Chapter 190: An Omission
Not only was Nan Yu unsurprised when he heard the news, he actually felt that it made perfect sense. If it was the Bai family, then it really was entirely possible.
But now wasn't the time to talk about that. Nan Yu beckoned to him. "Let's go inside and take a look first. Maybe we'll find the reason Yao Anyang didn't dare tell you about this place."
Yu Lanfeng said, "Stay behind me. It may be dangerous inside."
Nan Yu didn't put on airs and say something like he wanted to face the danger together with him. Yu Lanfeng's flame ability could easily protect him, so all Nan Yu needed to do was stand farther away and make sure he didn't interfere with Yu Lanfeng.
He retreated several steps, then watched as Yu Lanfeng opened the door made from that enormous jagged boulder. Of course, his method was simple and crude—he simply used his flames to burn the massive rock until it melted.
Nan Yu could see that many places around them had already cracked from the heat. Some nearby rocks also split apart one after another and fell, shattering the instant they hit the ground.
Yu Lanfeng probably didn't want to use too much firepower. If he accidentally burned whatever was inside, they would lose some of their clues. Because of that, it took him several minutes to deal with the enormous boulder. Once the rock was gone, the entrance to the cave behind it was quickly revealed.
Nan Yu frowned slightly as he stared into the pitch-black, deep cave. "Brother, it should be in here, right? I wonder what he put insi... Hm?"
Nan Yu didn't know whether it was his imagination, but his keen Mental Power seemed to have detected some kind of sound from inside. Yet when he focused and tried to sense it carefully, it disappeared again.
Yu Lanfeng noticed his slight frown. "What's wrong?"
Nan Yu shook his head. "I'm not sure. It felt like there was someone in there, but then it felt like there wasn't. I can't tell. Let's go inside and take a look?"
Yu Lanfeng was confident that he could protect Nan Yu, so naturally he had no objections. "Let's go. We'll take a look first."
The two of them slowly headed deeper inside, one in front and one behind. Soldiers stood guard all around the area, so it was basically impossible for anyone to slip inside and interfere with their investigation.
Yu Lanfeng led Nan Yu gradually deeper into the cave. They walked at a steady pace for about five minutes before finally seeing a faint light ahead. When they reached it, they discovered a door, and there wasn't a single security device installed on it.
There was no fingerprint lock, iris scanner, or anything of the sort. It was simply an ordinary door. All they needed to do was push it open to get inside.
There was nowhere on the door that allowed light through, so they had to open it before they could enter and investigate the situation inside.
Yu Lanfeng said, "Try sensing it again now."
Nan Yu shook his head. "I've been keeping my senses sharp this entire time, but I haven't felt anything like I did just now. Maybe I was being overly suspicious. What happened just now was probably my mis—"
He stopped speaking midway through his sentence and carefully focused on the sound he had just detected again, but his expression became somewhat troubled.
"I've sensed it twice now, so it definitely wasn't my imagination. But whatever it is feels a little unusual. It might not be a person, but I can't tell what it is. Let's go inside first. Maybe the answer is behind this door."
Yu Lanfeng told him to move back.
Nan Yu slowly retreated several steps until he was a few meters away and quietly watched Yu Lanfeng.
Yu Lanfeng first examined the door. From the outside, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. Its surface was extremely smooth, and there was no handle to pull it outward, which meant it had to be pushed inward.
When Yu Lanfeng placed both hands on the door, flames suddenly surrounded his body. However, he controlled the temperature with extreme precision before pushing the door open directly.
Once the door opened, they could finally see what lay behind it.
Unexpectedly, there really wasn't any danger inside.
Beyond the door was an enormous space measuring roughly a thousand square meters, divided into four areas of approximately equal size.
Nan Yu followed Yu Lanfeng inside and discovered that all four areas looked perfectly normal at first glance. It wasn't until they carefully examined the documents and experimental data recorded here that they realized something was seriously wrong.
All of the documents and data here were records from experiments Yao Anyang had conducted on himself.
