Chapter 638
Trap
Chapter 638 Trap
The air in the room seemed to gradually stagnate, and a heavy, cold pressure could be felt with every breath. The underground trading agent, nicknamed "Iron Hand," sat in his chair with a tense expression. On the wall next to him, brightly colored promotional posters still displayed the small-scale struggle that took place at the bottom of the Iron Nest and was commissioned by the upper-level moviegoers through voting. The circulation system blew out fresh air, but it could not dispel the fog in his heart.
"Is Old Joe the only person you've been in contact with?" Luo asked unhurriedly.
“…Only him,” Iron Hand answered hesitantly, as if some unseen watcher were in the room, “and I didn’t even know it was one of his men at first; I thought it was you…”
Luo interrupted him directly: "When was the first time you two collaborated?"
Iron Hand leaned back in his chair, a struggle in his expression, but still answered the question: "Terra Calendar, about four years ago."
Luo raised an eyebrow.
"So, the first phase of the Zolda Blackstone test data and the fracture generator blueprints were also leaked from you... That all makes sense."
Iron Hand raised his head, seemingly struggling with the decision for a long time before suddenly making up his mind: "You... should leave this place. You are no match for him now. This planet is full of his people. You shouldn't have come here in the first place..."
Luo looked at him with a half-smile, an expression that sent a chill down Tie Shou's spine.
"You're so concerned about urging me to escape this place, while secretly sending my movements to the upper levels of the giant wall... Trying to please both sides at this time is exhausting."
Iron Hand's eyes widened immediately.
Luo seemed unconcerned about the other person's reaction. Her gaze passed over him and went out the window, as if looking into an unseen distance. At the same time, she said to the air, "Old Joe, stop with the beating around the bush. This isn't your style... I have limited time. Let's get this over with quickly."
There was no response from inside the room, except for a transaction agent with an unusually grim expression sitting behind a table. But Luo knew that the steel monster was watching the room from somewhere—from the moment she left her apartment building, the watcher's gaze had never left her, watching the shuttles flying overhead, the gang-controlled sensor towers in the Great Wall area, the satellites in orbit, and the surveillance systems around the junkyard platform that had been operating for a century…
Iron Hand didn't lie to her about at least one thing: the planet was now teeming with Old Joe's men—which was quite in line with the Iron Man's style.
Extreme caution, extreme care, making all preparations, and not taking action until absolutely certain of success, for fear of encountering even the slightest danger... even if it's just damaging a spare steel shell.
Beneath that seemingly powerful steel body lies a cautious and meticulous heart.
Luo stood up.
Iron Hand hurriedly stood up as well: "Are you leaving?"
Luo didn't answer, but simply looked the person in front of him up and down a few times.
Faint silver lines appeared in the eyes of the transaction agent, and the blood vessels near his neck bulged slightly, visibly pulsating, as if harboring something alive.
"How many doses of the 'gene serum' that Old Joe gave you?" Luo suddenly asked.
Iron Hand paused, seemingly taken aback by this abrupt question, and instinctively stammered, "Two..."
Hopeless.
The living metal has invaded vital organs—not everyone can survive the subsequent modifications, and besides, Old Joe simply cannot afford the extra costs to perform a real modification surgery on a piece of trash like this.
On this planet, only a fool would spend money on a piece of trash—just for that little bit of sincerity in his eyes back then.
“Let’s shake hands,” Luo suddenly said, extending his right hand to the person opposite him. “Consider it as settling accounts for all the hardships you’ve endured over the years.”
Iron Hand stared blankly at the slender hand reaching towards him, his lips moving slightly: "Boss, I..."
"It won't hurt much," Luo said softly.
Iron Hand blinked, and finally reached out his hand—with his still intact palm, he gently grasped the elf's fingers.
He vaguely remembered that decades ago, this hand had pulled him out of the garbage heap. Back then, the owner of that hand looked so tall, and her voice was like a gentle breeze blowing over the top of the high wall—but he could no longer remember what she had said to him back then.
Luo turned and left the room.
She walked through the stairs and living room, past the water feature wall with its flowing filtered water, and arrived at the door where she saw her captain of the guard and soldiers. Several bodyguards who had previously followed Iron Hand had been disarmed and were now handcuffed and bound to the railing with electromagnetic shackles, each of them bruised and battered.
A few thin foremen and technicians stood to the side, not tied up, but trembling with fear. Luo walked past the foremen, casually pulled out a badge and tossed it into one of their arms: "From now on, you're the new boss here."
