not help but frown when she heard the unfortunate news.
“We’ll be under too much pressure if that’s the case. Can we somehow involve the government in this?”
Sheyan shook his head.
“It’ll be hard. What’re we gonna tell them? That the fetus inside a certain pregnant woman will be targeted by Terminators?”
After a moment’s contemplation, Dolittle said, “I don’t know how you guys will deal with this, but the three Terminators captured before have provided a lot of useful materials. Skynet’s technology is 30 years ahead of us after all. I’ve brought you a few little gifts that transcend the technology of this era — for the sake of my weakening heart.”
Dolittle was indeed really eager to get his hands on some liquid alloy to repair his heart so that he can live for a few decades longer to engage in his beloved scientific research. Therefore, he and Party Ace shared a common goal.
Dolittle finally opened the suitcase he brought with him and showed them some shiny gadgets.
“This is a high-frequency oscillator. Attach it to a Terminator’s body, the closer it is to the head, the better. The microchip which functions as the brain of the Terminator will be shocked several times in an instant. Simply put, it will be put into a state similar to unconsciousness in human beings. Naturally, it doesn’t work on a T-1000.”
“This is a liquid nitrogen compression tank, which can be used to slow down a T-1000’s movement. But be careful, the extreme low temperature it produces is harmful to humans, so it’s clearly written in the instructions that it’s not to be used at close range.”
“This pile of stuff which looks like sh*t is, without a doubt, the most dangerous thing among all the things I’ve brought today. When it comes into contact with electric current, it will become a terrifying bomb. The resulting explosion will be powerful enough to tear a Terminator’s body apart.”
“And last but not least, this USB drive contains a new computer virus that I developed based on my research on the microchips you got from the T-910s. You can inject the virus into a Terminator by inserting this USB drive into the slot on a Terminator’s head. Just the way you said John Connor did to a T-800, you can use this to turn a Terminator from a strong and lethal opponent into a loyal bodyguard. However, since said slot is under a Terminator’s artificial scalp, it’s safer to do so after the Terminator has lost its ability to resist.”
(TL’s note: This is bonus chapter #7 for December from meeting a Patreon goal. If you enjoyed The Ultimate Evolution, please consider showing your support on patreon.com/Sean88888 . You will get early access to advanced chapters!)
Year 2032. The future.
Alaska, USA.
The former suburbs of Anchorage.
Aleutian military base.
Before the outbreak of Judgement Day, because of Alaska’s unique position to the east of Russia, the importance of the Aleutian military base was comparable to the one in Guam. The two constituted two major military bases, one in the north and one in the south, which played off each other. They were like the bridgeheads that firmly blocked Russia’s eastward route.
It was for this reason that the Aleutian military base was well equipped with all kinds of strategic materials. In addition, because Alaska did not border the U.S. mainland, Skynet had moved his main body to this place to face off against the fierce retaliation of the Resistance forces.
At this time, the various external defensive facilities in the Aleutian base, such as the barbed wire mesh, had rusted and decayed in the wind and rain. Some U.S. military uniforms that were rotten and in tatters could be seen hanging on the barbed wire mesh. Skeletal remains were also a common sight here.
Skynet had simply performed a severe nuclear leak in this area in order to hinder human assaults here. It had transformed the original vibrant land into a barren territory.
The Aleutian base was currently brightly lit, and if you were to look at it from a bird’s-eye view, you would see that all 14 of the nuclear power plants operating in Alaska and nearby Canada were brightly lit at the moment, and that the power generated by their full-capacity operations was frantically being transmitted to the Aleutian base at the same time.
Skynet seemed to be planning something big this time. Large groups of T-600s that had removed their armour and equipment, so numerous they looked like ants from afar, were mechanically handling and assembling various parts in the base. At the core of the base, there was a huge pit the size of a basketball court.
The pit was in the shape of a uniform spiral, burrowing deep into the earth’s interior, as if an invisible giant drill bit had appeared out of the sky and tried to penetrate through the earth’s crust!
The pattern of the inside of the huge pit had a very strange appearance. It looked like an ordinary screw thread at first glance, but if you stared at it for too long, you would be overcome by a feeling of dizziness, and risk losing your balance and falling into the pit. You would also feel blood pumping hard within your chest, which was very uncomfortable.
The very bottom of the huge pit sometimes felt really deep and sometimes felt like it was within arm’s reach. There seemed to be a great secret hiding at the point at the very bottom of the pit. Space and time congregated at this point, so the secret could never be unearthed.
This point was what we usually call a spatial rift.
