Chapter 439: Chu Che's Request

After the second stage of reverse stretching ended, Zhang Rui arranged three groups of shuttle runs and a round of core strength contest.

When the whistle was prolonged to announce free break, the thirty‑seven people on the field scattered like a burst nest: some clustered and ran toward the snack stall, some collapsed on the plastic track pretending to be dead, and some gasped while cursing Zhang Rui's ancestors to the eighteenth generation.

Lu Yu didn't hurry to leave.

He squatted at the edge of the track, untied and retied the left shoe lace. The motion was slow. He lifted his eyes, scanned around, and locked onto the drinking area on the west side of the field, right next to the equipment warehouse.

Three stainless‑steel direct‑drink machines, a long water trough, and a half‑length corrugated iron canopy above. The canopy's shadow perfectly covered both ends of the trough, and with the equipment warehouse's outer wall jutting eastward, it created a partially concealed visual zone.

A telescope from the clock tower direction could see people, but under the canopy it could only capture from the waist up.

The key was the faucet.

It was an old‑style knob; once turned, the water flow was loud. Combined with the chatter of three nearby groups of classmates, the effective pickup radius was compressed to within one meter.

Lu Yu tied his shoe lace, stood up, and walked toward the drinking area at an unhurried pace.

When he reached the third direct‑drink machine, he bent down, pressed the water button, and took two sips. The water was cold, carrying a lingering iron‑rust taste from the pipes, and as it rushed down his throat, his Adam's apple rolled.

He straightened up and wiped his mouth.

Someone was washing hands at the adjacent water trough.

Chen Yao stood under the faucet, her school uniform sleeves rolled to mid‑forearm, exposing an overly white wrist. The stream rushed over her fingertips, splashing fine droplets that wet the tiles at the trough's edge.

She washed her hands meticulously, scrubbing finger by finger as if performing pre‑operative disinfection in a hospital.

The two were half a step apart.

From any angle, they appeared as two students who had just finished running, leaning against the trough for a break, with no interaction.

"You are more cautious than I thought."

Chen Yao spoke first. Her voice was wrapped in the rush of water, as if pulled up from beneath the flow.

She didn't look at him. Her eyes stared at a nonexistent speck of mud in the seam of her nail.

"Whenever, the channel on my side will always be unconditionally open to you."

Lu Yu turned the faucet in front of him, plunged both hands in and rubbed. The cool water spread over his palms, suppressing the post‑exercise heat.

"There's no time to waste." His lips barely moved, his voice so low it blended with the water, "Actually, I do want to ask you to do something."

Lu Yu withdrew his hand from the water, flicked it. Droplets splashed, flashing in the sunlight for an instant before shattering.

Chen Yao turned off the faucet.

Her damp hand reached into her school uniform pocket, pulled out a pack of tissues, tore open the seal, took one out and wiped her finger. The motion was relaxed, the rhythm natural. Her face was turned toward the trough, her lips moving only minimally.

"Whenever, whatever, just speak up."

Lightly, floating.

Lu Yu mentally reviewed the weight of that sentence.

Whenever.

Whatever.

Just speak up.

The previous person who got Chen Shao to write such a blank check hadn't even been born.

Hearing those six words from Chen Yao's mouth was equivalent to obtaining the universal key to Eden Garden's underground vault—face‑scan entry unlimited, no questions about purpose.

He didn't respond immediately.

He first dabbed the water on the side of his pant leg dry, then took a disposable cup from the paper‑cup rack beside the drinker, filled it half full, and drank slowly.

The paper cup was thin; his fingertip could feel the water's temperature through it.

"Then I won't be polite."

Chen Yao was wiping her third finger. The motion didn't stop.

"I need to look into something." Lu Yu crushed the paper cup, tossed it into the nearby Trash Can. The throwing motion, a natural arc. From the clock tower it looked like a little boy goofing off during break.

"What are you looking into?"

"A few old cases."

He turned the faucet again and washed his hands once more. The water sound perfectly masked the words that followed.

"The really old kind. Some files may have already been manually… cleaned."

Chen Yao's finger lingered on the tissue for a fraction of a second.

"You need to bypass the Investigation Bureau's data permissions." It wasn't a question.

"Right." Lu Yu's tone was flat, as if reciting the Cafeteria's menu for today, "The Investigation Bureau's monitoring system they gave me has eyes in every direction—up, down, left, right. If I were to retrieve files from the bureau's port, they'd see the record within twenty minutes."

Chen Yao didn't ask why he couldn't use the regular channel. She folded the used tissue twice and precisely tossed it into the Trash Can.

"Where to look?"

Lu Yu reached out and tightened the faucet.

The metal valve emitted a short squeak as it turned, coinciding exactly with the moment he uttered those three words.

"Jiang Hai City."

Chen Yao's hand‑wiping showed no visible pause to the naked eye. Yet Lu Yu sensed it.

It wasn't in the motion.

It was her whole aura that, in that 0.3‑second interval, twitched slightly, like a perfectly tuned string being plucked a half‑step more.

Jiang Hai City.

One of the top‑three high‑risk cities on the global martial‑law list, the location of the first batch of schools of Qiu Ce Yuan.

