pjbooks Chapter 325 I say yes, then yes!
Chapter 325 I say yes, then yes!
Nie Qingcheng sat next to him, legs crossed, holding a cup of tea, watching him dabble in data on his tablet, without asking any questions.
He would say something occasionally, and she would listen, nodding or not, without saying a word more.
By evening, new monitoring data had been updated.
The contaminated area south of Aung Tun in northern Myanmar has expanded again. Two port cities on the Southeast Asian coast reported mass deaths of livestock last night, with blackened eye sockets, exactly the same as those previously reported in Aung Tun.
After reading it, Zhang Yan didn't say anything. He marked the three points on the system map and connected them.
After waiting for two seconds, he understood.
Connecting these three points forms an arc.
The arc-shaped direction points northeast.
Pointing at Jinghai.
Nie Qingcheng looked at him through the rim of the cup, waiting for him to speak.
"The net is closing in," Zhang Yan said. "The spread of pollution in Southeast Asia is not random; it's moving in this direction."
He turned the map over to show her.
Nie Qingcheng narrowed her eyes, finished reading, and put the cup down.
"Then we won't wait for it to push over," she said.
"Right." Zhang Yan was already thinking about how to reverse the cut. "First, clear out these few contaminated nodes, break the arc, and mess up its deployment."
He sent these three coordinates to Qin Xiao, noting their priority.
Then he looked at Nie Qingcheng.
Do you have any manpower in Southeast Asia?
"Yes, along the coast."
"Can you help me with local intelligence gathering? I don't need direct contact, just first-hand reports of unusual events, one step ahead of the military channels."
Nie Qingcheng thought for a second and nodded. "Send the instructions to them tonight."
Zhang Yan stared at the map for a while longer.
The three pollution points are located in a port in northern Vietnam, less than 1,000 kilometers from the Kinh Sea.
He can go there by plane or by sea.
The sea route is more concealed, but slower.
He roughly went through the timeline in his mind and finalized the itinerary.
"I might leave the day after tomorrow." He looked up. "This time it won't be long, three or four days."
Nie Qingcheng looked at him.
"Where are we going this time?"
"Northern Vietnam, then depending on the situation, southwards," he said. "Not deep, but operating on the water, clearing out the core of a few nodes, and absorbing energy with the Heart of Nature."
She lowered her head and rubbed her ring finger against the side of the cup; that spot was now empty, and the ring was still in the box.
"I'll prepare the supplies."
"it is good."
"You said you prefer braised eggs and rice balls, or the usual three dishes?"
"The usual three dishes are fine."
Nie Qingcheng picked up her phone and started typing. This time, there was no delay or beating around the bush; she went straight to making arrangements.
Zhang Yan looked at her and suddenly remembered that more than a year ago, when he went to Changbai Mountain for the first time, she secretly marked all the possible escape routes on the map behind his back. He has never told her that he knew about it since.
It was getting dark outside the window, and the lights in Jinghai began to come on, one after another.
After sending the message, Nie Qingcheng looked up and saw him looking at her, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"What are you looking at?"
"It's nothing."
She put her phone face down, rested her hands on the coffee table, leaned closer to him, and lowered her voice a little.
"Zhang Yan".
"Um."
"No staying up late to check data tonight."
"……OK."
"You saying 'okay' is useless," she said, walking around the coffee table to sit next to him and closing his tablet. "I have to say 'okay' for it to work."
Zhang Yan didn't move, watching her push the tablet away to the corner of the coffee table, then turn to look at him with a very serious expression, not like she was joking.
He thought for a second and said, "Then you say yes."
Nie Qingcheng paused for a moment, her lips curled up slightly, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, her voice softer than before.
"OK."
The trees in the yard were pushed by the wind again. This time they didn't bounce up, but bent over and bowed their heads in the night.
The tablet screen on the corner of the coffee table went dark.
The countdown is still going on, but that's for tomorrow.
……
The day after tomorrow became the next day.
Because Qin Xiao sent new data at 11 p.m. last night—two B+ grade dependent animals from an unknown source appeared at the pollution node in the port in northern Vietnam, and the heat map showed that they were migrating inland.
The inland areas are more troublesome; it's difficult to fight in places where civilians gather.
After reading it, Zhang Yan moved his departure time forward by 24 hours.
Nie Qingcheng didn't ask any questions. She got up before dawn to pack his luggage bag. There were three more braised eggs than last time, and the writing on the note was denser than last time, but the last line was still the same sentence—send the message on time.
It was 4:30 a.m. when Qin Xiao personally delivered the latest monitoring data from the military to Zhang Yan's system interface.
"The Vietnamese military has no contact person on your side. You're acting alone. If you need to retreat, then retreat. Don't try to fight your way through."
"Um."
"Those two B+ grade ones are different; their thermal characteristics differ from the ones we had in northern Myanmar last time. Be careful."
"understood."
Qin Xiao glanced at him, hesitated, and finally said, "I'll have the intelligence terminal over there push information to you in real time."
"OK."
Zhang Yan went into the water.
As soon as the Devouring Shark engine started, the sea surface trembled the moment the entire mechanical shark emerged from the system space. Qin Xiao took two steps back and watched it enter the water. Then the water returned to calm, leaving only a shallow ripple.
Zhang Yan slept through half of the underwater journey.
It's not that I'm not nervous, it's that I'm tired. I've been looking at data since last night, and I haven't actually slept for more than three hours.
He set the Sea Devourer to auto-cruise, adjusted the speed to 32 km/h for fuel efficiency, then closed his eyes in the driver's seat, keeping the system running in the background and automatically waking up in case of any abnormality.
I woke up at nine in the morning, four hours away from the target sea area.
Nie Qingcheng sent a message, one.
"Have we arrived yet?"
"Not yet, I slept for a while."
"...You can actually sleep in there?"
"It's alright, more comfortable than the hard seats on the old-fashioned green train."
"...I'll go with you on the old green train from now on, so I can see if it's really true."
Zhang Yan didn't reply. He took out a braised egg from the notepad bag, peeled one, and ate it.
He ate half of the soy sauce-flavored one that Nie Qingcheng had prepared and continued looking at the map.
The port in northern Vietnam is called Cam Pha. It's a small fishing port with a long, narrow bay near the shore. The terrain is semi-enclosed, and the water is shallow on the inner side, so sharks can't get in. They have to find another way to land.
He checked the parameters of the Thousand-Machine Arm and the high-frequency dagger, and then checked the underwater mobility of the Black Scorpion—it was fine for deep-water combat, but its mobility would decrease in shallow water, so it had to be kept as a backup.
The system notification popped up when he was about 30 kilometers away from the coastline.
"Two B+ level Ruins' Familiar energy cores have been detected ahead. The current location is about 11 kilometers inland from the port. The energy cores are stable and in a dormant state."
"There are three unidentified Class C pollution source fragments nearby, distributed on the seabed near the port. The energy intensity is weak, but there are signs of diffusion."
Zhang Yan first marked the coordinates of the three pollution sources on the seabed.
The order is: first clear the seabed to prevent your companions from using the remaining energy to replenish themselves when they run away; then force out the two B+ class creatures and deal with them in an open area.
He went through the strategy on the system map, and it made sense.
Twenty minutes later, the sea-devouring shark slowed down at a depth of fifty meters and entered stealth mode.
Zhang Yan exited the cockpit, changed into light equipment, equipped with the Thousand-Machine Arm and the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship, and set the Xuan Scorpion to remote standby, ready to be summoned at any time.
Then he sneaked out.
The seawater is not deep; the deepest point here is no more than sixty meters. When sunlight shines through the water, the water appears greenish.