The ultimate blue sea

Chapter 21 - Night Talk

That night, there was a strong influence from a cold wave. In rained over vast areas of the country—where Hu Bugui was, it was strictly speaking a mix of rain and snow. Winter had already begun, and the nights were very cold. For people caught outdoors, this rain was adding insult to injury.

Hu Bugui was wrapped up in a raincoat, his face icy, struggling forward through the bleak wind and bitter rain. With the glasses on his nose, he felt even worse. While he was wearing gloves, his hands were still frozen numb. He was alone in this area and had already been traveling for three hours. Despite his raincoat, he was soaked through.

This place that they had designated "area 1" was particularly remote, very far from the cities, and it was a flat plain. The reserve personnel were concerned about exposing themselves and didn't dare to come too close. They could only send him alone to make the arduous trek on a lousy mud-splattered bike.

When he heard a faint sound and received a communication request signal from headquarters, Hu Bugui stopped, took off his gloves, breathed on his hands, and rubbed them together. Then he took the glasses off, roughly wiped them with his fingers, and vigilantly stood in place for a while. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He looked down at the energy indicator on his wrist, confirmed that there were no unusual energy reactions, then finally got off the bicycle and pressed on his glasses, switching to headquarters. Out of caution, he still didn't speak, only pushed aside the messy hair in front of his forehead, tapping three times on the other arm of the glasses with his nail—this was the signal they had arranged beforehand.

Xu Ruchong reported at once: "Captain Hu, your current position is basically at the heart of the suspected area. There's no need to go any further. There currently appear to be no suspicious phenomena. Use your detector to test the place at your three o'clock, five hundred meters away. There's an energy coordinate device there. Return the way you came immediately. Take care not to disturb it, there's likely to be an alarm system on the energy coordinate device—I can basically confirm now that that thing is disturbing the signal that friend of yours is sending."

Hu Bugui nodded and turned the bicycle around. Xu Ruchong continued to report: "During your investigation, area 7 can also basically be eliminated using technological means—though I still think that you're all running too great a risk..."

Hu Bugui turned and got onto the bike. Shivering but no less imposing, he said, "Shut up."

Xu Ruchong paused and suddenly said a little solemnly, "Captain Hu, this isn't right. Do you know what this energy coordinate device is?"

Hu Bugui didn't make a sound, waiting for him to continue. Xu Ruchong pushed up his ridiculously large glasses and frowned. "This is a new model anti-tracking-signal disruption device. When your friend's signal is emitted, because of these disrupters, at my end I receive at least forty or fifty possible locations scattered all over the globe. After three whole days of wrestling with it, I was able to eliminate a part of them. The remaining seven are the hardest nuts to crack. To make a comparison, they're like online proxies, but much more complicated. It's a mighty thing."

Hu Bugui paused for a moment—Xu Ruchong was regularly out of line and always thought highly of himself; his thoughts were bold and unconstrained in style. It was very rare to hear the word "mighty" come out of his mouth. "What's the matter?"

"This is used by the army. It hasn't been released to the public yet. In fact, the RZ Unit also has one. Chief Xiong just signed off on it half a month ago—I know about it because I took part in its development."

There was no need to say the rest. Having heard this much, Hu Bugui already understood better than he did—whether it was the blue seals or the insubstantial Utopia, plainly speaking, they were a group of anti-government militia with unclear goals and identities. How could they have technological power like this?