ebookland Chapter 330 Alien Beacon
Chapter 330 Alien Beacon
Xia Yunze, on the other end of the phone, clearly heard Zejing's barely audible but absolutely certain chuckle.
This caused his fingers, gripping the receiver, to tighten almost imperceptibly for a moment.
trust.
At the top of the TPC, a large, complex international organization rife with entanglements of various forces, this word is both as precious as a diamond and as fragile as glass.
Xia Yunze always regarded Director Zejing's trust in Lin Yeming as the "optimal choice" after careful calculation, a rational judgment based on a balance of ability and background and long-term observation.
But at this moment, there was clearly a sense of entrustment in Sawai's tone that went beyond pure rational calculation and was almost intuitive.
Especially the young team member named "Daigo". Xia Yunze quickly recalled everything about Madoka Daigo in the intelligence agency's files: a clean background, excellent training results but not top-notch, cheerful and sociable personality, and seemingly no particularly outstanding qualities in the Victory Team. However, if you carefully examine his resume, you can see how terrifying this team member is.
Not to mention, he's currently dating Nanase's daughter.
This kind of high-ranking official in space is several levels above the average staff officer.
Of course, most importantly, he learns things really quickly.
Could he really be a genius from a poor family?
Now, it seems that Director Sawai's trust has extended to this person as well.
After carefully analyzing the situation, Xia Yunze picked up the internal phone and dialed the number.
The internal call was quickly connected, but instead of a secretary or assistant's voice, it came through a slightly deep male voice with a unique electronic reverb.
That has been specially treated.
He quickly and clearly explained the tasks, speaking at a steady pace, using concise and precise language, without any unnecessary embellishment or emotion. After finishing, he hung up the phone decisively, as if the conversation had never happened.
Meanwhile, Lin Yeming and his group arrived at the hiding place of the Manong aliens and made some discoveries.
The afterglow of the setting sun, like molten golden-red amber, stretched the shadows of the ruins long, and the twisted steel bars and broken cement blocks drew grotesque patterns on the ground.
The wind whistled through the ruins.
Lin Yeming stood beside a half-collapsed concrete beam, his figure outlined with a resolute silhouette by the setting sun.
His gaze was calm as he first focused on the faintly flashing red light on the detector in his hand, which pulsed rhythmically like a weak heartbeat.
Then, he looked up and gazed into the distance.
It was the entrance to an underground passage almost completely covered by dense vines, dark as the throat of a giant beast.
The air was filled with the dry smell of dust and the sweet, fishy odor unique to decaying plants, which mixed together to create an old and unsettling atmosphere.
“The signal source is right below us,” Tetsuo Shinjo said, holding his Hyper rifle, the muzzle slowly moving with his wary gaze, scanning the silent ruins around him. His back was slightly hunched, a posture of readiness to deal with any unexpected situation. “The energy reading is very weak, but very stable, unlike anything that comes from nature.”
Lina crouched down, her gloved fingers gently parting a few withered leaves at the edge of the entrance, examining it carefully. "The vines show signs of being recently disturbed," she whispered, looking up at Lin Yeming with focused eyes. "Very carefully, but still leaving fresh cuts. They might still be down there, or they might have left not long ago."
Lin Yeming nodded, but did not immediately give the order to enter.
“Daigo,” Lin Yeming suddenly spoke, his voice low but clear. He looked at Daigo, who was checking the other side of the wall a few steps away. Daigo immediately turned around, his face still bearing the serious expression of someone focused on their investigation. “You and Lina are in one group. Go down the gentle slope on the left, and watch out for any other exits or unusual energy fluctuations. Shinjo, you and I will enter from the front entrance.” His gaze swept over the three team members. “Maintain communication. Report any unknown situations immediately. Avoid engaging in combat unless absolutely necessary. Our primary objective is to confirm and locate the target.”
"Understood!" the three replied in low voices, their eyes quickly exchanging glances, and the division of tasks became clear in an instant.
Daigo and Rena quickly disappeared behind the collapsed wall at the corner of the ruins. Lin Yeming and Shinjo exchanged a glance and nodded to each other.
Lin Yeming stepped forward first, gently parting the thick, curtain-like vines, and a stronger, damp, musty smell wafted out. He was the first to step into the downward-sloping, dimly lit, damp passage, with Xincheng following closely behind, the tactical flashlight on his Hyper rifle already lit.