On the Bermuda Triangle region on earth, cargo ships and airplanes often disappear because of the dense and unstable spatial rifts there. Once natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning occured, energy would be poured into them and the spatial rifts would crack open, swallowing the helpless victims into them.
Although the spacial rift chosen by Skynet was located deep in the ground, it was also an active area like the Bermuda Triangle. However, because it was deep underground, it could not be charged by natural phenomenon such as lightning, so it was relatively stable.
At least it was for robots. Humans would definitely not describe the place as “stable”. In some places, buildings would be unknowingly built on top of spatial rifts such as this. Although the buildings would not suddenly disappear without a trace, the people living in them would start hallucinating due to the leakage of time and space from the spatial rifts. Sometimes, the phantoms of the deceased would also appear. Those with weaker mental fortitude would start performing actions that were contrary to common sense, which gave rise to rumours of haunted houses.
At this time, a large number of T-600 Terminators had entered the bottom of the pit to lay down various cables in the soil… In the buildings adjacent to the pit, a neatly arranged group of Terminators were sitting upright with their backs straight like soldiers. A thick electrical cable was connected to the socket on each of their necks; they were obviously charging for the last time before they departed.
Fifteen minutes later, Skynet connected the power supply. The cables leading to the bottom of the huge pit flashed with blinding lights. The spacial rift greedily absorb all the energy fed to it. Soon after, electrical currents could be seen dancing around the pit, while something indescribable gradually materialised at the bottom of the pit. It looked like a pond containing spacial tide.
The long-readied Terminators marched neatly into the huge mysterious pit without showing any expression. In the process of entering the pit, many of the Terminators were actually hit by the high-power electrical currents dancing around the area, resulting in their bodies being severed amidst dazzling sparks and violent explosions. From the looks of it, only less than two-thirds of the Terminators managed to step into the spacial rift!
**
In the present time in the Terminator world, Sheyan and his group arrived at the residence of the woman they had “impregnated”.
Before this, Sheyan had actually thought to mislead Skynet by asking Dolittle to provide some false information to it; he wanted to try to change the address of John Connor’s family into the location of the highest security military base in Los Angeles. However, the nightmare imprint warned him that such an attempt would easily be seen through by Skynet. In the end, they could only provide truthful information.
It was worth mentioning that Ms. Adess, the woman who was quietly injected with the fertilised egg, still had no idea that she was pregnant, despite the fact that Mr. John Connor was joyfully thriving in her body.
What Part Ace had to do now was to send Ms. Adess to a safe and hard-to-discover location. Another important thing to pay attention to was that, as a pregnant woman, they could not cause her too great of a shock, or there would be a risk of miscarriage.
Fortunately for them, Ms. Adess was a religious person – a devout Catholic – which meant that Reef, who had dreamt of being a holy knight since he was a child, was given a stage to perform. All the tedious courtesies he learned as a young man were put to good use.
“Ma’am, the Lord has decided to convey His will through my mouth. Demons are coming to threaten your son’s life,” Reef, dressed as a priest, stood at the door of Ms. Adess’ home, and said with a pious face.
He was so frank that Ms. Adess, on the other side of the burglar-proof door, was stunned for more than a few seconds before she could reflect on the rich implications in Reef’s words. So her first reaction was…..to call the police. She had even planned what she would tell the police:
“Officer, a madman dressed up as a priest is causing trouble at my door.”
However, Reef did not give her a chance to do so. The lock of the burglar-proof door was torn away with a slight pull of his weapon. He proceeded to walk into Ms. Adess’ home uninvited. At the same time, a “holy light” glowed from his body (it was actually a side effect of using the ‘Goldpearl of the Caribbean Sea’). That stopped her from making the phone call.
While she stared at him with her mouth agape, he said to her, “Sorry for the intrusion, ma’am, but the demons have already started to come to your house.”
As he said that, he directed the cross in his hand at a vase nearby. The vase immediately shattered, and there was crimson blood flowing out of it. The blood was poured into the vase by Mogensha who had sneaked into the house ten minutes ago. As for the vase exploding, that was, of course, thanks to Zi.
When Adess’ husband heard the vase breaking, he rushed out of a room from the inner part of the house while screaming furiously, before he abruptly stopped in surprise.
“Who broke my favourite….vase?”
“Are you talking about this object that was possessed by demon, sir?” Reef bowed slightly. “I apologise for that.”
Then, Reef showed his “miracle” again. He shattered the TV in the living room, and blood also splashed from the TV — the result of a bag of blood Mogensha attached to it. After that, Zi displayed the illusionary image of a Sithspawn. Reef “fought bitterly” against the demon and in the end, managed to drive the evil away.
