Chapter 189: The Bai Family
Nan Yu really would keep his promise, but whether Yu Lanfeng would accept his recommendation was outside the scope of that promise. Shuang Qingyue's desire to survive was simply so strong right now that he had forgotten this point.
After obtaining the answer, Nan Yu quickly went to the other cell to find Yu Lanfeng. However, when he tried to open the door, he discovered that it had been locked from the inside.
Locking it from the inside meant that Yu Lanfeng did not want him casually entering before he came out himself. In other words, Yu Lanfeng was currently handling something important and could not be disturbed.
Although Nan Yu was somewhat surprised, he obediently waited outside.
He was impatient to tell Yu Lanfeng the good news. He just did not know whether Yu Lanfeng would manage to get anything out of Yao Anyang. After all, there was a considerable difference between the general area Shuang Qingyue knew and the exact location Yao Anyang knew.
Hopefully, Yu Lanfeng would succeed.
If he did not want Nan Yu casually entering right now, could he perhaps be carrying out some bloody torture inside?
Even now, Nan Yu probably had not realized that Yu Lanfeng genuinely intended to torture Yao Anyang to death. He had even already decided how to handle everything afterward. In any case, they still had Shuang Qingyue, along with all kinds of surveillance footage and other evidence. Taken together, they had both witness testimony and physical evidence.
Moreover, once Yao Anyang was dead, there would be no one to contradict their testimony. Even if there were minor inaccuracies in what they said, as long as the overall situation was roughly correct, no one would keep clinging to those details or cause trouble for Yu Lanfeng over them.
And just as Yao Anyang had said, no one else knew about this matter so far. As long as they destroyed everything, it would not matter even if they never reported the incident.
As for the infiltrator soldiers they had previously killed at the military base, although those people possessed Imperial identity records, all of them were false. Yu Lanfeng only needed to upload the false identity information to the Imperial Family. Once the review was approved, he could execute them however he wished.
After all, the Empire was extremely strict when dealing with spies from other nations or internal traitors. Once discovered, they could simply be killed. There was no need to go through layer upon layer of approval.
After the evidence and information were submitted, the Empire's central AI handled the review on behalf of the Imperial Family, and its processing speed was second to none. The review of nearly twenty thousand people had been approved in less than an hour, with every single case passing verification.
The central AI had an enormous amount of information to process every second, but it prioritized military-related espionage reviews.
Moreover, reviewing this information was quite simple. It only needed to connect to the Empire's enormous and highly classified database, compare the records, and obtain the result. If there was no corresponding information at all, then the identity was false and entirely fabricated. If matching information existed but the records had been altered, the process was even faster.
So receiving the results for twenty thousand reviews within an hour was already extremely fast.
Nan Yu continued waiting outside.
He checked the time.
More than forty minutes had passed since he arrived here to wait.
Why had Yu Lanfeng still not come out?
Although Nan Yu was puzzled, he had no intention of knocking on the door and disturbing the people inside. After thinking about it for a while, he sat down on a nearby chair to wait.
But after he sat down, a squad approached from the distance.
They appeared to be patrolling soldiers.
Nan Yu looked at them twice before withdrawing his gaze. Having soldiers patrol this area was perfectly normal, so he did not think much of it.
But when they came within twenty or thirty meters, Nan Yu suddenly felt that something was wrong!
The chair he was sitting on was off to one side. Under normal circumstances, a patrol would not come this way, yet they were heading directly toward him.
Had they come to ask him something?
Or had they simply changed their patrol route?
But that would be completely unnecessary.
It was like someone standing inside a room who could reach the door in only a few steps, yet insisted on walking around the bed, circling the entire room, and only then going out.
More importantly, judging by their original patrol route, following the normal path would not only be faster, it would also allow them to see every part of the surrounding area clearly.
There was absolutely no reason to make this detour.
So their target was him.