The beam of the flashlight cut through the thick darkness, illuminating the slippery moss-covered steps and some barely discernible, twisted, non-earth-like engravings on the walls, which gleamed faintly in the flashlight beam.
The passage was not long, and at the end was an underground space of about thirty square meters.
This place looked like an old-fashioned underground storage room, eerily cold, yet now it was filled with a jarring sense of technology. Several oddly shaped, small devices with a dull metallic sheen were haphazardly placed on collapsed wooden shelves, with cables dangling down. In the center of the floor, a palm-sized, irregularly shaped, dark blue crystal emitted a rhythmic, breathing glow from within, and it was this crystal that resonated clearly with the detector.
"Is this it?" Shinjo lowered his voice, pressing himself against the wall next to the entrance, his gun barrel cautiously and slowly scanning every dimly lit corner to confirm there were no ambushes. His breathing sounded somewhat heavy in the silence.
Lin Yeming didn't answer immediately. He gestured for Xincheng to remain vigilant, then crouched down, not touching the crystal directly, but instead using a detector to perform a more detailed scan. The detector emitted a slight hum, and data streamed rapidly on a small screen. "It's not a weapon, nor a standard communication device," he analyzed in a low voice, staring at the screen. "The energy spectrum shows it's more like a... beacon. Or rather, the core component of a locator."
"Locator? For whom? Earth? Or..." Shinjo frowned, his confusion deepening.
“It could be either.” Lin Yeming stood up, his gaze sharp as a knife, and swept across the entire space again. “If the Manonians left this behind, their purpose was one of two things: to navigate for a possible return, or... to monitor certain changes on the planets they ‘marked.’ Either way, this thing shouldn’t have been left here.”
He took out a specially made lead-gray containment container, preparing to place the crystal inside. The inner wall of the container was lined with a soft energy-damping material. Just then, Daigo's deliberately lowered but almost imperceptible urgent voice came through the communicator clipped to his shoulder: "Yoru, about 200 meters to the northwest, a suspected life form's thermal signal has been detected! It's moving very fast and is fleeing towards the city! Lina and I are trying to track it!"
Lin Yeming's eyes sharpened, and his movements quickened abruptly as he carefully placed the crystal into the container and secured it. "Shinjo, let's go! Daigo, Rena, maintain a safe distance and keep track, reporting your location constantly. We'll provide support immediately! Be careful, the enemy is very likely a Manonian, extremely dangerous. Do not engage them alone!"
"understand!"
The two quickly retreated from the underground space, practically jogging back to the surface of the ruins. Night was rapidly falling, the last vestiges of crimson on the horizon quickly being swallowed by inky blue, and the city lights in the distance began to twinkle, forming a hazy sea of light. On the detector screen, the point of light representing the escape heat signal was streaking towards that sea of light where humans lived, like an ominous shooting star.
As Lin Yeming and Xincheng rushed to the surface, the last rays of dawn were sinking into the distant mountains. The ruins were completely swallowed by the deep blue night, with only the lights from the city's direction casting a blurry halo on the horizon.
Over the communicator, Daigo's breathing mingled with the sound of running wind: "The target is crossing the old riverbed and approaching the abandoned Highway Bridge No. 3! It's moving too fast—"
"Where's Lina?" Lin Yeming asked as he ran, his eyes fixed on the rapidly moving light spot on the detector.
"She tried to flank them, but the terrain was too complicated... Wait! The target stopped! Under the bridge pier!"
"We'll be there soon," Lin Yeming said in a deep voice, exchanging a glance with Xincheng. The two quickened their pace simultaneously, their boots crunching over rubble and debris, making a rapid and clear sound in the silent ruins.
The abandoned No. 3 highway bridge is a concrete structure left over from the last century. Its structure is cracked in many places, with exposed steel bars, and in the night it resembles a lifeless behemoth spanning the dry riverbed. Below the bridge piers, even deeper shadows lie, piled high with construction debris and overgrown weeds.
Lin Yeming and Xincheng stopped behind a crumbling wall about fifty meters from the bridge pier and quickly concealed themselves. Almost simultaneously, Daigo and Rena also quietly emerged from the shadows on the other side. The four-person team silently assembled in the darkness.