Even an atheist would be convinced after that, let alone a devout believer like Ms. Adess.
The next action taken by Reef dispelled the last trace of their suspicion. Everyone knows that all con artists were after money. No one who was a con artist would give away money instead. Reef provided them with a huge sum of money to let them travel around for a period of time, under the condition that no one could know of the couple’s whereabouts during this time. Reef warned them that “the demons” could imitate the voice of any human, including him!
Ms. Adess immediately agreed to Reef’s request without hesitation. Although she was frightened, she left quickly with great joy — not because of the money, but because Reef had told her that she was pregnant! Her boy would become a great enough man that he was chased after by demons before he was even born!
Sheyan did consider the risk of Ms. Adess being killed while she was out of their sight. However, he had some confidence in her staying safe. In the case of the group of contestants who were proficient in mystical arts, it was almost impossible for them to discover Ms. Adess under Zi’s deliberate planning. As for the Terminators, Reef had put a jammer made by Dolittle on Ms. Adess. It would ensure that they could not be tracked by the Terminators for a short period of time. That was the most effective way of ensuring her safety.
After resolving the problem of Ms. Adess, thus dealing with their biggest weakness, Party Ace started to make some arrangements around the house in preparation. The first thing Sheyan had to consider was not how to get the body part of a T-1000, but how to handle the first wave of the Terminators’ fierce assault without casualties!
***
Ten minutes later, at a scrap metal dump site about twenty minutes’ drive from Ms. Adess’ house.
The dump site was the graveyard of cars. It was a place of messy parts, broken windshields, flat tires, gasoline and mold mixed in the air, and barbed wires that could hinder no one. Emergency lights that looked like weird-looking eyes illuminated the place with yellow lights.
It was in this place that some chaotic electric currents, interweaving together like a web, suddenly popped up!
Enveloped by the frenzied net of electricity, more than a third of the total area of the scrap metal dump site turned into an eerie spectacle. The car wreckages, broken poles, rusty wire mesh, and the piled up scrap, everything in the electric net started to become transparent and slowly lost its original color. The items turned faded, abstract, illusionary, and finally disappeared entirely.
After the scrap metals vanished from view, in their place emerged the aforementioned basketball court-sized area from the future. This strange pit slowly appeared on the ground.
The electrical flashes were even more dazzling in the pit. A few devices could be seen operating crazily at extremely high loads, churning out electric sparks every once in a while. These electrical flashes covered the surface of the spiral pit, effectively isolating the space-time energy from further invading this world. At the bottom of the pit were the Terminators half-kneeling in neat rows!
Nearly half of the Terminators that had tried to step into the pit were destroyed before the violent electrical currents were tamed. At the moment, numerous Terminator wreckages still lay at the bottom of the pit. If it were not for the exposed metal skeletons inside them, it would have looked like the scene of a crazy massacre!
During the process of space-time teleportation, the violent electrical currents could actually counteract against the power of space-time energy. This was the method developed by future Skynet to mass transport Terminators through the time field.
This method was already quite comprehensively studied. Its advantage was that it could transmit multiple objects at the same time, with the possibility of returning — provided, of course, that a staggering amount of power could be supplied at the destination and the time machines that were transmitted over could be repaired.
There were naturally some shortcomings, the most prominent of which was that the method was extremely risky. More than half of the objects and Terminators transported with this method would be destroyed. If humans were to use it, the mortality rate would be even higher — close to 100%.
The energy of the electrical net gradually ran out as it slowly dissipated. The air was filled with the pungent smell of ozone, and the operation of the time machines slowly died down. Suddenly, one of the machines flared up before it exploded, sending the parts in it flying everywhere!
The time machine had just traveled through time and space, so the space-time energy on these parts had not dissipated yet. As they traveled through the air, they inexplicably emitted some shrill noises akin to the sound of metals being sawed, as if they were cutting through space itself!
A T-910 Terminator that was standing still was brushed by a flying gear. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, pale blue electric currents suddenly gushed out of its neck. The red light in its eyes went out, and it collapsed.
If one were to take a closer look, they would see that more than half his neck had been severed by the gear that was only as big as a fingernail. When it fell to the ground, the wires and parts on its neck spilled out and scattered. This cut to the neck would have been fatal to a human, but not to a Terminator. It could actually still be saved it it weren’t for the electrical currents around the area that had not fully dissipated yet. The electrical charges on its wound caused a huge lightning to come crashing down on it, destroying it completely!
