Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 64, Section Sixty-Three: The Informant (4K) [Thanks to Alliance Leader: Light-colored Folded Ear Spirit Absorber]

The heat from the lake collides with the cold air from the city, creating strong gusts of wind, and foam and garbage surge on the crests of the waves and accumulate in the bay.

The sound of water was blocked by the floor-to-ceiling windows and the screen separating the room. Suger sat on a single sofa.

The video he had just rented was playing on his screen, and the environment in his eyes had become the single room in the video (details omitted for brevity).

The film's visuals were very realistic, but Suger couldn't truly understand the protagonist's feelings. Watching films of the target audience's preferred genre was initially novel, but after half a month it became a routine.

What did you mean by what you just said?

Su Ge asked Shen Ke, whose figure appeared in the field of vision, sitting on the windowsill in the film.

“He might just have this quirk.” Shen Ke swung her legs. “But if you elevate his quirk to a level that doesn’t belong to him, he’ll feel like his innermost feelings have been touched.”

……

At dusk, the setting sun reflected on the lake. A railing enclosed a lakeside terrace, where Suger leaned back in his chair, the lake breeze rustling the awning. On the table beside him were anchovies, peanuts, and a dish of cucumbers. He had been eating these for almost forty minutes, gazing at the lake as if deep in thought, occasionally picking up a peanut and popping it into his mouth.

A voice came from behind him. Su Ge turned around and saw Qian Yun walk over, sit down, stretch, and look at the lake. "The weather is nice."

“Yes.” Su Ge looked out over the railing into the distance; only in the suburbs could one see natural scenery.

"How was that film?" Qian Yun asked.

“Not bad,” Su Ge replied, thinking to himself that since the target had approached him, they must have checked his identity. His identity information had been processed by the security bureau, and the other party could no longer find his real information.

A swarm of drones flew by in the distance, while raw materials for the printing plant were being loaded and unloaded at the dock.

On the terrace, a robot wearing flowing sleeves brought a red silk tray and placed a bottle of white wine in a green ceramic bottle on the table.

"Wine? That's a rare sight these days." Su Ge gave a look of surprise that would make the other person smug.

"I knew you knew your stuff." Qian Yun smiled, opened the bottle cap, and said, "What's the point of having food without wine? Let's have some."

“Food, equipment, space, and most precious of all… time.” Soger poured the liquor into a small green ceramic cup, about the size of a bottle cap. “These costs are necessary to brew real liquor. Almost everyone opts for pre-mixed neural data.”

These days, few people have ever handled real liquor, let alone understood the brewing process. In most people's minds, the raw material for liquor is neural data, not grains. Qian Yun turned his head to admire Su Ge for a moment, then looked away and poured the liquor into a small green ceramic cup about the size of a bottle cap next to Su Ge.

"What you just said really resonated with me."

"Thanks." Soger took the glass. "Which sentence?"

"They said it at the bar." Qian Yun raised his glass, downed it in one gulp, smacked his lips, looked at his prosthetic finger in the twilight, and clenched his fist. "I often feel like I don't exist anymore. Only in that state of truly having nothing can I feel alive."

He looked Suger up and down. "You don't seem to have many prosthetics implanted."

“I have an immune disease, so I can’t get a prosthetic body; I can only use an exoskeleton.” Suger shrugged, took a sip of his drink, and smacked his lips at the spiciness.

Qian Yun paused for a moment, then sighed, "This isn't a bad thing. There are very few people as 'pure' as you these days."

Suger didn't respond.

“Many people want to be like you but can’t,” Qian Yun continued.

Su Ge shook his head and smiled, as if taking those words as a consolation, and picked up the wine bottle to pour Qian Yun a glass.

“I’m telling the truth.” Qian Yun’s expression turned serious. “Haven’t you heard of the Spiritual Society?”

"The Spiritual Society?" Sog looked somewhat puzzled.

"I'll take you there sometime; you'll definitely be very popular."

……

In the Strategic Planning Office of the Security Bureau's Special Investigations Team Three, fifteen investigators sat around a conference table.

The screen displayed an image of a man with a square face and a buzz cut.

"Yue Guocheng, male, 46 years old. Twelve years ago, he murdered four colleagues who worked at the same military research institute and disappeared. Recently, we found a clue that he is hiding his identity and living in Yingchuan City. He is guilty of intentional homicide, espionage, and treason..."

"A chance encounter can lead to unexpected success."

At the conference table, Yang Guan muttered something under his breath. The prison break case, which the Security Bureau had been investigating relentlessly, still had no clear leads, but the thorough investigation had uncovered many other major cases.

To be honest, the direction our investigation is currently taking probably has nothing to do with the prison break case.

Bai Miao's voice rang in Yang Guan's mind.

