Chapter 353: Computing Power

The two people wearing sunglasses and dressed in a style suspiciously cosplaying Yan Shuangying were none other than a father-daughter pair from the fourth branch of the Tu family, Tu Wangmo and Tu Wangjuan.

They swiftly restrained the rampaging Tu Qiaohua, bound his hands and feet tightly with rope, then took out a small porcelain bottle and poured a brown medicinal liquid with a foul smell into his mouth, gradually calming him down.

The entire process flowed like clouds and water, as if rehearsed long beforehand.

"Hah, hah."

The young master of the third branch of the Tu family, who had been rescued at the last moment, could not recover for a long time from the violent emotional upheaval of escaping death, staring fixedly at the unconscious Xu Qiaohua on the ground,

when he suddenly realized something, his face changed drastically, he stared hard at Tu Wangmo and his daughter, his lips trembling, wearing an aggrieved expression of having nowhere to vent his anger, then swept his sleeves and left.

Tu Wangmo and his daughter had no intention of explaining either. They had servants place Second Master Tu on a stretcher and send him back to his room to recuperate, then turned to look at the guests. "Sorry for disturbing everyone. My elder brother has long been tormented by illness, his mind no longer what it once was. Please accept our apologies."

All the jianghu people knew the Tu family's situation and offered words of comfort one after another, lamenting Second Master Tu's illness.

Hui Yu was nibbling on a chicken bone. Seeing Li Cheng's thoughtful expression, she lowered her voice and asked: "What's wrong?"

"These Tu family members showing up is a bit too convenient."

Li Cheng said: "If we treat this scripted mission like a tabletop RPG or a text adventure game, then these three waves of Tu family members represent the second branch, third branch, and fourth branch respectively. From each wave, you can gather different intelligence clues or unlock different plot branches."

The Tu clan still has the first branch and fifth branch who haven't appeared, as well as the Tu family grandmother at the center of the incident's vortex.

In theory, the fastest way to figure out what happened on the island in the past and what will happen in the future would actually be to directly kidnap the Tu family grandmother and brutally interrogate her for intel.

But Li Cheng wouldn't do that. On one hand, even a toe-brain could figure that the Tu family grandmother lives in the deepest part of the manor, with no shortage of experts secretly guarding her.

On the other hand, he's also not the kind of bad guy who'd beat up a grandma to complete a mission—he'd rather just pump her full of scopolamine, thiopental sodium, pentobarbital truth serum + Brain Entropy Drain + Skill USB Drive + a second Brain Entropy Drain.

Thinking of this, he said to Hui Yu: "Don't eat too full. There's an operation tonight."

Hui Yu's expression sharpened. She nodded, dipped her fingertip in wine, and wrote on her palm: "Operation codename: 【Cold War】."

? Are you shooting a movie here?

Li Cheng's eye twitched. He silently pretended to shovel two bites of rice into his mouth.

————

After the meal, the butler appeared again and arranged rooms for all the guests.

For ease of movement, Li Cheng deliberately picked a two-story pavilion on the far west side. By the deep of night, most people had gone to sleep, and the Tu family compound was left with only servants preparing ingredients through the night for the birthday banquet, and a small number of jianghu people still drinking and socializing.

Li Cheng, who had been lying in bed pretending to sleep, suddenly opened his eyes, slid off the bed without a sound, flipped his palm, and took out an industrial endoscope camera,

extended the probe under the door crack, and observed the corridor.

Confirming the corridor was empty, he took out a button-sized fisheye panoramic surveillance camera, poked it out the door crack, and flicked it with his fingertip,

sticking the monitor, which had double-sided tape on its back, to the corridor ceiling.

This set of equipment had programs pre-installed. If it detected anyone in the corridor, especially anyone walking toward this door, it would send Li Cheng an alert.

After setting it up, Li Cheng retracted the endoscope, returned to the bed, and said softly: "Get up." He lifted Hui Yu's blanket.

The blanket lifted, and the light from a phone screen shone toward the ceiling. Hui Yu was wearing earphones, fully focused on playing Honor of Kings—a specially downloaded offline single-player version, the kind where one match has nine bots.

"Leave a clone here, then come with me to gather intel." "Got it."

It happened that Hui Yu's blue side was about to have its crystal pushed over by the enemy bots, so she took the out and liquefied half her body, pinching out a little Hui Yu.

"Give me the phone."

Little Hui Yu, who didn't even reach the table in height, took the phone with a solemn expression, and like an esports pro, three fingers tapped the screen at lightning speed, smoothly controlling Luna to fly around her own high ground, wiping out all five enemies in the blink of an eye.

Both Hui Yu and Li Cheng were shocked, eyes wide: "Damn, how are you playing so insanely?"

"First, since you as the main body have had your brain upgraded, and we're networked, my computing power has also increased."

Little Hui Yu pointed at the CPU and signal transceiver antenna she used as a hairpin headpiece, and said calmly: "Second, I've shut down many useless functions, saving a huge amount of computing power.

These functions include but are not limited to 【Web Surfing】, 【Bad Joke Association】, 【CCB, SM Stick Guy, One-Glance Awl, Haiku Freestyle Creation】, 【Anime Rewatch】, 【Troll Trash-Talk Reverse-Trolling Flame-Baiting】."

"You've got a mouth full of teeth, and all you do is run that beaker."

Hui Yu quickly covered her little clone's mouth. Ever since her brain connected to a network card, she could dial up the internet with her mind, and her internet addiction had risen to the point where not going online for an hour made her whole body feel like ants were crawling on it.

"The child doesn't know any better, just talking nonsense." Hui Yu awkwardly scratched her head, and like a brat caught forging a parent's signature on a failing test paper, changed the subject with unnatural stiffness: "Who are we going to kill?"

!

"... Gather intel first."

Li Cheng clicked his tongue, pushed open the window, and sent a drone out.

The drone climbed to five hundred meters altitude, held position and hovered, activating night vision to monitor the entire manor.

The Tu family building complex was overall rectangular in shape. The north was an entire stretch of artificially created garden, the northwest was the family cemetery, and the northeast was where the Tu family grandmother, the ancestral hall, and the Tu family's first branch resided.

The southwest was the guest wing, the middle housed the remaining second, third, fourth, and fifth branches, and further east extended the private school, storehouses, and kitchen.

"Let's go check the storehouses to the east first for clues..."

Li Cheng muttered as he put on his night clothes, donned a mask, and swung up onto the roof like an ape.

As for Hui Yu, even after splitting off a clone and reducing her weight, she would still step on the roof tiles, so she transformed into the shape of a hollow hydrogen balloon, filled with hydrogen, drifting slowly through the low air.

Tatta-tatta.

The man in black sprinted silently across the rooftops, leaping from ridge to ridge like a rabbit and a falcon, evading all eyes and ears.

The drone high above seemed to have opened the heavenly eye, the entire building complex laid out in full view. It could even see illicit lovers chatting and flirting behind rockeries, let alone the completely unguarded Tu family servants and jianghu people.

"Five high! Six six six! Seven clever! Eight horses..."

After drinking and playing finger-guessing games half the night, many martial artists were already drunk. No one noticed that a figure in a corner, pretending to be drunk, flashed a sharp glint in his eyes, silently withdrew from the banquet, and vanished into the night.

Tonight, Li Cheng was not the only one in action.

(End of chapter)