Chapter 294: Isn’t This Soul Summoning Banner A Bit Off?
Night Owl almost thought he was hallucinating.
Out on the vast sea, he was leading his men back to the island on a speedboat when a beam of white light suddenly appeared on the boat, and an old daoist priest stepped out of it.
Was this normal?
Moreover, he remembered something: in the online videos about the Chen Clan, there seemed to be an old daoist priest.
But that matter had been conclusively denied by the officials of Linhe County.
So no one online believed it.
Especially now, when everyone online believed the Chen Clan had been pushed into the spotlight by that tycoon Liu Ye, even fewer people believed that story.
Everyone was marveling at the money power of this tycoon Liu Ye.
But he was different. He had just learned that people who did bad things and went against the Chen Clan would suffer misfortune, and he even suspected the Heavenly Lord of Demon Subjugation’s dream about planting rapeseed flowers was real too.
Now he was even more certain.
So that old daoist priest was real as well.
If the other party could appear like this, how could he believe there were no immortals?
The subordinate beside him instinctively raised his handgun and opened fire at the old daoist priest who had suddenly appeared.
Bang! ~
Bang! ~
…
In the dark night, the noise was exceptionally obvious.
What inspired terror was that the bullets were actually blocked by a layer of light shield condensed in front of the old daoist priest, then rolled down, landing on the speedboat with an exceptionally clear sound.
When Night Owl saw this scene, he knew they were finished. In the next moment, the subordinate beside him suddenly had blood spraying from his neck and toppled straight into the sea.
Splash! ~
Night Owl dropped to his knees and begged for mercy. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done these things. But I had no choice. I was born in the Stars and Stripes. My grandfather is a fugitive from this country. My father has already taken Star-Spangled Nation citizenship. I was selected for training when I was very young…”
Hearing this, Chen Han thought the other party really wanted to beg for mercy, but as he spoke, the man suddenly lunged into the sea.
It was just a way to distract him.
You could only call him ruthless. In a sea like this, to jump in at night was basically a death sentence.
Unfortunately, someone like that living one extra second was a waste of air. A single steel needle locked onto him, shot into the sea, and pierced through his body.
Then Chen Han walked up behind the man piloting the speedboat.
With the boss and companions dead, the man was already trembling, guessing that he would be next. Sure enough, the next moment he saw blood spraying from his own neck as he plunged into the sea.
A mission map had already appeared before Chen Han’s eyes. One red dot after another showed up on the island ahead. The speedboat’s driver was also a red dot and could not be allowed to live.
He did not know how to pilot a speedboat, but after studying it a little, he knew which control was for acceleration.
That was enough.
He charged toward the island at full speed without needing a second choice.
Before he reached the island, a beam of light shone toward the speedboat, flashing at varying intervals, clearly signaling.
Seemingly because there was no response, Chen Han clearly sensed them take action. A terrifying whistling sound swept over and then struck the shield formed by the spirit jade ball.
It was a bullet.
And Chen Han could tell it was no ordinary bullet. It was larger caliber, a sniper rifle round.
He looked toward the direction the bullet had come from. There were three red dots there.
At that moment, at a certain spot on the island, a figure lying on a boulder stared in horror at what was happening through his night vision scope.
He simply could not believe it.
The bullet aimed at the head had clearly hit, so why was the target fine?
Because of the night vision goggles, he could not clearly see what had happened.
The speedboat crashed into a reef at an unbelievable speed, and a terrifying burst of flame shot up.
The sniper froze. Had he actually hit after all? Was that why the speedboat went out of control?
He quickly checked through the sniper rifle’s night vision scope and saw the raging flames at the speedboat’s location. In that situation, the people on board were surely done for.
He also reported through the walkie-talkie, “The yacht has been destroyed. No survivors. Request patrol team to go check…” But before he finished, his eyes went wide. “What? How is that possible?”
Through the scope, he could clearly see a figure walking out of the blazing flames.
He felt like he was dreaming. He checked through the scope again and saw no such figure. It had to have been an illusion. He continued reporting, “Request patrol team to go inspect!”
After finishing, he took out a bottle of special beer and drank.
He really hoped to finish this task quickly and go back.
Staying in this damned place feeding mosquitoes was not work for humans. If that eastern country discovered this place one day, they might never get out.
Then they would end up as nameless corpses. The people back home would not acknowledge their identities.
But soon, he heard an enraged voice over the walkie-talkie. “Attack, we are under attack, position southeast 34 degrees.”
Hearing this, he hastily raised the sniper rifle, aimed in that direction, and saw a terrifying scene: a figure was rushing toward him at an unbelievable speed.
By the time he reacted, the person was already upon him. He looked up and saw an old figure.
Yet in his eyes, that figure seemed like a terrifying devil.
In the next moment, he felt a choking sensation close in. His hands instinctively clutched his neck, but the blood filling his throat left him unable to make a sound. He suffocated and stopped breathing.
Chen Han watched the floating white light and directly stored it in the game warehouse.
Another primary spirit stone.
That patrol squad had already dropped several, all primary spirit stones.
The other two red dots seemed to have noticed the commotion and came over with weapons.