Furthermore, among these documents were records containing the identities of four other people.
Nan Yu examined them carefully. "Could these four people be the Mental Power Users he brought back to serve as sources of Mental Power?"
There were records for four people here. Aside from the two who were still alive at the military base, did that mean the other two were the ones who had died?
Nan Yu carefully flipped through the information on the four of them. "I wonder if the bodies of the other two are hidden here as well. If they are, though, there doesn't seem to be anywhere to hide them."
However, they had only searched the obvious areas so far. They still hadn't determined whether there were hidden compartments, secret rooms, or anything similar.
Nan Yu left the documents to Yu Lanfeng while he began searching the enormous laboratory inch by inch.
He hadn't consumed much Mental Power while searching for the entrance outside earlier, so even if he searched this entire place, he wouldn't have to worry about overusing his Mental Power.
Nan Yu quietly and slowly moved elsewhere, while Yu Lanfeng continued examining all the documents.
Suddenly, Yu Lanfeng discovered that this place was actually connected to the Star Network.
There were scheduled posts set up to be sent to numerous discussion forums and social platforms. They contained some of the experimental content and data from this place, as well as so-called evidence intended to frame and slander him.
Yu Lanfeng checked the scheduled time and discovered that everything was set to be sent two days from now.
In other words, had Yao Anyang already planned to drag them down with him if things went wrong?
That was why he had set this particular time.
If Yao Anyang managed to return here before the deadline, it would mean nothing had happened to him and he could continue playing his part for a while longer. He could simply cancel the scheduled posts for the time being and continue lurking within the legion to obtain even more classified information.
But if he failed to return, all of this information would be sent out automatically when the time came.
Even Yu Lanfeng couldn't say for certain what kind of consequences that would cause.
He immediately canceled all the scheduled posts and deleted all the relevant material, then began disconnecting every network connection in the laboratory.
However, just as he was about to cut off the network completely, he suddenly noticed a message that had arrived only a few seconds earlier.
He opened it and discovered that the sender's name was Bai Cheng'an.
Who was Bai Cheng'an?
He was Bai Zhouyun's grandfather, the current Old Master of the Bai family!
Yu Lanfeng hadn't expected that immediately after learning from Yao Anyang that the Bai family was connected to Nan Yu's previous kidnapping, he would now discover evidence of contact between Bai Cheng'an and Yao Anyang.
When he opened the message, sure enough, it was nothing but a jumble of garbled characters.
If it had actually been written openly in ordinary text, that would have surprised him instead.
At first glance, the garbled text looked as though someone had typed it randomly, but after careful examination, a particular pattern could be found within it.
Even the battle-hardened Yu Lanfeng found it somewhat troublesome.
This type of cipher wasn't actually difficult, but it was extremely tedious. Incredibly tedious. Even Yu Lanfeng would need half an hour to an hour to decipher it.
Fortunately, he was highly experienced. After a little over thirty minutes, he finally understood the garbled message.
Bai Cheng'an: Everything is ready on our side. Hurry things up on your end! Once it's done, remember to reply and let me know!
Yu Lanfeng fell into deep thought as he stared at those words.
So his previous guesses had all been correct.
Yao Anyang really had connected the organization with members of the Bai family, joining forces with both sides to act against the Empire.
The organization's people intended to use Yao Anyang to create chaos here, directly using Ability Beasts to carve out a path and then mixing in among them to enter the Empire.
Afterward, they would take advantage of the chaos throughout the Empire, using all kinds of methods to infiltrate further before meeting up with Bai Cheng'an. Then, with people working both from within and without, they would deal the Empire a devastating blow.
As long as the Empire was left unable to target their organization for a period of time, they could use those few years to establish themselves firmly within the Empire and continue developing and expanding.
By the time the Empire recovered from this incident, it might already be impossible to eradicate them completely.
As for the Bai family, once they cooperated with the organization, they could receive the organization's protection in the future as well. If that happened, the Empire might remain unable to catch them.
