area51novel Chapter 687 Bait
Chapter 687 Bait
Zhang Mingyuan.
The smiling person, number HR-2714.
He was wearing an ordinary employee's uniform, without that standard smile, and just stood there at the intersection of the ventilation ducts, looking at Li Shuang with the expression of a traveler who had been lost for a long time and finally found his way home.
"Oh, skipping work? Aren't you afraid of getting your pay docked?" Wu Wang said with a grin, chewing on a candy.
It was hard to tell whether his smile was one of joy or sarcasm.
Zhang Mingyuan ignored his nonsense.
He simply walked to the center of the platform, squatted down, and used his finger to write a number in the dust on the ground.
That wasn't an employee number, it was a date.
It wasn't the time of the strike, but sometime earlier.
The day the Solidarity Union was founded.
Li Shuang's eyes instantly reddened.
As the first person to inherit Zhang Mingyuan's will, she knew more than the subsequent employees, including those special days.
"You...you still remember?" Her voice trembled.
Zhang Mingyuan stood up, and a third expression appeared on his face, besides a smile and blankness.
It was a sadness that had been suppressed for so long that it was almost unrecognizable.
He quickly wrote on the ground: "I have never forgotten!"
Looking at this guy's appearance, Wu Wang was a little puzzled. He squatted down and asked, "What's wrong with you right now?"
The other person looked Wu Wang straight in the eye and wrote in dust: "Found a way to defect."
"I can't speak right now. The program in my body that's called 'Smiling One' will upload everything I say. If I stay like this, at most I'll be flagged for abnormal behavior, and I probably won't get a warning for about an hour."
“As long as I return to my post during this period, I can continue to hide among them.”
After writing these words, his expression became increasingly complicated.
Yes, although it seems like we have a certain degree of freedom, we can't speak and there are time restrictions.
His freedom was brief, lasting only one hour.
Then, Zhang Mingyuan erased the previous writing and continued writing below:
"I've hidden the external program in the bottom-level data of the seventh, twelfth, and nineteenth experience pods in the Wish Showroom. After you have someone start these three experience pods in this order, a USB drive containing the program will pop up from the Wish Consultant's workbench. Remember, it must be in the order of 7-12-19, there can be no mistakes."
"Once you get the program, go to the 49th floor and insert it into the main control console physical interface of the data core."
"But the main control console is located deep within the core, requiring us to bypass the patrol areas of at least six Smilers."
"Li Shuang can help you interfere with the signal, but she can't help you stop the Smiler."
"So, you need a lure."
As the other person wrote this, their gaze turned firmly to me.
Wu Wang raised an eyebrow and said, "You wouldn't be thinking of saying..."
brush--
Zhang Mingyuan's calligraphy appears incredibly free and unrestrained.
"I am the bait!"
"I should have died on the 49th floor the day the strike failed."
"Now that there is hope of destroying this steel monster that has swallowed countless people, I must also stand up and burn my last bit of warmth."
"I've lived enough."
After writing these words, Zhang Mingyuan slowly stood up.
He first used his foot to wipe away all the dust and writing, then, seeing Li Shuang's red-rimmed eyes, he raised his hand and patted her shoulder.
Without uttering a single word, their silent body language was deafening.
After encouraging Li Shuang, he bowed deeply to Wu Wang.
He then turned and resolutely walked away in the direction he had come from.
He needs to return to his post as soon as possible to avoid being found out by the factory that he had abandoned his post without authorization.
He no longer lives just for himself.
They also need to hide until the day Wu Wang breaches the data core, to be sacrificed as bait.
He cannot reveal himself now in order to make this day possible.
The footsteps gradually faded away.
In the end, only the hum of the fan and Li Shuang's suppressed sobs remained.
Wu Wang looked down at the dust that had been wiped away on the ground, especially the place where the date of the establishment of the Solidarity Union was once written.
It was an ordinary day, some years ago.
That day, someone stopped typing and stood up. The sound was like a muffled thunderclap, echoing from the fourth floor all the way to the top floor.
"He...did the right thing to do, didn't he?"
"He's a good person, isn't he?"
Must good people always have to sacrifice themselves?
Li Shuang suddenly asked this question.