The young man who received the badge shuddered in fright, and then subconsciously looked at the small building on the platform, and at a window on the second floor—the window was open, and hot air filled with foul fumes swirled in a few scraps of paper that had fallen from the upper floor.
Iron Hand was breathing heavily. He looked at the scraps of paper that had fallen on his shoulder and reached out to brush them off, but the action squeezed out the last bit of air from his chest.
A ball of blazing spiritual energy erupted from his body, engulfing everything around him in a sweltering heatwave.
Exclamations came from the platform behind them. The captain of the guard, who was walking with Luo toward the helipad, subconsciously looked back and saw thick smoke billowing from the two-story building. The henchmen were shouting and yelling outside the platform. Some were rushing in to put out the fire, while others stood by and watched indifferently not far away.
"What a pity, he used to be quite reliable." The captain of the guard shook his head and sighed casually.
"For him, this is already a good ending," Luo said calmly.
They returned to the tarmac, where the shuttle they had arrived in was still parked. However, near the boarding gate, the soldiers found a charred body on the ground.
“The people Old Joe sent,” Luo said calmly, as if he had known this would happen all along, “are probably planning to tamper with the shuttle—every one of my private aircraft is connected to my electronic brain, and Old Joe knows that, but he still sends people to try anyway, that’s just how he is.”
She kicked the corpse aside, and the shuttle's anti-gravity engine began to hum. As she entered the cockpit, several alarm messages popped up on the holographic projection.
Luo casually glanced at the alarm messages aside, while the captain of the guard's voice came from the passenger side, tinged with tension: "Boss, that 'Fairy' shuttle is gone!"
“I know,” Luo said casually, steer the shuttle away from the rickety helipad while opening the intercom. “Everyone in the back, hold on tight! My piloting style might be a bit wild from now on—”
"Boss, which way do we go?" the captain of the guard asked quickly, gripping the armrest of his chair. "Back to the building? Or through the high-walled passage to the starport launch tower? We can use the launch tower's signal cover to enter orbit. The smuggling ships in orbit are already arranged and can cover our departure from this planet..."
“Leave? I can’t leave now. My home is surrounded. Old Joe’s armed drones are everywhere,” Luo said casually. The holographic projection next to her then showed images from various monitoring angles. It was near her apartment building, and the sky was filled with flashing drone lights. “Not to mention the starport launch tower. It’s been so long. Even if he can’t monitor all the launch towers on the planet, he can at least control all the access points near this node city—his people are everywhere here.”
Even the most loyal captain of the guard was momentarily stunned upon hearing these words. He stared wide-eyed at his boss: "So... you knew this would happen?!"
"Correct."
"Then let me arrange smuggling boats and passages through the high walls..."
“It was specifically designed to have Old Joe intercept us,” Luo said, controlling the shuttle as it flew along the “canyon” in the middle of the high wall, slowly descending as it went. “I wanted him to think I was in a hurry to leave this planet, and then I wanted him to block all our escape routes one by one, so that he would believe I had nowhere to escape, that I was truly at my wit’s end…”
The "cliffs" on both sides of the porthole flashed by, and the ancient and mottled urban megastructure became a blurry continuous light and shadow. The sunlight grew weaker and weaker, while the lights of the lower area pierced through the mist, appearing shadowy and layered, like a ghostly curtain.
Luo pressed the joystick down to the next gear.
The captain of the guard gradually realized: "You mean..."
"To find out what Old Joe is up to, we have to push him to the brink. But this steel monster is too cautious. Even when faced with a 'loser' whose project has gone bankrupt and who has fallen to this state, he only dares to send out a shell. So if we want this coward to really show himself, we can only give him the illusion that everything is foolproof and that the situation is under our control."
“I was originally hoping he would make a move directly at the Gray Iron Junkyard, but now it seems that even in the lawless zone in the middle of the Great Wall, he only dares to send his men to use some minor tricks. So we can only…”
A jolt came from the shuttle, and then the scenery on both sides of the porthole began to rise rapidly.
"...to go to an even more lawless place."
The shuttle began its descent towards the bottom of the giant wall.
Almost simultaneously, a piercing alarm sounded throughout the cockpit.
The control panel flashed a blinding red light, and warnings of being locked by radar sounded one after another. The shuttle's navigation system and sensing radar were violently interfered with, and the main control screen, which had clearly shown the surrounding terrain, turned into a white screen!
Immediately afterwards, two tongues of fire shot out from a nearby giant abandoned building, and a ghostly shadow rushed out of the building.
The captain of the guard quickly recognized the shadow: "Boss, it's that 'Fairy' shuttle from before!"
(End of this chapter)