Chapter 41: I Won't Leave You Behind (Please Vote for Recommendation)_1

Back on the ground, Jiang Yu took a deep breath of the cool, dry air. The surface was so much more comfortable; even the bright and vast underground environment felt incredibly oppressive.

In the power plant's large yard, the lights were now blazing, and the two off-road vehicles that had brought Jiang Yu and his company had been towed to the corner of the wall.

There was a convoy formed of off-road vehicles, minibusses, and trucks in the yard, ready to set off.

When Jiang Yu had arrived, there hadn't been a single vehicle present; the entire convoy seemed to have appeared as if by magic.

He scanned the night sky over the hills, not knowing if the Redemptionist's reinforcements had arrived.

"I led them away," Sixteen seemed to read Jiang Yu's thoughts. "A signal transmitter was found on Lisha by 'Athena' just as you entered the base.

"Deliberately letting Lisha and Baluo escape was to draw away any potential pursuers that might disrupt my retreat plan."

Jiang Yu laughed awkwardly, "You said you didn't have my information, didn't you?"

Sixteen shrugged, "A reasonable guess made it obvious that you stood out in Baluo's team.

"And the drones tasked with patrolling the perimeter of the base just happened to spot armed Redemptionists. Anyone with a brain could have deduced your identity."

Joking, Jiang Yu said, "You know too much!"

Then he added, "Though I don't know where you're headed, I wish you a smooth journey."

As the forklift hoisted the massive 'Athena' server onto the truck, Sixteen boarded the vehicle as well, "Thank you for your wishes."

He tossed something the size of a USB flash drive to Jiang Yu, "Plug this into your phone, and you'll be able to video call me, as well as send texts and emails!"

Jiang Yu put it away, "Don't be too trusting, but also, don't hurt others without a reason."

"I know," Sixteen said with a smile, "The bomb will go off in about ten minutes. Try to stay as far away as possible. Until we meet again."

He made a 'forward' motion with his hand, and the convoy began to move slowly.

The car headlights pierced the darkness, like beams of light charging at the black curtain, speeding faster and faster down the pitch-black road.

Jiang Yu also hurriedly left the power plant, and, ten minutes later, with a tremendous explosion, the power plant was reduced to ruins.

In room "G36" on the fifth underground level, the explosion caused a huge shake, but, as expected, it did not cause a collapse here.

After a brief darkness, the emergency lights came on.

Thirty-Six dusted himself off, took out the pre-prepared engineering blueprint to adjust the electricity lines, supplying only a small area with lighting to save unnecessary waste.

Then he turned off all the refrigeration units in the specimen room on the sixth underground level. Thirty-Six took one last look at the grotestque specimens in the tanks, many of which could no longer be classified as human.

Silently, he closed the airtight door. Without the refrigeration units to maintain low temperatures, the specimens inside would gradually decay and eventually become unrecognizable.

This was exactly what Thirty-Six wanted to see.

He returned to the fifth underground level and stopped in front of room "G39." Entering, he found that most of the room's structure was actually a huge glass box!

Inside the glass box, under the not so bright lights, was a person whose skin seemed as hard as an exoskeleton. His eyes bulged, resembling dead fish eyes.

Not only that, but his nose and mouth structure was also vastly different from that of a normal person.

Thirty-Six smiled, "Now it's just the two of us here."

The person inside the glass box stared into Thirty-Six's eyes.

Thirty-Six nodded, "I know, I know. Don't worry; I won't leave you behind."

…

The massive explosion drew the attention of the Redemptionist armed personnel, who quickly drove over and found Jiang Yu on the road.

Seeing Jiang Yu, Captain Wu, who was leading the team, finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Ye Wenjie's concern for Jiang Yu surpassed what Captain Wu and the others had expected; if anything had happened to Jiang Yu, Captain Wu and the others would have also felt deeply that they had betrayed the Commander's trust.

When asked about the cause of the explosion, Jiang Yu simply said it was the work of the Adventist faction, who had blown up the base.

He was still hesitant, wondering whether or not to reveal the existence of Sixteen?

This matter was definitely something that needed to be reported to Shi Qiang since that youngster had so many robots—it was likely an unstable factor.

Evans would probably be able to learn the general situation about Sixteen through Sophon, but the question remained, should he inform the Redemptionist faction?

As Jiang Yu pondered, he spoke briefly with Captain Wu and learned that the armed forces participating in this capture operation were not just Captain Wu's squad.

Ye Wenjie had assembled nearly two dozen squads from the surrounding area, and many squads were still tracking the signal from Lisha.

Jiang Yu asked Captain Wu for a vehicle to go and report the details of the operation to Ye Wenjie.

At the same time, he told Captain Wu that the Adventist faction had detected the signal device, and that the current signal source was just a smokescreen, so they could go ahead and capture Lisha and Baluo.

Jiang Yu did not want these two to escape.

A Mongolian who had been following Captain Wu acted as Jiang Yu's driver and drove to the command post.

During the ride, Jiang Yu finally reasoned that the Redemptionist faction would not last many days and therefore, they didn't need to know about Sixteen's existence.

After more than an hour's drive, Jiang Yu arrived at the command post set up in a plain, where a gathering of herders was located.

Jiang Yu met Ye Wenjie in a spacious tent, his face covered in grease, hair and clothes stained with sweat and dust, which he had deliberately not cleaned off.

The more disheveled he appeared, the more it evidenced his dedication to the operation.

When Ye Wenjie saw Jiang Yu, she indeed first expressed her gratitude several times, saying that she would treat him to a big meal in Beijing as compensation.

This made the other captains in the tent envious; although they also took direct orders from Ye Wenjie, they had never been treated to a meal by the Commander.

Jiang Yu briefly summarized the details of the operation. There was no need to lie about what had happened before entering the base, but of course, using the "Sophon Monitoring System" inside the base was something he could not divulge.

The chaos in the base, Jiang Yu described, was due to a weapon developed by the Adventist faction that had gone out of control, causing some of the Adventists to become bloodthirsty maniacs and severely damaging the research base.

In these descriptions, Jiang Yu did not entirely fabricate events; he based it on the attacks he and others, like Baluo, had encountered in the base to illustrate its disarray.

At the end of Jiang Yu's story, a few Adventists who hadn't gone mad blew up the base and retreated, leaving Jiang Yu to escape during the chaos.

After delivering his report, Jiang Yu found a place to collapse into a deep sleep.

During the day, he had to be cautious around Baluo, so Jiang Yu basically had no chance to rest, and talking with Sixteen at night had drained a lot of his energy.

After spinning the events at the base into a story, his mind felt as though it was clogged with paste, and he had a sense of being too tired to think straight.

By the time he woke up, the sun was already high in the sky, and Jiang Yu had a bowl of boiled mutton to fill his stomach.

The boiled mutton in Mongolia was not as delicious as he had imagined, and Jiang Yu still missed the goat meat from his hometown more.

After washing his face, Jiang Yu learned that Captain Wu and his team had returned.

At the command center, Jiang Yu was informed by Chu Xu that Captain Wu and his team had only found Lisha's body.

Lisha's signal transmitter had been dug out by Baluo with a dagger, but Captain Wu and his team had found no trace of Baluo.