At this point, Wu Wang also planned to leave. The surveillance system in the tea room outside couldn't be maintained like this indefinitely. What if someone from the Smiling Party came to repair it?
After all, the fourth floor is still under close inspection.
"There are no good people or bad people in this world."
Wu Wang climbed back up the vertical ladder, his voice echoing inside the metal pipe.
"Only those who haven't finished paying off their debts."
Li Shuang wiped her face thoughtfully, picked up the cold light stick, and looked up at Wu Wang, who was about to disappear around the corner of the passage.
She said very seriously, "Now I know why he chose you."
Wu Wang did not look back.
"Because he's the only one who can see right through you."
"You're not here to die, you're not here to save anyone, you're here to collect debts!"
"This factory owes everyone a debt..."
"You can collect it!"
Wu Wang laughed.
His smile was completely invisible in the dark ventilation duct, but Li Shuang could hear the familiar, smug laugh in his voice, and it seemed he was in a good mood.
"The ledger is quite thick. Let me start by collecting the interest."
He disappeared completely after he finished speaking.
Only Li Shuang remained in the ventilation duct, continuing to be her ghost.
As she watched Zhang Mingyuan leave, a subtle smile appeared on her lips.
When Wu Wang climbed out of the ventilation duct, Xiao Qiu was still fast asleep on the coffee machine.
He pinched that small cat face and spread it out to the sides, almost turning it into a pancake.
"Is this how you guard the gate, huh?"
"If someone really came, would you still be breathing on them?"
Hearing Wu Wang's angry words.
Xiao Qiu immediately demonstrated to him, proving that she could definitely breathe on things.
"what……"
Boom!
As soon as he opened his mouth to breathe for less than half a second, Wu Wang flicked his forehead with his finger.
He said in a very serious tone, "You dare to breathe on me?"
hill:"?"
Boss, I couldn't find a single thing like that in a damn bad way, even if I were deliberately picking a fight.
"You just want to flick my forehead, don't you?" "Good to know." Wu Wang admitted it without any shame.
Xiao Qiu was already used to this guy's unpredictable ways, and he was too lazy to argue with him.
In a flash, it ran up to his head, stomped on his milk a few times, and then comfortably continued to lie there.
At this moment, the fourth floor returned to its familiar tranquility, just like every night.
Although the lights were still on and people were working, the sounds of movement and keyboard clicks were slightly quieter.
When Wu Wang returned to his workstation, he found that there was something extra on the chair.
It was a dark coat folded neatly.
It wasn't a factory-issued work uniform, but a jacket that ordinary people wear every day. There was a small, barely noticeable water stain at the collar, as if it had accidentally dripped while drinking something.
Wu Wang had seen this outfit before—it belonged to Lao Fan.
He picked up his coat and a piece of paper slipped out of his pocket.
There was only one line of text on it, written crookedly, as if the person who wrote it hadn't written in a long time.
"Tomorrow morning at seven o'clock, in the break room."
This is Lao Fan informing him of the time for the next gathering.
Wu Wang casually burned the note and poured the ashes into the trash can.
He draped his coat over the back of the chair and left.
Once back in his cheap rented room, Wu Wang finally turned on his bracelet and started communicating with [Bai].
"How's it going? Got it sorted out?"
Upon hearing Wu Wang's question, the artificial intelligence [Bai] appeared and bowed, saying, "Of course, sir."
“During the time you spent with Li Shuang, I completely copied the chip code she had.”
"Just as you left the break room, I successfully overwrote all the surveillance footage of your time in the ventilation duct. From the perspective of the surveillance, you were working at your workstation the whole time."
"Even the submitted work tasks have been forged, but there's no way to obtain the corresponding wish points. At this stage, we can only forge the record traces."
Li Shuang was not lying.
The chip on her bracelet is indeed closely related to the data core.
She can take her own bracelet offline and adjust the status of the contact device.
However, in the hands of the AI "White", the chip's code can achieve even greater effectiveness.
[White] It is even possible to fabricate false behavior records and upload them.
In this way, after the fall of Wu, it will be much more convenient to go anywhere or do anything.
Actually, Wu Wang originally just wanted to use [Bai] to hack into the other party's bracelet to see if Li Shuang's file contained any things she hadn't mentioned.