"Jiang Hai City is now the Core control zone of the Iron Curtain Plan," she said evenly, "Old cases in the Investigation Bureau aren't impossible, but retrieving records would pass through three independent audit nodes."

"So that's why I came to you." Lu Yu leaned against the trough's edge, arms crossed over his chest. From a distance, it looked like the standard slouch of a fourteen‑year‑old boy.

"Eden Garden's information network doesn't use the Federation's audit system."

Chen Yao folded the tissue's outer wrapper into a small square, slipped it back into her pocket. Her finger lingered in the pocket for an extra beat.

She is thinking.

Lu Yu can tell.

This thirteen‑year‑old girl is using a brain far beyond her peers' to rapidly calculate the cost and risk of this request.

It's not a technical issue— for Eden Garden's dark web that has infiltrated half of the Federation's economy, pulling a few old case files is about as easy as buying a bottle of water at a convenience store.

She's calculating a different ledger.

Lu Yu wants to investigate an old case in Jiang Hai City, bypassing the Federation's surveillance, yet refuses to state the exact reason.

That means he is looking for something.

What could be worth a teenager whose body hosts a Quasi‑S Weird, already under the Federation's watch, risking exposure to dig through three‑year‑old archives?

Chen Yao didn't ask.

Not that she isn't curious.

It's that she judged that probing further at this point would only cause the other side to tighten its defenses. And she wants to see what fish this line she voluntarily cast will eventually hook.

"After I return to the dorm tonight," she released her hand from her pocket, her voice light and steady, "I'll activate the investigation with Highest Authorization."

Highest Authorization.

Those four characters denote Chen Shao's personal clearance level. It means Eden Garden's Core intelligence network will be mobilized, like a giant beast sleeping in the shadows, opening its eyes for a fourteen‑year‑old's request.

Lu Yu turned, faced the sink, bent down and took the last sip of water.

Water dripped from the corner of his mouth, ran down his chin and fell to the floor. He brushed it off haphazardly with his cuff.

"Thanks."

The tone was casual, like borrowing a fellow desk's eraser.

Chen Yao gave him a glance.

The look was brief, so brief that any camera could only catch a single blurry profile frame.

Yet Lu Yu caught it.

Beneath the gaze lay curiosity, scrutiny, and a tiny, deeply suppressed—interest.

Like a cat finally seeing another cat step into its territory. Not rushing to pounce, it tilts its head to assess whether the other's claws are sharp enough.

"No rush before the results are out," Chen Yao said, then turned and left.

After three steps, her hand fell naturally back to her side, her shoulder line retracted, her stride shortened, the "please don't notice me" default persona switching seamlessly.

Perfect to a chilling degree.

Lu Yu leaned against the sink edge for a few more seconds, watching her ponytail vanish into the crowd.

Then he lifted his head.

His gaze crossed the playground, the four‑meter‑high gray wall, and the scaffolding and hoist tower under construction beyond it.

Far away, a thin veil of gray haze blurred the horizon's edge. That direction was south‑southeast.

Jiang Hai City.

One thousand two hundred kilometers from here.

Beneath that city lie the Federation's earliest batch of Weird birth records: Cavity Person, Ghost‑Wall, Symbiosis Lin Fan—each source file of a serial number points to the same time window, the same region.

That place is the origin of everything.

Lu Yu withdrew his gaze, bent to brush dust off his trousers, and blended into the flow heading toward the teaching building.

This time, before that guy ascends to godhood, he will pull him out from the shadows.

Not to save anyone.

It is for reckoning.

On the playground, Zhang Rui started whistling again. Someone cursed, someone laughed. Sunlight fell just right on the flagpole, stretching the courtyard flag's shadow into a long line.

Everything is normal.

Everything has only just begun.

Clock tower's top floor.

The observer took off the headset, rubbing the ear that bore a red imprint.

"Report end: target lingered in the water‑drinking area for two minutes forty seconds, had brief contact with Chen Yao."

The earpiece was silent for two beats.

Su Ming's voice came through, dry, devoid of emotion.

"What did they say?"

The observer flipped through the waveform log of the voice‑print capture. The faucet's white noise smeared the entire band into a paste; AI denoising ran three times, barely extracting a few fragmented syllables, insufficient to form full words.

"Water noise interference severe, effective content extraction below twelve percent," he paused, adding, "Facial expression read normal, body‑language analysis judged ordinary social interaction."

The nearby toothpick guy added, "Two kids washed their hands, took a sip, under three minutes total. If you insist there's something fishy, the ten‑minute daily chat between the cafeteria cook and the guard downstairs is enough to convict a spy."

The earpiece fell quiet again for a few seconds.

Then Su Ming said, "Keep watching."

The communication cut.

The toothpick guy curled his lip, spat the chewed toothpick into the Trash Can, pulled out a fresh one and bit it.

"Su Team this person, paranoia heavier than my grandma's."

The observer gave no reply. He leaned back over the telescope, where the playground showed thirty‑seven half‑grown kids in school uniforms drifting toward the teaching building in small groups.

Lu Yu walked in the middle‑rear of the line.

Chen Yao was at the front.

At least fifteen people separated the two.

Ordinary to the utmost degree.