Chapter 525 - 359: Identity Exposed, Requesting Permission

Chapter 525: Chapter 359: Identity Exposed, Requesting Permission

The ruins of the abandoned smelter were still spewing thick smoke. The acrid smell of burning and the heat-distorted air made the area feel like a living hell.

Schiller stood at the helicopter’s cabin door, looking down at the ruins below, which looked as if they’d been gnawed on by a colossal beast. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his pupils contracted into dangerous pinpoints.

"Where is he?!"

His icy voice, tinged with uncontrollable rage, echoed over the silent ruins. A loudspeaker broadcast his question to every corner, making the soldiers carefully searching below shiver involuntarily.

Twenty minutes! A full twenty minutes! During the grid search, they had flipped over every steel plate, even those no bigger than the palm of a hand, yet they hadn’t found so much as a single hair!

It was as if the recent, world-destroying saturation bombing had all been for nothing!

That damn rat, right under his nose, in the midst of a barrage of fire hot enough to melt steel, had once again vanished into thin air!

"Useless! A bunch of useless trash!" Schiller spun around and kicked the helicopter’s cabin wall, creating a dull THUD. A visible dent appeared on the expensive alloy wall. The surrounding guards didn’t even dare to breathe.

The hunting ground he had so meticulously created, the game he thought he had in the bag, had now become a giant joke! Not only had the rat not been cornered, but it had instead slapped him hard across the face before calmly making its escape.

This feeling of losing control, this feeling of being toyed with, completely shattered Schiller’s elegance. Behind his lenses, his eyes churned with a nearly insane brutality.

"Mr. Schiller," an assistant began cautiously.

"We really didn’t find anything at the scene. The target might have... escaped through a tunnel unknown to us."

"Obviously!" Schiller roared, cutting the assistant off.

The scene fell silent, with only the whirring of the helicopter’s rotors echoing through the air.

Schiller closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down as his mind raced.

’In a direct confrontation, the target’s strength and skill far exceeded our estimates. Even the "Heavy Hammer" squad was taken down with ease. When it came to tactics, the target’s cunning and use of the environment were masterful. Misdirection, setting traps... he always seems to anticipate our moves.’

’Conventional methods don’t seem to be working anymore...’

When he opened his eyes again, the madness within them had been forcibly suppressed, replaced by an icy resolve.

He knew that to catch this slippery "rat," he needed greater power and more precise information.

And there was only one person who could do that.

But at the thought of having to deal with that woman again, Schiller couldn’t help but frown.

He didn’t like her. He didn’t like her detached gaze, one that seemed to see through everything and view all of humanity as lines of code. But it was undeniable that in the world of the web, she was an omnipotent god.

This hesitation lasted only for a moment. Schiller took a deep breath, pulled out his communicator, and made a call.

The call was answered quickly. Schiller forced his voice to sound elegant and polite.

"Lady Butterfly, I need your help. A very interesting rat has caused me some... minor trouble."

...

In the Alliance Cyber Security Command Center, inside an office as spacious as an art gallery.

Butterfly leaned back languidly in a pure-white levitating chair, her waterfall of black hair cascading over her shoulders, making her skin seem even fairer. She was idly toying with an abstract, shape-shifting geometric figure made of light at her fingertips.

When Schiller’s call came through, she didn’t even open her eyes. Her red lips parted slightly as she uttered a single word: "Speak."

After listening to Schiller’s brief description and his emphasis on the target’s various methods, a flicker of interest finally appeared on Butterfly’s face, which was so exquisite it hardly looked real.

But she only said two words.

"My fee."

The other end of the line went silent for a moment before a staggering number was quoted.

Butterfly knew this number was the absolute limit of what Schiller could offer. It seemed the rat had truly pushed him to his breaking point.

For her, practically everyone in the entire city of Zhongjing had no privacy, save for a very small handful of people.

Whether it was bank deposits or other assets, she could look them up whenever she pleased.

This was also why she had no interest in money. To her, so-called wealth was just a string of numbers on the network, something incredibly easy to manipulate.

The only reason she demanded payment was to prove her own value.

"You’ll have your result in two minutes."

With that, Butterfly hung up, and her consciousness plunged into the vast, boundless sea of data.

Countless images from surveillance cameras flashed through her mind, from bustling commercial districts to dark underground pipes, from the heart of Zhongjing to its most remote, abandoned corners.

Time lost all meaning for her. All public and private video records from every corner of the city over the past few hours, and even days, were being retrieved, analyzed, and cross-referenced at a speed beyond human comprehension.

She was searching for the "anomaly" that matched Schiller’s description.

Suddenly, her consciousness paused for a moment.

The image froze on the surveillance feed of an inconspicuous entrance to an underground passage.

The timestamp was from right when Wu Liangchen was emerging from the underground passage, preparing to head to the abandoned factory.

A blurry figure, gone in a flash.