SIATOWITF Chapter 52
by Volare“Brother…”
Ji Mo Xin clung to the doorframe, drawing out her words.
“Are you really going back to the company?”
“Yes.” Ji Mo An had already said this word for the fourth time this morning.
“I don’t have to go back?” Ji Mo Xin’s eyes lit up.
“I’ll video call your tutor. Stay here obediently with Grandpa and Qian Xing. In a few days, Mom and Dad will get off the ship and go to your maternal grandpa’s house with them,” Ji Mo An repeatedly instructed.
“Got it, Brother, I’ll miss you,” Ji Mo Xin feigned wiping away non-existent tears.
“…” I think you can’t wait for me to leave, Ji Mo An coldly raised the car window.
Ji Mo Xin stood there, watching the black car gradually disappear.
Until the last wisp of dust settled, the little girl couldn’t suppress her smile any longer.
“Yes, yes! Finally free!”
Ji Mo Xin now felt refreshed, even walking became a skip.
She ran back while making a phone call.
“Qian Xing, my old brother finally left! Let’s take Little Ma fishing this afternoon, I’ll tell you gossip!”
“Class?”
“Oh, we’ll go tomorrow~”
–
“Just the two of you following me?” Ji Mo An sat in the back seat, looking at the two people sitting upright in front.
“Mr. Wei said that he will arrange other candidates. For now, we will escort you on the way,” Tang Lin immediately responded.
“Arrange it as soon as possible. I don’t want to keep meeting strangers introducing themselves every time I go out for the next few days.”
“Yes, President Ji. We will draft the personnel list as soon as possible for your review.” Seeing that Ji Mo An wasn’t resistant to being followed by people, Tang Lin’s voice became noticeably lighter.
“Okay.” Actually, Ji Mo An couldn’t wait for more people to come, so he wouldn’t have to think of excuses to mobilize them when he met them at the Comic-Con.
The car gradually left the city, passing through a rural area before getting on the highway.
Ji Mo An looked at the swaying corn leaves on both sides of the fields and suddenly remembered something.
“Lin Mo.”
“President Ji…” Lin Mo was still mourning his phone with eight cracks.
“What happened with your sudden braking last time?” Ji Mo An remembered Lin Mo’s previous three sudden stops, which seemed to happen in the suburbs just off the highway.
“It’s an electronic chip, installed under the skin of our necks. Every official member of the Seventh Bureau has one,” Tang Lin, who had witnessed the pitiful phone being dropped, thoughtfully explained.
“Except for some members brought in by Chief Mu six years ago when he intervened in the project, all official members of the Seventh Bureau, including me, have been cultivated since they were under ten years old. Everything we know is top secret and must not be known by outsiders.”
“The chip can detect all our body indicators, provide location, and store seven functions such as identity information. Electric current is also one of them, mostly used for emergency awakening.”
“Perhaps it was a circuit malfunction. A few days ago, the chip released an electric current several times when Lin Mo came back. After investigation, it was a chip instruction error.”
“You really have two jobs, like the protagonist of a novel,” Ji Mo An suddenly felt some sympathy for Lin Mo.
“No, he’s just a desperate corporate slave.” The arc of Tang Lin’s lips rose by 0.1 degrees.
“…” Ji Mo An looked at Lin Mo. The man’s cold face was still expressionless, but the bulging veins on his neck were clearly visible.
“Just kidding.” Tang Lin smiled and turned to lower the partition.
“He’s a little traumatized, so don’t look at his sulky face.”
…
Almost the instant the partition was completely lowered, a slender tail wriggled out from Ji Mo An’s collar.
The rat snake rested its head on Ji Mo An’s neck and began to pant heavily.
“…” What’s wrong with this ancestor again…
Ji Mo An’s peripheral vision could just catch a glimpse of Xuan Bai’s sharp fangs.
Just last night, when discussing how to get home, the views of the human and the snake finally clashed.
Ji Mo An hoped to call a pet carrier to put the snake in a breeding box and send it home with other pets, to avoid Xuan Bai contacting humans.
And Xuan Bai was eager to have Ji Mo An pack him up and ship him away.
However, after watching ten videos of violent sorting of express deliveries and videos of pets getting sick during transportation, the human and the snake each took a step back.
Adhering to the attitude that the most dangerous place is the safest place, Ji Mo An, in front of Lin Mo and Tang Lin, got into the car with a box containing seven snakes.
“Haha…” Xuan Bai squeezed himself out of the middle of the box of six king snakes, and crawled all the way to Ji Mo An’s shoulder, panting heavily.
[What’s wrong with you?] Ji Mo An typed on his phone to show Xuan Bai.
The snake weakly collapsed on his neck, and Xuan Bai’s voice ‘spread’ along his skin.
“Too ugly. Six ugly monsters surrounded the snake, the snake is going blind.”
“…” It’s just nervous.
Ji Mo An coldly grabbed the snake and stuffed it back among the six ‘ugly monsters’.