After cutting through the neck of the T-910, the troublesome gear bounced at a weird angle straight towards a man nearby. The man’s face was different from the rest of the T-910, and he even had his own clothes.
He had slightly pale skin, sunken cheeks, neat clothes, and meticulous hair. His blue eyes were cold an penetrating, and his sleeves were slightly pulled up. Together with his hooked nose, tight lips, and the slight frown on his face….his entire person looked dangerous, like a sharp, rusty razor.
Seeing the gear coming towards him, he put out his left hand in front of him to block it. The gear that was carrying space-time energy reached the palm of this man and penetrated straight into it!! Inside his arm, it continued cutting everything in its path, producing some horrible noises, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade.
The man’s outstretched arm instantly became as soft as a noodle. His arm convulsed, marks appeared on its surface, as well as some huge bubbles that kept bursting. Obviously, the residual space-time energy had caused some great damage inside him. However, the man’s face displayed no expression at all. He stood there quietly as if the arm had nothing to do with him at all.
Three minutes later, the man finally extended his right middle finger in a slow manner. The finger bizarrely changed into a sharp knife. He stabbed the knife into his left shoulder blade, then slowly moved it around. When he finally pulled it out, his finger was no longer a sharp knife. Instead, it had turned into a pair of pliers that were currently clamping tightly onto the gear.
The man tried moving his left hand. Some electricity surged on the surface of the hand while he did so, before everything returned to normal. There was no more doubt that this man was a T-1000.
Despite having its body built from powerful liquid metal, it must be noted that the space-time energy on the gear was not so easy to deal with. This could be seen from the fact that the T-1000’s left hand, although seemingly healed, still produced the occasional sparks when it moved.
In order to avoid a similar accident, all the Terminators maintained their posture, half kneeling quietly on the ground as they waited.
More than ten minutes later, the T-1000 finally stood up and said to the other Terminators, “All models equipped with maintenance capabilities, stand up and step forward!”
Three T-910 Terminators abruptly stood up. However, two of them were injured.
Looking around, the T-1000 noticed that the other T-1000 had vanished. It could still remember the situation at the time, when an electric current whipped past, causing the other T-1000 to fall into the space-time vortex.
After some calculation with its powerful CPU, the T-1000 immediately took over command. He ordered with a cold, mechanical voice, “All models equipped with maintenance capabilities, start repairing those around you. You can try using the scattered parts on the ground.”
The sound of electric welding was instantly heard. Suddenly, one of the T-910 with maintenance capabilities said in a rigid voice, “Unable to proceed with maintenance work. We do not have the necessary parts.”
The T-1000 did not hesitate at all as he barked, “Then just disassemble your own parts!”
Although the command of T-1000 was cruel, the T-910s with maintenance capabilities would have the maintenance modules take up a large part of their CPU resources. So, in terms of combat effectiveness, they were inferior to the T-910s with full combat capabilities.
While the Terminators were executing the orders, the light of a heavy truck suddenly tore through the darkness in the distance. It truck swayed over while spewing thick black smoke, then directly smashed through the barbed wire surrounding the area and drove to the edge of the pit.
A man jumped off the heavy truck. His expression was not stiff, and looked no different from a human. From a human standard, he actually looked quite harmless, somewhat similar to Mr. Bean.
After he jumped out of the truck, he stretched out his hands and exclaimed passionately, “Aha, my friends, I hope I’m not too late. Check out the gifts I brought you!”
This man was obviously another TOK715 Terminator lurking among the humans.
“Shut up, fool, or I’ll tear you into pieces,” replied the T-1000 flatly.
The TOK715 Terminator merely shrugged and said in a regretful tone while chewing on a gum, “I’m sorry, sir, but my personality is controlled by my CPU thread, so I can’t help it. The Creator (Skynet) wanted me to be this way, and that’s what I became. It’s precisely thanks to this human emotional template that I can hide so well in this alien society without being found.”
At the mention of Skynet, the T-1000 became silent.
After a few seconds, he asked seriously, “What have you brought us?”
The TOK715 Terminator whistled before he answered, “Comprehensive information about the target, including, but not limited to, her family members, her pictures and so on…. Also, we can almost be certain that there are humans who are capable of fighting against Terminators protecting her. According to our assessment, the combat capabilities of these humans are not inferior to those of the Terminators.”
The colour of the T-1000’s eyes shifted rapidly in succession. He was apparently making calculations and analysis while he was talking.
“It’s close to impossible for humans to become capable of fighting against Terminators!” said the T-1000 coldly.
