Chapter Ninety-Two: An Unexpected Delight!

"I can't do it..." Xiana said with a trace of self-reproach.

"Try harder."

Ji Cheng replied with a low, grumbling sound.

"Still no good," she said, aggrieved.

"To ensure safety, the cluster intelligence may manage the entire Hive Laboratory, but its underlying logic imposes restrictions. It can only approve applications, not submit them."

"Then I submit the application, and you approve it on your end, won't that do?" Ji Cheng said, chewing over her words.

"Submitting a call-up request requires researcher-director privileges." She closed off that path.

Just as Ji Cheng began to feel deflated, Xiana's next words rekindled his hope.

"Wait a moment."

"What is it?" he asked eagerly, full of anticipation.

"It seems that not long ago, a researcher-director applied to requisition ten gene prototypes."

"Not long ago? Researcher-director? What kind of ghost story are you telling?"

He went rigid all at once.

The researchers in here could not possibly have been dead for decades, could they? The more she spoke, the stranger it sounded.

"You've misunderstood. In any case, there was such an application..."

Xiana could not explain it clearly, so she simply sent the cluster intelligence's approval record to Ji Cheng's tactical visor.

At 4:52:13, Research Director Wei Changshun applied to requisition ten gene prototypes.

At 4:52:19, biometric verification failed; the application was suspended, and the central node rejected it.

Stand by...

Biometric verification failed?

Seeing those stark words, Ji Cheng immediately understood. It had to be that intruder who had blended in with the others.

Who was he? How could he have researcher-director authority? Was he and Pang Weiwei really in the same camp? And where had he gone now? Countless questions surged through Ji Cheng's mind.

Xiana brought the conversation back on track:

"This application was only suspended, not terminated. As long as I make a small adjustment, I can have it approved, and those ten gene prototypes will be yours. Right now you only need to decide whether to change the type of gene prototypes requested."

"There's such a good deal?" Ji Cheng was stunned.

A gift from nature, unasked and freely given!

Whichever saintly soul made this happen had truly sewn the wedding clothes for him.

What a pity the kind soul had not left a name; otherwise, once he had money, he would surely have erected a statue in his honor.

The sudden windfall left Ji Cheng almost embarrassed.

"Do you want to change it?" Xiana asked again.

"Of course!" he said at once. "Change all ten to Ghost Vine."

That should be the strongest second-tier gene prototype available on White Mountain Star. In practical value, it was hundreds of times superior to things like withered moss.

It not only comprehensively enhanced muscle strength and nerve reflexes, making combat power terrifying, but also inherited Ghost Vine's formidable vitality, bringing an astonishing boost to cellular activity. Among peers, it could be called nearly immortal.

And cellular activity was an extremely important attribute when advancing to the third tier, while also being tied to the use of biological weapons.

Even setting aside its life-resonance effect, there was no better choice.

"There's not that many Ghost Vines. We only have one in stock."

So that was it...

Still, it made sense. The production of the Ghost Vine gene prototype was said to be extremely difficult, so it was only natural that stocks would be scarce.

Ji Cheng thought it over, then replied in his mind:

"Then one Ghost Vine, one Demon Thorn, one Carnivorous Osmanthus, one..."

Through this period of fighting side by side, Ji Cheng had basically identified the gene prototypes of those dozen ability-users.

"When you're out in the world, you've still got to value loyalty," he muttered, doing his best to choose second-tier prototypes with the best growth potential for them.

"All right, then I'll approve the application for you now?" Xiana asked with a delighted smile.

For her, being able to help Ji Cheng was the happiest thing of all.

"Ah, hold on. Help me check whether there is any information about that case."

Ji Cheng suddenly remembered there was still an important matter unfinished.

"Same as before. Search the database specifically for the terms: case, concealment, and 1251."

...

"I didn't find anything."

Xiana's speech was slow, clearly because she was multitasking. "I changed the wording in several ways, but still nothing."

"That's odd. Could it be that White Mountain Star's owner was unaware of this case? Or maybe I was simply wrong, and White Mountain Star's mutation has nothing to do with it at all..."

At that moment, Xiana suddenly interrupted his train of thought.

