Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 713 - 596 Valuable

Chapter 713: Chapter 596 Valuable

The torrential rain howled down, drenching the entire city as if the sky had split open to vent its rage onto the world below.

Surrounded by skyscrapers, the civilisation’s technological brilliance shone like the Starry Sea, pierced only by such summer downpours, soaking its foundation.

After settling Lu Jing, Rinne found a place to get online and sent Kanako all the important information she managed to hack.

"These messages are really secretive, needing hacker skills just to extract them." Kanako browsed the information, growing more impressed with Rinne’s expertise.

Rinne, originally a street hacker, had her hidden talents fully revealed through promotion and training, and now she was second to none among the hacking elite.

"I’m pretty useful, aren’t I?" Rinne bragged about herself. She was also searching for news about the Namisis Group; Rinne had spent her childhood there, where those modifications and experiments had formed her first nightmares. And Rinne was destined for a deadly duel with Aiden the Crusher in Jialong Slope.

Dressed in silk pajamas, Kanako checked the list of treasures for tomorrow’s grand auction, her interest growing by the minute.

Many large factories would be up for sale, all from the advanced smart manufacturing of petrochemicals, machinery, and microelectronics in the Cold Bay Industrial Zone. If Nestor Corporation could acquire these core productive capacities of Jialong Slope, their manufacturing prowess would surge exponentially.

If they found a foothold in Jialong Slope, Nestor Corporation’s reach would extend not just to the Eastern Hemisphere but to the entire world. From Jialong Slope, they could expand their network westward to the White Elephant Continent, Hot Tree Continent, and the Near East Region, taking a significant step in the current corporate strategy.

The second target of the auction was Digital Mind.

"Do you really need Digital Mind?" Kanako asked.

"Of course I hate to owe this... Anyway, please." Rinne requested.

"Don’t worry," Kanako understood.

The seller of Digital Mind was a mystery, with no information to be found. Its core architecture was "Helix-4," a breed of digital mind originating from the Western Hemisphere, emphasizing the optimization of computational efficiency by advanced algorithms. Xu Yang’s digital mind used a hexa-cognitive structure, focusing on harnessing the human brain itself.

The third significant auction item, the "Peacock Enigma Paintings" by the Artist, greatly intrigued Kanako.

There were 24 paintings in total, and it was said that each one bore the phantom of a peacock, which was precisely why the painter surnamed Wu was obsessed. The Book Page Peacock served as the messenger of the Great River Goddess, disseminating her memories and forbidden knowledge.

Two of the paintings had been unveiled by Yongyi Company and Yunding Group, the two major corporations in Jialong Slope. According to their tests, the Peacock Enigma Paintings could provide people with "answers."

The process involved the observer first contemplating a question, then staring at the painting, and almost immediately, they would feel the answer emerging from the painting into their mind.

Isn’t this just the world’s leading oracle answering machine? Kanako thought to herself.

But surely it couldn’t answer all the questions in the world.

"What questions did the company’s people ask using those two paintings?" Kanako asked.

"According to the information I hacked, they chose two questions out of nine to ask the Enigma Paintings: The path beyond the high tower, the Unified Theory, methods to overcome the limitations of biological telomere splitting, the meaning behind the creation of the universe, the Navistox Equation, how humans can become Qualified Ones... and three others that are still unclear. Who knows which ones they picked. Are they really asking a modern technological question to an Ancient God?"

"The memories of the Great River Goddess are a record of all history from the past... There might have been civilizations more advanced than ours," Kanako speculated.

In any case, these were not just simple paintings but a medium capable of transmitting knowledge.

Similarly, the starting bid for each painting was calculated by the billions. This knowledge could either change the world’s trends or point to some mysterious and ancient technology.

From the clues collected so far, it was evident that various powers would fiercely bid and fight for these paintings.

If Nestor Corporation managed to buy five or six paintings, it would be a windfall, and it was not necessary to acquire them all. Their usage was ambiguous and might not provide the answers they truly needed.

Kanako pondered over the bidding strategy with difficulty.

Just then, manager Akiyama Tsuzuki reported to Kanako.

"Miss Kojima... There’s a visitor in the lobby who wishes to see you," Akiyama Tsuzuki said in a subdued voice, speaking with a feeble tone.

"Who?"

"She refuses to reveal her name, insisting that you must see her because her presence is very... important and special. You will miss a significant opportunity if you bypass her. In short... it’s very mysterious," Akiyama Tsuzuki conveyed, sending the video feed to Kanako as well.

In the lobby sat a very strange woman.

She was wrapped head to toe in a bright red plastic rain poncho, seemingly ripped from some large parasol, completely drenched, sitting on the sofa, soaked to the core. The service staff around her looked distressed, wanting to change her seat, but she refused anyone to come close, her voice hoarse.

"Bring her to my room," Kanako observed carefully.

"Yes," Akiyama Tsuzuki, though afraid of the risk, was more afraid of defying Kanako’s will, so immediately ordered the woman from the lobby to be brought to Kanako’s room.

Kanako bid farewell to Rinne. She felt she knew who the woman wrapped in the red poncho was.

She sat at the vanity, tending to her nails, then gave her forearm an injection of cell repair fluid. This fluid, mixed with fragrance compounds, greatly improved the aging condition of a person.

