Chapter 361 – Gathering Intelligence

As dusk approached, Yuwen Xuan, accompanied by Wu Pengfei and Ronnie, finally returned to their small courtyard.

Before entering, he suddenly stopped and looked around.

The silence around them was profound. The nearby alley was shrouded in darkness, and the leafless plane trees appeared ghostly in the fading light.

“Yuwen, what are you doing?” Ronnie asked, watching Yuwen Xuan head towards the alley with a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“It’s strange. For a moment, it felt like someone was watching us,” Yuwen Xuan murmured, pinching the hair on his forehead, puzzled.

Under the night sky, Wu Pengfei felt a chilling sensation throughout City A, and with a trembling voice, he said, “Don’t be paranoid. This quarantine zone is naturally scarce in population—who would waste their time spying on you… Anyway, let’s just go inside.”

Once inside the quarantine zone, Wu Pengfei and Ronnie let down their guard. In their view, it was unlikely that anything could happen here.

But even with a relaxed attitude, there was still an underlying unease with the unfamiliar environment.

“Besides, isn’t Ling Mo here? If there were someone outside, wouldn’t he know?” Wu Pengfei continued. He was deeply impressed by Ling Mo’s mental detection abilities.

However, he was unaware that this ability couldn’t be used constantly. Even for a psychic specializing in sensory abilities, rest was necessary.

Especially for Ling Mo, this psychic power was currently just an auxiliary ability.

Nevertheless, his words managed to make Yuwen Xuan turn around: “That’s true. Ah, I envy mental ability users. To have such an unrestrained spying ability—I wish I had that too!”

“Sp…spying?!” Ronnie’s eyes widened in shock, “You mean, this ability allows you to see people’s looks and actions? Like… a camera?”

She suddenly thought too far ahead, like when she was changing clothes, there might be an invisible Ling Mo smirking and watching her…

“Ah? I don’t know about that,” Yuwen Xuan said offhandedly as he knocked on the door.

“You…” Ronnie felt both angry and scared, thinking why he would bring it up if he wasn’t sure, causing her to have all sorts of wild thoughts…

The door was opened by the maid girl. Ling Mo had her stationed at the door, but now she had to follow them inside.

“Huh? Your posture looks a bit odd…”

Upon entering, Yuwen Xuan was immediately taken aback by the sight of Ling Mo sitting in a chair.

Seeing Ling Mo sitting silently with his waist askew, he continued, “Considering your abilities, it’s unlikely you hurt your back just moving a chair, so I can only guess you were up to something while we were away. And the only thing that would require that much back effort is that grand exercise…”

“Just like siblings,” Ling Mo couldn’t help but glance at Li Ya Lin.

“But there’s still something I don’t understand. Even if you achieved a quadruple kill while we were gone, there’s no reason for your back to end up like this…” Yuwen Xuan stroked his chin, pondering, “There’s something fishy here! But speaking of which, why does this chair look so familiar?”

Ling Mo glanced at him, thinking there was nothing odd about it at all – the target was a Leader Class Zombie! And it was both the spirit and the body that were in play!

It was hard enough to handle just one, let alone a quadruple kill… And to top it off, he even included the maid girl in the count.

“So, how did it go with the registration?” Ling Mo turned the conversation to Wu Pengfei. Compared to Yuwen Xuan, this silly brother seemed a bit more reliable.

Having just finished his water, Wu Pengfei replied, “It went smoothly. Initially, two soldiers were in charge of reception, but once they heard we were all ordinary people, they skipped the inspection and sent us straight to a young girl. She mainly registered our names and ages, and any special skills we had. According to their standard procedure, they were supposed to arrange us uniformly, but with Yuwen there, we were directly assigned to his squad. However…”

At this point, Wu Pengfei glanced at Yuwen Xuan and said, “I want to know, why did that girl look at us with pity after she finished registering us?”