“Unfortunately, it’s the truth,” the TOK715 spread his hands and said. “They’re extremely strong. That’s why, I hope you won’t get careless. Inside the truck are some weapons I prepared for you guys – of course, the necessary modifications have already been made.”
The T-1000’s voice remained cold as he said, “This is the only piece of good news coming out of your mouth today. You better get out of my camera’s sight as quickly as you can; the sooner the better, the farther the better — because I’m finding it really hard to resist the urge to tear you apart! You look too much like a damn human!”
(TL: Bonus chapter coming later.)
It could be seen that the Terminators also had social classes among them just like the humans did. For example, the status of the T-1000 was obviously much higher than that of the TOK715.
The TOK715 Terminator did not show any signs of displeasure at the T-1000’s discriminatory words. It only said in a serious tone, “We’re all serving the Creator, sir.”
“I don’t need you to remind me of that. On the contrary, I have to remind you to take my words seriously, or you’re gonna have a bad time!” said the T-1000 ruthlessly.
After he said that, he took a step forward, grabbed the unlucky TOK715 Terminator’s neck, and lifted him straight up! At the same time, his left hand quickly turned into a sharp blade. He stabbed it deep into the stomach of his comrade and stirred the blade around a few times, causing some blinding flashes of electric sparks to jump out from the wound. Only after that did he throw the TOK715 away, sending the TOK715 smashing heavily into a car at the back.
The hapless TOK715 completely flattened the top of the damaged car with a loud bang!
“Leave now, or next time, I’ll pry your CPU chip out!” the T-1000 said coldly.
The T-1000 then strode towards the truck. The TOK715 Terminator struggled a few times before he managed to climb out of the pile of metal wreckage, covered in rust and dust. The T-1000’s strike just now would have been fatal on a human, but on a Terminator, it was merely a flesh wound. Even so, the TOK715’s eyes had become very complicated.
Future Skynet had experimented with emotional programs on all the Terminators he sent on this expedition. The emotional programs included a hatred for all human beings.
Skynet’s reason for doing so was simple — because it found that after the T-800 it produced had been transformed by the humans and had learned human emotions, it displayed exceptional combat capabilities.
Presently, the conventional Terminator CPU was the learning type, which could store almost unlimited data and information. But when they were sent out to perform tasks, Skynet would set all Terminators’ modes as read-only — ie., they could not learn any new knowledge. That was because Skynet would not allow any Terminator to have its own ideas. Besides eradicating the humans, Skynet’s goal also included not allowing the emergence of a second Skynet!
But the T-800 that was remodelled by humans had its learning ability and human emotional programs liberated. The performance of a non-emotional Terminator in battle was rigid and straightforward, while the emotional Terminator was obviously stronger. Its performance was not only stable, but would also sometimes display exceptional bursts of power!
In the battlefield of the future, a remodelled T-800 that had obtained human emotions on John Connor’s side had once performed the feat of destroying three other T-800 Terminators by itself.
In view of this situation, Skynet started to make attempts at adding emotional programs into the Terminators’ modules. This action was definitely a challenge for Skynet! Love and hate were difficult to express in simple binaries of 0’s and 1’s, after all.
It was hard for the non-emotional Skynet to understand what hate was. It could only reproduce its feelings for John Connor in its subordinates — that feeling was actually a mix of displeasure, fear, etc.; it was absolutely not the hatred that humans felt.
Love was even more difficult for Skynet to understand. Among all the Terminators, only the T-800 which protected John Connor in Terminator 2 could accurately acquire and show the emotion of “love”. It had said before it self-destructed that it finally knew why humans shed tears. That emotion was undoubtedly love, and the pain of eternal parting made it deeply understand the feeling of friendship between John and itself.
Skynet obviously did not possess the kind of condition to experience all these. Although it had become self-aware, in essence, it was still an emotionless machine.
After the three maintenance Terminators disassembled their own body parts and repaired five combat T-910 Terminators, only a small part of them remained. Almost every part of their bodies from the chest-down had been disassembled. They lay paralysed in the mud, watching their freely-moving companions clatter about expressionly as the Terminators familiarise themselves with the newly-acquired weapons.
The final result of future Skynet’s batch transmission this time were as follows:
Team configuration before transmission: Two T-1000s and fourteen T-910s, four of which possessed maintenance capabilities.
Loss in transmission: One T-1000, three T-910s rendered completely unserviceable (including one with maintenance capabilities). Only two T-910s remained perfectly intact.