I never expected there to be such a wonderful thing as a chip, so I naturally copied it without hesitation.
"Well done." Wu Wang casually pulled up a chair and sat down, asking, "What about Zhang Mingyuan? Can you check on his movements now?"
With the chip's support, [Bai] can now remotely view the surveillance footage of other floors.
In her eyes, the data stream was running wildly.
After a moment, he said, "Sir, Zhang Mingyuan entered the talent incubation center half an hour ago and has not come out yet. The internal monitoring system here seems to be separate from the normal floors and cannot be directly accessed."
"But the time he disappeared outside and the time he appeared inside the ventilation ducts correspond to each other."
Upon hearing this, Wu Wang narrowed his eyes.
He always felt that something was wrong.
To put it bluntly, this instance has been too kind to me so far.
Indeed, although other players see this Desire Factory as a trap, Wu Wang still feels it's been too friendly so far.
Logically speaking, I should definitely be targeted by the dungeon, and the big boss would never let me fall into His hands.
But right now everything seems too good to be true.
It seems that as long as the people on the fourth floor are organized to make some noise at the right time to attract the factory's attention, and then follow the order Zhang Mingyuan said to activate the external program in the Wish Exhibition Hall, go to the data core location through the entrance of the maintenance channel, and then just plug in the USB drive, that's all.
Even in seemingly difficult situations, there are corresponding solutions.
At the entrance to the maintenance channel, Li Shuang has a virtual work card that can be used to open it, and Zhang Mingyuan, the smiling man from the talent incubation center, can also be used as bait to lure him away.
It seems like I only need to go through the formalities.
"Is it so easy just because this is only the first level of the Disaster Tower?"
"Could it be that the higher you climb in the tower, the more difficult the dungeon becomes?"
Wu Wang was somewhat uncertain.
Currently, players worldwide are still researching the Disaster Tower.
Nobody understands in what form these copies exist.
As for the interconnected dungeons mentioned by Qin Shusheng, Wu Wang has not yet encountered this situation.
Does that mean we can only detect it after passing through customs or leaving the factory area?
"By the way, Bai, how many of those chips does Li Shuang have?" Wu Wang asked suddenly after thinking for a moment.
There was an immediate response to this.
“Sir, this chip was most likely stolen from the data core, so the other party probably doesn’t have any extra stock.”
[Bai] didn't think there was anything wrong with it.
However, a strange glint flashed in Wu Wang's eyes.
One piece...
If there's only one, that would be really interesting...
He had some other speculations in his mind.
However, it is not possible to determine this at present; certain experiments are required to obtain the results.
This will take a little time, and a little help from the fourth-level staff...
Wu Wang did not take any further action tonight.
He needs to work with [Bai] to further explore what the chip can do.
Maybe this thing will bring me even more surprises.
The research continued late into the night, and even Xiao Qiu couldn't help but yawn.
Finally, he jumped onto the bed and fell fast asleep.
Wu Wang doesn't need to sleep; he just dies to refresh his status when he's tired. The artificial intelligence [Bai] has no physiological structure, so of course it doesn't need to either.
But cats need it!
When Xiao Qiu was first brought home by Wu Xiaoyou, based on her understanding of black and white cats, which are similar to huskies, Wu Wang was worried that Xiao Qiu would be too energetic and destroy the house everywhere.
So, he used the same method as keeping a hawk awake, forcing Xiao Qiu to play for two or three days straight without sleep.
In the end, they completely gave in.
As a result, Xiaoqiu's daily routine is now exactly the same as that of humans, and he is even healthier than most people.
He really does get sleepy at the designated time.
Even after Xiao Qiu woke up, he still saw Wu Wang and [Bai] fiddling with the bracelet.
It was almost seven o'clock when I opened the door and went downstairs.
Return to the fourth floor and pass by the workstations.
The coat I draped over the back of the chair last night is gone.
Wu Wang walked straight towards the tea room.
Upon entering, I found more than a dozen people already standing inside.
It wasn't the kind of situation where people were scattered around queuing to get coffee; instead, a dozen or so people were standing together, making the already not-so-small tea room feel crowded all at once.
That is, the moment Wu Wang appeared.
Old Fan's voice came from the crowd—
"He's here." (End of Chapter)