Seeing them, Chen Han flicked out another steel needle.
Both men fell.
Another cluster of white light floated up.
He went over and picked it up.
Still a primary spirit stone.
The spirit stone drop rate was really quite high.
Chen Han looked at the game mission map. There was an exclamation mark in one direction, standing there.
He looked that way. With the eyesight he had gained from eating so much moon gazing sand, he could see clearly even at night.
It was a large cave, where the soul summoning banner was located.
He wanted to see what this soul summoning banner actually was, that it was marked with such a large exclamation mark.
At that moment, a shrill alarm sounded across the island.
Inside that cave, a blond, curly-haired white man had already received reports that there was an intruder.
He roared in fury, “Damn it, bastard, find him quickly and kill him.”
As he spoke, he hurriedly began operating a very large computer mainframe.
It was an integrated mainframe server, with a very large case and very powerful functions, a military-grade machine you would never see outside.
The reason they chose this place was to better send tasks to the people they controlled and receive the information those people sent back.
This island was supposed to be very secret.
Now that someone had broken in, he had to consider that the location had been exposed. So he had to quickly transfer the information out and then completely erase the data on this computer.
Especially those lists.
Those were the people they had painstakingly controlled over more than ten years. If exposed, it would be a huge blow to them.
It would become harder to get people to take photos and videos, and it would be hard to guide online opinion and cultural perception.
For several years, they would not be able to operate so smoothly.
Especially with the current environment over there, slowly accumulating such personnel again would be even more difficult.
But his subordinates still had not sent back any reports, giving him a growing sense of dread.
Finally, all the data had been transmitted, and he directly chose to delete it.
“Mr. Tosk, this is bad. All the guards are not responding. Something big might have happened.” This report made his heart sink.
Tosk ran his hand through his blond curls. “Did the surveillance see anything?”
As he asked, another alarmed voice rang out. “Mr. Tosk, this is bad. All our internal surveillance signals have turned into snowflake patterns. The enemy is definitely inside.”
“Damn it, how could this happen? Aren’t they elites? How did they let someone come in without a sound?” Tosk was about to blow his top and looked straight at the huge mainframe computer.
Things were getting out of control. He felt that just deleting the data was not safe enough; the entire computer needed to be destroyed.
He grabbed a submachine gun and swept it across the mainframe, thoroughly blasting it to scrap. That would be safe.
But what happened next left him dumbfounded.
As he opened fire, the bullets that impacted the case seemed to be blocked by some invisible force, and some even bounced back around the room.
In the next moment, Tosk felt sharp pain in two places on his chest. Looking down, he saw blood slowly flowing out. He had been hit by ricochets.
Not just him, but the people beside him as well.
How could this be?
He had only shot at the computer case, not a steel plate.
With that puzzled doubt, he slowly collapsed and became a corpse.
When Chen Han fought his way to this place, he stared at the corpses on the ground with a puzzled look.
“Was it the gunfire from just now?” Chen Han frowned. He had heard the noise in here when he entered the cave, but who had done it?
He had not seen anyone leave when he came in.
And even if someone had left, the red dots would have appeared for him to see.
So what was going on?
Had these people killed themselves?
He shook his head. Impossible, nonsense.
Then he refocused. The priority was to complete this demon extermination instance task.
This dungeon task was to destroy the soul summoning banner refined by the outer demonic path.
But when he followed the prompt and saw the soul summoning banner, he was stunned.
It was a computer.
The exclamation mark that represented the target was on that computer.
What was this about?
Was the game system glitching? It was not like he did not know what a banner looked like. It was a long, flag-like object, tightly sewn around the edges and hollow in the middle…
Now this computer, aside from the large mainframe, how did it look anything like a banner?
So this thing was called a soul summoning banner?
Chen Han sighed, but thinking of the spirit fire stove, spirit pressure cooker, and artifact refining furnace, he was no longer surprised.
So as long as he destroyed this soul summoning banner, the demon extermination task would be complete.
Without hesitation, he activated the basic sword control technique, and steel needles carrying explosive force instantly pierced through the mainframe, punching several holes in it.
To his surprise, even with the case wrecked like that, there was still no prompt that the task was complete.
So he could only use the basic sword control technique again, battering the mainframe and completely destroying it.
This time, the exclamation mark representing the soul summoning banner vanished at once, and a cluster of light burst out from the case.
This really was…
Chen Han did not hesitate and collected all the emerging white light into the game warehouse.
A few more primary spirit stones.
From the entrance all the way in, he had obtained nearly thirty primary spirit stones, so after subtracting the ten used to enter the map, the revenue was pure profit.
He had also gained two pieces of special artifact refining metal, which added more materials for refining a flying sword.
But even adding the previous three pieces, it still was not enough to refine a flying sword.
The storage disk that dropped did not surprise him.
A demon extermination map like this would always have such an item, just like in the previous two dungeons. It should also contain information like name lists.
【Outer demonic path puppet list: The outer demonic path covets the Central Plains and has long exploited the weakness of humanity to infiltrate, control, and use these people to cause trouble in secret, bringing many problems to the Central Plains.】
Now Chen Han roughly understood why that computer was the soul summoning banner.
