When Jing Shu arrived at the base of the structure, Yang Yang was already there, leaning against the side of a vehicle. Somehow, he had found a white convertible, the kind that looked like a sightseeing car used in resorts, and it was packed full of supplies. It looks like he had made a pretty good haul while he was exploring.
Compared to him, Jing Shu looked a bit of a mess. Her coat was dusty and her hair was windswept. She was carrying over a dozen bags of all sizes, the straps straining against her hands, and every now and then something weird would tumble out onto the ground.
Just a moment ago, an artist's painting had fallen out of one of her bundles. Since she was in a hurry, she smashed it with a punch, the canvas splitting with a sharp tear. She instead treasured the hollow crystal frame, slipping it over Hao Yunlai's head before continuing on her way.
Yang Yang parked the car outside the tower, the tires crunching on the gravel, while Jing Shu loaded her bundles onto the leather seats. Then she looked up at the towering structure before them, their final destination. The metal gleamed coldly in the moonlight.
This tower was the main reason her group hadn't dared to come close before. It was a military defense tower with a two-kilometer security radius. This meant the area inside Rhine Manor was a vacuum zone, targeting only external intruders with lethal precision.
Jing Shu didn't understand the technical stuff. But according to Snake Spirit's testing, the tower had advanced AI weaponry that adapted its attacks depending on the intruder's size. It would shoot down anything nearby that moved but wasn't alive.
They had thought about trying an armored vehicle or tank, but nothing could get close to the perimeter. Not to mention, right next door stood North America's largest solemn temple with its own heavy defenses. A small-time thief might sneak in, but there was no way to take down a high tower from two kilometers away.
"Where is Hao Yunlai?" Yang Yang looked around but didn't see him in the dark.
"Right here…" Hao Yunlai poked his head out from a sack, looking utterly disheveled. His neck was draped in all kinds of jewelry that clinked together, the crystal frame still hanging around his head. He held an expensive-looking candlestick in his left hand and a vintage diamond platter in his right, jingling and clattering as he stood up. Little trinkets kept falling off him—things that had dropped earlier and that Jing Shu had picked up and stuffed back in. He didn't dare ask about them and definitely didn't dare throw anything away.
"You worked hard." Jing Shu pulled him out of the car. She removed all the junk from his person and carefully took back the high-tech Ever-Burning Candlestick, the Unbreakable Diamond Platter, and the crystal frame, tucking them all into the white convertible.
"That's the situation. We will need to tweak Plan B." Jing Shu and Yang Yang entered the tower, with the half-crippled Hao Yunlai limping after her. After all, there could still be danger inside the narrow stairwell.
"That rich guy's words can't be trusted. Things won't be that simple. Let's see if we can shut the tower down first. If we can stop it, the others can move in easily," Yang Yang said.
The tower had over ten floors, each just a dozen square meters wide. Every level stored different weapons and had its own AI core managing the systems. The air hummed with the sound of cooling fans.
With the chip, Jing Shu could move freely through the security doors, but the AI cores weren't under her control. She couldn't shut them down, and there was no way to just pull the plug or cut the heavy wires.
She thought about smashing the machines with her tools, but a warning popped up on a screen in bright red letters. Forced destruction would trigger a self-destruct sequence. So she came up with another plan.
"120mm pursuit cannon? Fine, I will just remove your whole barrel and base. Let's see how you chase anything now." She gripped a wrench, the metal groaning as she loosened the bolts.
"Twelve-tube heavy rocket launcher? If I turned this into the state, that would be worth at least 500 contribution points."
"Single-wing recon aircraft? Nice, this will be perfect for home surveillance later." She looked at the sleek wings of the drone.
"Terminal high-altitude defense system? Kind of annoying, but if I detach the boosters, it's useless. Wait, these materials around it look valuable too. If we haul them back for research, we will each get another 200 contribution points."
"Look at these built-in tracking rifles, newest tech. They would make great weapons for us."
At first, Hao Yunlai had no idea what she was up to. But as he watched her skillfully dismantling one piece after another—some unscrewed, some ripped right out—his jaw dropped.
They couldn't destroy the main systems, but no one said the weapons couldn't be removed. No, these weapons were just naturally detached.
What started as Jing Shu trying to disable the tower turned into her calculating the resale value of every part. She even got Yang Yang and poor limping Hao Yunlai to haul the pieces down the stairs one by one.
By the time Plan B was modified on the fly, Zhen Nantian was controlling the overall situation, Ling Ling was sniping outside from her position, and Snake Spirit brought Monkey in, they arrived just in time to see Jing Shu almost strip the entire tower clean. She left only the humming AI core behind in the empty rooms.
"Searching for pursuit cannon." The computer voice sounded confused.
"Searching for rocket launcher."
Snake Spirit drove the white sightseeing car back and forth, hauling materials to the outskirts of Rhine Manor. The tank unit outside handled the transfer, moving everything to the Canal No. 808 cargo ship that waited in the dark water.
Meanwhile, Jing Shu's team finally reached the tower's inner chamber. With the robot's persistent urging, she used her chip to unlock the door. She pushed it open carefully while everyone stayed alert with their guns ready.
A blast of cold air hit them from the air conditioning. On the floor was a pool of fresh blood that hadn't yet coagulated, and the mangled corpse of a middle-aged man beaten to death with a blunt object. He looked exactly like the one they had seen on the screen earlier.
Besides the body, the room was full of confidential files, important materials, and most importantly, their target: the newly developed formula for prolonging human life.
Yang Yang rushed forward and grabbed all the documents, the paper crinkling in his hands, while Jing Shu stuffed the scattered test tubes and chemical materials into a sack. Monkey swept through the opposite side, gathering everything he could find on the shelves.
Then click, click.
The sound of a camera shutter echoed, followed by bright flashes of light that blinded them for a second.
Jing Shu and Yang Yang turned around. In the corner, a robot was posing with a peace sign. Its screen was displaying footage of everything they had just done—them looting, the corpse lying there—forming a perfect picture of guilt.
"Confirmed: Master Job Sibus deceased. Activating Death Protocol. Triggering alarm. Initiating Rhine Manor self-destruct mode."
"Death data uploaded. Confirmed killers. Global bounty issued. Reward: one million pounds of food."
"Requesting rescue…"
A shrill siren echoed through the entire manor, followed by the heavy thud-thud of signal guns firing into the night sky.
Then came the beep-beep-beep of a countdown, urgent and deadly. Jing Shu knew that sound all too well. It was the same one from when that whole house exploded. Even Hao Yunlai clutched his head. "Danger, danger! We're in danger!"
"So that's it… he lured us here just to make everyone believe he is really dead!"
It all clicked. The man's goal was simple: to make Jing Shu and her team the scapegoats. He had faked his death. How could a rich man like that ever cooperate with people who raided his villa? He would never risk sharing such a secret anyway. Dead people keep secrets best.