Page 973

Is that really so?

Wang Ye discussed with the other party for a day and didn’t return to his accommodation until midnight, analyzing the possibilities of what had been said.

According to the other party, the initial experiment was planned by a group of elites from various factions.

However, none of them appeared in the data world afterwards—not a single one, which was indeed unusual.

Considering the military’s enigmatic figure who had secretly arranged Tianji, and the complete disappearance of Mister Tianji, anyone’s first thought would be that at least some of those people must be hiding in the shadows.

But have they really hidden for so long?

Wang Ye felt something wasn’t quite right.

From what he now knew of Digital City’s history, those individual warriors who entered had managed to rise to dominant positions over time.

After all, players could reincarnate indefinitely, and they were the first batch.

Logically, they should have taken control of that world by now.

Plus, with their substantial influence in the real world, if not leading both generations, at least by now they should be a powerful and energetic noble family, shouldn’t they?

Why the silence?

Even their game world was only recently opened, and those people seemed to have always kept a low profile, as if they were afraid of being discovered.

To Wang Ye, this seemed very unreasonable.

Those people must still be alive. According to Chen Qing, those who had died were reintroduced into that world with replicated genes, most likely their doing, so they must be manipulating some situation from behind the scenes.

But if they really have been hiding for so long and have such a strong foundation, do they really need to sneak around like this?

Wang Ye felt it wasn’t that simple. Those guys were avoiding something...

Upon this thought, he looked at a piece of white cloth beside him, left by Mister Tianji, who had said if anything unexpected happened to him recently, he should take this cloth and go back to Chen Qing immediately.

He had looked at the white cloth for a long time. It had no technique energy on it, obviously a plain piece of white cloth. He had no idea what use it would be to bring it to Chen Qing?

And now, the truth was just in front of him.

If he went back without getting things clear, it wouldn’t be of much help to Chen Qing.

After all, his own power was far inferior to Chen Qing’s at this point, and without intelligence, his current combat power might not even match a squad of the Warrior Army.

But now, the deepest person he could get in touch with was Hou Jie from the new military he met during the day.

He was merely a child of the middle class, and many historical issues were based on his own speculation.

This wasn’t to say there was no effect on exploring the truth of the past, but he could only have a general direction.

Specific details would require the cooperation of someone specialized.

Wang Ye closed his eyes and pondered for a while, then his body shook and he disappeared from the spot.

Gentle methods and slow consumption couldn’t be used now. With Mister Tianji missing, and no news from Chen Qing’s end—having tried contacting several times with no response—it’s possible something had happened there. He must gather useful intelligence as fast as possible!

------------------------------------------

"He went to find Hou Jie?" The person responsible for monitoring Wang Ye promptly reported his intelligence, and the one observing Wang Ye was from the Digital City’s ten great families, the Wang Family.

As they shared the same surname, even if some offenses occurred, they could use the surname to mediate on a personal level.

That was a decision from above, but now, Wang Xin felt enormous pressure.

Monitoring an NPC from a Parallel World, and a very powerful one at that, was not easy.

They dared not be too blatant, nor could they relax their vigilance.

After all, although those two NPCs seemed harmless, they actually had astonishing energy.

They were rumored to have very strange special abilities, and their danger level was dozens of times that of the top transcendent human players from the past. It was estimated that Wang Ye alone could destroy all of the Central Federation’s transcendent data lives at the current stage!

Such a humanoid nuclear bomb made the guardian’s job extremely stressful because whether he lived or died depended entirely on the NPC’s mood.

Despite his nobility, if he was casually killed off by the other party, it was likely that the whole Central Federation, including his own family, would not come to his aid.

.. nor would they pursue the matter afterward. ..

But now the other party was acting abnormally, and he had no choice but to stiffen his resolve and act.

Two days ago, another NPC had already disappeared. This matter was reported to the higher-ups, who immediately convened a meeting and sternly demanded that everyone keep a lookout for another one.

But now...

"Notify Hou Jie that I will visit him, and then... prepare a supper for Mister Wang and ask if he needs a technician to help him relax."

Not long ago, an old man known as Mister Tianji, became obsessed with ultimate foot massages and often tempted Wang Ye to join him.

At first, Wang Ye was quite resistant, but after being dragged along a few times, he ended up going almost every other day.

He apparently, like most men in the Central Federation, grew fond of such leisure activities.

After giving the order, Wang Xin went straight to where Hou Jie’s bedroom was. Receiving a visit in the dead of the night made Hou Jie’s heart skip a beat.

Data beings inherently have no physiological need for sleep, but the strong inertia of memory still requires them to rest their brains for a period each day. They can’t work overtime and skip sleep like they did when they were living.

The adequate amount of sleep for data beings was mutually established by both federations because, in the early days, there were many cases where data beings turned into piles of meaningless data just days after joining Eastern Enterprise.

According to the research, data beings are far less resilient to psychological pressure than their once-flesh-and-blood selves, and working overtime or losing sleep could easily burn them out into dead data.

After a century of Digital City’s existence, both the Eastern and Western Federations introduced normal holiday times for workers.

It could be said that in Digital City, the eight-hour sleep schedule is almost mandatory.

He planned to first probe Hou Jie for information and if Hou Jie didn’t cooperate, Wang Xin wouldn’t mind taking him back for a thorough interrogation.

Now that most of the high-ranking officials of the new army had entered that world, the threat level had significantly decreased from just a few months ago.

But just as he arrived to speak with Hou Jie, he discovered that no one answered the door.

And after the subordinates forcibly broke in, they eerily discovered that Hou Jie had vanished!

This discovery made him instinctively realize that something was up with that fellow Wang Ye.

He immediately hit the alarm!

-------------------------------

Wang Ye has also disappeared...

This outcome made the throats tighten for all high-level officials in the Eastern Federation!

They had always been on guard against those two NPCs, fearing the most that the pair might cause trouble. Yet despite being cautious, they still couldn’t withstand the others’ mysterious powers.

"No surveillance footage at all, and Hou Jie vanished in his own room? The one named Wang Ye too?"

"It must be some sort of ability..." a specialist speculated: "It’s most likely something akin to teleportation, since the inner rooms are surveillance-free for official privacy, we have no idea when he took Hou Jie away."

"But the key point is that Hou Jie doesn’t have significant privileges..." another person expressed doubts: "What’s the use of taking Hou Jie?"

"Hou Jie is useful..." Suddenly, a woman in the conference room interrupted everyone.

Members of Noble Families, the high-level officials, were all startled because the woman who spoke was not one of the high-level officials, but a secretary responsible for preparing documents. Logically, this secretary...should not have the right to speak.

"He has a privilege that you all might have forgotten..." The secretary, completely unaware of stealing the spotlight, coldly addressed everyone: "Have you all forgotten? He was once... from the grand archive room!"