Yu Lanfeng stared fixedly at the sentence he had deciphered.
No matter what, he definitely couldn't reply yet.
He knew how Bai Cheng'an sent messages, but he didn't know how Yao Anyang normally replied to them. For now, all he could do was seize the opportunity while the Bai family still didn't know that the general of this military base had already been replaced and that Yao Anyang had been captured, and gather as much evidence as possible.
He raised his head and looked at the garbled text on the screen.
At that exact moment, a self-destruct program activated.
The message was instantly destroyed without leaving behind a single clue.
Yu Lanfeng naturally recognized this method. This type of destruction mechanism was also commonly used by the military. After ensuring that the recipient had kept the message open long enough to finish reading it, the program would destroy it directly without leaving anything behind, minimizing the risk of information leakage.
Moreover, the destruction countdown would only begin once the message had been opened.
In other words, as long as the message remained unopened, the program wouldn't activate.
Just as Yu Lanfeng was about to continue examining the other information here, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
If his guess was correct, then if he failed to reply to Bai Cheng'an within a limited amount of time, the other side would definitely realize that something was wrong, perhaps even discover that the person on this end was no longer Yao Anyang.
They would immediately retract every claw they had extended.
When that happened, catching them red-handed would become far more difficult.
Yu Lanfeng immediately began searching for records of messages Yao Anyang had previously sent.
Generally speaking, there should be cached data somewhere.
The problem was how to find that cache or archive as quickly as possible. That was the most important part, because it would contain records of Yao Anyang's previous replies and allow Yu Lanfeng to quickly determine the correct way to respond.
Fortunately, Yao Anyang had probably been overly confident that no one would ever trespass into this place.
Many documents that would have been absolutely classified anywhere else were left completely exposed here. Anyone who managed to enter could basically examine them freely.
That made Yu Lanfeng's investigation much easier.
It took him ten minutes to find records showing how Yao Anyang had replied to previous messages.
He discovered that every reply consisted of nothing but a single number.
The first time, Yao Anyang had replied with 1.
The second time, he had replied with 3.
From the third time all the way through the most recent exchange, every reply had been 8.
What did these numbers mean?
Yu Lanfeng began tracing their conversation records backward, all the way to the earliest exchanges between Yao Anyang and the Bai family, around the time this laboratory had first been established.
Sure enough, they had originally communicated using ordinary text. Later, however, the two sides had discussed the matter and established several codes.
The number 1 meant that there was temporarily no time and a reply would come within one day.
The number 3 meant to postpone the timing.
The number 8 meant there was no problem.
Yu Lanfeng thought for a moment, then replied to Bai Cheng'an with the number 8, indicating that everything was completely fine.
Sure enough, Bai Cheng'an's side showed that the message had been received.
Yu Lanfeng then noticed that after his sent message was destroyed, a notification appeared informing him that the message had been destroyed.
It seemed the Bai family hadn't become suspicious of anything on this end.
In that case, they could afford to delay things a little longer.
First, Yu Lanfeng still needed to deal with every spy in this military base. After that, he could consider how to handle the Bai family.
Working methodically but extremely quickly, Yu Lanfeng collected all of the information in the laboratory and then destroyed all the data stored there.
He already had a complete copy of everything, so there was no reason to leave another copy here.
Besides, once they left, Yu Lanfeng intended to burn the entire laboratory to the ground without leaving a single trace behind.
He stood up and went to find Nan Yu.
In fact, Nan Yu wasn't far away. Yu Lanfeng only needed to walk a short distance before spotting him.
Nan Yu saw him approaching and waved.
"I found a place with a gap in it. It should be hollow underneath, but I tried just now and couldn't open it. Come over and give it a try. You should be able to open it..."
Yu Lanfeng walked over and pressed his palm directly against the floor.
Flames erupted from where his palm touched the ground, and moments later, the entire section was burned through.
Nan Yu looked at the newly opened hole.