"We'll have to investigate to find out." Yang Guan's mind flashed back to the image transmitted by Su Ge, where he was having a pleasant conversation with his target. "The fish has taken the bait..."

“Lieutenant Colonel Yuan, isn’t the information about the target too brief?” an investigator asked.

A holographic projection of an army political commissar sat below the screen, shook his head, and said, "It concerns military secrets, I cannot disclose any information."

The deputy director frowned. He understood that the military was unwilling to leak scandals, but this made it impossible to determine the target's threat level. He smiled and said, "Don't worry, Lieutenant Colonel Yuan, the Security Bureau will not leak any secrets. We don't need too much specific information, but we still need to know if the target possesses dangerous weapons and whether it has undergone militarization."

The lieutenant colonel remained unmoved. After exchanging a two-second glance with the deputy director, he finally spoke: "That project has been halted. The research at the time was for the creation of Asura."

"Asura?"

Soft gasps rose and fell around the conference table, and Yang Guan lost all interest in chatting with Bai Miao. Asuras are the representatives of anger and strife among the Six Paths of Rebirth. They only appear briefly in wars; after the war, their mortal incarnations are destroyed and they return to the spiritual realm, leaving no visual or historical records. Legend has it that they possess the defensive capabilities of tanks and the maneuverability of fighter jets, and a single squad can end a local war.

The military's attempt to create an Asura is not surprising; what is worrying is whether they succeeded and whether the wanted criminal truly possesses the destructive power of an Asura.

"Don't worry, everyone. The suspect doesn't have abilities like Asura," the lieutenant colonel said. "The arrest operation will begin in ten minutes. We can now reveal the suspect's current identity. To prevent leaks, none of you are allowed to transmit any information to the outside world before the arrest is carried out."

The square-faced man on the screen had changed; he now had a thick beard, deep facial features, and wore a pair of elegant tortoiseshell glasses.

“He runs an illegal video store in the suburbs of Yingchuan City, called ‘Floating Waves’.”

Yang Guan suddenly stood up.

"Yang Guan?" The deputy director looked at him in surprise.

“My informant is right there,” Yang Guan said. “I need to get him out of there first.”

The deputy director frowned and looked at the lieutenant colonel, who shook his head.

"If the information leaks and the suspect escapes, it will cause more casualties."

“Send only one message, without the suspect’s information,” Yang Guan retorted. “If the lieutenant colonel doesn’t trust the security bureau, you can send it on his behalf.”

The lieutenant colonel hesitated for two seconds, then nodded.

“Okay, I will edit the message content. His reaction must not alert the suspect.”

"Also, could the arrest be postponed...?"

“No.” The lieutenant colonel refused decisively. “The suspect is very cautious. The suburbs are sparsely populated, and the peak period for pedestrian traffic is after seven o’clock every day, according to calculations. We have set up misleading holographic images on nearby roads. At this time, our personnel can fill the gaps between pedestrians without arousing his suspicion.”

Yang Guan clenched his fist. "In ten minutes, my informant might not be able to retreat to a safe area."

“That’s his problem,” the lieutenant colonel said coldly. “He’s a National Security Bureau informant, and he’s sensitive enough to be a necessary quality for an informant. You’d better hurry, investigator, there are only eight minutes left.”

……

It was dark when Su Ge put down his cup. The green ceramic bottle was empty, and only salt and oil splatters remained on the dish. "So, this society is just too messed up." Qian Yun breathed out a breath of alcohol as the evening breeze cooled. "Money is hard to earn. I know a guy who had his brain modified so he doesn't need to sleep anymore. He calls himself the Insomniac, but he actually sleeps with his eyes open."

"Is it also part of the Spiritual Society?" Soger asked.

“We sometimes hold seminars,” Qian Yun said. “It’s where everyone sits together, vents, shares, and discusses the problems that prosthetics have brought to them. Besides seminars, there are some special activities that I’m sure you’ll be interested in.” He looked at Su Ge with an “I understand you” look.

“I’m a little curious.” Su Ge smiled, then changed the subject, “It’s getting late.”

Five hundred meters north of Fubo, at the hexagonal pavilion beneath the Rongxing Building, I'll be waiting for you there.

The sudden news in his field of vision made him feel a little strange. He was at a critical moment in contacting his informant, and Yang Guan would not interrupt him unless there were special circumstances.

As the conversation progressed, the target repeatedly mentioned the symposium. Su Ge noted the time, still playing hard to get with his words. He said goodbye to Qian Yun and returned to the front desk of Fubo, where the orange light cast a greasy glow under the shop door.

He placed the chip on the synthetic wood table and looked at the display wall; the Jedi: The Rise of Skywalker film had been replaced.

The shop owner, who was resting with his eyes closed on a recliner, glanced at Su Ge and put away the chip.

