Chapter 1076: The Compet.i.tion Begins!
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Li Yao was busy the entire day.
After sneaking out from the backdoor of the diner, he spent an hour in a gaming club like a real middle-school student and pondered calmly how he should go to the capital city.
From a remote city in the frontier to the capital city, of course, the easiest way was to fly in his Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit.
With his current capability, he could certainly finish the journey in a day and a night with at most two brief rests in the middle.
However, different from the Grand Desolate Plateau, the inland was populated and headquartered by a lot of Cultivation sects. Also, the air defense arrays of the federal army and the spies of the Secret Sword Bureau were everywhere.
The Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit at present included tremendous biochemical materials that would unleash demonic energy when functioning. He looked like an out-and-out great demon in the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit. The air defense arrays would certainly be a waste of the taxpayers’ war tax contributions if they did not shoot him down.
Also, Li Yao had no doubt that Guo Chunfeng’s accomplices were following his tracks right behind him. Should those guys catch him and engaged him in a fierce battle, he would not have any chance to explain himself anymore.
Since a rally of millions of people was to be held in the capital city, where the Speaker, the Chief of Staff, and the leaders of the major sects would be present, the defense would certainly be unprecedently heavy. It was almost an impossible mission to break in and meet the Speaker without hurting anybody.
Then, how can I go to the capital city through public transportation legally under the ident.i.ty of an ordinary person ?
Li Yao sorted through the whole plan in thirty minutes and left the gaming club.
Before he left, he ran into a young man who was walking into the club and stole his wallet.
He held his fingers and s.n.a.t.c.hed the young man’s ID card inconspicuously without touching the cash and the bank cards inside. Then, he threw the wallet to the gate of the gaming club.
Soon, he heard the boss of the gaming club shouting, “Whose wallet is it?”
Making sure that the young man picked up the wallet and would not make a fuss, Li Yao found a public toilet and changed his appearance to that of the young man.
He bought two paper maps of the routes of the civil carriers and the crystal trains in the federation with cash in a magazine booth. Then, he checked in with the young man’s ID card at a ragged hotel and studied the maps carefully.
An hour later, Li Yao decided the route to the capital city.
At 1:30 p.m., the banks large and small in the city were back to business. Li Yao lurked at the game of a branch of the Federal Commercial Bank and waited patiently.
He chose banks because those who came to banks usually brought their ID cards.
Li Yao picked two targets in half an hour. They were approximately of the same height and appearance as him. One of them was a middle-aged man, and the other was a young man in his twenties.
The two of them were both in fas.h.i.+onable clothes and looked capable of affording a long trip.
Li Yao recorded their facial features and walking posture with his crystal cameras. He then walked past them and stuck an eavesdropping chip on their collar, collecting their voiceprint.
In the end, he stole their ID cards.
He changed into the appearance of the middle-aged man and went to the West Railway Station of North Tranquility City, where he bought a ticket to the capital city for the following morning with cash and the middle-aged man’s ID card.
The hundred-day memorial ceremony and the debut of Burning Prairie were supposed to be events that would refresh the entire federation. Many citizens of North Tranquility City were planning to partic.i.p.ate. The ticket office was quite lively.
Thankfully, the authorities had foreseen the situation. A lot of temporary carriers and super-fast trains were added to the major towns of the federation.
Despite the preparations, Li Yao failed to purchase a seat ticket; he only got a place on the train without a seat.
But Li Yao was not bothered. Putting the ticket in his pocket, he went to the toilet in a hotel outside of the railway station, avoiding the surveillance camera, and changed his appearance again. He returned to the ticket office and bought another ticket with the young man’s ID card.
It took him only forty-five minutes to finish everything.
He returned to the bank that the two targets had visited and tossed their ID cards in a corner.
When they found that their ID cards were gone, they would certainly return to the bank to look for them. Their wallets were still with them, and they had only taken out their ID cards when they were doing business in the bank. Where could their ID cards have gone if they did not drop them in the bank?
As long as they found their ID cards, they would not be very suspicious.
Even if they were, it still did not matter because they were not Li Yao’s focus.
After that, Li Yao took a large turn in the downtown and went to a branch of North Tranquility Development Bank, where he located his third prey.
That was his real target. It was a woman in her forties who was rather thick and wearing fancy makeup.
When she was doing business, Li Yao glimpsed at her ID card. The photo on it did not look like herself at all.
Li Yao stole the woman’s ID card as before. He went to the ticket office of the East Railway Station of North Tranquility City and bought a ticket due at 11:30 a.m. the next day with cash.
The destination of that ticket was not the capital city but Green Plateau City, another big city two hundred and thirty kilometers away from the capital city.
In the next, he did not throw the woman’s ID card back to the bank but returned to the hotel.
When he left the East Railway Station, he stole a wallet from a random traveler. After taking away all the money, bank cards and ID card inside, he threw the empty wallet into the bushes outside the railway station.
It was a very common theft case in the railway station, which would happen hundreds of times day. Barely anybody would be suspicious about it.
