Chapter 253: Nuclear Power

Night. On the rooftop of a certain high-rise, Li Cheng, clad in night-black attire, scanned the intelligence on his tablet with lightning speed.

This tablet was a standard model issued by the Whale Song Guild; it stored the guild's offline database, allowing retrieval of other players' data, some of which contained rather interesting intelligence.

For instance, Gouchen was actually a newly created being forged from the soul of a powerhouse in a script world, his original body being nothing more than that of a wealthy second-generation heir with an empty brain;

Joker started as an ordinary internet streamer; after being overwhelmed by refund requests from underage viewers who had tipped him, rage struck his heart, causing him to faint, and he awakened his player qualifications while lying on a hospital bed;

(Assuming a viewer tips 100 yuan: the platform takes 50, income tax plus withdrawal fees take 10, the guild takes a 15% cut, leaving the streamer with 25. If an underage viewer demands a full refund, the platform refunds 50 and the streamer must also refund 50, meaning the streamer effectively loses 25.)

That Eugene was initially an apprentice of the Zhong Lou Mages Guild, maintaining an ambiguous relationship with his mentor (male). It was precisely because of his mentor that Eugene, a low-level player, qualified to access guild secrets, seizing the opportunity to steal a guild treasure and defect.

Considering the Zhong Lou Guild is located in Britain, this was hardly surprising.

It's the Rotten Kingdom, after all; mygo is perfectly normal.

As for Li Cheng himself, the database contained little information, mostly derived from descriptions by Duizhan Qibing: earlier passages praised his meticulous thinking, extraordinary courage, and calm rationality without losing moral boundaries (referring to his refusal to use NPCs from script worlds as human shields),

while his shortcomings included a vile personality, a penchant for feigning madness and foolishness, sabotaging and intimidating teammates, and especially possessing a wicked sense of humor.

The phrase "wicked sense of humor" was bolded and enlarged; one could almost feel Duizhan Qibing's resentment radiating through the tablet.

Really, am I that terrifying?

Li Cheng pursed his lips, deleted the final paragraph of the text, and added his own description: "Capable in both literary and martial arts, handsome in appearance."

Bart Mo Si is truly an honest man,

not only providing equipment and a tablet but also helping to erase traces—back then, intending to control Li Cheng, Bart Mo Si had proactively hacked into Toy City's network, clearing the surveillance footage of Li Cheng's journey to the park.

By the time Toy City's authorities discovered the chaotic battle scars left across Chengnan Park and attempted to investigate, they could not immediately trace things back to Li Cheng, buying him at least ten-plus hours of operational time.

More crucially, Bart Mo Si had uncovered secrets deliberately concealed by the City Hall.

The spread of the Glitch Disease was far more severe than public reports described. Some civilian patients, fearing Stormtroopers would come to arrest them and cause them to vanish without explanation, hid directly in the Underhive at the city's bottom layer—

The Underhive is a complex geological structure formed by abandoned subway tunnels, sewers, and natural karst caves; rumors say it teems with numerous bizarre toy monsters lacking intelligence and incapable of communication.

"According to Toy City's official records, over twenty years ago, when the first toy (that is, the current mayor, Dumbledore) awakened on the assembly line of the Holy Factory, many toy monsters already existed in the wild.

This seems to be some kind of watershed; before him, the factory's creations possessed no self-awareness or wisdom; only after him did civilization emerge."

Just as Li Cheng was pondering this, a large truck bearing no markings approached slowly along the highway with its headlights off, taking advantage of the night to turn into the nuclear power plant.

The teddy bear guards at the nuclear power plant's entrance made no move to inspect the truck, simply raising the barrier to let the vehicle pass.

This must be the sneaky convoy Mario mentioned; it was suspicious as hell—suspicious to the extreme.

Li Cheng put away his tablet and retrieved a pile of parts from his spatial warehouse, including high-power battery packs, slender rails, C-type armatures, and more.

Activating his Artificer ability, all the parts floated in mid-air, assembling themselves into a Fang Fangzhengzheng, crudely shaped electromagnetic cannon.

The manufacturing process for an electromagnetic launcher was not difficult; there was a wealth of online data, and the cost was relatively controllable. Moreover, bolstered by the Artificer's magic cannon techniques, this launcher's range could easily reach five kilometers.

Subsequently, Li Cheng snapped his fingers, summoning a paper origami crane, which he gently placed inside the hollow warhead of a conical shell.

