Chapter 396 338: Speedrun Mode! Blitzkrieg

Chu Bamboo slowly opened his eyes to find himself in the Ecological Garden.

"The time... is six o'clock!" Chu Bamboo pulled out his phone and glanced at it. 'I'm back at the very beginning... Good. This is the perfect chance to reorganize my plan!'

Chu Bamboo immediately closed his eyes. He ran through everything he had experienced, repeatedly sorting through his thoughts. After weighing his options for a moment, he made his decision. He opened his eyes and said in a steady voice, "Nuwa No. 17!"

"Present!" The Little Mushroom Head stood up abruptly.

"Spoof my phone number as..." Chu Bamboo rattled off a phone number—even though the chances of something going wrong by calling from his own number were low, Chu Bamboo still took an extra precaution.

Then, Chu Bamboo quickly tapped the number into the screen and made the call.

"Hello?" A soft, gentle voice came through the phone, tinged with confusion. "Xiaoxue? Why the sudden call...?"

"Where are you right now?" Chu Bamboo's voice abruptly changed, becoming that of a young woman.

"I'm... ahem! Working out." The voice on the other end turned serious, then added with a hint of displeasure, "But you're calling a bit too early, aren't you? Good thing I'm an early riser... or else!"

"Is there anyone around you?" Chu Bamboo asked, his tone unreadable.

"..." The person on the other end finally realized something was wrong. There was a sound of hurried footsteps, then a door closing. She let out a long sigh of relief. "Okay... go ahead. What kind of trouble are you in?"

"It's me." Chu Bamboo switched back to his own voice.

Li Min: "...?"

Li Min's brain short-circuited. The amount of new information was simply too much to process.

Xiaoxue was a classmate of both Chu Bamboo and Li Min. Her family was quite wealthy, so she'd had a cell phone even back in school—though she had only shown it off once. Her relationship with Li Min was reasonably good.

"...You and Xiaoxue... don't tell me!" Li Min bit her lip, her voice suddenly strained. 'No way... am I being cheated on? But that's impossible... Xiaoxue and Ah Zhu barely interacted in school... And she didn't say anything about this the last time she called me!'

"Let me confirm one more time: there's absolutely no one around you, right?" Chu Bamboo's voice changed back to Xiaoxue's. "Or... are there any cameras? Any chance someone with 'Kung Fu' could be listening in on your call from a distance?"

"..." There was a short pause. Li Min seemed to realize something, and after a moment of activity on her end, she said seriously, "Okay... you can speak freely now."

"Good. Now, I'm going to tell you a story." As he spoke, Chu Bamboo pulled out his phone and skillfully typed, ordering the Hive to begin repairing the drone carrier and to prepare for battle.

Chu Bamboo gave her a very rough summary: yesterday, he and Li Kang had saved Jinghai City, only to be betrayed by the Officials. Li Kang and Xu Duoduo had been captured and their whereabouts were now unknown. He said "unknown" because he hadn't broken them out of prison yet in this timeline; even though he knew Li Kang was dead, he had to obscure that fact for now.

Of course, this was also to lay the groundwork—if he had just told Li Min "your dad is dead" right from the start, it was hard to say if she would have been able to handle it.

"...Who is the enemy?" Li Min's voice was surprisingly calm, as if she wasn't the least bit worried about her parents. She even pushed aside the question that had just formed in her mind—how did Chu Bamboo know she was a Transcendent? That wasn't important anymore.

"You're smart. You couldn't possibly fail to realize who, could you?" Chu Bamboo retorted. He paused, his tone complex. "Alright, I'm going to save Uncle Li and Aunt Xu now. But... I'm afraid the enemy's reaction might be a little extreme. If you run into any trouble, you can call me at this number. Don't worry... from now on, I'll only ever use Xiaoxue's voice when I talk to you, as a layer of cover."

"One more thing. In the future, the enemy might try to manipulate you by claiming... that I killed Uncle Li and Aunt Xu. You need to keep a clear head."

"Wait... what?! Xiaoxue isn't with you?" Li Min finally processed what he was saying. It was a voice imitation. Her own voice went up a pitch. It's no wonder she was mistaken; after all, both the phone number and the voice had matched.

"Right, that's not important. Let's leave it at that for now..." Hanging up, Chu Bamboo let out a small sigh of relief.

After a moment's thought, Chu Bamboo looked at the Little Mushroom Head. "...Nuwa No. 17, keep the number spoof active. Make sure that when she calls that number, it gets routed to my phone. Of course, also ensure that anyone calling my real number can still get through."

"Yes," the Little Mushroom Head replied, its voice calm.

'That's one loose end tied up. But...' Chu Bamboo mused. He wasn't sure. Now that he had preempted Li Min's involvement, would someone else still try to sneak aboard the drone carrier later?

His brow furrowed. He had to prepare for the worst on that front.

Then, he glanced at the time. Judging it was about right, he made another call, this time to the Pope.

Once that call was done!

"Nuwa No. 17, next up... jailbreak!"

Once again, it was time for a jailbreak, time to save people.

This time, however, Chu Bamboo didn't send Xu Duoduo to Hai Mingyue. Instead, he first sent her to a secret safe house. His plan was for Aunt Xu to accompany the drone carrier to the Celestial Capital.

As for Wall Announcements, the plan was to first rescue Hu Kaikang, then persuade Huo Qiming... followed by an emergency draft, taking down the Third Corps, and eliminating Eunuch Huang and his men.

But this time...

Chu Bamboo didn't have Huo Qiming persuade the Police Chief Bureau to defect and subsequently take over all of Jinghai City.

