Chapter 2087: The Most Popular Man
The crowd didn't know if the "borrow" he mentioned meant what they understood it to mean, but they still followed the original plan and acted separately.
Xu Huo, Meng Wenguang, and Feng Hui were heading to the Little Star Company located on 16th Street. In terms of street count, it was one street less than the 6th Street where the City Hall was located. However, the Time Tower was positioned directly above Pumpkin City, close to the city's edge. In a straight line, because Little Star Company was slightly lower on the map, the arrival times for both sides should be roughly the same.
Space Teleportation Items were restricted, so they chose to travel across the tops of buildings. But after passing through the 13th and 14th Streets, Xu Huo suddenly stopped on a building and asked the other two, "Do you feel anything?"
"What kind of feeling?" Feng Hui didn't understand.
"That tingling sensation every time we cross a street." The first time, Xu Huo thought he might have been mistaken, but by the 14th Street, he confirmed that passing through gave his entire body a feeling of being brushed by tiny electric currents. This was somewhat different from passing through a barrier; it didn't feel like entering a different space, but rather a subtle sense of passing time.
He subconsciously checked the time twice, but the timing tool showed no significant change compared to before.
"Tingling sensation?" Meng Wenguang seriously used an instrument to check the surroundings. "No change."
Xu Huo didn't say much more. He also didn't detect any traces of other players nearby. Considering that this might involve Time Power, it could be something else giving him that feeling, but now wasn't the time to investigate.
The three of them tried to conceal their tracks as much as possible and arrived at 16th Street in the shortest time. During the journey, they attempted to contact Wang Ling and the others every time they crossed a street, but they couldn't always get through. The signal was also intermittent, which should be the effect of the signal poles the shop assistant had mentioned earlier. By the time they reached the main Little Star Company building, the communicator was completely out of reach.
It was now lunchtime. Most of the staff working at Little Star Company had gone out to eat. From the conversations of passing employees, the company's lunch break lasted from 11:40 AM to 2:40 PM, which was very generous, so most people chose to eat out rather than at the company cafeteria.
As the technological frontier of Pumpkin City, Little Star Company had two large projection screens in front of its entrance. One screen updated the company's recent technological achievements, while the other displayed some major internal personnel changes and cooperative promotions with other companies.
Leaving the technological achievements aside for now, Meng Wenguang pointed at a promotional photo scrolling across the other screen. "Am I seeing things? The person in the middle looks familiar."
Not just a little familiar—very familiar. Even if they had never seen the real person, all players, plus most ordinary people, had observed this face in detail more than once. Because he was the so-called "Most Popular Man," the chairman of the Stellar Group. Of course, in the introduction below this photo, this person's identity wasn't the chairman of Little Star Company, but one of the capital-investing bosses. Standing alongside him was the boss of Liming Company, the two shaking hands. On either side of them stood four other people, unnamed. However, the following description mentioned that due to Little Star Company's technology-investing boss, "Dr. Wu," overcoming a space-covered signal jammer, the two companies had decided to cooperate in developing an inductive city defense barrier.
Xu Huo took out a White Note, held it up, and aligned it with the person in the photo. Although the head on the White Note had a slight variation, the two were indeed very similar.
Feng Hui also compared it with a White Note and said in shock, "We haven't stumbled upon the Stellar Group's rise to power by accident, have we?"
Xu Huo and Meng Wenguang's expressions weren't good. Regardless of who created this space, daring to drag out the chairman of the Stellar Group meant that this place was hard to enter and even harder to leave. No wonder so many players had gone missing in District 011 without anyone ever revealing the inside story here. As long as a player saw the face of the Little Star Group boss, they wouldn't take it lightly. The fact that no information had leaked out so far indicated that the vast majority of players who entered had already met with misfortune.
After lingering at the entrance for a while, the three disguised themselves as staff and entered the company. Before they arrived, their only clue was the "home invasion case." After arriving, they automatically gained the "Stellar Group Chairman" and "Dr. Wu." Of course, whether this "Dr. Wu" matched "Dr. Wu" was still unclear.
After entering the company, the three split up. Meng Wenguang and Feng Hui went to investigate personnel changes and financial transactions, while Xu Huo went to screen information related to the "home invasion case."
The latter was originally like looking for a needle in a haystack, but after Xu Huo arrived at the main control room, he realized that Little Star Company's intelligent data analysis was already very advanced. For the "home invasion case" alone, they had not only marked the location and time but also, based on existing criminal science, inferred three types of possible criminal groups. Furthermore, they had screened personnel based on the online activity times of these three groups, combined with detailed investigation records obtained from the City Hall and some subtle inferences from local residents, and rigorously and fairly identified five criminals.
Home invasion cases had a high degree of randomness. Sometimes, criminals didn't choose a specific person for long-term surveillance but selected targets within their own living range. This selection process was full of unpredictability, and of course, there were also impulsive crimes.
These five people were the most recent offenders, but only one was a repeat offender who moved around frequently. The others were first-time offenders.
The photos of these five people had already been notified to the City Hall, and arrests could be arranged soon.
Xu Huo disguised himself as a staff member and sat down at the control console. He searched for all content related to the four times on the Time Tower. Apart from 9 o'clock being Little Star Company's work start time, the other three times didn't hold any special meaning. Even in Pumpkin City, the lunch break wasn't at a full hour, so the 12 o'clock time point was less noteworthy than 11:40.
The 9:17 PM time point hadn't arrived yet, and since players repeatedly lost their memories at this time, it was likely that the event truly requiring players' attention would be related to tonight's 9:17 PM.
He paused, then switched to searching for information on Little Star Company's several bosses, but this was a privilege that ordinary employees didn't have.
He called Meng Wenguang and asked him to find the HR manager's access password.
Meng Wenguang quickly sent him back a string of numbers.
"Got it," Xu Huo said, asking him what he had found.
"Information on the bosses is definitely not available, only their regular salary and dividend accounts," Meng Wenguang said. "I checked the authorization locations of their accounts. They've probably been tampered with. Besides the bosses, the authorization locations for the company's remittance accounts have also been hidden."
"But that's normal for a tech company."
"Any progress on your end?"