Chapter 602: Clues and Traces

At the same time, within the Blackstone Space Station at the border of the distant Feiyu Star Domain, Luo was busy organizing her "belongings."

The repair progress of Blackstone Space Station was astonishingly fast, and the condition of its core systems was actually better than expected. Although its Fissure Laboratory had been almost completely destroyed by the Jie Bridge earlier, as a large space station, its "control center" was not in the laboratory but in the "inner ring" between the laboratory and the outer ring. Thus, it had luckily escaped the previous destruction. Now it only needed to be brought back online, and over seventy percent of the station's basic functions could be restored.

A large amount of valuable research materials and log data were also restored as a result, even giving Luo a chance to reorganize the events of that catastrophic accident.

For this great scientist, the aftermath of the "Jie Bridge" incident was only just beginning, and its impact on her entire career would likely last a very long time.

Her mood at the moment was complicated.

Being able to return to this familiar place was certainly something to be happy about. After all, most areas of the space station hadn't changed much, and with the help of that "Mo Ran" city lord, Blackstone Station had basically restored the conditions for long-term habitation. But on the flip side, having the boss's face pop up on the walls and ceilings at any time was quite frightening...

Luo, who was busy in the central database, turned her head and looked somewhat helplessly at the distant alloy wall.

This place was a giant shaft-like chamber. In the center of the vertical cylindrical chamber was a circular platform, built around a pillar-like silver-white "Hub Mainframe." The outer edge was connected to the chamber's entrances and exits by two suspension bridges. Now Luo was standing on the inner side of the circular platform—and on the inner wall of the shaft opposite the platform was Yu Sheng's huge face, covering dozens of square meters.

The enormous face appeared on that silver-white high wall, looking quite intimidating.

"...Boss, you're going to scare me like this."

"Don't I look like the kind of big villain from a sci-fi TV series?" Yu Sheng said, sounding quite pleased. "You know, the type that causes trouble for the main cast every season but never gets killed off because they're too popular..."

"Are you really that bored right now?" Luo said with a helpless expression. "If you're that bored, how about helping me fix the pipes under the suspension bridge? This place is full of the smell of gas leaks from the atmospheric circulation system."

"Oh, that's easy..."

From the deep shaft beneath the suspension bridge came the faint sound of metal squirming and healing, and several warning indicators on the data terminal decreased accordingly.

Luo seriously pondered whether this place was more frightening when the Gloomy Angel was causing trouble or when Yu Sheng was causing trouble—her conclusion was that she should never have sent people to meddle in the local gang conflicts on Zolda Star back then.

If she hadn't meddled in that mess, she wouldn't have gotten the Zolda Black Stone. If she hadn't touched the Black Stone, there wouldn't have been the subsequent Jie Bridge incident. Without the Jie Bridge incident, there would have been no angelic descent. Without the angelic descent, her space station wouldn't have been targeted by angel hunters. Then she'd still be holed up in her happy home, researching black psionics on odd-numbered days, studying sub-space on even-numbered days, using scraps from her scientific research to scam money on the black market on holidays, and checking whether Bai Liqing's bounty on her had added another zero...

Now it's all·over·with.

"I feel like your eyes suddenly got resentful again," Yu Sheng suddenly spoke again, his voice coming from the steel face with metallic tremors and echoes. "It's like when Hu Li goes to the kitchen, opens the cupboard, and finds I've put all the soy sauce bottles away."

"If you would stop using this face to scare people here and instead come over in person to talk with me, my condition would be a bit better."

"Can't do that, I'm accompanying Hu Li shopping right now..."

Luo sighed, stopped paying attention to her somewhat unreliable new boss, and turned her focus back to the work at hand.

The silver-white "Hub Mainframe" that ran through the entire cylindrical chamber emitted a low, pleasant hum in front of her, with lights flickering regularly and steadily on its surface. It seemed that after being re-energized, its condition had fully recovered.

Luo connected a data terminal to a port on this silver-white pillar, and several other cables ran from the remaining ports on the pillar to the mechanical limbs on her back—using her highly modified implanted parts to directly interface with the database. Every large storage server here seemed to become an external brain for her, allowing her to access vast amounts of data on demand.

This was an operation that only she could perform. Even Alvin and the Stellar Scholars he led couldn't match this efficiency.

Huge amounts of data flowed through her auxiliary brain. The heat and electrical discharge from the neural interface occasionally brought stinging pain and itching, and brief auditory and visual hallucinations were something she had long since grown accustomed to.

In the daze of direct connection with the database, Luo would sometimes briefly blur the boundary between self and machine, forgetting whether she was an elf who had undergone surgical modification, or a pile of chips and living metal mounted on a frail body of flesh and blood.