Yet Nan Yu had not noticed any of them looking at him. Everything appeared perfectly reasonable, as though he were simply being overly sensitive and imagining things.
Still, just in case, Nan Yu immediately released his mental power and formed a mental power barrier around himself for protection.
Of course, this mental power barrier could only block mental power and attacks directed at his mental space. If they physically attacked him, Nan Yu might not even have an opportunity to fight back.
Nan Yu took a deep breath.
He wanted to get up and leave, but sure enough, the people behind him immediately followed.
Nan Yu knew that the safest place right now was the cell where Yu Lanfeng was, so he simply got up and quickly headed in that direction.
The people behind him finally revealed their true intentions.
One after another, they pulled various weapons from beneath their clothes and chased Nan Yu toward the cell where Yu Lanfeng was.
From the way they behaved, Nan Yu immediately knew they had to be a suicide squad.
They did not care about their own lives at all.
If they completed their mission, they could immediately kill themselves. If they failed, they would still choose to commit suicide at once.
In other words, before accepting this mission, they had already known that they would inevitably die, regardless of whether they succeeded or failed.
More importantly, Yu Lanfeng was usually nearby.
Most of the time, Nan Yu and Yu Lanfeng acted together. Even when they were separated, Nan Yu was normally surrounded by many other people.
There had never been any opportunity to strike before.
They had joined the legion and endured for so long, and now they had finally encountered an ideal opportunity.
Nan Yu was sitting outside alone.
Yu Lanfeng was nowhere to be seen.
He must have gone somewhere else to handle something.
This was their chance.
None of them intended to let it slip away. Following their leader's order, they chased after Nan Yu to kill him.
However, just as Nan Yu reached the cell door and was about to knock, the people behind him suddenly froze where they stood.
The reason was very simple.
The door opened from the inside.
And the person who appeared in the doorway was none other than their Marshal, Yu Lanfeng.
The instant he opened the door, Yu Lanfeng noticed the wound on Nan Yu's body.
Nan Yu had accidentally been grazed while dodging just now.
A moment earlier, Nan Yu had almost used his mental power directly to destroy their Mental Seas, turn them into idiots, and then kill them.
Nan Yu suddenly found the current situation rather amusing.
Everyone stood completely still.
Nan Yu did not move because he was finally reassured.
Yu Lanfeng did not move because he was coldly staring at the people who had just been trying to kill Nan Yu.
As for those people disguised as soldiers who had been pursuing Nan Yu, they did not dare move at all.
It was not that they did not want to.
Under the pressure radiating from the furious Yu Lanfeng, they could barely move a muscle.
Fortunately for them, the leader who had issued the order recovered first.
"Run!"
He immediately turned and fled.
The others snapped back to their senses and scattered in different directions.
But would that help?
If the person standing here had been anyone other than Yu Lanfeng, at least half of them probably would have escaped.
But the person here was Yu Lanfeng.
His fire ability was not merely for show.
Nan Yu immediately looked at Yu Lanfeng but said nothing, because he knew Yu Lanfeng had his own plans.
Sure enough, just as those people were about to disappear around the corners, flames suddenly appeared in front of them, blocking their escape routes.
Everyone stopped where they were, not daring to approach the golden-red flames.
Perhaps because Yu Lanfeng was particularly furious today, his flames seemed even more brilliantly golden than usual.
They even felt hotter.
No one dared approach them despite the wall of fire being only a thin layer.
They had tried using other things against Yu Lanfeng's flames before.
Anyone who attempted to use their ability to pass through them, or simply tried to force their way through, ended up burned so completely that not even ashes remained.
So they stared cautiously at the wall of fire.
In the end, they remained where they were.
To them, touching Yu Lanfeng's flames meant instant death.
There was no chance whatsoever.
Of course, they were not afraid of dying. If they were, they would never have come here in the first place.
But now their deaths would accomplish nothing.
They had failed their mission, and they could neither escape nor hide and wait for another opportunity.
