Chapter 360: Intelligence

Zhang Fuluan and Brother Sikong strode forward quickly; behind them, the collapsed and ruined Shi Shi was slowly restoring itself at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The cave was made of dark red stone, with a vast quantity of luminous pearls piled at the bottom. A single narrow path slanted upward at roughly forty degrees, with lamp stands holding luminous pearls installed at regular intervals.

The stone steps of the path itself had been roughly hewn, and one could faintly make out the traces of passersby, as well as the white marks left behind by some kind of slime after it had dried.

Through the perspective of the information-integration glasses, the formation times of these marks were concentrated within the past hundred years, with some of the oldest traceable back two thousand years.

————

Shouting, running, the sound of gongs.

The guests staying in the west wing rooms were roused one after another. They pushed open their doors, only to see the Tu family's servants pushing pump water-dragons (fire carts), shouldering water guns and buckets, hurrying off toward the east.

Su Konghu, still in his pajamas, stopped a steward and asked in confusion, "What's happening?"

"Probably the wind was strong tonight and blew down a lantern, which set fire to the eastern storehouse."

There was little panic on the steward's face. He said in a clear voice, "The estate has ponds and water-dragons; the fire will be put out very quickly. There's no need for any of you guests to worry—please go back and rest."

The Tu family's firefighting equipment was fully stocked. In the time it took to speak, the glow of the fire in the eastern storehouse rapidly dimmed, leaving only billowing black smoke still rising.

The roused guests, seeing this, no longer suspected anything and returned to their rooms.

"Li Cheng" closed the door; his body's surface rippled and shifted back into Grey Rain's appearance. He drew a deep breath, forcefully suppressing the burning desire to kill in his eyes.

The small Grey Rain clone that had been split off earlier noticed the main body's ferocious expression and reminded him, "Don't be angry. Anger lowers your intelligence."

This world's era is set in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, but the backwardness and ignorance are only surface-level. Just from the divine slough with its built-in spatial anchoring ability, one can tell the waters run deep.

"I know."

Grey Rain smoothed back his hair, picked out a Type-C data cable serving as a hair tie from between the strands, then took a tablet computer from the cabinet and connected the data cable.

The small Grey Rain frowned and asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Modify the parameters."

Grey Rain's fingers flew across the tablet, bringing up a blue-background, white-text BIOS interface.

As a liquid-metal robot, Grey Rain's underlying technology far surpassed anything the real-world human civilization could reach.

The mere fact that she could convert fried chicken and cola in her stomach entirely into electrical energy, with a conversion efficiency as high as 98%, would be enough for research teams to churn out hundreds or thousands of papers.

Actually, Li Cheng didn't understand how the nano-intelligence mechanism worked either, but not understanding it didn't mean he couldn't prepare in advance through 【Assembled Puppet · Modified】.

Open the BIOS, raise the voltage, increase the overall CPU frequency, disable the 【Anime Playback in Brain】 program, clear the 【Internet Meme Slop】 cached data, locally deploy the 【Deep Thinking】 artificial intelligence model.

As Grey Rain completed each step, the fans beneath her clothes spun at high speed, swaying violently; the light in her eyes grew brighter and brighter, until—

Intelligence optimization, complete.

Grey Rain silently unplugged the Type-C data cable. The gluttonous, idle, slothful look in her eyes vanished entirely, replaced by a deep, sharp alertness.

The old me was soft-hearted, kind, pure, and valued bonds. The new me is cold-blooded, ruthless, decisive in killing, and puts profit above all else. I will repay the suffering others brought me twofold—ten months old, nearly one year, already darkened.

She turned her head to look at the clone. "Is that scale put away properly?"

"Hidden. To the northeast of the island."

The small Grey Rain held up the drone remote and showed the screen.

Earlier, Li Cheng and the other two had been sucked into the divine slough scale. Following Li Cheng's instructions, Grey Rain had not gone on a killing spree, but instead used the drone to airlift the scale away and hide it in a dense forest far from the Tu family estate.

On one hand, Grey Rain, who was not a player, didn't have that many methods at hand—especially spatial abilities that could open the scale.

On the other hand, it was also to prevent the Tu family from tracking the scale through scent or other means.

"Adjust the position. Put the scale on the treetop, then set the drone to semi-hibernation mode. If it detects a heat-source signal, send the warning information over."

Grey Rain issued the deployment while recalling in her mind the scene she had seen in the storehouse.

She extracted the height, build, walking posture, voice, and other information of the other two figures in night clothes, and analyzed and compared them one by one against the group of guests she had seen during the day.

Found them.

Embroidered Uniform Guard Brother Sikong, peak Postnatal. Staying in west wing, first floor, room six.

Longhu Mountain Zhang Fuluan, Innate martial artist. West wing, second floor, room eleven.

Among them, Brother Sikong was staying with several other Embroidered Uniform Guard, while Zhang Fuluan had a single room.

Grey Rain pulled two blobs of liquid metal from her arm, shaped them into two palm-sized tiny clones, then took two button-sized listening devices with cameras out of the cabinet.

The tiny clones understood the intent, slipped out the window, and amid the noisy chaos of the estate, placed the listening devices respectively on the outside of the window above the Embroidered Uniform Guard's wing room, and in the seam of the roof beam of Zhang Fuluan's room.

Then they returned to the second floor and merged back into Grey Rain.

"The Tu family may not know who stole the scale, but the missing people can't be faked. At the latest by tomorrow's birthday banquet, at the earliest tonight, they'll know who's missing."

Grey Rain narrowed her eyes and analyzed calmly, unhurriedly putting on her earphones to monitor the sounds inside the Embroidered Uniform Guard's room.

"Commander, Brother Sikong still hasn't come back. Could something have happened to him?"

"Commander, while the fire's raging outside, let me go rescue him!"

This group of Embroidered Uniform Guard had known each other since childhood, grown up together, their bonds as close as siblings. Brother Sikong's prolonged absence meant something had happened for certain.

"Everyone, sit down."

Embroidered Uniform Guard Vice-Commander Lu Hu's face was dark as water. He waved his hand to stop his restless subordinates. "Brother Sikong has his Embroidered Uniform Guard token on him. Even if he's been caught, he can claim he was blinded by greed, lost his head for a moment, and tried to steal treasures from the storehouse.

Out of respect for the token, the Tu family may not do anything to him. Most likely they'll hand him back to us and let us deal with him ourselves.

If you rush over to rescue him now, you'll only tip them off.

Secondly—"

"Secondly what?"

"We have our own people inside the Tu family too. They'll help cover for Brother Sikong to some extent."

Lu Hu said in a low voice, "Don't forget the mission of this trip. His Majesty wants us to thoroughly investigate whether the Tu family is plotting treason. We eat the sovereign's salary; we serve the sovereign's cause."

"."

The Embroidered Uniform Guard fell silent at his words. For them, raised from childhood on loyalty to the sovereign and love of country, there was but one sun in the sky—the Yong'an Emperor alone.

Better to die than fail to complete the mission the Emperor had assigned.