"Something seems off."

"What is it?"

"Given the size of the database, even if it really had nothing to do with the case, there is no reason why the number 1251 itself should not turn up at all."

Xiana projected the search results onto Ji Cheng's tactical visor.

Whether it was 1249, 1250, 1252, or 1253, corresponding entries could always be found in the database.

Only that one number yielded not a single document containing the term 1251.

"You mean someone deliberately deleted the related information?" Ji Cheng's expression changed.

If that was true, then the Hive Laboratory was certainly implicated in this case!

"Yes, and it was deleted in a great hurry," Xiana said, making full use of her analytical strength. "The traces are too obvious. If there had been enough time, the work would have been cleaner."

Normally, one would not crudely erase every piece of data concerning the number 1251; only the truly necessary material would be removed. As it stood, this was clearly an emergency measure.

Ji Cheng's thoughts raced.

"Since it was done in such a hurry, could there have been some slipups left behind?"

When time grows short, efficiency rises, but so does the chance of error. That is hard for anyone to avoid.

"Think again. See if there's another way, or some overlooked angle."

He tried to spark a little inspiration in Xiana. "Consider why the person who deleted the data was in such a rush."

The crisp tapping of keys from the light screen rang on and on, while time trickled by.

"I found it!" Xiana soon exclaimed in excitement.

"I just converted all the audio and video surveillance records from the Hive Laboratory into text, then searched using those keywords. I found a hidden surveillance recording more than ten minutes long, with an extremely high match."

"Then hurry up and play it for me to see. No, wait, better to hold off until we're outside. They all seem a bit impatient." Ji Cheng noticed that the discussion among the ability-users behind him had grown louder.

"Just save that video first."

Suddenly, his eyes lit up.

Save it.

"The Hive Laboratory is a genuine laboratory from before the severance of contact! It had to record experiments and conclusions, which means... aside from experimental data, doesn't this cluster intelligence also store a great deal of knowledge, knowledge with grades attached to it!"

Ji Cheng felt his heart pounding wildly, dense and rapid as a drumbeat.

Excitement. Tension.

By purchasing those gene prototypes from the Imperial Ministry of Industry, the Hive Laboratory had set out to reverse-engineer the production processes of various second-tier prototypes, so naturally there would have been a mountain of experimental data.

And experimental data would certainly have been analyzed and refined by the researchers into experimental conclusions. Such conclusions were, in truth, knowledge.

Not to mention anything else, even the production process of the Ghost Vine gene prototype alone could fetch an enormous sum on the Empire's black market if it were taken to the right buyer.

He had not thought of this before because he remembered that White Mountain Star had a warehouse for storing data ether bodies—the place where Xiana and An Chan had been found—which is now also called the Ruin Number Five.

Since White Mountain Star's owner could afford so many data ether bodies, it stood to reason that he would not have stored knowledge inside some ordinary cluster intelligence.

But then he suddenly realized a fatal flaw in that assumption.

If that man had truly been so wealthy, he would never have been studying second-tier gene prototypes here at all. He could simply have purchased the relevant knowledge from the authorities.

"So the most likely situation is that White Mountain Star once had two groups of people. One was the official ruler of White Mountain Star. His finances were average, so on the advice of his subordinates he established the Hive Laboratory and used it to study all kinds of knowledge."

"The other group, or at least part of it, was mixed in under the first group's nose, using this shell to evade the Empire's planetary local network surveillance while secretly carrying out other dealings. The warehouse at Ruin Number Five should have been established by this second group, and the first group knew nothing about it!"

The moment Ji Cheng reached this conclusion, he could no longer contain himself.

If that was truly the case, then he had hit the jackpot!

According to the information Zhou Ze had given him, the Hive Laboratory had been researching at least three or four fields.

"Even if not all of that knowledge had reached first grade, the harvest would still be absolutely enormous!" Ji Cheng clenched his fist. "Knowledge built into a system like this is not something a few second-tier gene prototypes can compare with."

For his development plan, the knowledge levels held by Xiana and An Chan were the most important trump cards, the very foundation for building and assembling a mechanical army in the future.

"An Chan, come out—you go in too!"