When he was back at the hotel, Li Yao took out the two ID cards and began his modification.
Theoretically speaking, the ID card of the federal citizens was a piece of precise magical equipment. Hundreds of interconnecting spiritual stripes were carved on the surface. Chips that stored tremendous personal information were embedded inside.
With Li Yao’s capability in refining, it was not a problem to replicate the sh.e.l.l of an ID card.
But the real problem was that, since the information in the internal chip was stored in the online database, it was impossible for him to fabricate a new ident.i.ty without the help of a crystal processor specialist.
Therefore, he decided to alter the stranger’s ID card into the thick woman’s ID card, and he would keep the thick woman’s real ID card to himself.
Since it did not involve the core, Li Yao finished his job very quickly and threw the fake ID card back before the bank was closed.
He knew that the bank would perform full cleaning and examination after work. By then, the fake ID card would the discovered, and the staff would contact the thick woman whose ID card was lost according to the information on the surface.
As for the internal chip, it would only be scanned when she was doing important business, like checking in at a hotel or boarding on a long-distance vehicle.
Li Yao believed that the thick woman should be able to find that her ID card had been swapped in only one day.
Even if she did, the police of North Tranquility City would not trace the case back to him so quickly.
Two to three days later, it would not matter even if he were discovered.
After enjoying a bowl of delicious noodles with eggs at a restaurant next to the hotel, Li Yao appeared in the West Rail Station of North Tranquility City again.
But this time, he went to the exit of the station, where he waited for the arrival of the crystal trains that came from the capital city. He observed the travelers departing patiently.
After half a night, he locked onto another three targets. By eavesdropping and inspecting their personal belongings, he ascertained that they were all citizens of the capital city who were on a short business trip to North Tranquility City. They had bought return tickets and would be back in a day or two.
It meant that, seven days later, when the hundred-day memorial ceremony was held, they should be in the capital city.
It was already late night when Li Yao returned to the hotel with the voiceprints, fingerprints, facial features, and personal information of the three targets.
Following that, he performed the arts of camouflage that he had learned from Fengyu Zhong and Jin Xinyue. Finally, before dawn, he prepared six sets of voiceprints, fingerprints, and ident.i.ty information.
Right now, he could pretend to be six ordinary people of different ident.i.ties whenever he needed, three of which were citizens of North Tranquility City and three the capital city.
At 7:30 in the morning, Li Yao pa.s.sed the security check and entered the platform of the first crystal train.
According to the safety regulations for crystal trains in the Star Glory Federation, the pa.s.sengers had to show their ID card when they bought the ticket, but they only needed to show their ticket when they got on board.
However, when the crystal train took off, there might be random checks of the ID card.
But the crystal train had been packed with people. Every car was fully loaded, and there was not a gap for a needle. Li Yao wondered how the random checks would be conducted.
It did not matter how it would be conducted because he did not intend to board the train at all.
After roaming around on the platform, Li Yao climbed out of the railway station like a ghost, avoiding all the surveillance cameras.
At 9:00, in a grocery market far away from the railway station, Li Yao called a luxury hotel in the capital city through the public phone.
A sweet voice came over. “h.e.l.lo. How can we help you?”
“h.e.l.lo. I saw your advertis.e.m.e.nt of your wedding dinner online. The one with ‘Colorful Golden Lobster Dinner’ that costs 18,880 dollars per table. I want to check with you if the lobsters are guaranteed to be fresh,” said Li Yao. “My son is planning to get married during the National Day Holiday. My daughter-in-law grew up by the sea. She knows whether a lobster is fresh or not when she sees one.”
“Please rest a.s.sured, sir. The full-seafood happiness dinners provided by the Junhao Hotel are made with the fresh ingredients delivered to the capital city from East Seagull Port after quick freezing every morning. They are preserved with the most advanced instant-freezing technology. After the ingredients are unfrozen, all the fish will still be jumping up and down, alive. If you are interested, sir, why don’t you give me your contact details so that the manager of our Restaurant Department can explain it to you in greater detail later?” The voice of the customer service representative was even more sweet.
“Okay. Maybe later.”
Li Yao cut off the communication rudely. He glanced at the watch. It was 9:05.
At 9:55, he boarded on the second crystal train with the second fake ident.i.ty. This time, he jumped out of the window in the toilet and left the West Railway Station for a second time. Then, he went straight to the East Railway Station.
In the East Railway Station, under the ident.i.ty of the thick woman with fancy makeup, he boarded on the third train that was leaving for Green Plateau City.
He did not get off the train when it was floating and rus.h.i.+ng forward with the impetus of the anti-gravity rune arrays. Instead, he stayed in the middle of the crowd.
Beneath the makeup that was messed up by his sweat was a smile of confidence and provocation.
Li Yao was wondering, what was Abyss Guo Chunfeng, Elder Nether Spring’s most terrifying spy and the supervisor of the Demon Execution Division in the Secret Sword Bureau known as Demon Hunter, doing exactly at this very moment?