The interior of the warhead was filled with shock-absorbing foam to protect the origami crane from being shattered by the impact.

He raised the electromagnetic cannon, aiming it at the distant nuclear power plant, placed the shell on the rails, and pressed the fire button.

A massive surge of current flowed in from the left rail, passed through the shell, and returned via the right rail, generating a powerful magnetic field between the two rail planes; the tremendous Ampere force propelled the shell shooting out at high speed, vanishing into the night sky.

Upon reaching the area above the nuclear power plant, the copper driving band on the shell's exterior cracked under air resistance, the casing split apart, and the origami crane inside fell out, flapping its wings as it slowly descended, dropping into the ventilation shaft of the factory building.

The range and power of the electromagnetic cannon might not match other types of magic cannons Li Cheng had created, but its acoustic and optical signatures were much smaller, making it quite "quiet."

Previously, Li Cheng had relied on this method to deliver origami cranes into the city from extreme long range, catching Bart Mo Si completely off guard.

Sensing that the origami crane was in position, Li Cheng dismissed the electromagnetic cannon and instead summoned a 105mm caliber hexapod turret, placing it on standby ready to provide support at any moment. As for himself, he activated his Familiar Swap skill, teleporting directly into the ventilation ducts of the nuclear power plant.

At that moment, the large truck had reversed into the nuclear island's auxiliary building (a collective term for the nuclear reactor within the containment vessel and all systems related to the reactor) and came to a stop.

Inside the auxiliary building, lights blazed brightly; a group of workers clad in full-coverage protective suits had been waiting there for some time.

There are three types of protective suits used in nuclear power plants: paper suits (made of PR material, with glove cuffs sealed by tape), air suits (fully sealed, supplied with compressed air), and lead suits (typically worn in conjunction with paper or air suits).

This group of workers wore air suits, the highest level of protection, with cables tied to their backs connecting to air tanks.

These are typically used for major maintenance operations and generally do not appear in auxiliary buildings.

Click-clack—

The rear doors of the large truck opened, and the workers swarmed forward, unloading over a dozen plastic crates from the vehicle.

Working in groups of three, two people lifted the iron crates while one pushed a mobile compressed air tank to inflate the air suits of all three members.

Everyone coordinated with practiced ease as they headed toward the reactor core area, clearly indicating this was not their first time performing such a task.

'Making such a mystery of it.'

Lurking within the ventilation duct, Li Cheng raised an eyebrow slightly and immediately followed them silently.

The deeper they advanced into the nuclear island, the hotter and more stifling the air became; the group of workers fell silent as they arrived before the reactor core, gazing at the deep blue cooling water.

"Let's begin."

No one knew who spoke, but everyone silently opened the plastic crates and used plastic tongs to retrieve pieces of corpses from within.

Pieces of corpses belonging to Glitch Disease infectees, covered in an unknown purple-black substance.

Some were plastic toys, some plush dolls, some wooden carvings, others metal figurines. Their facial expressions ranged from blank confusion to terror or stupor. The number of deceased was approximately eighty.

"May our sins be forgiven."

Accompanied by the workers' murmurs, all the purple-black corpse fragments were dropped into the blue cooling water; they sank rapidly, bubbling vigorously as they gradually dissolved.

WTF.

Hiding in the shadows, Li Cheng raised an eyebrow, took out a camera, and silently recorded this bizarre scene.

Is this Toy City nuclear power plant even a legitimate nuclear power plant? Why does it involve sacrifices?

After all the corpse fragments had been disposed of, the workers closed the crates and were about to leave when two figures entered from outside, wearing no protective suits.

"Wait a moment, there is another batch."

The speaker was a brown-haired man in a trench coat, looking haggard; he held up his palm, levitating five plastic crates in mid-air.

It was none other than Eugene, the Level 19 Extraordinary who had defected from the Zhong Lou Guild.

The blond youth trailing behind Eugene wore a loose black-and-orange outfit, toe-exposing boots, a metal forehead protector, and three black lines on each cheek.

Holy whirlpool Naruto.

Li Cheng's eyelid twitched; he instantly understood what was happening.

Either Eugene was even weaker than Li Cheng, obtaining core membership in the Toy City Hall the moment he landed and wielding the strongest "momentum,"

or he realized the gap in strength between himself and Seeing Gouchen and the others was too vast, with absolutely no chance of victory alone, so he decisively defected to Toy City.