At this moment, some surveillance footage was being transmitted into his brain-computer interface. It was surveillance video from a radius of half a kilometer. The pedestrians on the road had become unfamiliar faces, and they were approaching him intentionally or unintentionally.

"Gods live in the heavens, and humans live on earth..." Sog asked, "The heavens are a spiritual realm, so where is the human world?"

The shop owner said nonchalantly, "It's right under your feet."

“There are gods and Buddhas in the heavens, and there are also gods who patrol the streets,” Sog probed. “I wonder if there are any other meanings in the human world.”

The shop owner narrowed his eyes.

Suger sensed a different meaning in his eyes.

Does he know about the human world? The human world on the dark web...?

……

The spider robot infiltrated the ventilation duct, carrying kinetic and electromagnetic weapons, its silk sacs filled with neuro-hypnotic gas.

On the streets, in the alleys, inside cars, and behind windows, many eyes "inadvertently" turned to the dim hexagonal lanterns in front of Fubo Gate.

Two investigators, customers, are walking into the store at this moment.

These images were transmitted to Yue Guocheng's brain-computer interface.

Without any hesitation, he activated the consciousness anchor switch that he hoped he would never use in his entire life.

In an empty room in the building where Fubo was located, a large number of high-voltage generators began to charge and then discharged through synchronous switches, with huge flashes and thunderous roars tearing through the night.

All the neon lights dimmed, light tubes within a half-kilometer radius exploded one after another, holographic images disappeared, and powerful electromagnetic pulses attacked all circuits within the radiation range indiscriminately in that instant.

Drones are like birds with broken wings.

Even investigators who rely on brain-computer interfaces to control their physical actions are not immune; sparks fly in the eyes of each "pedestrian," and they all fall into a state of malfunction.

Two investigators collapsed to the ground at the store entrance.

On the terrace, Qian Yungang got up, then lay back down with a blank expression.

……

Inside the security bureau, the surveillance footage turned into countless flickering colored noise dots.

The lieutenant colonel slammed his fist on the table. His hologram couldn't affect the physical body, but it conveyed his anger.

"He used an electromagnetic pulse attack!"

“The riot police have gone over, and new drones are on their way. They have already spotted us, so there is no need for us to hide anymore.”

……

There were only two people still standing at the front desk.

The roar and flashes of lightning turned the field of vision into a chaotic jumble of gray and white noise.

Before Suger could even remove his glasses, the dark muzzle of a gun was pressed against his forehead.

He was startled and instinctively took a step back, pushing the gun forward slightly. He had connected with the Gu Diao, but due to the electromagnetic pulse, the combat mode could not be activated.

In the dim light, the lights flickered and crackled, and robotic waiters in flowing sleeves announced messages.

"Welcome to Guangling Phantom..."

Electromagnetic pulse attack.

Suger realized what had happened.

But he didn't understand why this had happened; he had only asked for information from "the human world," and yet such a change had occurred.

"Don't move." The shop owner's expression was cold, but his voice and hands trembled slightly.

“I didn’t provoke you.” Soger’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I just wanted to ask, about the human world…”

“Suger.” The shop owner interrupted Suger, staring intently into his eyes. “The Sleeper, the Security Bureau’s informant. I originally thought your target was Qian Yun, but I didn’t expect you to be after me.”

Su Ge cursed under his breath; the Security Bureau's so-called identity processing was so unreliable.

The shop owner was clearly quite agitated, his finger trembling slightly as he gripped the trigger.

Suger tried to connect to the other party's brain-computer interface, and the connection was successful. He secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

The shop owner remained standing under the electromagnetic pulse. Socrates had assumed he didn't rely on brain-computer interfaces, but now it seemed he had simply taken defensive measures to shield himself from electromagnetic pulse attacks.

Suger did not attempt to control the shop owner's prosthetic body. When he tried to control the gray-haired man, the man's conscious resistance burned out his brain. If the same thing happened again, the Security Bureau would definitely suspect him.

"You investigated me?"

"It's not just you, it's every regular customer."

As soon as the shop owner uttered those words, Suger also read them in his brain.

"This is a misunderstanding. My target is indeed Qian Yun. Please don't get agitated..."

"Do you even believe that yourself?" Before Su Ge could explain, the shopkeeper snapped, "Turn around and leave!"

Suger turned around stiffly, was shoved twice, and left the shop.

The investigator lying on the ground by the door had his eyes open, his hand on his gun, his fingers twitching.

The shop owner shot him in the head. With a bang, half of his head was blown off, revealing his tongue and gums between the metal frame and nerve fibers.

Coolant, brain matter, and blood plasma splattered all over the walls and paper windows, with two drops landing on the shop owner's face.

The shop owner shuddered violently, glancing at the corpse on the ground with fear and resentment, his voice trembling: "You forced me to do this."

(End of this chapter)