Chapter 3621: Good Opportunity

In Ye Chen's view, Antarctica offers cultivators almost no benefit besides being able to escape modern society.

Here, there are no traces of human habitation, and few rare plants or animals; cultivating here means finding neither magical treasures nor materials.

If I weren't chasing the aurora, I wouldn't have come all this way to such a place.

But since the elder of the Broken Qing Society came in person and even enslaved the entire Japanese research team, he must be seeking something I don't know about.

At one moment, Ye Chen felt a stir of hope—if Antarctica truly holds something good, and I find it before that Broken Qing Society elder, wouldn't that be a windfall?

Yet Ye Chen also knows his own limits; even with Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu, the three of us couldn't match that Broken Qing Society elder, so even if we knew what he sought, we'd hardly get a chance to beat him to it.

Moreover, Antarctica is now ice-locked, and ships can't reach it, meaning both sides are stranded on this continent for at least four or five months.

During these four or five months, if he keeps searching Antarctica nonstop, then I and Lin Waner and the others will face unknown risks at any moment in the coming months.

I'm afraid I'll have to play a game of hide-and-seek with him,

but Ye Chen doesn't want to just sit and wait for death, so he gave his satellite phone number to Matsushita Heiji, saying: "If that Guanghan True Person contacts you, call me immediately to tell me the details."

His satellite phone is from an overseas provider, prepaid, no real-name registration needed; even if the Broken Qing Society elder learns of it, he can't trace my identity, but as long as the elder doesn't come to the research ship himself, he won't know Matsushita Heiji is already under other cultivators' control, so Matsushita Heiji can keep acting as my undercover agent.

Besides, Ye Chen asked Matsushita Heiji: "What's the current status of the ship's surveillance?"

Because initially unsure about the ship's surveillance status, Ye Chen has been avoiding cameras, keeping his front and profile out of their coverage, inevitably also having him block them in advance.

Matsushita Heiji replied: "All ship surveillance is currently on, but not synced to the cloud; aside from the ship's data center storing these feeds, no one else can access this data."

Ye Chen asked him: "Can you transmit these feeds to my designated server?"

Ye Chen's ground network system benefits from countless automatic vending machines with built-in cameras that upload captured faces to the server, while his AI model runs real-time face capture and recognition on the server.

So, as long as this ship's surveillance footage can be uploaded to the designated server, the entire ship becomes part of the ground network system.

Matsushita Heiji told Ye Chen: "Data upload poses no problem; our ship carries several satellite networks, with eight sets of public and private Starlink equipment alone, fully capable of uploading surveillance video."

"Then that's good."

Ye Chen relaxed, instructing: "I'll send you the server address later—arrange it as soon as possible."

"No problem!" Matsushita Heiji said respectfully: "I will do my utmost to implement this promptly."

Ye Chen nodded, saying: "Go operate now—I'll wait in your room; notify your crew that no one may approach your room even half a step."

"Understood!" Matsushita Heiji said devoutly: "Please wait here, I'll go arrange this."

Ye Chen recalled something and reminded him: "By the way, when will the research station personnel return?"

Matsushita Heiji thought, then said: "They've organized a fuel transport team that comes daily to deliver one or two loads of fuel; they should arrive in another two or three hours."

The research station's fuel consumption is enormous—not just in Antarctic winter, but even in past summers, they've never had this much fuel use, and now with so many people, their team has never been this busy.

Nearly all vehicles and helicopters are running nonstop outdoors; radar scans consume massive power, so these vehicles and aircraft must burn extra fuel to generate electricity.

Japanese research helicopters in winter, with ice-penetrating radar activated, consume nearly two tons of fuel per hour—absolute fuel guzzlers.

To keep these systems running, the Japanese research team organized a dedicated fuel transport unit, using a snow tractor with a heavy fuel tank trailer, delivering a full load of fuel daily; this tanker's 20-ton capacity is just enough for one helicopter trip.

Upon hearing the transport team was coming, Ye Chen asked Matsushita Heiji: "Do the transport vehicles have positioning and video recording functions?"

"Yes." Matsushita Heiji explained: "Actually, every vehicle used at the Antarctic research station has GPS and IoT systems, and this data is openly accessible to domestic authorities, who can monitor vehicle locations in real time, even real-time video around the vehicles—but we've already been ordered to remove all vehicle network modules, so without network, video and GPS coordinates can't be uploaded, and domestic authorities can't track them."

Ye Chen asked him: "Are you sure only the network communication modules were removed?"

"Certain." Matsushita Heiji said: "Guanghan True Person's order was to prevent domestic authorities from knowing real-time dynamics of all vehicle equipment, so we immediately arranged to remove all IoT modules from the equipment, including our research ship— theoretically, restoring the network modules would instantly upload coordinates via satellite to the server, allowing domestic staff to see them."

Ye Chen asked him: "Is there a way to secretly restore these vehicles' network communication functions, but without letting them send any data to you domestically—instead, following my requirement, sending all data to my server?"

Matsushita Heiji nodded: "That's also not difficult—just swap the network communication module; we happen to have some crew members' own Starlink systems on board, so installing one set on the vehicle and setting the data transmission address would work."

He added: "GPS and vehicle cameras are non-intelligent hardware—they only provide data, like a phone's GPS and camera; the communication module we removed is fixed to send data to domestic authorities via a dedicated network, so replacing it would achieve the goal."

Ye Chen felt a sudden joy.

If I could grasp the real-time location of one fuel truck and view its dashboard camera feed in real time, it would be like seeing the research station's conditions daily, possibly even spotting that Broken Qing Society elder in the footage.

This would definitely give me more initiative.

So he asked Matsushita Heiji: "If I have you do this, will Guanghan True Person or the transport team discover it?"

Matsushita Heiji said: "This shouldn't be discovered—all equipment is integrated on the vehicle roof; inserting the Starlink terminal likely won't be noticed, unless they need to restore the original dedicated network one day."

Ye Chen smiled faintly, began reasoning through the logic.

First, that elder has cultivated for years and likely doesn't understand such professional matters, so he couldn't issue highly professional orders like directly demanding removal of dedicated network modules; it must have been a verbal instruction, letting the research team use their own methods to avoid exposure—this solution they devised themselves.

Second, since these professionals chose to remove dedicated communication modules, following normal logic, it's like a phone having its SIM pulled and network cut; professionals solve it with their expertise, completing the task, and shouldn't regularly check whether the SIM slot has been reinserted with another card—that would defy work logic.

Third, spiritual sense can't detect signals—meaning even if the vehicle's network is restored, the invisible, intangible signal frequency would be undetectable to them.

Professionals won't check, and the Broken Qing Society elder won't notice the problem—doesn't this give me a good opportunity for covert observation?