After rethinking his strategy, Chu Bamboo realized there was little point in conquering Jinghai City. After all, he wasn't playing a grand strategy game of capturing bases, boosting production, and then conquering the world. His strategy was a decapitation strike.

Therefore, he had to cut out every unnecessary step. Speed was everything.

This was, in essence, a blitzkrieg.

The focus now was the Celestial Capital!!

"Oh, right!"

Just as he was about to leave Nuwa Base and board the drone carrier to pick up the emergency conscripts, Chu Bamboo suddenly remembered something.

After a moment of thought, Chu Bamboo went to the Zone Three prison. He selected a middle-aged woman suffering from dementia, knocked her unconscious, and used Disguise to make her look like Xu Duoduo. Then, mimicking his actions from the previous timeline, he called a maglev car and sent her to Hai Mingyue.

This was also a way to lure the snake out of its hole.

After all, if the masterminds failed to capture Xu Duoduo, they might not fully trust Li Min.

If that happened, the butterfly effect could cause the situation to spiral out of his control.

...

「On the drone carrier.」

Hu Kaikang glanced at the time. It was a little past eleven. He looked at the bento box in his hands, thought back on the day's events, and felt like he was in a dream.

Of course, compared to Hu Kaikang, Huo Qiming's state of mind was far more complex and delicate. From start to finish, he'd been trying to figure out where he was, what he was doing, and what in the world was happening.

He hadn't even begun to make sense of it all before Chu Bamboo had inexplicably dragged him through the entire operation. He had inexplicably helped Chu Bamboo, inexplicably thrown in his lot with him...

And now, Chu Bamboo had brought him onto a drone carrier. Chu Bamboo even had the presence of mind to casually solve many problems that should have been Huo Qiming's own concern—like dismissing his secretaries, for instance.

Huo Qiming even felt the strange sensation that he had become Chu Bamboo's marionette.

"Um..." Hu Kaikang began, glancing cautiously at Chu Bamboo. He opened his mouth to ask something, but then he saw...

...Chu Bamboo skillfully order the Hive to form a missile-interception grid in advance. And just like that... they smoothly passed through the missile engagement zone, arriving unscathed directly over Celestial Capital City at 11:32.

After handling it, Chu Bamboo let out a long breath and looked at Hu Kaikang in confusion. "What is it?"

"..." After a moment of silence, Hu Kaikang forced a smile and held up his bento box. "Nothing... This food is really good!"

He hastily shoveled a few more bites into his mouth.

"...Then have some more." Chu Bamboo frowned and had Zhao Xu bring Hu Kaikang another bento box.

Then, Chu Bamboo looked down at the Six Gates. That's right—this time, he didn't plan to sneak over in a maglev car from a distance. Instead, he was going to park the drone carrier right on their doorstep. From start to finish, the entire operation was going to be brazen and overt.

"Huo Qiming, you're coming down with me! Hu Kaikang, be prepared for someone to infiltrate the Kunpeng's interior!" Chu Bamboo enunciated clearly, but spoke at a rapid pace. "It might be an operative skilled in stealth... perhaps with a shadow-related 'Kung Fu'? Or it could be something else... whatever it is, just take them down. Try to capture them alive if you can... but if you can't, so be it."

Even though he had already spoken with Li Min, Chu Bamboo's past experiences told him it was never a mistake to have another card up his sleeve.

"...Huh? Oh, okay!" Hu Kaikang nodded, dumbfounded. He only processed the order after he'd already agreed to it. He bit his lip, looking at Chu Bamboo as if he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.

Right now, Hu Kaikang desperately wanted to ask: 'Are your Divine Techniques inherited from the Celestial Secret Archbishop's lineage? If not, how can you act like you have a complete blueprint in your head for everything that's about to happen? But then again, even the Divine Techniques of the Celestial Secret Lineage aren't this absurd, are they...'

'Can he really be accounting for every single possibility? That's terrifying!'

In the next instant...

Chu Bamboo and Huo Qiming descended rapidly into the courtyard of the Six Gates.

Drones swarmed around the two of them.

However, to Chu Bamboo's surprise, he encountered very little resistance within the Six Gates. He didn't even see Sun Min or Xu Yuan, whom he had run into during the previous timeline.

But Chu Bamboo quickly figured it out. With the intimidating presence of the drone carrier looming directly overhead, anyone who still dared to resist deserved a thumbs-up from him. Of course, that "thumbs-up" was the command for the drones to open fire.

After successfully acquiring the permissions for Nuwa No. 3 and completing the data sync, Chu Bamboo picked up the second Little Mushroom Head and returned directly to the drone carrier.

Huo Qiming: "..."

'At first, I thought it was because it was dangerous, but... wait, don't tell me it was just to show off how close you are with the Great Goddess Nuwa?'

'Oh, brilliant! After half-admitting you might be the Grand Ancestor back in the Underground Temple, you've decided to stop pretending entirely, is that it?'

He had just sat down on the drone carrier and hadn't even had a chance to catch his breath when his phone rang again.

"I really am ridiculously busy," Chu Bamboo grumbled to himself. He glanced at the screen and saw that the call was from Li Min.

Letting out a long breath, Chu Bamboo thought for a moment before walking into a separate compartment. Xu Duoduo immediately stood up, looking a little helpless. This was the compartment on the carrier where Chu Bamboo had told her to stay.

Nodding at Xu Duoduo, Chu Bamboo answered the call. He first spoke a few words to Li Min in Xiaoxue's voice to confirm she was safe and alone, then handed the phone to Xu Duoduo.

He opened his mouth, but in the end, the thousand things he wanted to say condensed into a single, sincere sentence. "Aunt Xu, you... just have a good talk with Xiaomin."