20: Chapter 20 Strange Energy Deep Within the Mist
For Wang Pingan, the weekend of the Elite Program was not a day of rest. It was his payday.
When a rich girl like Su Yue drove her flashy pink hover sports car, roaring away from the base to enjoy a top-tier genetic SPA worth six figures in star coins; when that martial arts fanatic Lin Zhan, who didn't treat himself like a human, kept himself locked in the five-times gravity room, torturing every inch of his muscles with roars and sweat; when that eccentric bespectacled guy Zhao Hao sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion in the meditation room, his mental energy fluctuating like tides as he tried to touch that ethereal higher realm...
Wang Pingan had already changed into his most beloved, yet most inconspicuous work uniform.
An old school uniform, washed until it was faded white, with frayed edges at the collar and cuffs, and two barely noticeable holes on the knees.
He strapped on that black backpack, which looked ordinary but had actually undergone spatial modification, capable of holding a whole cow, and skillfully boarded the public shuttle headed for the West City Scrap Yard.
He found a window seat, put on his headphones, and pretended to listen to music while actually resting his eyes. Watching the bustling streetscape speeding backward outside the window, and seeing those ordinary people rushing about, struggling for a living, he felt a sense of peace in his heart.
This feeling was just like punching in for work on the subway in his past life, full of ritual.
It was just that for others, punching in meant burning themselves out to earn their boss a new car. For him, punching in for "work" meant adding the most critical fuel to his path of defying fate.
West City Scrap Yard.
As soon as the shuttle door opened, that familiar composite aroma, fermented for at least a hundred years from a mixture of machine oil, rust, ozone, and unknown chemical substances, rushed to meet him.
The surrounding passengers subconsciously frowned and covered their noses, but only Wang Pingan took a deep breath, a satisfied expression appearing on his face.
Now, when he smelled this scent, he didn't find it choking at all; instead, he felt a sense of intimacy as if he were home.
This was the scent of money, the scent of dreams, and the scent of trampling those so-called geniuses under his feet while making them applaud and cheer for him.
He adjusted his baseball cap, hiding half of his face in the shadows, and skillfully navigated around to the back wall of the scrap yard, crawling through a concealed hole in the fence that only he knew about.
He hunched his waist, his presence suppressed to the extreme, like a drop of water merging into the sea, silently and swiftly disappearing into that endless metal jungle piled high with discarded steel.
"Activate, energy scan." He muttered in his heart.
The familiar deep blue 3D map instantly unfolded in his mind. With him as the center, everything within a three-kilometer radius had nowhere to hide. Dense white and green dots, like stars on a summer night, clearly marked the specific location of every "treasure."
He was now the most efficient and professional miner in this vast junkyard. Bar none.
Following the "treasure map" he had drawn, he headed straight for a green dot marked "high value." It was a pile of scrap that looked like the hull of a transport ship. He skirted to a blind spot in the surveillance and pulled out a short, stout crowbar.
The crowbar in his hands was used with more precision than a surgeon's scalpel. He didn't use brute force, but instead incorporated the power-exertion techniques from the Federal Military Body Boxing, giving a gentle pry and a jolt, and an armor plate embedded with energy circuits slid off silently.
He quickly stuffed it into his backpack, the entire process flowing like water without making a single unnecessary sound. The capacity of his backpack was calculated down to the last detail. What to put at the bottom, what to stuff into the gaps—everything was strictly planned.
One hour. Not a minute more, not a minute less.
When he slipped out from another equally hidden exit, carrying the heavy backpack that almost crushed him, he had already exceeded his KPI for the day.
He returned to the cheap studio apartment located in the city center—which he had specifically rented to facilitate his "work." Locking the door, drawing all the curtains, and activating the signal jammer were all done in one smooth motion.
He dumped all the "spoils" from his backpack onto the floor in one go, producing a pleasant clattering sound.
Three discarded warship energy core fragments, a section of a high-strength alloy drive shaft that still retained pure energy, and five or six strange parts whose names he didn't know but which had decent energy reactions according to the system.
He sat cross-legged and began his weekly, most sacred, and also most unadorned wealth conversion ritual.
"Absorb!" He pressed his hand onto an energy core fragment.
[pay-to-win points +90]
"Absorb!" [pay-to-win points +15] "Absorb!" [pay-to-win points +75]...
Watching the numbers rising rapidly on the system panel, Wang Pingan felt every cell in his body cheering and jumping for joy because of this unearned... ah no, because of the huge harvest from his hard work.
This feeling was much purer and much happier than lifting weights until exhausted in the training room, or fighting to the death to snatch resources in secret realms.