“What do you expect when you’re following a nutcase?” Ling Mo thought for a moment and then added, “Yuwen, take care of my brother. At least until he can fend for himself, don’t let him go to his death…”

“That means I owe you a favor…”

Yuwen Xuan’s eyes lit up, only to see Li Ya Lin staring at him with a cold face: “Alright, I’ve taken note.”

“From what you’re saying, this shouldn’t take more than two hours, right?” Ling Mo asked, puzzled.

Ronnie leaned against the door, snorted unhappily, “The registration process took 5 minutes.”

“So why…”

“After we arrived at headquarters, Captain Yuwen told us to wait a moment, and then it was two hours before he remembered we were still waiting at the door like fools.”

Seeing the resentment on Ronnie’s face, Ling Mo sighed while massaging his forehead, shaking his head: “As expected, unreliable…”

“When have I ever been unreliable? Do you think I was off playing with paper airplanes for two hours? Okay, I did play a round of shooting down paper airplanes with my psychic powers… But don’t be mad, I mainly went to gather intelligence. Ronnie, you guys go outside,” Yuwen Xuan said earnestly.

“Any normal person would say ‘Ling Mo, come outside with me’!” Ronnie was dumbfounded again, but seeing Ling Mo leaning oddly in his chair, she could only huff and walk out with Wu Pengfei.

Although she looked displeased, she didn’t forget to close the door behind her as they left.

“We better keep the matter of the experimental subjects between us,” Yuwen Xuan went to the door to listen, making sure Ronnie and the other had walked away before turning to speak.

Seeing Yuwen Xuan’s serious demeanor, Ling Mo nodded, “That’s right. You finally have a reliable idea.”

“Yeah, otherwise, dealing with all the killing, it’s not easy for me either,” Yuwen Xuan sighed.

“I guess I’m the most unreliable one for thinking you were dependable… Anyway, what intel did you manage to gather?” Ling Mo was genuinely interested. He believed that people who could gather a lot of information without resorting to violence could generally be divided into two types: one was the type that had keen observation skills, knew how to use the art of language, and could subtly draw out information without leaving a trace.

The other was probably like Yuwen Xuan, who spoke without any concern, could ask anything outright, and yet the people conversing with him wouldn’t suspect a thing… a madman.

“Oh, it was simple. I first found the guy responsible for managing the duty rosters of all the institutions and gave him a good thrashing,” Yuwen Xuan said with a smug smile. “This guy is a Psychic with a powerful memory, and he can also share what’s in his mind with others through a mental connection. He claims to have learned Muay Thai, but every time he ends up being a pushover in front of me. He said if he lost, he’d let me see the clips stored in his brain, but I just took a quick look at the duty roster while I was at it.”

“That sounds like an amazing ability…” Ling Mo frowned as he imagined it. Such a non-combat psychic ability was probably rare, and it sounded like it was of the mental ability type.

“It’s not that impressive, really. At the headquarters, his nickname is ‘Human Referencing Computer.’ All he does every day is get bossed around by the higher-ups. Without the network, he’s still pretty useful. But lately, the tech department found some devices and started setting up a local network, so he’s been sidelined,” Yuwen Xuan chuckled heartlessly.

Ling Mo nodded inwardly, thinking that Yuwen Xuan had taken advantage of the situation at the right time; he might not have been able to access the duty roster so easily in the past.

“So, you got the duty roster for the lab?”

“Exactly. Let me tell you about the lab.” Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Yuwen Xuan produced a piece of paper with a floor plan and handed it to Ling Mo.

“…”

“Why are you looking at me like that? This is impressionist drawing. I won it from a member of that lab after winning a paper airplane contest. Too bad he would only let me take a quick glance at it,” Yuwen Xuan sighed.

Ling Mo pointed to the jumbled mess: “A floor plan… and you used impressionism… are you freaking kidding me?”

Cough cough, “Otherwise I couldn’t have taken it with me. You have to be searched when entering and leaving headquarters. As long as I can understand it, that’s all that matters.”

Yuwen Xuan pointed to the indecipherable scrawl and said, “See the dotted lines and wavy lines?”

“Yeah.”

“Try ignoring them.”