Now they could only die here.
Naturally, if they had a choice, they would not want to die like this.
But things were not that simple.
No...
Thinking about it, perhaps it really was that simple.
Yu Lanfeng only needed to kill them.
Since Yu Lanfeng's flames had trapped the assassins and prevented them from escaping, Nan Yu finally had the leisure to chat with him.
"Brother, did you get anything out of him in there? Did Yao Anyang confess everything?"
Yu Lanfeng nodded. "He told me everything, but perhaps because he was in too much pain, his account wasn't very complete. He's locked inside for now. Once we've dealt with the current situation, we'll go back to him."
Nan Yu said, "All right. But since you've already finished questioning him, does that mean this matter is basically settled?"
Yu Lanfeng said, "Mm. I know the general method now, and I also know who the person behind him is. That's going to cause us another problem."
Nan Yu said, "So we still have to keep him alive because he'll be useful later?"
Yu Lanfeng said, "Mm. We can't kill him yet. We'll keep him alive for now."
Whether Yao Anyang's current condition could really be considered "alive" was another question.
But if it could not, then there was nothing they could do about it.
Who told him to be a spy?
Moreover, he had caused such enormous losses to Yu Lanfeng's legion. Not skinning him alive already counted as mercy.
Hopefully, he would survive for a little longer.
That way, he could still prove useful later.
As for now, Yu Lanfeng only needed to burn to ashes every person who had dared attempt to assassinate his partner right under his nose.
There was no reason to waste time listening to their excuses or arguments.
The result was that within a single minute, every one of them was dead and reduced to ash.
Then, to keep the place clean, even the ashes themselves were burned away until nothing remained.
Once again, Nan Yu experienced Yu Lanfeng's flames from close range.
There truly was nothing to criticize.
They were an excellent tool for destroying corpses and eliminating evidence, extremely convenient in many situations.
Fire itself was already highly destructive, and Yu Lanfeng's flames were even more terrifying.
Once they touched you, there was basically no hope of survival.
Nan Yu said, "Brother, you just said you basically know everything now. What secret information did you get out of Yao Anyang? Share it with me."
Yu Lanfeng said, "Come somewhere with me first."
It would be better to get farther away, in case Nan Yu suddenly became curious and decided he wanted to go inside and see Yao Anyang's current condition.
Nan Yu did not suspect anything and followed Yu Lanfeng back to the office.
The former general of this military base had already been imprisoned and exposed as a spy, so naturally, a new general needed to be promoted to replace him.
If any of Yao Anyang's die-hard supporters refused to believe he was a spy, they only needed to show them part of the surveillance footage from earlier, where Yao Anyang had lost control in front of Yu Lanfeng and blurted everything out in one breath.
They would immediately give up on him.
They truly had been loyal to Yao Anyang, but that loyalty had a foundation.
It was built on the assumption that Yao Anyang was an Imperial citizen, a general who did everything for the Empire and their country.
But now?
Yao Anyang was a spy.
An utterly vile spy.
If they continued remaining loyal to someone like that, they might even be branded traitors themselves.
And what they found most intolerable was that they had followed such a man so devotedly for so many years.
They had truly been blind!
Yu Lanfeng was actually the person who suffered most from all of this.
After all, he had personally chosen and promoted Yao Anyang.
Yao Anyang's strength and military achievements had also genuinely been sufficient for his position, his status, and Yu Lanfeng's trust.
Yu Lanfeng simply never could have imagined that things would turn out like this.
The third person standing in the office with them now was someone Yu Lanfeng had carefully selected over the past two days.
His strength and military achievements surpassed Yao Anyang's by a considerable margin.
And there could be absolutely no problem with his identity, because he could technically be considered a member of the Imperial Family.
His Imperial bloodline was simply rather distant, so people rarely heard about him.
Yu Lanfeng said, "Starting today, you will officially take over this military base and serve as its general. I expect you to use your own methods to make every soldier here obey your orders and deployments."
