Chapter 3163: Bookworm's New Deal
"Aren't you looking for news about Stellar Pharmaceuticals?" Dr. Deng said. "A friend of mine recently passed me a message. He said a group of people returned from their internal operations, supposedly working in a secret laboratory outside, but they didn't receive any commendation after coming back."
Xu Huo paused. "The work wasn't completed?"
"Not just that," Dr. Deng said. "Generally, if an experimental project fails or is shut down, the people returning wouldn't look so dejected. Eighty percent chance the lab was robbed."
"Robbed?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. "Is this common?"
"Quite a bit," Dr. Deng said, showing no goodwill toward his former employer, speaking cheerfully. "That's why they're scrambling to find places to hide. Stellar Pharmaceuticals, the one openly displayed on the surface, is actually just a transfer station responsible for drug transshipment. The truly important things are hidden in places players can't easily set foot in."
"But in the game, players are everywhere. They'll find them sooner or later."
He suppressed his smile a little and added, "If it really was robbed, there might be transaction information leaked on the game platform. The equipment goes without saying, and maybe they can even get some key materials to figure out what they've been up to recently."
Dr. Deng gave him the contact information of two intelligence dealers, saying their information channels were very broad. If Xu Huo wanted to buy some "dirty goods," he could find them. If there were any cutting-edge research materials among them, it would be even better if he could share a copy.
Xu Huo didn't refuse his kindness and said he would take a look later.
Dr. Deng, satisfied, went to find Mr. Dong, then started a one-sided argument. Not long after, he left with a dark face.
Mr. Dong later came to settle accounts with Xu Huo. Dr. Deng had only taken half of the price he had quoted.
Xu Huo smiled. "Don't I still have some patents? The profits should be considerable. Anyway, he's developing medicine. Whatever he spends now, he'll earn back later."
"He spends too much money," Mr. Dong said worriedly. "It doesn't hurt him because it's not his own money."
"Let's see how he performs this time," Xu Huo said. "If there's still no result, fire him."
Mr. Dong nodded, then mentioned the lunch arrangements before leaving.
Xu Huo opened his personal panel. Instead of contacting the two people Dr. Deng had given him, he found Bookworm and proposed to purchase the leaked materials from the Stellar Pharmaceuticals laboratory.
Bookworm didn't comment on his well-informed status and directly told him that the leaked materials included several unfinished evolution agents and treatment potions, as well as information that might involve the laboratory's location.
The prices for these two were different. If he only wanted the immature potion formulas, he only needed to help kill the head of a player family.
If it was the latter, he needed to deliver an item to a non-ticket district.
"Not a non-ticket district at an A-class wormhole point, but a district that no longer has instances," Bookworm added.
He was certainly doing business with many people at the same time, and the tasks he issued might not necessarily be his own needs. Xu Huo replied, "What kind of item can't be transported through the game platform?"
The game platform only imposed mandatory restrictions on two types of items: food and weapons. However, although food couldn't be sent to each other through the game platform, it could be carried in the luggage compartment or smuggled through some special items. Weapons were more special. Known thermal weapons and common weapons in the game couldn't be carried or placed in the luggage compartment, and this list was constantly updated. For example, when Xu Huo first entered the game, the energy weapons developed by Platinum Eye could still be placed in the luggage compartment, but not anymore.
"It can't be placed in the luggage compartment or container items. It can only be carried on the person. That's my requirement." Bookworm didn't explain the reason but directly told him this was the condition.
Xu Huo had been gathering information about the Star Group and had personally searched for it several times, but what he got was either fragmented scraps or outdated old information, almost useless.
He had guessed that the Star Group might be hiding in those high-risk districts or areas near the orbit, but he rarely set foot in either place and didn't dare to easily venture into them.
Players still came and went in the districts where high-risk random instances were located, but that didn't necessarily mean they could find traces of the Star Group. The areas near the orbit were even more chaotic in time and space. Just leaving the train was extremely dangerous, let alone venturing further. There might even be a need to cross dimensions nearby, which was not yet a place he could intervene.
Given the Star Group's control, it was inevitable that no key information about the group would leak out. If players wanted to find it, they could only rely on those fragmented materials to speculate and guess. Whether they could gain anything depended on individual luck and strength.
"I agree," Xu Huo replied.
Bookworm first sent him half of the materials, then informed him that he needed to go to a district under an A-class wormhole point to pick up the item. The pickup also carried some danger. After he successfully retrieved the item, he would be told the final destination.
Xu Huo had no objections, only coordinating the time.
Half of the materials was still a considerable amount, mostly experimental data records with encrypted information. However, Bookworm had already deciphered the encrypted parts and annotated them nearby. But most of these materials were incomplete, apparently deliberately separated during storage. He didn't know if the next half contained the missing parts.
In fact, the things that could best reveal the external environment of the laboratory should be food and daily necessities. However, considering that the secret laboratory might be built in a remote place, it naturally couldn't be purchased from nearby. And if the group wanted to conceal things from the experimental personnel, they could also arrange unified supply, so there was no need to buy from neighboring districts.
Still, there was some useful information. For example, the weather intelligence system would collect outdoor temperatures. The data clearly recorded the time span from sunrise to sunset, as well as the unusually long night.
The time from one sunrise to sunset was 8 hours, followed by a night lasting over twenty hours. The night's duration was not fixed; it would only end when the next sunlight appeared.
Xu Huo had experienced many districts, and in most of them, the alternation of day and night was relatively regular and more suitable for human survival. If the laboratory was built in such a place, it was likely not one of the districts that once had numbers, but more likely a high-risk district excluded from the ticket system.
Such places might not have stations, or if they did, they wouldn't be on the players' tickets. To go there, one could only use cross-district teleportation devices; items wouldn't work.
"Do you have the address of a normally functioning secret laboratory of Stellar Pharmaceuticals?" After thinking for a moment, he still sent the message.