It was fairly wide, more than enough for one person to descend comfortably, but it would be rather cramped if two people tried going down together.
Yu Lanfeng said, "Wait for me up here. I'll go down and take a look. Remember not to touch anything around the area I burned. It's still very hot."
As soon as he finished speaking, he jumped straight down and disappeared from sight.
It took Nan Yu a moment to recover.
So what exactly was that supposed to mean?
Was Yu Lanfeng deliberately keeping him from going down because there might be danger below?
But did he really think that leaving Nan Yu alone up here meant nothing could possibly happen to him?
Unwilling to give up, Nan Yu craned his neck and peered down, but he couldn't see anything.
He had no intention of jumping down on his own.
Yu Lanfeng had more than enough strength to handle a fall like that, but if Nan Yu jumped down and Yu Lanfeng wasn't waiting below to catch him, he might break several bones the instant he landed—or even lose half his life.
Since he couldn't go down, he might as well continue searching.
This laboratory was more than a thousand square meters in size, and he hadn't even searched one-tenth of it yet. There was still roughly three-quarters of the place waiting for him to explore!
Following the same route as before, Nan Yu carefully searched little by little for any cracks that couldn't be detected with the naked eye.
For a laboratory built inside a mountain, cracks like these shouldn't exist at all.
Once he found one, it meant there was definitely something wrong!
As for exactly what was hidden inside, he would have to wait until Yu Lanfeng came back before finding out.
After nearly two hours, Nan Yu finally finished searching the entire place.
He had also discovered another relatively small gap, and this one was quite short.
From the four seams surrounding it, he could tell that if it could be opened, there should be something like a cabinet inside. The space itself should also be relatively small, so it probably wasn't a passageway.
But whatever was inside had to be extremely important.
At the very least, it had to be more important than the classified documents and experimental data openly left outside.
Nan Yu had no idea what it was, and he was already itching to open it.
However, he also felt that it might be dangerous, so it would be better to wait until Yu Lanfeng returned.
The problem was that Yu Lanfeng had already been gone for two hours. If Nan Yu continued waiting, who knew how much longer it would take?
Nan Yu hesitated.
Logically speaking, this was only a relatively small "door," about the size of a cabinet. It shouldn't be much of a problem for him.
He should be able to open it using his Mental Power alone.
Whether he actually could was another matter.
Nan Yu thought about it for a long time before finally deciding to give it a try.
He released his Mental Power. Aside from the portion he reserved for ordinary consumption and emergencies, he concentrated all of his remaining Mental Power over this spot.
Logically, it shouldn't take him much time to open it.
But no matter how much force he exerted with his Mental Power, he couldn't widen the gap at all. Ideally, he wanted to open it enough to see what was inside, but no matter how hard he tried, the door stubbornly refused to react.
Fine!
Now Nan Yu really refused to believe he couldn't do it.
Normally, he definitely would have given up and waited for Yu Lanfeng to return. But for some reason, he simply couldn't stop himself this time.
He was determined to open this place himself.
He wanted to see exactly what the hell was hidden inside!
Nan Yu continuously exerted his Mental Power, trying to force the compartment open.
Perhaps his efforts finally paid off, because the door really did move slightly.
His eyes lit up, and he immediately redoubled his efforts, widening the gap until the door shifted outward far enough for him to grip its edge with both hands.
He slowly pulled the door open and moved it aside.
Only then did he finally see what was inside.
There was only a single device in the cabinet-sized space.
And Nan Yu was extremely familiar with it.
It was a device used to store the Mental Power of Mental Power Users.
He had used devices like this many times before.
It was rather sudden and unexpected. He hadn't thought that something hidden so carefully would turn out to be this.
Of course, if there wasn't any Mental Power inside, there would be no reason to hide it here.
So let him take a guess.
Whose Mental Power was stored inside this device?
Nan Yu carefully picked it up and examined it.
He discovered that it was filled to the brim with Mental Power.