"Especially now. There are enormous numbers of Ability Beasts outside, and they're all in a state of unrest. You must consolidate control over everyone here in the shortest possible time. Can you do that?"
Yuan Qiyi nodded. "Marshal, rest assured. I definitely won't have any problems."
When it came to Yao Anyang, although he appeared fairly decent on the surface, for some reason everyone had always felt a faint sense of rejection toward him.
Over time, people began gathering privately and discussing all the things that seemed wrong about Yao Anyang.
Eventually, it developed into complaints about this flaw and that flaw.
And in the end, it became:
Yao Anyang did not deserve to be a general at all.
He did not deserve to command them.
If the Marshal had not personally appointed him, they would never have listened to Yao Anyang!
Now that Yao Anyang had fallen from power, the people at this base could hardly have been happier.
Moreover, not a single person who genuinely supported the Empire had been lost.
Those who died had either been completely indifferent toward this military base or had always stood on the sidelines watching everything coldly.
Could people like that possibly have been any good?
For Yuan Qiyi, there had been no real loss at all.
In fact, even before Yao Anyang was removed, Yuan Qiyi had already become the base's unofficial leader.
Apart from official missions, where everyone followed Yao Anyang's arrangements on the surface, during the rest of the time they actually listened to Yuan Qiyi.
This became even more pronounced after they inadvertently learned about Yuan Qiyi's background.
Combined with his strength, his genuine military achievements, and his exceptional personal charisma, taking the position of general now was almost effortless for him.
Every soldier under him was happy for him as well.
At some point, people had already begun privately saying that it would be great if Yuan Qiyi became their general.
He had a legitimate background, strength, accomplishments, and excellent command ability.
Whenever Yuan Qiyi commanded a unit, its casualty rate was always the lowest.
Everyone envied the units under his command.
Even units personally commanded by General Yao Anyang suffered considerably more casualties than his.
If it had happened once or twice, no one would have thought much of it.
But when it happened every single time, everyone naturally assumed Yao Anyang simply lacked that kind of talent and was unwilling to learn, which was why he had remained like that all these years.
After Yuan Qiyi left, Nan Yu said, "Is he a relatively distant relative of Qiyang?"
Yu Lanfeng said, "You could say he is, or you could say he isn't, because the blood relationship really is quite distant. Yuan Qiyi's grandmother was a princess of the previous generation of the Imperial Family, but she was an unfavored princess. After she married, she had a child. The child took her surname and was also given a name following the naming convention of the legitimate Imperial Crown Prince. Later, when Yuan Qiyi was born, the same thing was done."
Strictly speaking, Yuan Qiyi no longer had much of a relationship with the Imperial Family.
It was simply that his name often caused people to mistake him for an Imperial Family member.
But everyone knew that the Imperial Family currently had only one Crown Prince, Yuan Qiyang.
Yuan Qiyi was more like a member of a distant collateral branch.
Nan Yu now had a general understanding of Yuan Qiyi's situation.
Then he returned to the main subject.
"Brother, what did you get out of Yao Anyang? It sounds like you managed to get most of it?"
Yu Lanfeng said, "Yes. I got everything out of him. Especially regarding the place he pretended was being used to train personnel. One of the laboratories there is the most secret of all. We've already confirmed its location. We need to go there as quickly as possible."
Nan Yu blinked.
Was Yu Lanfeng really that impressive?
He had actually extracted everything in such a short amount of time.
Didn't that mean the information Nan Yu had obtained from Shuang Qingyue earlier was useless?
Forget it.
If it was useless, there was no need to mention it.
The matter could already be resolved, and a new general had been selected for this military base. Once they dealt with this final issue, they could move on to the next military base.
Although they had known from the beginning that they would be delayed here for some time, neither of them had expected the delay to be this long.
It seemed the amount of time required to visit every military base would have to increase again.