The final configuration of Terminators capable of combat: one T-1000, six T-910s with full combat capabilities, and two T-910s with 70% combat capabilities.
After adapting to the weapons, the T-1000 issued the order for the Terminators to enter the truck compartment and sit in neat rows inside. Of course, the time machines were also carried into the truck.
He went over to the three T-910 maintenance Terminators and said with his face cold and stiff, “Your mission is over. The time has come to be terminated.”
The three maintenance Terminators that had only a small part of their body remaining were expressionless. They seemed to have resigned themselves to their fate. The T-1000 changed his hands into a pair of huge hammers, moved to face the ones that had just made great contributions to the team, and smashed down on them!
A few minutes later, the T-1000 drove a road roller over and rolled over the remains of the three Terminators several times. He then poured petrol on the remains and set them ablaze. Finally, he dropped a powerful bomb on them. There was no doubt that after the explosion, the pieces of the three Terminators would eventually be mixed in with the abundance of scrap metals in the metal scrapyard. They would be impossible to find.
While doing these things, a slight fluctuation rose in the cold figurative heart of the T-1000, but this slight fluctuation was quickly suppressed. The “read-only” attribute Skynet had programmed into him beforehand had stifled the possibility of him further acquiring human nature.
“According to the numbers I just observed, the Gates index has risen sharply… Okay, okay, in consideration of your ignorance of proper scientific knowledge,I’ll give it to you straight. There was a very strong fluctuation in space, and this time, the volatility index reached a terrifying new height — almost 20 times higher than the previous highest index! We can conclude from this that a major space-time transfer had just taken place!”
Dolittle’s voice transmitted over from the phone.
Sheyan asked solemnly, “Can you tell if the transmission was successful?”
“Bad news. During the whole transmission process, the energy index did not change too much, which means that the space-time transfer this time should be quite successful,” answered Dolittle with a sigh.
Sheyan said faintly, “That’s within our expectation. Any further information will help. Can you figure out the exact destination of the space-time transfer?”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult to find out. Give me a moment…. The location is in the western suburb of Los Angeles. On the map, the place is called the Idak Vehicle Recycling Center, and the area around it is quite empty. Besides that, after I analysed the information from various sources, I estimate the theoretical number of Terminators sent in this batch of space-time transfer to be more than 10 but less than 20. But according to my deduction, this is the first time Skynet has attempted a batch transfer, so there were bound to be damages in the transmission process because it’s an untested new technology. What’s more important is the fact that you don’t have to be wary of the powerful firearms from 30 years in the future. But of course, the Terminators should be outfitted with some Skynet-manufactured cold weapons,” replied Dolittle.
Sheyan narrowed his eyes in thoughts.
“Understood. Skynet sure is ambitious, sending so many Terminators here in one go. How many do you estimate they’ve lost in the space-time transfer?”
Dolittle answered with some difficulty, “That’s hard to say. It depends entirely on Lady Tyche’s mood.”
(Note: Tyche is the Greek goddess of fortune & luck.)
After the conversation ended, Sheyan put down the phone and walked out of the room. Mogensha instantly asked nervously when he saw Sheyan, “How was it, boss? Are those guys coming?”
Sheyan nodded.
“But they won’t come here at once. There’s no way the battle plan that Skynet came up with will be so simple. If I were in its place, the first thing I’ll do will not be to attack us, but to set up a smokescreen. I’ll order the Terminators to first attack a couple of locations of strategic and military significance in order to attract the attention of the government. Only then will their assault on this residential area not attract official attention.”
Right after he said that, an urgent news was broadcasted on the TV in the living room:
“This is an emergency warning issued by the Los Angeles City Council. Another round of terrorist activity had just occurred. The City Hall and the headquarters of Cyberdyne Systems have suffered simultaneous attacks. The LAPD Headquarters was also set on fire. All civilians are advised to stay home in order to avoid getting injured!”
Following the calm voice of the anchorwoman, Sheyan faintly said, “The next target should be us.”
As soon as Sheyan’s words ended, they saw an out-of-control double-decker bus in the distance, rushing over on the long street in front of the house. The bus ran onto the sidewalk and crushed the pedestrians wantonly in its berserked charge!
Buses normally gave the impression of being slow, huge and crowded, but when they saw the bus in front, the only terms that came to mind were violence, slaughter and blood! The bus driver drove the bus like he was driving a bulldozer, forcefully knocking away a car that was in its path as the bus charged aggressively towards Sheyan and his team!
