Chapter 579: Eve of the Rainstorm

An aircraft that looked exactly like a United States Global Hawk was flying continuously above the skies of Africa.

It was constantly transmitting the captured information to a crude cave located on a cliffside in a section of the East African Rift, near the border of South Sudan and Ethiopia.

"Has the Unmanned Reconnaissance Aircraft still not found any new strong energy or electromagnetic signals?"

Sun Cheng looked at the several giant screens hanging on the wall in front of him, his brow having remained furrowed for a long time.

"Not yet!"

Forerunner reached out and pressed his hand onto a machine, where azure electric sparks jumped from time to time; he was currently remotely controlling three drones, circling over North Africa, East Africa, and West Africa simultaneously, searching for potential targets with strong energy and electromagnetic signals.

"A barren land!"

Scavenger said gloomily from the side, "Those damn bugs have truly wasted this fertile land!"

When building this temporary Base, Sun Cheng and his team had accidentally discovered several small mines nearby, and in the spirit of not wasting them, they had dispatched dozens of mining robots to extract from the discovered mines.

As a result, in less than a week, they had already mined 3 tons of gold, over 850 tons of copper, 171 tons of tin, over 500 tons of iron, and so on.

Africa was truly a heaven-sent treasure land.

Sun Cheng nodded imperceptibly; he also acknowledged some of Scavenger's points, as Africa was indeed a wasted fertile land.

However, there were many reasons for this situation, which could be summarized as nothing more than "great power games" and "being too close to Europe."

Such a good treasure land; one could imagine how reluctant Sun Cheng had been in his heart when he originally decided to use the fertile Africa to trap the Autobots.

But, one cannot catch a wolf without risking the child.

Sun Cheng and his team had already noticed that the Autobots had begun prospecting and mining in the unmanaged zones of Soli and Kenya, and he knew all too well what this meant.

The Autobots could not hold back; they were going to establish a base on Earth.

A Cybertronian base was different from a human city; strictly speaking, it was more appropriate to describe it as a military fortress.

A base needed to have an energy supply system, a defensive combat system, living quarters, a command center, barracks, and so on, while also having mineral deposits nearby.

On the planet Cybertron, whether it was the Autobots or the Decepticons, even a small base would occupy at least a dozen square kilometers, covering an area of hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers.

They often needed to be responsible for the security and defense of a region, while also shouldering tasks like mineral extraction and energy refining.

It is no exaggeration to say that once the Autobots' base in Soli and Kenya was built, relying on the Autobots' deep foundations, they might only need a few months for its scale and coverage area to exceed Base No. 2.

Of course, this was only an ideal state.

Not to mention whether the Decepticon Legion could allow the Autobots to establish a base on Earth, the Autobots themselves would likely find it hard to overcome the hurdle called "morality" to compete with the locals for mineral resources and living space.

However, these were not things Sun Cheng needed to worry about.

His investment in the Autobots had already ended; after all, from beginning to end, the Autobots had only shown him a tiny bit of goodwill, and Optimus Prime had neither directly refused his request for an alliance nor agreed to it.

This was exactly what Sun Cheng wanted; after all, getting too deeply involved with the Autobots was not a good thing.

Holding an AllSpark Fragment in his hand, azure electric arcs kept jumping between his fingers and the AllSpark Fragment.

"AllSpark Fragment!"

Scavenger was somewhat envious; he did not need to breathe, yet when Sun Cheng took out this fragment, two streams of scorching white gas puffed out from his nostrils.

Stared at by the cold gaze of Thundercracker nearby, he quickly realized his loss of composure and turned his head to look in another direction.

The fragment belonged to Sun Cheng; it was something he could never obtain.

Thundercracker gave a light snort, his fingers rubbing a wound on his chest left by Jetfire that had not yet healed.

A Medical Spider was currently crawling back and forth on his body.

Its two legs clamped a piece of metal fragment, working hard to first repair some inconspicuous small wounds on Thundercracker's body.

The fragment in Sun Cheng's hand was the one Forerunner had obtained from Wheelie not long ago, and its original owner was the American boy—Sam.

After obtaining this fragment, he had kept it on his person at all times.

Whenever he had time, he would use power-generating equipment to replenish its energy; in the process of continuously studying AllSpark Fragments in the past, Base No. 2 had already discovered that the fragments could directly absorb electricity to replenish energy.

During the period just after obtaining the fragment, Sun Cheng had only treated it as an ordinary fragment.

Although his Engineers had already discovered that the fragment contained a large amount of information while studying it previously.

However, because most of that information was chaotic and disorganized, it was very troublesome to decode.

Therefore, Sun Cheng had not been in a hurry to read the information inside, intending to wait until he had time in the future to study it.

It was only not long ago, when Jetfire and Ratchet kidnapped Sam, wanting to get the information they needed from his head.

Only then did Sun Cheng realize the importance of the fragment that Sam had obtained.

Like the Autobots and the Decepticon Legion, Sun Cheng was also searching for the Matrix of Leadership.

However, none of the three parties had a better method; the Matrix of Leadership had been deliberately hidden, although they all believed that such an energy source containing immense energy could not be completely concealed; once they approached within a certain distance, whether it was the Autobots, the Decepticon Legion, or Sun Cheng, they would all be able to sense it, just like the AllSpark.

Based on this understanding, now the Autobots, the Decepticon Legion, and Sun Cheng were all using a wide-net approach to search for the Matrix of Leadership.

The Decepticon Legion had the most sufficient manpower; Starscream had sent at least over a hundred Decepticons to Earth to search everywhere.

As for the Autobots, according to Sun Cheng's investigation, they were led by Optimus Prime himself, starting with Soli as the first station, and had begun searching in the East African region first.

As for Sun Cheng and his team, they had ordered Base No. 2 to specifically design and manufacture three special Unmanned Reconnaissance Aircraft based on the United States Global Hawk, which could detect strong energy sources and electromagnetic fluctuations deep dozens of meters underground.

Currently, the three Unmanned Reconnaissance Aircraft were searching everywhere in Africa for traces of the Matrix of Leadership under the control of Forerunner.

And Sun Cheng himself was taking the opportunity to decode the information within the fragment, hoping to obtain more useful information from it.

Africa had temporarily entered the final dawn moment before the rainstorm.