Nan Yu wondered whether Jiang Youjian would still be able to make it to Bai Shanzhou's wedding.
They could probably just speed up the rest of their journey a little.
Yu Lanfeng took people with him and destroyed every laboratory Yao Anyang had revealed.
Some were hidden, while others operated openly.
There were basically no secrets inside the public laboratories, since too many people constantly entered and left them.
The hidden laboratories, however, contained much more.
Yu Lanfeng directly sealed many of the things they found and submitted them to the Imperial Family, since there was nothing he could use them for himself.
Moreover, the method of sacrificing numerous Mental Power Users to increase one person's mental power was utterly inhumane.
Especially from the perspective of Mental Power Users, it was unforgivable!
After receiving the report, the Empire directly ordered all related information destroyed.
They did not even preserve it as classified material.
Every piece of information was to be destroyed.
Yu Lanfeng was also ordered to destroy every copy on his end.
Naturally, Yu Lanfeng complied.
The Imperial Family's attitude could not have been clearer.
They did not want anything similar to happen in the future, nor did they want someone to discover this research later and attempt the same thing again.
That was exactly what Yu Lanfeng wanted to see as well.
So after receiving the order, he immediately destroyed everything they had collected.
They continued until every location Yao Anyang had revealed had been burned down and not a single thing remained.
After roughly two or three days of work, Yu Lanfeng finally announced that they were finished.
But then he saw Nan Yu frown.
"What's wrong?"
Nan Yu asked somewhat strangely, "Are these all the places Yao Anyang told you about?"
Yu Lanfeng said, "Why? Did we miss one?"
Nan Yu was not entirely certain either.
Then he told Yu Lanfeng about the location Shuang Qingyue had given him.
"We never went to that location. I kept assuming you were saving it for last, so I never mentioned it. But now that I think about it... Yao Anyang didn't tell you about it?"
Yu Lanfeng's expression immediately turned extremely ugly.
He knew that the place Nan Yu mentioned had to be the final location.
But how had Yao Anyang still managed to conceal it under those circumstances?
Yu Lanfeng did not want to waste time speculating.
What they needed to do now was find the soldiers who had previously guarded that area and question them.
Perhaps they would know a more precise location.
Finding those soldiers was actually very simple.
All they needed to do was ask.
Everyone now knew that Yao Anyang had been arrested for treason, and they hated him to the bone. As long as something involved Yao Anyang, even the faintest memory was enough for them to recall it.
So in only about half an hour, every soldier whom Yao Anyang had ever taken to that area to serve as a guard or patrol nearby had gathered.
Not a single one was missing.
They voluntarily stood in the positions where they had previously been assigned to guard.
Those who had served as mobile patrols retraced the routes they used to follow.
This made finding the location considerably easier for Nan Yu and the others.
Although Yao Anyang had brought these soldiers here, he naturally would never have allowed them to learn or see where the laboratory entrance actually was.
So they only needed to search within the area surrounded by all the soldiers, specifically in places outside their lines of sight.
With their assistance, the search area became much smaller.
Nan Yu had his mental power to help him, so he searched very quickly.
He released his mental power and spread a thin layer of it across the ground.
Any crack or place resembling a door would immediately be detected.
He walked back and forth throughout the enclosed area.
Perhaps his luck was good.
After searching with his mental power for less than an hour, he found the entrance.
"Brother, come over here! I found the entrance!"
The entrance was extremely well concealed, surrounded by enormous boulders that blocked it from view.
Someone could walk straight past and still fail to notice anything there.
Nan Yu had to admit that Yao Anyang truly knew how to choose his hiding places.
The two of them stood a short distance away.
Before Yu Lanfeng made his move, he suddenly said, "By the way, Xiaoyu, there's something I forgot to tell you. Your previous kidnapping, as well as several other incidents... actually..."
"The Bai family had a hand in them."
Obviously, this was something Yu Lanfeng had extracted from Yao Anyang.