Book 3, Chapter 150: Hidden Player

It was the middle of October. Since Chen Chuan was at Motie Mountain, he didn’t call his family, for safety’s sake. Instead, he asked Gao Ming to send them a telegram.

During that period of time, he took another two doses of the special medicine. At the same time, he kept accumulating blood essence and building his mental foundation every day. With no enemies attacking them, this was the same as isolated training.

Aside from the defensive tasks he had to be part of, he just focused on training. It was an enjoyable time, since he could clearly feel himself getting stronger every time after taking the special medicine.

Over the past few days, the Meng family and the company had been acting as real eyesores, but Yan Yi ignored them all, believing that they were simply trying to put pressure on Meng Shu and make her lose her composure. It meant that Meng Huang was getting anxious, so they absolutely couldn’t lose their cool at this point in time.

Chen Chuan had also been getting constant updates from the Resolution Department, and he could tell that Meng Huang’s side was being really cautious. The Resolution Department had recently detected lots of movement from Ferris Wheel, and a lot of their attention was diverted to them. From this, it was clear that Meng Huang’s side was about to attack, so he had been paying extra attention to his surroundings.

Just then, he heard an alarm outside, followed by urgent footsteps. All the security guards in the manor rushed to their positions.

Meng Shu’s group had been doing repeated drills of the defense measures provided by the Resolution Department. Sometimes, Chen Chuan would join them when he wasn’t training so that the security guards would get an objective view of a Third Limit martial artist’s threat level.

However, one-third of them were gone now, and they could no longer cover the whole area. All they could do was deploy bioweapons to those places while the security guards focused on defending the main manor. Their goal wasn’t to kill all the enemies but to protect themselves and stop their enemy attack.

While they were performing the drill, a truck drove up the mountain. Since there were many people in the manor, they had to purchase lots of food and daily necessities every month. For safety’s sake, they bought everything through Motie Mountain’s proxy company.

A small airship flew over. Whenever an unregistered vehicle passed by Motie Mountain, the airships would come over to observe them. They paid even more attention to such vehicles when they got close to manors that had upgraded their security level, like Meng Shu’s.

The truck stopped in front of the manor, and the people inside started unloading.

In the front passenger’s seat sat the tall man wearing a staff uniform. Through the one-sided mirror, he observed the manor, only to find that every part of it was covered by either a fence or something else. Further away, there were trees hiding the manor. He couldn’t see much from within the truck.

After the staff finished unloading the truck, they shut the door and left while the security guards watched them go.

The tall man kept his eyes on the road while the driver drove. “We received news. The manor has been frequently performing drills over the past few days, and their security is tight. They also did something strange last month. They brought a criminal inside, though we haven’t figured out why. I think they handed him to Chen Chuan.”

“A criminal.”

The tall man’s face twisted into a strange expression. Why would they bring a criminal into the manor at this point in time? Suddenly, he thought of a possibility, but he soon dismissed the thought. He was overthinking it. If they handed the criminal to Chen Chuan, he had to have asked for him for training purposes or to vent.

This was a logical deduction, because Third Limit martial artists were all a little crazy in the head, especially those training with special medicine. Many of them even had unique... habits. The Third Limit martial artists in their group were like that, so he believed that Chen Chuan was no exception.

***

Meanwhile, a staff member tasked to check the food and daily necessities found that there were no problems with the goods, and he called for people to bring it all inside.

Chen Chuan walked over and cast a glance at the stuff. “Wait a bit. Open up the boxes and let me take a look.”

The security guards immediately stepped back and ducked behind something for cover. Then, they sent two people over to open the boxes together with a staff member tasked with transporting the goods into the manor. The poor staff member’s face was completely drained of color.

Once Yan Yi noticed the commotion, she took an internal electric cart to come down and boldly approached the boxes. She inspected them for a bit before asking, “Is there a problem with them, Mr. Chen?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t advise any of you eating or using this batch of stuff,” Chen Chuan said.

He had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Still, he was willing to trust his gut.

Yan Yi, too, trusted his judgment and had Motie Mountain’s proxy company send another batch of food and daily necessities. “What should we do about these things, Mr. Chen?”

“One second,” Chen Chuan said and went to a quiet place to contact Wu Bei.

“Wu Bei, can you set up a two-person platform?”

“It requires a resonator platform and some unique biosentient entities. I have some with me, but you can only use it for a maximum of five minutes,” Wu Bei answered.