In Kanako’s view, "aging" seemed less a gradual process and more a sudden mutation. One enjoys two or three decades of youth, and then almost instantaneously, the body plummets in function, with all prior sleepless nights, bad habits, and latent illnesses exploding at once, like an unpredictable trap crumbling all vitality.

After administering the shot, she ordered food, and then heard footsteps halt outside her door.

Kanako opened the door with a glance, and the sliding door moved along its magnetic track, revealing the woman clad in the red rain poncho.

"Now, can you feel at ease?" Kanako tried to lift the rain poncho from the woman, but she slapped Kanako’s hand away forcefully.

Security personnel behind, ready to spring into action, were stopped by Kanako.

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"Go ahead, I’m fine," Kanako said with a smile.

After the security personnel left, Kanako pulled her into the room.

As she walked, the floor was covered with rainwater, and Kanako also smelled the unpleasant odor of blood, which reminded her of many dark memories. Struggles had run through their lives, leaving countless corpses along the way.

Countless names of the dead flashed through Kanako’s mind as she closed the door, pulled down the awning, and saw a very young, indifferent girl with pale blonde hair, bloodshot eyes, and black symbols written all over her body with Secret Script, dirtied from head to toe, having endured untold hardships on her journey.

"Why have you wrapped yourself up like this, Huang Feng," Kanako sat on the bed.

"They will come to kill me."

"Who will?"

"The Invisible Imperial Guard," Huang Feng said, her gaze somewhat vacant.

"More than a dozen?" Kanako immediately became alert.

"Scared? I can leave now," Huang Feng said tiredly.

"I am scared because this hotel was just attacked today during the daytime. If it couldn’t withstand a gang of thugs, what about the Invisible Imperial Guard?" Kanako said with a smile, then savored the look of loss on Huang Feng’s face.

"Do you mean I’d be better off dead?" Huang Feng asked, taking a small box out of her pocket and placing it on the table.

Kanako opened the box and inside was a large smart chip, specifically for synthesizing mental slots.

"How much is this worth?" asked Kanako.

"This is an A40; it’s worthless. I’m sorry to have troubled you," Huang Feng said as she headed for the door.

"Don’t be too upset." Kanako approached from behind and took Huang Feng’s hand.

Before long, the food delivery server brought the meals through the anti-disturbance drift express tunnel. Kanako snapped her fingers, and an eyeball robot flew out from the square box on the floor, helping them to open the hidden cabinet at the wall and serve the full tray of food.

Huang Feng’s eyes lit up at the sight of the fried chicken burger, tomato beef soup, grilled rib, spicy roll, cheese hot dog, and cola on the tray. She pounced on the food, grabbed it, and stuffed it into her mouth, wolfing it down, and unscrewed the cap of the cola to gulp it directly from the bottle.

Kanako watched Huang Feng with a gentle gaze, herself only taking a chicken wing from the meat platter on the tray and tearing it in small bites.

Watching Huang Feng eat voraciously, Kanako slowly started to talk to her.

"Our resources are very limited right now, and there’s not much I can do for you. Have you ever heard of the Witch Goddess?" Kanako said.

"...The Witch Goddess promised to give me freedom. She let me work here, and I did make... some progress. Do you mean I should return to the Witch Goddess? I... am a little scared," Huang Feng lifted her head.

Sometimes, in her wildly chaotic dreams, she envisioned herself lying on a silver platter, with a woman with brown hair eating her.

"You should indeed be scared, because what the Witch Goddess gives often comes with a price big enough to cause regret. So you must come to my side, get protection here, and that’s why you chose the Xisheng Hotel, right?" Kanako reassured softly.

"The news said there was a gunfight here; you came back, and there was the ship," Huang Feng recognized Nestor Corporation from the red Innovation.

"Just wait here," Kanako urged gently.

After eating half of her food, Huang Feng felt a pain in her throat.

She blankly reached out her hand to the floating projection lights, which were like fish swimming through steam waves. She touched the colorful schools of fish over and over, feeling as if she was standing in the ocean somewhere, the room’s lights intentionally dimmed to make the rippling lights on the floor visible.

Huang Feng’s thoughts were completely captured by these fish and the streaming illusions.

She needed so little. Kanako watched Huang Feng, then carefully crouched by the window.

Bang!

A bullet struck the bulletproof window, chipping off a fragment that skimmed past Kanako’s delicate face, leaving a mark in an instant.

"They’re here!" Huang Feng screamed.

"Don’t worry." Kanako pulled all the curtains closed quietly, while having someone check the surroundings and mobilizing the Witch Division’s forces.

"..." Huang Feng didn’t say a word. Black Fire Innovation, in their aim to retrieve Huang Feng, had deployed most of their immediate forces to Jialong Slope.

The hotel was going to suffer a second attack.

"How are things?" Kanako asked the hotel’s security.

Most people had been killed by bandits in the afternoon, but some were still alive. New combat robots were piling up at the entrance, pretending to be a force to reckon with.

But Kanako knew that if they encountered real enemies, they would melt like ice in the scorching sun, and their defensive line would be as fragile as paper.

"We’ve detected many people... they’re approaching from different directions, like paramilitary personnel."

"How many?"

"Several hundred, including some high-risk units such as heavily armored mercenaries and others. I recommend you evacuate!"

"... Keep a close watch on the entrance," Kanako sat in the room.

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