WTYTIAAN Chapter 195

Chapter 195

Chapter 195

Blue Star, Hua Country.

Secret Operations Unit.

Sunlight streamed through the hazy glass, spilling into the spacious office. The air was thick with the technological aroma of instant coffee. Several people in shirts and trousers hurried about with files, their footsteps accompanied by hushed conversations. An outsider might easily mistake this for the employee office of a listed company.

In reality, this was the Secret Operations Unit’s office building, hidden deep within the newly established G311 Military Region.

The outer perimeter of the military region was occupied by regular troops. Only personnel belonging to the Secret Operations Unit were permitted to enter the depths of the region. In the past three years, talents selected from various units had been transferred here, and the unit now numbered over ten thousand.

Nearly a third of these were technical personnel, the rest being carefully chosen individuals who had signed non-disclosure agreements.

“Sister Qin, is this really where we’ll be working from now on?” Gao Wen looked around with wide-eyed curiosity, examining everything. Before them stood a three-story building that appeared unremarkable. Ivy even covered the exterior walls, giving it a rather dilapidated appearance.

It looked like an old building from the late last century.

No matter how he looked at it, Gao Wen felt that this old building was a far cry from the office building he had imagined for a mysterious unit.

Wasn’t the G311 Military Region supposed to be newly built? How could these buildings look so run-down?

Gao Wen was, after all, a highly paid technical expert. His usual workplace was in a high-tech building. He only reluctantly agreed to move to this remote area in the newly built G311 Military Region with his entire secret department after receiving a sudden notice from above to increase security.

Once he was in this place, he would have to apply every time he wanted to go out. What a pain.

Gao Wen sighed in melancholy.

The person called Sister Qin glanced at him and took out a phone to check the notice. “Don’t wander around. This is where we’ll be working from now on. Someone will be here to meet us shortly.”

The dozen or so technical personnel who had come with Qin spoke in hushed tones. “Really? This place? No way. Wasn’t it just established recently?”

“Could it be a lack of funds? That can’t be right. Wouldn’t this level of military region construction have sufficient funding?”

“I even suspect that it wasn’t newly built at all, just an old building that they renovated for us.”

“I hope the place we’ll be living in isn’t like this either…”

The quiet discussion was filled with unease about the uncertain future. Sister Qin coughed lightly and looked at the building in front of her, unable to suppress her own doubts.

Is this really it?

As if on cue, the person sent to meet them arrived. A refined man with gold-rimmed glasses strode over and greeted Qin and the others. “Ms. Qin Yue, and everyone else… hello. I’m Lin Mingjie. You can call me Little Lin.”

He shook hands with Qin and said politely, “The leader has asked me to take you inside. Getting in and out of here is a bit complicated. It’s best to have someone lead the way the first time.”

Several tech nerds behind Sister Qin exchanged glances: What’s going on? How can entering such a small, run-down building be described as “complicated?”

Qin nodded to Lin Mingjie. “Thank you for your trouble, Mr. Lin.”

Lin Mingjie gestured for them to follow and took the lead. “You all should have signed non-disclosure agreements before coming in, right?”

“Of course,” Qin replied.

Lin Mingjie said nothing more and led them into the three-story building. The interior was much as they had imagined, with a distinctly last-century style. An old man sat in the guardhouse at the entrance, leisurely drinking tea. At first glance, it looked like a family compound building.

Lin Mingjie greeted the gatekeeper and led them inside. Before Gao Wen and the others could make any impolite comments about the building, they noticed the old man’s sharp, hawk-like gaze sweeping over them.

The few of them were immediately frightened and swallowed back their impolite remarks, lining up like little chicks to pass through the security gate.

The old man watched as the last of them entered the gate, then picked up his teacup again, blew on the lid, and took a sip.

After finally passing the old man’s scrutiny and entering the building, just as they were about to breathe a sigh of relief, Lin Mingjie led them through a maze of corridors into an elevator room.

Only three floors, and they need an elevator?

Their first reaction was that it was strange, but then they thought of settings from movies and TV shows, and their eyes lit up.

Wait, could it be…?

Sure enough, after several layers of security checks, they entered a descending elevator. When the elevator doors opened, they were greeted by a high-tech underground area.

It was an extremely open space filled with people hurrying about, each one busy as could be. There were also soldiers in military uniforms carrying real guns patrolling the area.

So the three-story building above was just a facade! Their real office was underground!

Lin Mingjie led them inside, and they soon encountered a woman with a straight and upright posture, accompanied by a secretary who was reporting to her.

Lin Mingjie met her gaze, stood at attention, and saluted. “Officer, the people have arrived.”

“Good work,” the woman nodded and gave a slight nod to Qin and her group. “I am one of the people in charge here. I will be assigning your work. It’s been a long journey, so you can all rest for a while. Is it okay to start work tomorrow?”

This is a doer, straight down to business.

Qin sighed inwardly, nodding in agreement. That was fine with them. The thing that technical personnel disliked most was socializing. It was best to get straight to work.

