Chapter 931: I Don"t Know Him
... If time were to rewind a few minutes ago, even if Lin Sanjiu guessed ten thousand times, she wouldn"t have expected to see this thing in the ruins.
She stared at it intently, her gaze fixed and unmoving.
Some were burned to black ashes, and when the scorching wind blew, they floated and scattered away; others were still wedged between bricks and rubble, perhaps due to their density and thickness, entangled with clumps of dirt. So even after Commander Tower crashed into the ground, they remained intact and caught Lin Sanjiu"s attention.
She bent down, her trembling fingers pulling out a clump of hair from the soil. She was familiar with this curly and coa.r.s.e texture of hair. After all, not long ago, she herself had stuffed a similar clump of hair into the gaps between the bricks.
Almost dazed, Lin Sanjiu raised her eyes and looked at Percival Levin.
At that moment, he lifted a huge and heavy stone slab, forcefully pus.h.i.+ng it aside, causing countless clouds of dust and soil to rise. Lin Sanjiu silently approached him from behind, still holding onto that clump of hair tightly in her hand.
"What is this place?" she shouted, then quickly realized her question was not clear enough. "I mean, is this the control console?"
As Percival Levin turned his head, he seemed to suddenly realize he heard her voice again. Before he could move away, Lin Sanjiu immediately raised her hand and grabbed his shoulder.
"I won"t command you anymore," she hastily replied, "I just want to ask you a few questions!"
Percival Levin"s gaze s.h.i.+fted on her face, then scanned the Commander Tower in the distance. After devouring countless offerings, the flames gradually lost their momentum, melting down softly and wriggling on the ground at a height of half a person. The flickering fire cast ever-changing shadows on their faces, making them look almost unrecognizable.
"This used to be the control console," Percival Levin wiped his face and kicked a broken stone heavily. As if still harboring resentment, he glanced at the deformed half-burnt tower in the distance, then kicked another stone away. "Now everything is destroyed. We can"t get in anymore. No one can."
Lin Sanjiu pressed her temple, feeling a sharp pain on one side.
"What did the control console look like when it was intact?"
"When you open the bluestone floor tiles, the control console will rise from below," Percival Levin stared at the Commander Tower and said dully.
"Opening the stone slab will cause the control console to rise directly?" Lin Sanjiu clenched her palms tightly and asked further, "Is the ground beneath the control console, with the brick floor tiles as well? How do you open the stone slab and make the control console rise?"
From the ruins, she could still vaguely recognize pieces of twisted and shattered metal plates.
"I think... I didn"t pay attention to the ground beneath the control console pedestal," the tall man finally turned his head towards her, his face burning red from the heat. "The officer in charge of security knows where to input the activation pa.s.sword. Why are you asking about this?"
Lin Sanjiu stood there blankly without answering.
The scorching waves of wind burned against her face, and all around her were the moans of people on the brink of death and the bustling footsteps and shouts of rescue efforts. Yet she remained transfixed, staring at the ruins and the Commander Tower in front of her, lost in thought.
Percival Levin glanced at her, then swiftly took two silent steps back, turned around, and hurried towards his Munitions Factory comrades.
Lin Sanjiu heard his footsteps but still didn"t move.
In a daze, a conjecture floated in her mind—a conjecture about why Silvan had appeared at the other end of the Munitions Factory to find her. The fragments seemed to fit together.
During the Exodus, the words of the Chicky brothers, Silvan, still echoed clearly in her ears: "It"s difficult for us to infiltrate the Munitions Factory, so we didn"t have a chance to leave our hair inside."
She slowly loosened her grip, and the dirty clumps of hair were instantly scattered by the wind.
So, what were these? Clearly, there were numerous "antennae" belonging to the Chicky brothers buried in the core area of the Munitions Factory. Most likely, they couldn"t hide much of what happened in the Munitions Factory from them.
Why? Why lie?
Lin Sanjiu raised her hand and saw that her fingertips had turned pale.
Silvan was once the chief of the security department. He wanted to enter the Commander Tower, so he must have had a way to open the control console. What had happened at that time that made him bend down and look at the ground beneath the console? These clumps of hair were probably also stuffed into the gaps between the bricks, just like she had done before. Perhaps a few strands had become loose and were blown up by the wind, and he happened to see them?
Regardless of how he discovered it, he eventually found out.
Something that had just appeared in Lin Sanjiu"s hands, whose purpose she didn"t know, was now found in a place she had never been in—just this one doubt was enough to make Silvan temporarily stop his actions. For some reason, whether out of concern or other motives, he had clearly turned around and come to find Lin Sanjiu. Because she had promised him that she would help him get the "Scholar."
But what he didn"t know was that the process of her obtaining the "Scholar" had gone so smoothly and easily. While he was running towards the research building, Lin Sanjiu had quickly approached the Commander Tower from another route—unfortunately, an intruder had indeed entered the tower, and it took her a long time to realize the situation.
Exodus was in danger.
This thought entered her mind like an ice cube slipping into her collar, causing her to shudder suddenly. The two brothers with unclear motives who lied to her were now in Exodus with the severely injured Puppeteer and the powerless Hu Changzai. No one could balance them out. With their informational abilities, they could always be one step ahead in preparation.
Even Bohemia, who brought them back, was starting to arouse Lin Sanjiu"s hidden suspicions.
She had to go back immediately.
Summoning her card, she quickly fed all the clumps of hair into a small bundle of flames. Then, without hesitation, Lin Sanjiu turned around and rushed in the direction she came from.
"Stop!"
Percival Levin"s voice echoed in the distance as he shouted at the Munitions Factory members who were rus.h.i.+ng from afar to a.s.sist, "Stop her, she is one of the intruders!"
Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth and was about to forcefully break through when she heard Percival Levin shout, "Blossom!" Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her back—as if her skin was cracking open—causing her vision to black out, and she was instantly knocked down.
It was the attack that had initially breached her back"s protective force field!
She didn"t expect Percival Levin to be so patient, enduring without using his "Command" ability that had hit her twice in a row—until several Munitions Factory combatants blocked her path, and he fiercely struck her, conveniently trapping her within the encirclement.
Lin Sanjiu slowly turned over, feeling intense pain all over her body, her vision blurred. Percival Levin"s figure approached from the half-illuminated darkness of the night, and he lowered his head towards her.
"You must have figured it out, right?" he sighed softly, "I couldn"t take you to find Luther because I don"t even know who Luther is."