“The heat signature is behind the largest pier,” Daigo said in a low voice, pointing to the impenetrable darkness. “It’s been there for about twenty seconds, without moving.”
Lina added, "I went around to the side to take a look, and there seems to be a recessed space behind the pier, which may have been the entrance to the former maintenance access road. I didn't see any other exits."
Lin Yeming nodded and raised his night-vision binoculars. In the green field of vision, the concrete surface of the bridge pier was covered with cracks, and the wild grass below swayed slightly in the night breeze. Everything seemed calm, but the stable heat source signal on the detector was as clear as a lighthouse in the darkness.
"Shinjo, Daigo, you approach from the left and right flanks, blocking any possible escape routes. Lina, you hold this high ground and use sniper mode to cover the area in front of the bridge pier." Lin Yeming spoke calmly, outlining the tactics. "I'll approach from the front. Remember, the enemy is a highly intelligent alien life form that may possess unknown technology. Maintain the highest alert level. If the enemy shows any signs of aggression... then you can lift the restrictions on firing."
"Understood!" three voices responded softly.
The team members quickly dispersed, like shadows blending into the night. Lina silently climbed up a section of the partially collapsed wall, set up her modified Hyper rifle, the infrared indicator on the muzzle just a faint, almost invisible dot in the darkness. Shinjo and Daigo, meanwhile, crouched low, using the ruins as cover, flanking to the left and right of the bridge pier.
Lin Yeming took a deep breath of the cold air and gripped his sidearm tightly—not a standard Hyper rifle, but a special model with colder lines and a faint dark blue glow flowing through its barrel. He checked the containment container at his waist, confirming that the dark blue crystal was properly isolated, before standing up from behind the ruins and walking steadily and silently toward the bridge pier.
The distance was decreasing. Thirty meters, twenty meters, ten meters... The air seemed to freeze, with only the faint hissing of the wind whistling through the weeds and steel bars. The detector showed that the heat source was directly behind the dent in the bridge pier, almost motionless.
Just moments before Lin Yeming stepped into the shadow of the bridge pier—
"Yoru! Watch out!" Daigo's warning suddenly rang out in the communicator.
It didn't come from behind the bridge pier, but from the upper side!
Lin Yeming's pupils contracted sharply, and he rolled to the side and backward almost instinctively. A beam of eerie green light grazed his shoulder and shot into the ground, instantly melting a smooth-edged pit in the concrete, from which wisps of smoke rose.
The attack didn't come from behind the bridge piers, but from the shadows above the bridge! There, a slender, twisted figure, almost completely blending into its surroundings, was slowly taking shape. It was about two meters tall, its body covered in a dark, carapace-like substance, its limbs bent backwards, its head in an inverted triangle shape, and its compound eyes gleaming with a cold, inhuman green light in the darkness. In its hand, it held a strangely shaped tubular weapon, the muzzle still emitting a lingering green glow.
Manonians! And not just one!
Almost at the same moment Daigo issued his warning, the heat source behind the bridge pier, which had been stationary, suddenly moved! Another, slightly shorter and stockier figure, also covered in armor, pounced out like a ghost, heading straight for Lin Yeming, who had just regained his footing. Its arms were not hands, but two curved bone blades that gleamed with a cold light, tearing through the air with a sharp whistling sound.
"Fire!" Lin Yeming's command was short and forceful.
Lina, who was already in position, pulled the trigger first. Whoosh! A high-energy particle beam shot out from the muzzle of her gun, hitting the bridge structure where the first Manon alien (the sniper on the bridge) was located. Concrete fragments exploded, forcing it to move and dodge, interrupting its second aim.
At the same time, Shinjo and Daigo rushed out from both sides. "Don't even think about it!" Shinjo roared, his Hyper Gun unleashing a dazzling barrage of energy bullets that covered the Manon alien wielding a bone blade who lunged at Lin Yeming. Daigo, on the other hand, moved even closer, attempting to attack the manon's vulnerable joints from the side.
The Manonian wielding the bone blade was exceptionally agile. With a near-physically defying the laws of physics, it leaned back and dodged most of New City's firepower. The bone blade flashed, creating a screen of light, and with a few crisp clangs, it actually parried Daigo's close-range thrust, sparks flying everywhere. Its compound eyes coldly locked onto Lin Yeming, or rather, onto the containment container at Lin Yeming's waist.
Their goal is to recapture the beacon!