However, today, just as he finished counting all his spoils and was preparing to pack up after swiping a "large item" marked as "medium value" in the last corner, he felt possessed and walked a few hundred meters deeper into the depths of the scrap yard.
Perhaps today's harvest had been too smooth, making him a bit carried away; or perhaps, in the mysterious workings of fate, something was attracting him. In any case, he stepped into an area he had never ventured into before.
The scrap here was significantly larger and older than that in the outer areas. Some rusted warship wrecks, like small mountains, with the blurred Federal military emblem still remaining on their hulls, lay silently here like the carcasses of ancient beasts.
The smell of decay and energy degradation in the air was so thick it almost solidified, and breathing it into his lungs brought a stinging sensation.
Wang Pingan's brows furrowed slightly. This place was a bit off.
He habitually muttered in his heart. "Activate, energy scan."
However, the next second, what appeared in his mind was no longer that familiar, brilliant starry sky composed of countless light points. Instead, it was... blood red.
A blurry, churning blood-red mist, like the static on a screen when an old TV had a bad signal, shrouded his entire scanning interface.
In the very center of the mist, there was also a blinking, glaring red exclamation mark!
[Warning: Unknown high-intensity energy field interference detected, scanning function severely impeded! Unable to parse target area!]
Wang Pingan's breath stopped in that instant. His whole body felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over him during the dog days of summer, chilling him through from the inside out.
The system had failed for the first time. The greatest trump card he relied on to survive and act recklessly since coming to this world had turned him into a blind man in front of this mysterious area.
How was that possible? Hadn't this scrap yard been repeatedly cleared by the military and confirmed safe before being opened for civilian use? How could there still be something powerful enough to interfere with the scanning of the supreme cosmic pay-to-win system?
Wang Pingan didn't act like a hothead, blindly rushing in just because he had the system. Experience from his past and present lives told him that the unknown was what signified the greatest danger.
He was extremely cautious, one could even say a bit cowardly. He took step after step, like a slow-motion shot in a movie, slowly retreating and silently exiting the area that made him feel extremely uneasy.
Then, he didn't leave, but instead found a towering pile of scrap, and like the most patient leopard, hid himself in the shadows, quietly observing the mist-shrouded scrap pile from afar.
He couldn't see anything. From the outside, it looked no different from anywhere else. It was still those rusted steel mountains, still that deathly silence.
But he could just feel it—an inexplicable, palpitating sense of oppression, like liquid mercury, spreading heavily from that area.
He tested it, walking a few more steps forward until he reached the edge of that invisible mist. He reached out his hand. Just as his fingertips were about to touch the air of that area.
A faint yet unusually strange energy fluctuation, like the softest spider silk, gently brushed across his fingertips.
The feeling was very strange. It didn't feel like the pure, jade-like energy of spirit crystals. Nor did it feel like the violent, life-filled vitality of demon beasts.
It was a kind of... cold, dead, yet carrying a trace of unbroken "activity," a weird feeling like cold mechanical circuits intertwined with warm flesh and nerve endings.
It was as if... a cold, dormant machine was still savoring the temperature of blood in its dreams.
Wang Pingan jerked his hand back. His back, he didn't know when, had already broken out in a layer of fine cold sweat. This place had a huge problem!
He didn't stay a moment longer, turned around, and left without looking back. His nimble figure was more than twice as fast as when he came.
...Returning to the Elite base, Wang Pingan dove straight into the base's library.
The library here didn't have a single paper book; it was all data chips flickering with dim light and huge holographic reading consoles.
He didn't look at those profound martial arts manuals that martial artists outside would fight tooth and nail for, but instead started frantically searching through some extremely obscure, even somewhat whimsical materials.
"Federal Warship Disposal Regulations (Third Revised Edition)" "Report on Energy Anomalies and Derivative Properties of Special Materials in High-Energy Battlefield Environments" "Discussion on the Possibility of Fusion Between Interstellar Organisms and Mechanical Creations (Excerpt from Top Secret Archives)"
He spent the whole afternoon searching, feeling dizzy and having over-consumed his mental energy, yet he didn't find any useful clues. Those materials were either vague or he lacked the clearance to access them.
The next day, during the martial arts instruction class, Instructor Chen Feng was explaining the precautions for survival in the wild, a compulsory course for the Elite Program.
"...In the wild, you will encounter all kinds of situations. Remember, never trust your eyes, and even less so, trust your instruments too much." Instructor Chen Feng's gaze swept over everyone like a hawk.
"Some places look ordinary, with spiritual energy concentrations even lower than average, but they might hide deadly spatial rifts. When I was young in the army, I saw with my own eyes a platoon of comrades just laughing and playing as they walked into a sea of flowers that looked beautiful, and then they never came out again."
