Chapter 298: A Line of Characters

【System detects signal source on the east side of the safe zone is continuously sending encrypted code. Parsing difficulty rating: S-level.】

When the cold, mechanical voice sounded in Lin Chen's mind, he was sitting at the table in the command room,

holding the note with the survivor camp coordinates in his hand, his fingertips sliding back and forth on the paper, leaving a few shallow marks.

Xia Nuan stood by his side, holding a signal decoder, the screen jumping with chaotic characters, without any rules to follow.

Lin Hao pushed the door and walked in, holding a patrol report for the Dongmen,

seeing the appearance of the two, his steps paused, he said nothing, just walked to the table and placed the report next to the note. It was very quiet in the command room, only the faint buzzing sound emitted when the decoder was running, and the shouts of team members training outside the window.

"Still can't solve it?

" Lin Chen asked without raising his head, his gaze still falling on the decoder's screen.

Xia Nuan nodded, her fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard. "These characters don't correspond to any known encryption rules; they are like randomly generated garbled code."

Lin Chen said "Mm," put down the note in his hand, reached out to take the decoder,

and looked carefully at the characters on the screen. Lines of letters and numbers appeared alternately, without any logic, dazzling to the eye.

He remembered the signal transmitter in the cave that had stopped working, remembered the number 666 that had jumped out on the screen at the end, and his heart suddenly skipped a beat, as if he had grasped something key, but couldn't explain it clearly.

【System prompt: Encrypted code contains repeating segments. Suggest extracting high-frequency characters for comparison.】

Lin Chen did not ignore the system's prompt; he just stared at the screen, his fingers sliding slowly over the characters. Suddenly, his gaze stopped in the middle of the screen, where there was a string of repeating letter combinations, habahshshssh, followed by a string of numbers. This string of characters repeated every three minutes, like some kind of marker embedded in the chaotic code.

"Look at this." Lin Chen pointed to the characters on the screen and said to Xia Nuan.

Xia Nuan leaned over to take a look, and her brows immediately furrowed. "This string of characters has no meaning; it's neither a place name nor a password, more like something typed out at random."

Lin Hao also walked over, looking down at the characters on the screen,

saying nothing, only a hint of doubt flashing in his eyes. He remembered the golden light that flashed on his chest when he woke up in the trash heap,

remembered Chu Yao's phantom on the hospital's third-floor window, and an inexplicable sense of familiarity suddenly arose in his heart, but he couldn't grasp the specific clue.

Lin Chen pulled the decoder toward himself, tapped on the keyboard, extracted this string of characters separately, and compared them repeatedly. He tried dozens of decryption methods—substitution, reversal, shifting—but none had any effect; this string of characters was like an insurmountable chasm in front of him.

The door of the command room was pushed open again, and a team member ran in,

holding an emergency report, his face showing an anxious expression. "Team Leader Lin, an unknown aircraft has been discovered in the direction of the Dongmen, moving toward the direction of the safe zone."

Lin Chen's gaze moved away from the decoder, looking up at the team member. "What kind of aircraft?"

"Not clear, the volume is very small, the speed is very fast, it didn't emit any signal,

the radar only shows it as a small dot." The team member said quickly, the report in his hand trembling slightly.

Lin Chen stood up immediately and walked toward the outside, Lin Hao and Xia Nuan following closely behind. The three ran quickly to the watchtower at the Dongmen, picked up binoculars, and looked in the direction the team member pointed. In the distant sky, a small black dot was moving quickly, drawing closer and closer, the silhouette gradually becoming clear—it was a small drone, the fuselage pitch-black, without any markings.

The drone circled over the safe zone, did not land,

nor did it emit any warning, just hovered in mid-air, the camera under the fuselage rotating slowly, as if scanning everything on the ground.

The team members all became nervous, raising their weapons one after another, aiming at the drone in mid-air, their fingers on the triggers, ready to fire at any time.

"Don't fire." Lin Chen said in a deep voice, his gaze fixed on the drone. "It has no attack intention, just reconnaissance."

The team members hesitated for a moment, but still put down the weapons in their hands,

just maintaining vigilance. The drone circled for about ten minutes, suddenly turned direction, flew toward the forest on the east side, its speed becoming faster and faster, and soon disappeared from his line of sight.

Lin Chen put down the binoculars, his brows furrowed tightly, the doubt in his heart deepening. This drone must be related to that survivor camp; maybe it was a reconnaissance plane they sent. And the string of characters on the decoder screen, habahshshssh, maybe it was their contact code.

The three returned to the command room; the decoder was still running, the characters on the screen still jumping, that string habahshshssh still repeating every three minutes. Lin Chen sat at the table, tapped on the keyboard, input this string of characters into the system, and performed a full-network comparison.

【System detects character matching failed. No relevant records.】

The cold, mechanical voice sounded again, and Lin Chen's face darkened. He looked at the characters on the screen, and an impulse suddenly arose in his heart; his fingers tapped on the keyboard, sending this string of characters out, the target being the coordinates of that survivor camp.

The command room fell into silence again, only the buzzing of the decoder running. Xia Nuan and Lin Hao stood by, saying nothing, just looking at the screen, waiting for a response. Time passed minute by minute—one minute, two minutes, three minutes—just when the three thought there would be no response, the decoder's screen suddenly lit up, with only one line of characters on it: habahshshssh. ===== CHAPTER 299 =====