These people’s names were in that computer. If their names were there, did that not mean they were controlled by the soul summoning banner?
Once someone’s name entered that list, they could never break free for life, until they lost their freedom or their life.
The game system was abstract, but every abstraction had its logic.
Seeing a few hidden red dots still on the map, he figured they were people who had realized something was wrong and gone into hiding.
For these people, he did not hesitate. He tracked them down and eliminated them one by one.
He could not let a single one go, or how would he complete the task?
Once he finished them all, the game prompt finally appeared:
【Congratulations, you have assisted the Shushan Immortal Alliance in successfully destroying the soul summoning banner and completed the demon extermination instance. Exit now?】
Chen Han did not hurry to exit. Instead, he took out the notebook seized in Myanmar and connected the storage disk.
In an instant, lines of information appeared on the notebook, and it was truly shocking.
There were too many people on the list, from ordinary citizens to university professors, all kinds.
He could not understand what these people were thinking. Instead of being decent people, they insisted on being dogs.
If they would not behave like humans, then expose them online and let everyone see these shepherd dogs clearly.
After pulling up the lists, Chen Han directly uploaded them online.
Only then did he choose to exit the game dungeon.
But once he posted these lists online, he dropped another bomb on the internet.
The internet was once again in an uproar because of the god of hackers.
The 500,000 referred to money, but it could also mean reporting someone or capturing a special person in exchange for 500,
Lei Bao was distressed. He had just gotten out of prison and had to start from scratch, and his few subordinates were not doing well either.
The times had changed.
So many years at a sewing machine job had made him unwilling to go back to the old path, but without capital, he could do nothing.
Suddenly, he saw a video about the god of hackers and instinctively asked the younger brother beside him, “What the hell is this god of hackers?”
A younger brother, hearing this, explained, “Boss, this god of hackers is pretty awesome. Before this, he dropped two big bombs in a row, exposing all the domestic help information networks, information traffickers, and those helping with buying and selling antiques and laundering them…”
“There were even big shots among them. Three tycoons were taken down, and several hospitals got into serious trouble. He is really powerful. No idea where he got the information.”
Hearing this, Lei Bao immediately handed his mobile phone to the younger brother. “Check this. Is it real?”
The younger brother took a look and shot to his feet in shock. “Holy crap, this is insane. The fifth woman here looks kind of like my neighbor, that slut who does nothing all day, dresses all flashy, and drives a BMW I thought she was with some rich guy…”
“Damn, what are you waiting for? That’s 500,” Lei Bao stood up and hurriedly yanked the younger brother along. “Lead the way, now.”
Only then did the younger brother snap out of it.
Online, the suddenly released lists spread at an incredible speed.
Many people had the same idea as Lei Bao.
You could say masses of people started checking the lists name by name, seeing if anyone looked familiar. Maybe 500,000 would fall into their hands.
More people were astonished by how powerful the god of hackers was, being able to obtain this kind of information.
These were shepherd dogs, and their masters were no simple people. This kind of information would be heavily guarded, yet the god of hackers had pulled it all out.
Tell him he is not impressive.
Elsewhere, Zhong Hou（chapter 281） was dumbfounded. After the upload of the cruise ship Brother Long incident, they had guessed the god of hackers had gone to Little Japan.
So he had already applied for the higher-ups to mobilize personnel over there, but they had found nothing during this period.
Yet unexpectedly, in the blink of an eye, the god of hackers had stirred up trouble again.
And this time, he had caused an even bigger stir, doing their job for them.
Because hunting down and arresting the 500,000 online bounties was something they were supposed to handle.
This made him admire the god of hackers even more and want to recruit him. They had not managed to find this information, but the other party had dragged it all into the light.
Without these dogs, their masters would be unable to do many things, and they would avoid a lot of trouble.
“Have you found the location?” Zhong Hou asked a subordinate.
A report came immediately. “Yes. The target’s address is at the edge of the high seas near Linhai City, on an island outside regular routes. Very hidden. The other side made no effort to cover it, so they must be luring us over.”
“Send people there,” Zhong Hou ordered on the spot.
Time passed. Soon, video footage shot on that island was sent back.
The video showed only corpses, and the fatal wounds were the same as those from Brother Long’s cruise ship.
What on earth had happened?
There was no way the god of hackers did all this alone. Was the god of hackers actually an organization?
And how had they killed people like this, with almost no resistance?
Zhong Hou felt a headache coming on. He could not figure it out at all.
Who was going to tell him what was really going on?
On the other side, Chen Han, the true instigator, had already returned to the Chen Clan through the instance portal.
【Congratulations, you have completed the outer demonic path demon extermination dungeon map task. Clearing rewards being calculated…】
【Congratulations, you have received a special reward: a soul summoning banner that has undergone variant refinement by experts of the Shushan Immortal Alliance!】
Directly rewarding a soul summoning banner was truly unexpected.
But when Chen Han looked into the game warehouse at the newly appeared soul summoning banner, that strange computer, he was even more stunned, his face full of disbelief.
“????”
This worked too?