He told a short but chilling story. "Especially those areas with abnormal energy fluctuations; they are very likely the entrances to some undiscovered ancient ruins, or perhaps the lairs of some unclean things."
"When you encounter such situations, don't try to be a hero; report it immediately and wait for professionals to handle it. Your task is to get into a top martial arts university and become pillars of the Federation, not to be explorers who sacrifice themselves in vain."
These words made Wang Pingan's heart skip a beat. Unclean things? The "unclean" that Instructor Chen Feng spoke of clearly did not refer to ordinary demon beasts.
During the break, Wang Pingan saw Lin Zhan in the corner, carefully wiping his special stone locks, which he treated as treasures, with a piece of soft deerskin. He thought for a moment, then walked over with a cup of nutrient solution.
"Lin Zhan." Lin Zhan looked up and glanced at him, which counted as a greeting. That was just how he was: taciturn, but not aloof.
"Ask you something." Wang Pingan pretended to be casual, took a sip of the nutrient solution that tasted like dishwater, and said in a chatty tone, "Do you know what the origin of that huge West City Scrap Yard is? Such a large area, it feels bigger than several districts of our Shen City combined."
Lin Zhan's wiping motion paused. For the first time, a trace of extremely subtle fluctuation appeared in his eyes, which were usually as calm as an ancient well, like a pebble thrown into a deep pool.
He was silent for a full half-minute, seemingly deliberating or perhaps recalling something. Then, he used his unique, low voice, like a subwoofer, to speak.
"My elders occasionally mentioned it once." "Over a hundred years ago, that place was the home port of the Federation's Third Interstellar Fleet. Later, due to changes in shipping lanes and strategic adjustments, the starport was abandoned and gradually changed into the current scrap trading station."
"It is said that when the fleet withdrew and the military conducted the cleanup back then, they sealed off some things in the Seventh Warehouse Area in the deepest part." Lin Zhan's voice dropped even lower, as if afraid of being heard by something.
"No one knows exactly what it is. My grandfather said it was top military secret." "Only that, starting from a hundred years ago, that area was listed as the Federation's highest-level restricted zone. Even within the military, very few people dare to approach it."
Seventh Warehouse Area! Restricted zone! Military secret! These few unintentional words from Lin Zhan were like several bolts of lightning piercing the darkness, instantly splitting open all the mist!
He finally knew where it was that he had stumbled into yesterday. An indescribable excitement and palpitation, mixed with a trace of fear of the unknown, like an out-of-control electric current, grew wildly from the deepest part of his heart, making all the hairs on his body stand on end.
A treasure! That mysterious area, judged as "high risk" by the system and listed as a "restricted zone" by the military, absolutely hid a massive treasure! A secret that even the Federal military found troublesome and could only choose to handle with the clumsiest method—physical blockade!
Just when Wang Pingan's heart was surging with emotion, and he couldn't wait to go explore it again right now. In his mind, that deep blue system interface suddenly flickered gently, brighter than ever before.
He was stunned for a moment and quickly sank his consciousness into it. He saw that next to the familiar option of [Energy Scan], a brand new, but greyed-out and locked icon was slowly emerging and taking shape.
The style of the icon looked like an eye. An eye filled with a cold sense of technology, composed of countless blue data streams and complex geometric figures, as if it could pierce through all things in the universe.
Below the icon, there was also a line of small, glowing text.
[Eye of Truth (Inactive): Can analyze all energy compositions, see through falsehoods, and gain insight into the origin. Activation condition: Mental attribute reaches 50.0.]
Wang Pingan's pupils suddenly contracted to the size of pinheads. Eye of Truth! Analyze all energy compositions! See through falsehoods! Wasn't this the "key" tailor-made for that mist-shrouded restricted zone!
He immediately pulled up his attribute panel. [Mental: 34.7] He was still 15.3 points away. And 50 points of mental attribute, according to the information he found in the library, was precisely the initial threshold for the transformation of mental power when breaking through to a Third-Rank Martial Artist!
Pressure. An unprecedented, massive pressure, like Mount Tai pressing down, instantly weighed on his heart.
He turned his head and looked out the window, toward the direction of Shen City. That Seventh Warehouse Area, shrouded in mist, was like a Pandora's box full of deadly temptation, lying silently there, waiting for him to open it.
He knew that there might be a huge treasure there that could allow him to reach the sky in one bound. But it might also bury a terrifying danger that could leave him doomed forever. To open this magic box, he needed a key. This key was to break through to a Third-Rank Martial Artist, raise his mental power to 50 points, and thereby activate the [Eye of Truth]. Before that, he could only watch, and he could only endure.