Chapter 364
Chapter 364: Chapter 41: Beyond China, Under the Black Hand_3 Chapter 364: Chapter 41: Beyond China, Under the Black Hand_3 “`
“Right, that’s it.”
Lin Xian instructed:
“Our current situation isn’t very clear, and I have no idea where the enemy is, both in plain sight and in the dark, so it’s always best to err on the side of caution.
We must not give ourselves away or leave any traces.
If the enemies trace us back to this location, that would be bad.”
“I’ll go take a nap now.
After I wake up, I’ll draw a sketch for you, and you will run facial recognition on that sketch to try to find someone in reality who looks like the person in it.
So while I am sleeping, you focus on learning about facial recognition and age progression.”
“No problem.”
VV responded:
“China’s Skynet System has similar functionalities.
We can just make use of it later on.
After my next evolutionary iteration, I’ll try to find some facial data from foreign networks.”
“Reliable.”
Lin Xian walked into the bedroom and kicked the robot vacuum out the door.
Source: Webnovel.com, updated on ƝονǤᴑ.ƈᴑ
…Turn off the lights.
Sleep.
…
…
Whoosh!!
The hot summer wind, mingled with the noise of the city, was in his face.
The midday sun was incredibly intense.
Before even opening his eyes, Lin Xian could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
He squinted and slowly opened his eyes…
Lifted his head.
Adjusted to the strong sunlight.
It was still the highly prosperous sci-fi city, with the space elevator reaching into the starry sky clearly visible in the distance.
But because the sunlight was particularly strong during the day, the Orbital Sky City higher up wasn’t very clear, although…
one could still vaguely see a black shadow above the clouds.
Therefore.
This was also solid evidence.
[The Fourth Dreamland hadn’t changed; it hadn’t turned into the Fifth Dreamland—a hard proof.]
Lin Xian still had a sliver of hope, thinking that bringing VV, a super artificial intelligence, hundreds of years into the past would have some kind of butterfly effect powerful enough to turn space-time on its head, wouldn’t it?
However, there was none.
At least not as far as the eye could see.
But this was also within Lin Xian’s expectations.
If his enemy, the overly affable old man, had indeed sentenced him for the crime of space-time disruption,
It meant that he already knew Lin Xian’s secret of time travel.
If that was discovered,
Then VV’s existence must have been found out long ago.
If they had the capability to capture Lin Xian, they surely had the means to catch and destroy VV as well.
So to say…
It’s very possible that in the future world of the Fourth Dreamland, VV was already dead, so its impact on the future world wasn’t significant, even failing to breach the Space-Time Elasticity, thus not inciting any major visible Temporal Flux.
Click!
Before Lin Xian had a chance to look around at his surroundings…
A gun was shoved against the back of his head:
“Hands up!”
Heh.
Lin Xian let out a light chuckle.
It seems…
his guess was indeed correct.
He truly was exposed through and through, and the enemy had laid an ambush here for him long ago.
He slowly raised his hands, looking straight at the dozens of soldiers who had encircled him.
The same as last night when he entered the dream.
These soldiers were fully armed, forming a perfect circle around him as the center, their precision impeccable.
This made Lin Xian even more puzzled.
How did they manage to pinpoint his respawn coordinates with such accuracy?
Their precision was almost down to the centimeter.
Every time he entered a new dreamland, even Lin Xian himself didn’t know where his starting point would be.
The disparity in strength between enemies and allies in this dreamland was simply too great.
An utterly uneven match, the kind that wasn’t even playable.
For Lin Xian, who was unarmed, it was like being hit from a higher dimension, like an adult hitting a child.
But…
No matter.
Lin Xian, who had a detailed battle plan today, was not panicked in the slightest.
If I can’t beat you 600 years later,
Let’s meet 600 years earlier!
“Lin Xian!
You are now arrested on the charges of crimes against humanity, endangering Earth, and disturbing space-time!”
The person who looked like the captain walked over, threw out an arrest warrant, and recited the same words.
Zzzt!
A large electric current spread through his body.
Lin Xian’s vision went dark, and he lost consciousness.
“`
…
After a long while,
Lin Xian didn’t know how much time had passed.
He regained consciousness.
Still strapped to the chair, his head covered with an opaque hood.
How long had he been unconscious this time?
Logically speaking, last time he was electrocuted around 9 PM and woke up at about 00:40, so he had been out for roughly four hours.
So, if he assumed he’d been out for four hours this time too,
it should be a little past six in the evening now, right?
Since he had been captured early, that old man should come to see him earlier, shouldn’t he?
With nearly seven hours to go until the arrival of the white light at 00:42, he could try to extract and collect more information.
Even just getting another look at the old man would help; he could try to memorize the details of his features and sketch them as accurately as possible.
However,
What irritated Lin Xian was that, after seemingly waiting for seven hours, that old man finally arrived fashionably late.
“Hehehehe…”
A few meters in front, the familiar dry laugh of the old man echoed.
Lin Xian couldn’t hold back his urge to spray him with words.
You still have the nerve to laugh?
If he delivered himself so early, couldn’t the old man come a bit sooner?
What was he busy with all this time, to only arrive at the nick of time?
Swish!
The hood was grabbed and ripped off.
The old man’s swollen eye sockets, sparse eyebrows, sunken cheeks, saggy eyelids, prominent nose bridge, cracked chin, slightly pale lips, narrow eyes, his excited gaze staring at Lin Xian:
“Now…”
“I see you,” Lin Xian intercepted with a response, under the old man’s shocked gaze:
“Stop jabbering.”
Boom!!!!!
Boom!!!!!
Boom!!!!!
Taken off guard, the white light burst forth, incinerating the old man’s trembling pupils and everything within sight under Lin Xian’s scanning gaze, in an instant.
…
𝘯𝗈𝘷𝘨𝘰.co
…
…
In a corner of the bedroom, Lin Xian opened his eyes.
He reinforced the old man’s facial details in his mind, then got out of bed to start drawing—
“Ouch.”
He almost slipped when he stepped on the floor-cleaning robot.
“VV, what are you doing lying here?”
Lin Xian complained.
However…
The cleaning robot, unresponsive.
?
Lin Xian was surprised.
Picking up the floor-cleaning robot, it showed no lights, as if it was out of power.
He put on his slippers and quickly walked to the living room.
The house was eerily quiet.
“VV!”
He shouted.
Immediately,
The screen on the refrigerator lit up, VV’s voice emanating from the speaker:
“Lin Xian, something’s happened.”
Lin Xian’s expression darkened:
“What happened?”
“I’ve collected all the facial data from within China, ready to go abroad to gather overseas data.
But, as I crossed China’s network security firewall and entered the world network beyond…”
The refrigerator made a sound like it was swallowing, as if the compressor paused for a second:
“[In the outside world’s network, there’s a Black Hand…]”
“Black Hand?”
Lin Xian didn’t understand:
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an enormous digital Black Hand that obscures the sky…”
The voice of VV from inside the refrigerator deepened:
“It’s more frightening than any program I have come across so far, greedy and tyrannical, devouring and assimilating everything.
In the external world network, this Black Hand virtually surrounds the Chinese internet completely…”
“Lurking with covetous eyes!”