Master of the Stars

Chapter 57: Local Area Network (Part 2/2)

“D*mned if I know where I am. Let me look at the map. Oh, I’m at the DeShang Building in the River Wu District. The surface looks so shiny and clean. How could the ground below be lacking in morals?”

“DeShang?”

Lua Nan recalled this detail from the information he just obtained. It looked like Crag Burst’s chasing skills could not be overlooked; he was quite close to the final objective.

“Wait a bit. I’m coming over as fast as I can.”

Ink rushed towards the sky, weaving between buildings as it flew through the air. Luo Nan’s soul body controlled the Human-Faced Arachnid to fly next to Ink.

The flying speed of the crow was really too slow. The Human-Faced Arachnid didn’t even display a third of its strength and it kept leisurely in pace with Ink. Luo Nan didn’t expend his energy on flying, instead, he used the all-encompassing view of his senses to observe the ground of the DeShang Building, which he had always heard of but had never stepped foot in.

The muddy night sky of the Recycling Stratum gave him a very subtle feeling. He wasn’t very experienced in flying around in the night sky. He never expected that it would be like swimming in a river. As time flowed on, the all-encompassing scene revealed the deepest hidden things in the area to his eyes, causing this feeling of his to grow even deeper and alien:

It was not only like swimming in water, it was like swimming in sewage!

Everything appeared in his all-encompassing view. There were so many specific details that things were a mess. It was impossible for Luo Nan to analyze things one after another. And so he had casually scanned things such as gangsters, prostitutes, drug dealers, casinos, as well as the abstract emotions of violence, lust, greed, apathy, and so on. All these interweaved as dirty paints that formed countless foul and muddy colors. They pelted and sprayed into his mind.

Everything converged into muddy roaring rapids that washed the entire Recycling Stratum. They flowed once again to drown the entirety of Xia City with a giant turbulent tide of emotions…… In the end, this was just a tributary that was a bit dirtier.

The Human-Faced Arachnid was quite comfortable in this environment. The term “a fish back in water” could describe it, but soon Luo Nan discovered that the Human-Faced Arachnid had some loss of appetite while it lingered in the turbid flow of emotions.

Weren’t these dirty and negative emotions the food that it desired the most back then? This fellow had relied on similar things to strengthen itself endlessly, but now it had thoughts of disdain. It felt that these emotions were beneath it.

Luo Nan tried to communicate with the Human-Faced Arachnid, but the information about the Human-Faced Arachnid had long ways to go before the analyzation was complete. A forced understanding would be filled with vagueness and disorder. In the end, Luo Nan could only confirm a single point:

The Human-Faced Arachnid had evolved on some level such that the food it used to eat would no longer satisfy its needs…… In the end, there wasn’t a single fished that relied only on drinking water to survive.

Perhaps the Human-Faced Arachnid’s evolution was like the transition between a plankton and a fish?

Should he congratulate it?

The DeShang Building appeared in front of Luo Nan’s eyes right when he was racking his head over the Human-Faced Arachnid’s food problem.

Crag Burst was already impatient from waiting so long. Right now he was standing on the protruding wall on the tenth floor of the building. He surveyed the distance from up high and saw Ink fly over. He waved his hand in excitement from afar:

“Hurry hurry hurry. I found a way inside here.”

Ink flapped its wings as it searched for a place to land, but how could Crag Burst have the patience to wait? He pointed at his shoulder: “Here. I guarantee it’s safe.”

Luo Nan stopped being polite as he gave Ink the order and Ink landed directly onto Crag Burst’s shoulder. Then Luo Nan and Crag Burst began to exchange their respective information.

“The lower three floors, including the underground buildings, all have structures shaped like 回 to be divided into inside regions and outside regions. Actually, they’re just setup to have an isolated area. Many buildings bordering the Recycling Stratum are like this, and so they were made in this way.”