[If you dare to be discovered by them before getting out of the car, you can meet them face to face on the spot.]
He gave the snake a final warning.
He was already nervous about bringing the snake in the car, and this snake dared to swagger out.
The snake, which had been stuffed back into the ‘ugly monster’ pile, angrily flicked its tail and began to curse the two people sitting in the front row in its heart.
After cursing halfway, the snake slowly coiled up several times in its small box.
Chip, he remembered.
He couldn’t let Ji Mo An know that he manipulated the chip to cause Lin Mo to brake suddenly three times…
“System…”
The snake buried its head into its body, and whispered the name of that cluster of flames in its heart.
Poof…
A fingernail-sized flame appeared in the narrow space under the snake’s body, and strands of blue numbers refreshed in the flame.
“System, restart the code. Query the number of people holding chips, intercept and copy all chip instruction signals between people’s necks.”
[Received.] Two words flashed in the flame, and the blue color flew back into the snake’s eyes and disappeared.
–
As soon as he returned to 1601, the snake immediately scurried back to his reptile tank to inspect his territory.
Although they were not at home, a part-time worker came to help take care of it every day.
Xuan Bai inspected which grasses had been added and which leaves had been lost along the driftwood in the tank, looking even busier than Ji Mo An.
“The convention center is at the dividing point between the city and the suburbs, more than 20 kilometers away from home.” Ji Mo An looked at the snake jumping up and down in the tank, and enlarged the map in front of the snake speechlessly.
“Don’t worry about the snake.” Xuan Bai lay on the highest branch and shook his tail, “I will leave a day early to pick someone up.”
“Okay.” Ji Mo An also wisely didn’t ask any further questions.
“I’ll go to the company in a while, you…you hide at home, I’m not sure where the people from the Seventh Bureau are watching us.”
“Um…” Xuan Bai leaned forward, carefully sensing the fluctuating emotions in the air.
“There are people upstairs and downstairs, but there are no cameras in the room.”
“Upstairs and downstairs?” Ji Mo An was a little surprised.
Living upstairs from him was a couple, and downstairs was a middle-aged man. Now that he thought about it, the two families always took turns encountering him in the elevator, and even enthusiastically chatted with him.
“Their emotions are not relaxed…It’s okay, the snake can be at home by himself. The snake won’t let them see it.” Xuan Bai was suddenly unusually well-behaved.
“Don’t worry about me, live normally.”
“I know.” Ji Mo An reached out and rubbed the snake’s head. He knew Xuan Bai’s little tricks better than anyone.
“Contact me via computer if anything happens. I’ll bring you a new phone when I come back this afternoon.”
“Okay~” The snake nodded obediently.
Ji Mo An tidied up simply, carefully locked the windows and hung up the curtains, before locking the door and leaving.
Not even a minute after he locked the door and left, the snake, originally hanging on the branch, suddenly stretched out its body, transformed into a human form and walked out.
Pa…
The snake kicked the mobile small surveillance camera away in retaliation.
“No one’s here.” He blinked, and a large mass of blue flames floated out of his eyes.
“Where are you planning to come from?” he asked.
[The cornerstone, you carry it with you. It is estimated that the transmission channel will be completed in ten days. The exact transmission time is unknown, and the transmission location is yet to be determined.] A line of words jumped out of the flame.
“Cornerstone…” Xuan Bai walked to the display stand opposite, and took out a small box from the top.
Opening the box, inside lay a round black stone.
Xuan Bai took out the stone and gently stroked the texture on the surface of the black stone.
Cold, smooth, just like the scales of a snake.
With his movements, fine and dense lines crawled all over the surface of the stone.
The black surface peeled off, turning into countless black scales in the process of falling to the ground.
[Some people say that the core of this stone is beautiful jade, some say it is a gemstone, and some say it is just an ordinary stone. But before it is cut open, it contains everything.]
The old man who sent the stone had smiled and said to Ji Mo An.
Those who said it was a gemstone were the guests invited by the old man.
Those who said it was a stone were the old man’s like-minded old friends for many years.
But…
[Under the skin, it contains everything.]
This sentence, however, came from that traveler.
The old man, who was in a foreign land, happened to meet a kindred spirit from his motherland on New Year’s Eve. After a long conversation, he gifted a black stone as a return gift for the rough stone he had received.
The old man had asked about the traveler’s contact information, but the traveler just smiled and turned away, his face was covered under a scarf, and his appearance was completely erased from the old man’s mind.
The whereabouts of the traveler are unknown, but the black stone smoothly came to the owner’s side.
Subtle energy waves spread out from the center of the stone, but dissipated when they were about to rush out of the room.
Xuan Bai stood with one hand flat, with dozens of slightly curled scales at his feet, while holding a ball of pure white energy in his hands.
It is not a stone. It is a portal hidden under a hard shell and compressed to the extreme.
It is the path to those non-human creatures.
It is also the path to those non-human creatures.