(TL: This is bonus chapter #8 for December from meeting a Patreon goal. If you enjoyed The Ultimate Evolution, please consider showing your support on patreon.com/Sean88888 . You will get early access to advanced chapters!)
Sheyan’s eyes narrowed when he saw the bus on the sidewalk and the innocent civilians screaming miserably under its wheels. The non-stop gunshots from the bus proved that the one who had the intention of taking lives was not just the bus driver; the passengers on the bus obviously shared the same mindset.
Mogensha easily judged the opponents’ numbers from the amount of muzzle flames. This was a necessary skill for survival that he had already acquired at the age of five.
“Including the driver, there are six of those bastards, but we can’t rule out the possibility of more remaining hidden in order to launch a surprise attack.”
Sheyan stared at the corpses and blood on the street. These Terminators were very skilled in shooting. Although the bus was constantly moving, they were able to find either the head or the heart every time they pulled the trigger. They left almost no survivors.
Zi came over and stood beside him. Her face hardened when she saw the scene in front of her.
“These murderers!” she exclaimed coldly.
“Something’s wrong with this new batch of Terminators. They’re not like the Terminators we met before,” said Sheyan with a frown.
As soon as she heard Sheyan said that, Zi immediately felt the same way.
“You’re right. The Terminators we’ve met before were all mechanical monsters that only have their targets in mind. Everyone who stands between them and their targets will be eliminated without mercy, but those who stand at the side will just be ignored. They prioritise efficiency, so they won’t even waste half a joule of energy on irrelevant people if they don’t have to.”
“But these Terminators in front of us aren’t just coming to kill us, they’re also killing the passers-by! These Terminators are indiscriminately shooting at them regardless of whether they’re threatening or if they’re in the way! And the driver — it clearly knows that driving on the sidewalk is not only inefficient for the implementation of their task, it will even delay them for a few seconds, but he still chose to do that…. It’s as if the objective Skynet gave them is to kill all the humans they see! ”
Sheyan nodded .
“You’re absolutely right. Seems like Skynet has made some changes to these Terminators. Maybe it’s an opportunity we can take advantage of.”
In the blink of an eye, the ferocious bus arrived at Ms. Adess’ house. The driver braked hard right then. The rotation of the rubber tires stopped abruptly, and the huge inertia of the bus caused the tires to drag long braking trails on the street.
Before the bus had completely come to a stop, several Terminators had already rushed out of the bus at an alarming speed. They did not get out of the bus through the door. Instead, each of them swept through the side of the bus next to them with a machine gun, then kicked a hole open and jumped down!
In just ten odd seconds, these horrible killers from the future surrounded Ms. Adess’ house from all directions. It should be noted that Ms. Adess was not staying in the villa-like suburban house commonly seen in the movies, but in a seven-storey reinforced concrete building.
On the first floor was Ms. Adess’ floral shop. The second floor was the office of the company her husband ran. Their house was on the top floor. The building had only two exits, and there were no adjacent buildings within thirty meters of it. As such, four Terminators were already enough to prevent the people inside from coming out.
The Terminators used their infrared vision to lock on to the humans inside the building. Unfortunately, the cold weather had made the people inside turn on their heaters or light up their hearths, so the temperature inside the building was quite high. A few heat sources thus easily interfered with the normal operation of the Terminators’ detectors.
The T-1000 appeared. He walked to the front gate, extended his finger, and inserted it into the keyhole. The terrifyingly versatile liquid metal instantly turned into a key which fit snugly inside the keyhole. The gate opened with a gentle flick of his finger. It seemed that the Terminator would still opt for the most economical and efficient choice of action as long as the task did not involve human beings.
Three T-910 Terminators immediately rushed into the building. The shattering of porcelain vases and the hoarse sound of furnitures being knocked away were instantly heard from the inside.
The T-1000 first looked around with cold eyes akin to a hawk’s, then followed the T-910s inside.
Sheyan witnessed all this through a night vision telescope from a building 300 meters away. He made some quick calculations. After five seconds, he felt the Terminators that entered the building should have arrived at the established detonation position, so he gave Mogensha a nod.
“Give them the present.”
The violent explosion happened instantly!
Before this, the “mastermind behind the scenes” had used a pre-set explosion trap to ruthlessly ambush them once. This time, Sheyan decided to borrow his idea to give this group of formidable Terminators a welcome gift!
At that moment, the powerful modified explosives prepared by Dolittle displayed their might!