Crag Burst had looked up quite a bit of material while he was waiting: “The isolated areas have one-way passageways, security is tight, and all access privileges are locked down. There are no ordinary means at all to enter the buildings of the business district from the Recycling Stratum; it doesn’t matter who it is.”

“All the gangsters in the land exist outside the isolated levels. Here they knock out countless mouse holes. It’s not just DeShang Building, it includes the several neighboring buildings. Passageways are knocked through and the people to go inside are decent in number.”

Luo Nan listened to Crag Burst prattle away and compared the situation here with the intelligence he had found out for himself. He organized his words and spoke:

“According to the information I acquired, DeShang Building has an underground fighting scene. People come here often to bet. Many rich guests stake big money here…… Jack is the ace host and judge of the fight scene here. He’s probably one of the bosses behind the scenes.”

“Underground fights?” Crag Burst immediately became interested when he heard the word “fight”. “How come I never heard of this before? I’ve been to practically all the fighting stages, be it public, private, legal, and illegal, in Xia City!”

“......It’s probably because this is a special stage exclusive for people 18 or under.”

The isolated external area of DeShang Building was just as Crag Burst said. It was filthy and chaotic with dark corridors weaving everywhere. Luo Nan had received a lot of useful information from the gangsters’ mouths. Then he also had the support of the all-encompassing view of his mental senses. A few rounds of scans gave him a flow of information that was smoother than obtaining from the gangsters.

Crag Burst was still holding down a stomach full of anger from his failure in pursuing down Jack and he wanted to vent out. He never thought that Luo Nan would open up a cheat-like map as soon as they joined up. They entered a path and they only saw the shadows of gangsters scurrying out of the way. Crag Burst could only eat disappointment in the back as they encountered very little people. It was very difficult to for him to get an opportunity to unleash the strength brimming in his body.

He wasn’t an idiot. He could naturally feel that Luo Nan had used means of reconnaissance other than using the crow; some sort of higher level perception had played a role in this.

“Wait. There’s something fishy with your ability! The range! Even Cat Eyes’s range isn’t this weird……”

“Cat Eyes?”

Luo Nan was actually quite interested in this wild woman who had suddenly appeared within the pyramid structure. Anyway, they weren’t pushing themselves too hard right now, so he spoke without thinking: “What’s the range of her super-far perception?”

“Her all-encompassing perception is about fifty to seventy meters. Her psychic perception, when her state is good, has a recorded limit of 3720 kilometers……”

“How much?” Luo Nan nearly choked, “Did you say kilometers or meters?”

“I said kilometers.” Crag Burst chuckled. ”Quite inconceivable right? But this is where the terror of super-far perception lies. It's outside your realm of reason as long as the feeling is there! Back in the day, Cat Eyes did something super kick-ass. She used her super-far perception to control a megaton grade nuclear warhead to bore through the earth. She smashed it into an underground lair of mutants in the wilderness. It was soul-shocking! Even the military big shots, who are excessively prideful, kneeled before her!”

“......” Luo Nan didn’t know what he should say for a time. He had been quite content with the range of his mental senses while he was in his soul form. But now he was suddenly faced with a standard so high who could only gaze upwards to look at it.

But on the other hand, such a kickass person had actually unwittingly entered his pyramid structure. She was receiving his influence and suppression, no matter how much or little there was. It was an extremely subtle feeling.

Crag Burst concluded: “In a certain sense, Cat Eyes’s ability should be the type closest to being a psychic. But it’s not as mysterious. Other than it being unstable and having no effects with Darksider life forms, there’s practically no weak points. Therefore, you must not offend her. Otherwise, she can find you no matter where you are in the city, in every nook and cranny. Then when you fall asleep…… Snap!”

Crag Burst performed the movements of snapping a neck, then he laughed and petted Ink on the head: “You really need to be careful. I feel that you two are polar opposites in nature and that one day…… Oh. It’s a dead end?”

It was a dead end ahead. In front of them was a wall painted in white. Crag Burst knocked against it. It was solid; there were steel plates embedded inside.