“Five minutes is enough,” Chen Chuan said.

“One moment.”

Chen Chuan really did wait for only a moment before Wu Bei sent word back. “It’s done. Who do you want to call?”

Chen Chuan immediately sent him the name of the person and an address. “It’s this person. Could you set up a connection between us?”

“Sure,” Wu Bei promised after taking a look.

He started fiddling with the controls, and after a while, he sent the login password to the temporary platform. “It’s done. You can call him now.”

Chen Chuan logged in and contacted the person, who quickly answered. After exchanging a greeting, Chen Chuan said, “I’d like to know something. Here’s what’s happening on my end.”

After he told the person about what he wanted to know, the person didn’t disappoint and immediately gave him an answer. Chen Chuan then said, “I might need to ask a few more questions about this. If I need any more answers, can I contact you via telegram?”

The person gave the okay. Once they settled on a telegram frequency, they ended the call.

Wu Bei had sent an audio message during the conversation. “Chen Chuan, I couldn’t tell you just now, but I intercepted a message from the manor when the truck came in. The same frequency had popped up when they came to deliver food and daily necessities last month. While I can’t decipher the contents, I’m sure that it came from within the manor.”

“Got it,” Chen Chuan said.

He went back and said to Yan Yi, “Just bury these things.”

Before Yan Yi could even give the order, the staff members and security guards set out to move the items to the side.

Yan Yi could sense the respect they had for Chen Chuan, and she was glad to see it. After all, only a strong leader could convince an entire group of people to listen to him when danger came knocking.

***

After the truck left Motie Mountain, the tall man learned that the manor had asked for another batch of food and daily necessities. The news surprised him. “Well, aren’t they cautious?”

They had indeed tampered with the batch of food and daily necessities, but the people inside the mountain shouldn’t have been able to detect anything wrong with the goods. Their plan had been to use something else to activate the

thing

inside the goods while they attacked the manor, thus launching a pincer attack.

One of the people involved in the plan asked, “Should we set things up again?”

The tall man dismissed it. “Forget it.”

Those things cost a ton of money, and if the people inside could identify them once, they could do it again. They would just be wasting their money by trying again, so the tall man just gave up on the plan altogether.

After telling everyone that the plan was off, he contacted his team. Once the call went through, he said, “Boss, that Chen Chuan is not as he seems. He has really keen senses. We were right to suspect that he’s pretty skilled with domain techniques. He’s very sensitive toward foreign objects and things that don’t fit his surroundings.

“With him willing to keep an eye out, it’s practically impossible for us to do anything to their food and daily necessities. I don’t suggest spending any more time on this plan.

“Anyway, the client is asking us to get a move on. I’ve already finished with the set-up.

“Should we do it?

“Alright. I’ll come over right now.”

***

While they waited for the security guards to bury the goods, Chen Chuan said to Yan Yi, “At least one of your three resonators is a mole.”

Yan Yi wasn’t too surprised by the news and just said in slight regret, “Skilled resonators are hard to come by. Losing one is a huge loss.”

“Do you have a way to find them, Miss Yan?” Chen Chuan asked.

“I’ll handle it. By the way, an update: The stuff and people you asked to be sent here this month have arrived. They’re at your villa,” Yan Yi said.

Even though she didn’t know why Chen Chuan asked for a criminal every month, she didn’t ask any questions, since he didn’t say anything about it.

After the food and daily necessities were buried, Chen Chuan went back to his villa and found a person lying at the door. Beside him was a package.

He scanned the person with his Realm Pass and found more than ten crimes attached to his name. Once he was sure that the person was indeed a criminal, Chen Chuan brought him into the villa.

The person had been injected with a tranquilizer and asleep, but Chen Chuan didn’t need him to be awake. He dragged the person and the package into the living room and set him down before taking the raccoon stone tablet from his pocket and tossing it on the person.

In an instant, the criminal started spasming violently. After around ten minutes, he stopped moving and was reduced to a mere skin bag.

Chen Chuan then bent down and picked up the stone tablet. While he was confident, he preferred to be careful, so if he could use external weapons against the enemy, he would.

He was sure that Meng Huang wasn’t going to send just one person to attack the manor. With the raccoon, he could get rid of one of their fighters. Even if it couldn’t kill the enemy, it would injure them so heavily that they wouldn’t be able to continue the fight.

As for the package...

He went over and opened it.

It was full of ritual materials Qi Gao had bought for him.