There was so much of it that he instinctively stopped his own Mental Power from probing inside. If he invaded it and created an opening, the enormous amount of Mental Power compressed inside might come pouring out.
If that happened, everyone within a large area around this place would be attacked by that Mental Power.
Nan Yu was somewhat surprised.
He hadn't expected Yao Anyang to be capable of something like this.
Even Nan Yu himself would find it extremely troublesome to cram this much Mental Power into a single device, much less Yao Anyang, who was an Ability User.
But as an Ability User, Yao Anyang definitely couldn't have done it himself.
Which meant someone had helped him.
Who?
Shuang Qingyue?
But Shuang Qingyue's Mental Power level...
The moment Nan Yu's thoughts reached this point, cold sweat instantly broke out across his body.
If what he had just thought of was true, then the military base might already have...
He needed to confirm the situation at the military base immediately!
Nan Yu took out his terminal and directly called Yuan Qiyi.
It took nearly two minutes before the call was finally connected.
Nan Yu said, "General Yuan Qiyi, were you busy just now?"
Why had it taken him so long to answer?
For a moment, Nan Yu had thought something had already happened at the military base.
Yuan Qiyi looked perfectly calm on the other side of the call, and there was even a certain gentleness in his expression. He really did look like an elegant young gentleman.
Hopefully, he wouldn't disappoint Yu Lanfeng in the future.
"Two people came to report their work to me just now, so I was delayed for a little while. Is there something you need from me?"
Nan Yu didn't waste any words. "I need to ask you something. Where is Shuang Qingyue right now?"
Yuan Qiyi froze slightly, looking somewhat puzzled.
"He's currently locked in his original cell. No one has touched him at all. Don't worry, we won't use any private punishment against him."
Nan Yu breathed a sigh of relief.
Only after confirming Shuang Qingyue's situation could he think about everything else.
"Good. Keep a close eye on Yao Anyang's and Shuang Qingyue's cells. If anything happens, remember to contact me immediately. We'll rush back at once!"
Yuan Qiyi said, "All right, no problem."
Nan Yu then ended the call.
Yuan Qiyi put away his terminal after the call disconnected, then looked toward the person standing in front of his desk.
"If there's anything else, continue your report. Tell everyone not to approach those cells. Just monitor them through the surveillance system. The moment anything unusual happens, report it to me immediately."
"Yes, General!"
Nan Yu toyed with the small device in his hand, then slowly murmured, "Who the hell made this thing? If someone can actually do this, their Mental Power would have to be at least comparable to mine."
To completely fill such a small device, judging by the amount of Mental Power Nan Yu possessed, he would have to do it in two separate sessions, injecting two-thirds of his Mental Power at his peak each time.
Which meant the Mental Power inside this device...
It wasn't as simple as merely pouring Mental Power into it.
The Mental Power User doing the injection also needed to possess sufficiently powerful Mental Power. Otherwise, once too much Mental Power accumulated inside and the pressure became too great, an ordinary Mental Power User simply wouldn't be capable of forcing any more Mental Power into it.
So how exactly had Yao Anyang managed to obtain this?
Or perhaps it didn't belong to him at all and had been given to him by someone else?
If someone had given something like this to Yao Anyang, then the most likely source was that organization.
But what use would this thing have to Yao Anyang?
What exactly was it supposed to be used for...
Nan Yu racked his brains but couldn't figure it out, so he simply stopped thinking about it.
He walked back to the hole and sat beside it, waiting for Yu Lanfeng to return.
But even after waiting there for more than half an hour, there was still no sign of Yu Lanfeng.
Nan Yu couldn't hear so much as a sound from below.
Gradually, he started getting bored.
He took out the small device he'd just found and began fiddling with it again.
Then he fiddled with it some more.
He was curious.
He was really, really curious.
He desperately wanted to take just a tiny peek at the Mental Power inside, but right now, this thing was something he absolutely couldn't touch recklessly.
It was like putting a mountain of delicious food in front of someone who was starving and then forbidding him from eating any of it.
It was absolute torture.