lcionline Chapter 64: One step too late?
Chapter 64: One step too late?
Chapter 64 Too Late? (3/5)
"Damn it, we're too late!"
Lance clenched his four fists and slammed them angrily against the black tree trunk beside him.
"Click click click one"
The black tree trunk cracked as it was smashed at waist level by Lance's punch and fell to the side.
Black sap oozed from the broken veins of the tree trunk, sticking to Lance's fist and making a slight sizzling, corrosive sound.
Lance seemed oblivious, only glancing at the busy testing personnel, veins bulging on his forehead.
Cheng Xu and Xue Zijing stood beside him, their faces equally grim.
Under Sigma's leadership, the Delta support personnel demonstrated astonishing efficiency, successfully tracing the source of the [Information Worm] back through the traces left by it in less than six hours.
Upon receiving the intelligence, Lance immediately dispatched elite personnel from the Farlight Star branch to head to Fog Mountain Star following the clues provided by the Delta Clan.
Although the location of Wushan Star is not near the boundary of the Chengyu Galaxy, it is not far away either.
Although the personnel of the Yuanguangxing branch had also launched near-Earth satellite observation and other search methods on Wushanxing during the previous investigation and search process, they found nothing.
Only now, with concrete clues and most of the Farlight Star Branch's manpower mobilized, has the secret of that valley finally been discovered.
However, when Cheng Xu, Xue Zijing, Lansli and the others arrived, they found the valley empty; the Purge Bureau personnel who should have been hiding there had vanished without a trace.
As for the abnormal [Cracks] and [Information Worm], they are not in this valley either.
"Chief, we've discovered wounds left by the [Stripping Scar] in the valley!"
"Director, a large number of abandoned devices have been found in Cave No. 3, suspected to be the carriers of the [Information Worm]. We have contacted the Delta people to conduct in-depth testing."
"A small number of metal parts and a large number of oil drums were found in Cave 2. According to database analysis, it is highly likely to be the hideout of the Arbiters!"
"Chief, based on the analysis of the remaining traces in Cave 1 and the valley, this place is most likely the lair of 'Purge Bureau Agent Shirahime'."
"Traces of a starship's departure have been detected, and it is preliminarily estimated that it departed three hours ago! Remnants of an interplanetary engine have been detected near the starship's departure point."
Countless messages converged from the valley to Lance, who was in the center of the command, but the director of the special operations department showed no sign of a smile.
From this information, he could clearly discern that the Arbiter and Bai Ji's departure was very hasty, so hasty that they had to leave behind too many traces of their existence in this place.
"Just three hours short—they ran really fast!"
Lance gritted his teeth.
A small difference can lead to a huge error. Since they failed to catch them this time, it's likely that the Arbiter and Bai Ji have escaped to who knows how far away they are with the [Cracked Scar].
He knew very well that, given the Purge Bureau's consistent practices, these two had probably already escaped the Far Light Star System and disappeared into the vast expanse of space.
If we want to find them again from the vast sea of stars, we don't know when the next opportunity will come.
"Director—please come and take a look."
A special operations officer jogged up to Lance, his face pale and his throat bobbing as he struggled to suppress the urge to vomit.
Led by this operative, the group arrived at the back of the valley.
Upon seeing the scene before him, Cheng Xu's face turned ashen, Lance's expression changed drastically, and Xue Zijing gritted his teeth, making a grinding sound.
What appeared before them was a huge pit of corpses, tens of meters long and wide.
It contained countless corpses, including humans, beasts, and the skeletons of many races that Cheng Xu could not recognize at a glance.
The vast majority of the corpses had turned into piles of white bones, their pale forms appearing hazy and indistinct in the misty fog. On those corpses still covered with bits of flesh, countless white maggots crawled out of the holes.
"It really is Shirohime."
Xue Zijing murmured.
"Bai Ji is—" Cheng Xu had never heard of this name before today.
Lance explained, "She is one of the high-ranking agents of the Purge Bureau, with a status comparable to the Arbitrators, but slightly lower than Graylord."
Xue Zijing turned his head away, unable to bear looking at the mass grave any longer: "Bai Ji's true form is a painted-skin skeleton, born in an unknown place. According to uncertain rumors, she came from a destroyed planet, essentially a kind of unusual anomaly."
"She has been active in interstellar society for the last five hundred years, committing countless crimes, the most famous of which is the Painted Skin Puppet incident that occurred in the Mirror Gallery."
When the topic of the Painted Skin Puppet incident came up, a look of understanding appeared in Cheng Xu's eyes.
This event occurred approximately 150 years ago, when the Mirror Gallery was hosting the Interstellar Film Festival.
At the awards ceremony, someone murdered and skinned six popular actresses, then manipulated them with puppetry to participate in the ceremony, staging a bloody and deadly spectacle in front of everyone.
The information Cheng Xu saw stated that the murder was committed by a vicious interstellar fugitive, without specifying his name.
Unexpectedly, this incident was orchestrated by Hakuhime.
"In addition, she had an obsessive love for bones in good condition, which led to countless killings."
Lanceley continued, "These corpses before us must be the result of her accumulation over the years. She might be involved in all the disappearances that have occurred in various star systems."
"In other words, a total of two agents from the Purge Bureau participated in this raid on the [Ripped Scar], not just the Arbiter as initially thought."
It should be noted that the combat power of the Arbitrator alone was already a major headache for the Farlight Star Branch.
That's someone capable of single-handedly destroying a small interstellar transport fleet.
After leaving the main ship attacked by the Arbiter, Cheng Xu specifically looked up information about this person.
This person was initially just an ordinary agent of the Purge Bureau. He was severely injured in an operation and underwent mechanization transformation led by the Purge Bureau.
After being mechanized, this person's strength increased dramatically. Various unauthorized materials and weapons endowed him with extremely strong individual combat capabilities, making him a veritable walking war machine.
The adjudicator is cruel and tyrannical by nature, but his cyborg body also gives him a considerable degree of rationality and analytical ability, making him a thug that gives the Administration a lot of headaches.
In one of the "Star Core Reactor Disaster" events, the Arbiter shattered the defenses of an entire planetary civilization and detonated a large star core reactor.
In that event, a planetary civilization suffered a devastating blow, with its population plummeting by 80 percent, and it was forced to leave its heavily polluted home.
Both the Arbitrator and Bai Ji are the backbone of the Purge Bureau, and at the same time, they are a thorn in the side of the Anomaly Management Bureau, which wishes to get rid of them as soon as possible.
"There's really nothing we can do when a character like this chooses to run away—" Lance said with a wry smile.
Is there really no way at all?
Xue Zijing turned his gaze to Cheng Xu.
At this moment, Cheng Xu entered a state of deep contemplation, as if everything in the outside world had lost its connection to him.