ctnovel Chapter 25 Warning Line
Chapter 25 Warning Line
The mountain forest was pitch black at night, so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. Only the bright moon and a few stars in the sky reminded passersby that they were not actually blind.
A metal car sped along a dirt road in the mountains. Jiang Yong was driving, while his three employers sat in the back. The man was warily watching the darkness outside the window, the woman remained silent, leaning back in her seat, and the girl named Xiao An sat upright, seemingly wanting to join the vigilance, but her head bobbed with the bumps in the road; she was actually asleep.
Jiang Yongyuan's physical and mental attributes, averaging around 30-40 points, granted him superhuman night vision, allowing him to see the road clearly even in the faint moonlight, without even needing to turn on the headlights. The mechanical sprite, unlike an engine, produced very little noise as it drove the wheels, making the entire vehicle as swift and stealthy as a ghost in the night…
Drip, drip, drip.
The communicator beside him suddenly rang, and Jiang Yong immediately slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a rapid stop.
"What happened?!"
The man in the back row was startled and asked in a low voice, while the woman and little girl next to him also woke up with a start.
"Shhh."
Jiang Yong quickly made a shushing gesture, then picked up the interstellar terminal disguised as an ordinary communicator—this was a pre-set instruction that the terminal would ring immediately once it intercepted any communication band.
Radio communication was extremely valuable in the Carlo civilization, generally only affordable to the military and special agencies. Intercepting a radio signal in such a remote, mountainous region was hardly a good sign.
After a slight adjustment of the frequency, clear sound entered my ears.
"...No abnormalities at sentry post number one."
"No abnormalities at post number two."
"Number three..."
"This is the radio station, no issues reported."
"No abnormalities at post number four."
"Number Five..."
……
Sentry post?
Jiang Yong's gaze sharpened, and he turned to the man, saying, "Don't make a sound, I'm going out for a bit."
He then quickly and silently opened the car door, took a few steps, and went behind a tree. He didn't intend for anyone to see the real interstellar communication terminal.
After removing the rough outer shell grille to reveal the technologically advanced screen of the interstellar terminal, Jiang Yong quickly began operating it.
"Tracing the source of all signals."
The screen flickered a few times, then quickly displayed five or six red dots, one of which was highlighted. Based on the signal characteristics, it appeared to be a repeater radio.
Judging from the distribution of the locations, it should be part of a long warning line.
Could it be that...?
Jiang Yong frowned and continued operating: "Compare the encryption features in the historical records."
The interstellar terminal has only recorded radio signatures once so far—from the three expert-level pursuers who have already been killed, which Jiang Yong recorded incidentally when he intercepted their signals.
As expected, the results showed that the features were completely consistent.
"Tian Du City has already surrounded Yun Qi City?!"
Jiang Yong was taken aback.
Even the most remote southern mountains have this level of security perimeter, so the situation on the other three sides is self-evident.
Professor Xu only learned of the leak from the Tiandu City leadership this afternoon. Based on past experience, Tiandu City must have only started preparing to frame him yesterday at most. In other words, they mobilized manpower and resources and deployed a perimeter cordon around Yunqi City in less than a day?
In Jiang Yong's memory, while Tiandu City was efficient, it hadn't reached this level. He had thought a lockdown of this scale should have occurred at least two days later.
"...This is a bit troublesome."
However, having anticipated the difficulty and unpredictability of city-level missions, Jiang Yong remained calm after reaching his conclusion and quickly began to consider countermeasures. After a short while, he returned to the car.
"The situation is a bit complicated. Tiandu City has already surrounded this place. I need to break through now, so you all need to hide carefully and not be discovered by others."
Jiang Yong explained the situation without any beating around the bush, and before they could get emotional, he immediately gave instructions: "Get out of the car now and come with me to the designated location. Don't move or make any noise there."
"The sentries of Tiandu City will be accompanied by elves with exceptional senses of smell and hearing. I've dealt with them before and can roughly grasp their patterns of movement. As long as you stay quietly in the location I designate, you won't be detected. I'll come to pick you up once I create an opening. I'm an expert; I can protect your safety. Trust me, you won't go wrong, understand?"
He spoke at a steady but extremely fast pace, striving to instill information and a sense of security into the employer's mind as quickly as possible, for fear that someone might have an emotional breakdown and yell a few times—this kind of annoying situation is quite common in guard missions, especially when the person being guarded is not very strong or has an unstable mental state.
As expected, after a barrage of information, the three of them only trembled slightly, but remained tense and made no sound. They silently followed Jiang Yong out of the car and walked to the spot he had chosen.
Using the terminal map, he could roughly determine the patrol routes of the nearby sentries, and then find the last place in the surrounding area to be discovered, with the aim of letting these people hold out until he returned.
After settling the three people in, Jiang Yong turned to leave.
"where are you going?"
Xiao An watched Jiang Yong's retreating figure and whispered a question in a breathy voice, her tone trembling slightly.
"...Go and shut down their radio station."
Jiang Yong left a deep voice with these words, then disappeared into the darkness after a few leaps.
—Last time, the three pursuers and their rear radio used a device similar to a walkie-talkie to communicate directly with each other. Therefore, Jiang Yong only needed to cover the frequency band and turn the original signal into a bunch of noise to send false orders and trick them. This time, the sentry squad of Tiandu City was equipped with a relay radio, which not only unified the transmission and reception of signals, but also enabled them to maintain contact with sentry squads guarding other areas. The signal range and power exceeded those of the basic interstellar terminal thanks to the powerful brick.
Therefore, hacking into a single sentry post is very difficult. To disable the system, the only option would be to tamper with the central relay radio.
……
Since he didn't yet have any stealth skills or traits, Jiang Yong could only keep an eye on the map, maintain a safe distance from the sentries around him, and try to move as silently as possible toward the brightest red dot. Soon, he spotted a faint light at the top of a hill.
The relay radio station in Tiandu City was quite bulky, occupying a large area, and emitted a faint buzzing sound. According to the terminal's reconnaissance scan, there were two guards next to the radio station, and if Jiang Yong's prediction was correct, at least one of them should be an expert.
"If we want to block the entire border of Yunqi City, even if we only block a few commonly used exits, we would need to deploy at least a dozen or twenty such radio stations, with one or two expert-level personnel at each location... Wow."
Jiang Yong was speechless—he remembered that the entire Carol Federation only had less than two thousand expert-level personnel, yet Tiandu City mobilized more than one percent of that number for this operation.
All I can say is that they truly deserve to be called a big dog owner.