People (elves) are truly highly adaptable creatures. She still remembered that when the Black Dot Corporation first severed her spine and implanted the first piece of living metal, she had even thought about death. The discomfort from the neural interface and "personality confusion" had nearly turned her into a deranged lunatic. But at some point, she had adapted to this body of machinery, and even used it to "prove her worth."

For a time, she had even genuinely regarded this "self-proof" as an honor...

Luo shook her head, and at that moment, a piece of data flowing through her auxiliary brain suddenly caught her attention.

Yu Sheng saw the blonde elf on the platform suddenly frown, and then her expression began to turn serious. Immediately after, lights among the mechanical limbs behind her started flashing rapidly—a moment later, a low hum began to resonate throughout the entire data center.

Vast amounts of data were being mobilized. Luo began to traverse the entire database, as if searching for something.

"What's going on? Found traces of Blackstone Station's 'overstep' period?"

"No," Luo frowned and shook her head, her tone uncertain. "I just found something off in the logistics system and communication logs..."

"Something off?" Yu Sheng's face quickly disappeared from the metal wall above the server array and reappeared on the silver-white pillar in front of Luo. "Specifically?"

"Boss, you want to scare me to death!" Luo nearly jumped on the spot. She glared at Yu Sheng before pouting. "It's a few strange cross-border logistics orders... Starting from a few years ago, every year a batch of goods labeled as 'high-energy minerals' passed through my logistics channels. The source is unknown, they were sent to the Darkflow Star Domain, and the signee can't be found. The guarantee serial numbers look like they were issued internally by the corporation, but... I have no memory of these orders at all."

Yu Sheng listened, dumbfounded. He completely didn't understand the rules of interstellar logistics, nor did he know how the intricate logistics network and approval process within Black Dot Corporation worked. But from the expression on Luo's face, he could see that this matter seemed quite suspicious: "This doesn't happen often?"

"It shouldn't happen—there are always people who exploit loopholes, but for someone to do this for several consecutive years without me noticing, that's a bit off."

Luo said while swiping on her data terminal, pulling up a series of documents and logs to show Yu Sheng—although she thought that given her new boss's educational level, he probably wouldn't understand these things, she had to show some serious work attitude.

"I don't know how these orders bypassed me... Also, there are these communication records. Basically, around the time of these 'orders,' several internal corporate addresses frequently communicated with an external anonymous network. It looks like they were inquiring about the order progress, but both senders and receivers are completely anonymous."

"...Interesting," Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. "So looking at this, your control over your sphere of influence... is there a problem?"

Luo was silent for a moment, just pursing her lips with a grave expression.

After a long while, she sighed and shook her head.

"In the past few years, I was heavily influenced by the 'Zolda Black Stone.' I was obsessed with its secrets like a demon, putting eighty percent of my energy into that thing. At the time, I didn't notice anything, but looking back now, even if something off happened right under my nose, I probably wouldn't have noticed, let alone these 'small matters' in the logistics network and communication system."

Yu Sheng didn't speak, just looked into Luo's eyes. After a long moment, he said, "But now it seems you don't think this is a small matter."

"There are rats stealing my things—could be traitors, or competitors from other departments," Luo said slowly. This elf, who was always so listless, now spoke with a chilling coldness, as if she were a different person. "These records don't look like big problems on the surface, but my spiritual intuition is warning me."

She pursed her lips, paused briefly, then suddenly looked up. "Boss, I plan to head back to my 'hideout' immediately. I might be able to find something."

"Alright, approved."

Yu Sheng said casually, and then Luo saw the air near the Hub Mainframe suddenly twist, and a phantom door appeared out of thin air before her. When the door opened, on the other side was a familiar starscape—a desolate rocky planet, with a small starport and several satellites floating in orbit around it.

This space station was now Yu Sheng's body, so it was perfectly reasonable for him to open a door on himself.

"Alright, go ahead." Yu Sheng said.

Luo was still staring blankly at the door. She clearly hadn't yet adapted to her new boss's pace or the Traveler's Inn's style of doing things. Her original return plan hadn't included this step. After holding back for a while, she finally spoke: "It's, it's not that immediate... I at least need to pack my luggage and prepare a shuttle."

"Oh," Yu Sheng closed the door again. "Then go prepare, and tell me when you're ready. Oh, and since that's the case, go to Shu Ji's Mo City before you depart and ask Mo Ran for some self-defense items."

Luo subconsciously said, "No need, I have my own..."

"She has my blood grenades over there. You can slap them onto the faces of people you don't like."

Luo instantly became energized: "Yes, boss!"