Chapter 1551: An Encrypted Message
He struck too hard, and the old man died on the spot, which stirred up anger among some government personnel. But they were no different from the old man who had been killed. Annoyed by their uncooperativeness, the tattooed player killed several more people in succession. His fierce and violent gaze was terrifying!
"Don't make it too ugly," said another man dressed in a refined manner, taking off his glasses and slowly wiping them. "Do you want to be sent off to carry corpses again?"
The tattooed man and the scarred man reluctantly stopped and sat down to the side.
The scene fell silent for a moment. The man who had put his glasses back on finally had time to ask about the situation in the command room.
Inside the command room, the personnel responsible for the actual operations were still government employees from the capital. Sifting through the massive amount of true and false information to find something useful was no easy task. So from the very beginning, a large number of players had crowded together waiting, and now most of them had gone out for some air. The spacious command room now had only a few players left, and that was only because each faction had to keep one or two people monitoring the messages in real time.
The long wait had worn down the players' patience, not to mention that much of the data was encrypted. After being sent to the command room, it had to be decoded. The repetitive and voluminous numbers were dizzying, and for those who didn't have some knowledge in this area, it was like reading an astronomical chart. Compared to staring at the big screen, it was more convenient and faster to check messages on their phones.
Of course, none of the actions in the command room could escape their notice.
"Send this message through an encrypted channel," a man said, walking up to the decoder and placing a piece of paper beside him.
After the players occupied the operations base, they only demanded that the staff collect and search for information, never asking them to do anything else. The decoder glanced at the content on the paper, looked up in shock, but found that the person standing beside him was a face he had never seen before. Seeing that the surrounding players weren't paying attention to this side, the decoder had no choice but to follow the man's instructions and start typing. However, just as he was about to finish, a voice suddenly sounded in his ear, "Don't make any mistakes."
The decoder shuddered all over and dared not pull any tricks. He faithfully encrypted the information exactly as written on the paper and then sent it out.
At this point, almost all the government information terminals in the various countries of Zone 017 had been occupied by players. Among the players were many highly intelligent individuals, not to mention the technology from other advanced zones. Breaking the existing encrypted channels was not a difficult task. So, across the entire zone, all countries were essentially like sieves—no different. Although this message, nominally sent to the various safe zones within the country, had been encrypted layer by layer, once sent out, it would quickly be intercepted and spread by other countries, making it effectively public.
"Can I ask a question?" the decoder whispered.
"Go ahead," the man's voice seemed somewhat ethereal.
"Has the Super Item really been found?" the decoder looked up.
"No," said the man, who was Xu Huo. Contrary to Jin Zi's speculation, he had come to the capital safe zone only to disseminate this one message. He didn't need authorization from the high-level government at all; he just needed a suitable government employee.
The only difficulty was that there were too many players from other zones in the operations base. Besides using the players outside to attract attention, he had also waited for a while before entering the command room.
At that moment, a player who had looked up from the game saw the decoder stop working and immediately frowned. He was about to shout a reprimand when he suddenly seemed to notice that there was another person standing beside him. He had only intended to glance over casually, but after his gaze swept past, he jerked it back sharply.
That player stood up and barked, "Who are you?"
This shout alarmed the other players in the command room. They all stood up, their eyes darting around the room, and quickly asked, "What's going on?"
"Didn't you see there's an extra person?" said the player who had first noticed something wrong.
Xu Huo, being such a large person, couldn't have walked over to the decoder without anyone noticing. It was just that no one had paid attention. Even now, when someone had pointed out the anomaly, some players still thought there was no problem. But when their focus finally settled on Xu Huo's face, they realized: they had never seen this face before!
Xu Huo glanced at the time. The three-minute time limit for the trait "Plausible Existence" hadn't passed yet. Although he had been discovered early, the task was already done. He tapped the watch on his wrist and said to the people who were ready to make a move, "Listen."
Listen to what?
Tap, tap, tap!
He tapped his watch three times, and the next moment, a huge explosion sounded from outside. The immense shockwave caused the underground command room to shake violently. Along with the clatter of small items like cups and documents falling, all the computers in the room went black, and the system was completely paralyzed.
"He has accomplices! Catch him, don't let him—" The player who had first spotted Xu Huo was the first to pull his attention back from the explosion, but before he could finish his sentence, he found that the person standing beside the decoder had disappeared.
Before they could search for him, they suddenly heard sounds of fighting from upstairs. A group of players rushed out of the command room in a flurry, but when they got upstairs, they found that there was no actual battle outside. It was just some players going out to check on the explosion.
"Not good!" A player reacted and immediately charged back into the command room, followed by the tattooed man and some other players.
Unfortunately, the command room was already empty.
"What's going on? Where are the people!" the tattooed man grabbed the person beside him and demanded.
That player waved his hand to push him away, equally furious, "You're asking me? I want to ask you! Weren't you guarding the outside? How did that person get in?"
"What person got in?" the tattooed man was enraged. "I'm asking you, where did all the people in the command room go!"
"How should I know?!"
"You were in the command room, and you don't know where they went? Are your eyes just for show?"
"How dare you say that! You were guarding the ground floor and you let an outsider in, and he took away everyone in the command room... Could it be that you were in cahoots with him?"
"Bullshit!"
The two of them argued back and forth without getting to the point. Other players were also suspicious and wary of each other, unable to communicate properly, until the glasses-wearing man, who hadn't gone far, returned to the command room.
A minute later, the glasses-wearing man had sorted out the sequence of events. "Are you saying that someone broke through the external defense barrier and entered the command room directly?"
The command room was built underground, just a small part of this underground complex. The players had checked it in advance; the room was reinforced with special metal, making it very difficult to get through without making any sound. This was originally a countermeasure devised by the government after evolution began in Zone 017. Coupled with the fact that it was underground, they had naturally assumed that as long as they sealed off the above-ground building, there would be no problem. Who would have thought that someone could enter the command room from underground?
The underground was a blind spot for most players. Many items couldn't directly penetrate the ground to affect the underground space. The glasses-wearing man's speculation was hard for the others to accept. "There are no obvious signs of damage in the entire underground complex. With such thick metal walls, could he have just walked through them?"
(End of Chapter)