The woman turned to Lin Mingjie and said a few words. “Have him take you to your assigned accommodations first. After that, you can make any reasonable requests to the organization, and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.”

After speaking, she didn’t wait for Qin to continue exchanging pleasantries. She checked the time. “I have a meeting coming up, so please excuse me.”

The woman smiled at them and brushed past them with a brisk manner. Gao Wen heard another person run up to her and say quietly, “One of the squads encountered Anonymous, and they got a hidden task from Anonymous. The squad leader has already reported it…”

The voice faded away, and Gao Wen couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but it still made him feel a surreal sense of absurdity.

The entire country, no, at least this entire G311 military base, was bustling around because of a game.

Thinking of that special holographic game, even back when the first closed beta test began, there were rumors circulating in their team that the higher-ups believed the game was likely of alien origin. Gao Wen hadn’t taken it seriously at first, but after witnessing this scene firsthand, he couldn’t help but begin to believe it.

Were the aliens finally going to invade Earth?

How absurd.

*

Anonymous, or rather, [Ri An], caused quite a stir in the G311 secret building by sharing the treasure map mission.

“This is the player suspected of being an alien in disguise?” The shirt-wearing man flipped through the records and analyses in his hand. “This dialogue doesn’t seem like it. Is it possible that he’s just a player? Like a… professional gamer?”

“It’s not impossible, but we haven’t been able to gather any information about this [Ri An] since the day he entered the game. If he hadn’t contacted us directly, we wouldn’t even know his ID by now. Do you think there’d be a player like that?”

“Besides, we’ve tracked the IP addresses of all the players who have spoken in the forums, and the identities of basically all the players who have appeared in the forums have been found, including everyone on the ranking list – except for this Anonymous, [Ri An].”

“I still tend to believe that this Anonymous is the owner behind the game, the controller of that alien civilization.”

The woman with glasses perched on her nose and a solemn expression said, “His level has always remained in the top ten on the level rankings, but he has not established any connections with any other players. After the [Ri An] ID was revealed, we conducted a further investigation into the ID.”

“Only two players have had any interaction with him: a game blogger with the ID name [Big A Bro] and a game enthusiast with the ID name [He Kou Wang], who previously worked as a game booster.”

“Both of these people were among the first closed beta players of the game. According to them, this [Ri An] didn’t act like a player who had just entered the game from the beginning. He didn’t show any shock at the game’s 100% realistic sense of immersion, and even seemed to anticipate the guiding NPCs that would appear next.”

“After the guiding NPCs took them into the Newbie Village, this [Ri An] left. Not long after, he leveled up to Level 1, opening the level rankings, wealth rankings, and so on, while at that time, the other players with the most experience were probably still two-thirds away from leveling up. It was incredibly fast.”

“However, the remaining players in the Newbie Village have no impression of this [Ri An] and don’t know what tasks he took. Why did his level rise so quickly from the beginning? Surely he didn’t receive a hidden mission from the start?”

“In summary, these two players believe that this [Ri An] is a GM hidden among the players by the game’s official side.”

In the conference room, everyone looked at each other, and for a moment it was too quiet.

“Okay, okay.” The old man at the head of the conference table, with some gray in his hair, clapped his hands. “Then, let’s tentatively assume that this person named [Ri An] is the mastermind behind this game. Then, what does it mean that he approached our team and gave us that… uh, hidden mission? To our team?”

Some of the intelligence analysts looked at the behavioral analysis reports they had in hand and hesitated to summarize. “Our personnel’s attempt to trade Level 20 dungeon resources for that hidden mission was rejected. The other side proposed that they needed new hidden mission information in exchange…”

He hesitated. “According to the previous reasoning, if [Ri An] is the game’s master, it’s normal that he doesn’t care about dungeon resources, but he also wouldn’t ask for hidden mission information…”

Discussion began in the conference room.

“Is there a possibility that he wants to push us to explore the game’s background story?” Someone proposed a new guess. “Please look at line xx of the conversation record. [Ri An] once said, ‘Then you can pay more attention to it. Sometimes the NPCs’ conversations also contain a lot of information, and maybe you can even get some hidden missions.’ and ‘Some games are worth studying the game’s plot in depth.'”

“Combining the fact that the other party wants hidden mission information as a condition for the exchange, can we speculate that the other party wants us to deeply explore the game’s background story?”

As soon as this was said, the people who were still discussing stopped their discussion and thought about this possibility.

After a long time, someone echoed, “There is indeed this possibility, but if this guess is established, his purpose is a bit strange. At least the possibilities we originally guessed will be overturned.”

“Then the problem returns to the original point. Is Anonymous, or rather [Ri An], really the mastermind behind the game?”

The conference room fell silent again.

In the end, the old man in the first seat spoke up. “Do you think that his sharing the hidden mission with us is out of good intentions, or malice?”

Everyone looked at each other, not knowing how to answer this question.

Volume Seven: Homecoming: A Winter Night Where the Sun Never Shines