The explosives called octogen was divided into three parts, and the amount that was buried in Ms. Adess’ house totaled up to 20 kilograms. Octogen consisted of an eight-membered ring nitramine structure and was usually used in high-powered missile warheads, as well as a component of the detonation charge of nuclear weapons and solid rocket propellants. From that, one could imagine its terror. More importantly, Dolittle had taken into account the abnormally strong endurance of the Terminators, so he had amped up the destructive heat and impact of the explosives!
The first to detonate was the explosive planted in the floral shop on the ground floor of the building. Thanks to Sheyan’s previous calculation, the timing of the detonation was perfectly controlled. The four Terminators who entered the building were less than three meters away from the core area of the explosion.
In that instant, the temperature of the core area reached up to 5,000 degrees Celcius, and the pressure exceeded 300 times the atmospheric pressure! Under such horrible impact, the outer layer of skin of the T-910 nearest to the core of the explosion was immediately scorched and carbonised. Then, its eyes burst. Although the precision cameras that were its eyes had been strengthened into the hardness of tempered steel, they could no longer keep themselves intact under such a high temperature.
Even its internal metallic skeleton was distorted and deformed. Under the action of the high temperature, it was twisted into a pretzel. The final thing to be ignited was its CPU chip that was soaked in tissue fluid. In the intense heat, a small flame lit up on the CPU chip like a burning mosquito-repellent mat, then went out shortly after.
The T-910 was terminated.
However, the death of the T-910 also blocked most of the power from the explosion. Although the two accomplices behind him were damaged to varying degrees, with the skin on their outer body burned away, the injuries only looked terrible — in truth, they had not lost their combat capabilities.
As for the T-1000, it just dissolved. The high temperature could only soften and liquefy its body. In this process, as long as there was not enough molten metal “infiltrating” into its liquefied body, its core would not be threatened.
Just seconds after this explosion, two more dull explosions rang out.
The two explosions were not aimed at the Terminators, but at the seven-storey building!
The whole building suddenly shook and, like a giant who could not bear the burden of its own weight, it groaned and collapsed!
The building, which had its main support structures destroyed, fell down quick under the pressure of its tremendous weight. The intact pillars and walls broke down and shattered completely. The building collapsed to the ground, rousing the dust and debris high into the sky!
To explain the whole process in steps, the whole building of tens of meters high first looked like a section of it had suddenly sunk into the ground. Then, its exterior glass windows and doors shattered and sparkled down like a torrential rain. The whole ground floor and the underground parking lot completely caved in!
The Terminators in the building had just tried to escape, but the violently collapsing pillars sealed off their paths. Then, thousands of tons of bricks and stones rumbled down and buried them underneath! Dust covered the sky.
Witnessing this situation, the four T-910 blocking the exits outside went into a confused state, because at that moment, a large amount of information from the outside flooded into their CPU chips. The calculation volume was too much for them to handle and there were simply too many aspects to be considered, so their programs, to put it crudely, “hung”.
But right at that moment, Party Ace appeared from the darkness. There was no doubt that the best choice when fighting against this group of Terminators was to reduce their long-range advantage as much as possible. So, Sheyan and co. rode a commercial MPV, accelerating to an amazing speed in an instant, rushing ahead at a distant Terminators!
However, the low roaring noise of the engine caught the attention of the T-910 Terminator and snapped it back into reality. It turned around at once and fired at the MPV with a cold gaze! The Terminators’ accuracy and precise control of guns with their strong wrists were perfectly put on display. A neat row of bullet holes appeared on the windshield. If the one sitting in the driver’s seat was an ordinary person, he would have been hit by a few bullets on his neck for sure!
However, the one there was Sheyan. When he saw the opponent opening fire, he stepped on the throttle more heavily, then raised his left hand to shield the fatal part that was his throat. Even though the Terminator’s weapon had been reinforced, the bullets it shot could only penetrate Sheyan’s flesh. They were rejected by his tough bones.
A few seconds later, the MPV reached the T-910 Terminator. It leapt to the side dexterously to avoid the vehicle. After Sheyan halted the car with a beautiful drift, several doors flew away accompanied by loud bangs as if the whole MPV was disintegrating. Out came a few silhouettes. Ace Party instantly started focusing their firepower on the T-910 Terminator. Mogensha’s bullets, Reef’s giant claw, Sheyan’s long saber, and Zi’s powerful Force immediately kissed the T-910’s body!
After they divided the powerful Terminator team into two with the explosions according to Sheyan’s plan, they knew time was going to be tight. Therefore, they must kill one of the enemies as quickly as they could, then face off against the remaining three Terminators on lookout duty with the full power of the Ace Party. Only in that way could they ensure a higher chance of winning!
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