Chapter 30: Otherworld Investment Inspection Team
When Yuan Zhu returned to the hall, everyone had changed into new clothes, holding arms cases, exuding the temperament of business elites ready to go out for negotiations.
It’s just the dry old woman with a face full of weathered wrinkles, the Rainbow Chicken Comb Head dressed like a monkey in a hat, and the burly Black Uncle who looks like a raging murderer… Their appearances are somewhat out of place, greatly lowering the team’s professionalism and affection level.
“Baa~ baa~…”
Right, there’s also a little goat not wearing clothes, sticking out its tongue randomly, coquettishly rubbing against the old woman, completely clashing with the team’s business style.
“Very good! Looking much more decent.” The captain lightly clapped, satisfied with the visual improvement brought by their own clothes.
Even the most mismatched country grandma, bloody butcher, and weak little punk, after changing into their own brand, all looked spirited and their fashion value soared, not seeming so much like small fry who would die soon.
This is changing fate!
Temperament determines fate, and clothes change temperament. Therefore, Mao Mao King luxury children’s wear is absolutely a necessity for Otherworld residents.
“Ahem, now everyone take out your respective communicators (mice). I’ll teach you how to use them. Their tails have been modified with built-in safe cleaning needles. They will pierce your skin to draw blood, which is stored in the blood sac. During blood draw, it will automatically activate mental frequency authentication. You just need to calm your mind and carefully perceive, and you can establish a connection with the communicator and control it mentally.”
“Now look at its abdomen, there are eight exoskeleton appendages piercing its body. After everyone finishes drawing blood, you can inject your own blood into another person’s communicator’s ‘appendage cavity’ to complete signal binding. Simply put, I represent the first appendage on the left. I will inject my own blood into your communicators’ ‘left 1’. After entering the mission world, you just need to focus your mind on that appendage to call me for communication.”
Yuan Zhu counted, including the captain there were 8 people total. And each person’s modified mouse was pierced by eight insect-segmented exoskeleton appendages. So the squad newcomers are specifically locked to 7 people, right? Each representing one spider leg, neither more nor less.
Emm… Phantom Troupe, huh?!
“Alright, everyone start. After authentication is complete, line up to come to me for one-on-one signal binding.”
A stinging pain on the back of his hand, the mouse’s tail extended a needle, precisely piercing into the vein on his hand back, gurgling as it drew blood. Immediately after, as if receiving a life supplement, its half mechanical head started ‘click click click’ turning, with red lights flashing in the metal eye sockets.
At the same time, Yuan Zhu’s built-in Immortal Scripture issued a mild alert, and the game sprite synchronously reported: “Boss, in Earth terms, detecting an external plugin attempting Bluetooth connection (mental)! Agree to this action?”
Yuan Zhu: “Approve!”
A faint noise appeared in his mind and quickly faded. In his mind, like a small player window popping up on a mobile phone screen, a screen appeared that could be closed/opened. That was the unique perspective of the mouse’s mechanical prosthetic eye, the image somewhat blurry, signal also delayed. Far inferior to the snake tail perspective in Tiger Demon form, which was perfectly synchronized, like another self.
The game sprite said in surprise: “Huh? Pretty fun.”
Under her control, the mouse in Yuan Zhu’s hand, which was completely dead, suddenly shook violently and played dead, its half-mechanical head lively looking around. Then, those exoskeleton appendages piercing the body were pulled out one by one from the chest and abdomen, like a spider or whip scorpion, using the appendages to support the mouse’s body, climbing onto Yuan Zhu’s arm, flexibly moving, circling, and spinning.
“Holy crap! Mouse-style. Spider crawling drone?” Yuan Zhu exclaimed impressive, it was actually an external soul bone, four-wheel drive turned eight-wheel drive.
The most high-end toy he played with in his previous life was a remote-controlled shuttle. Now he actually got a ‘mouse-style all-terrain drone’ controlled by mind, capable of ground crawling, burrowing, 90° tree climbing, 180° ceiling inverted hanging… and making calls, syncing video, storing and exchanging data, a treasure.
Not just Yuan Zhu amazed, even the knowledgeable Investigator Lady and the silent, cold, unapproachable Black Butcher were attracted by the mice, seriously fiddling with them, playing happily.
“After completing authentication, you all have time to get familiar with the operation. Now confirm each other’s companion codenames, then exchange blood, the mission is about to start.”
Under the captain’s arrangement, everyone took turns performing signal binding with other mice.
Based on the principle of males on left and females on right, Yuan Zhu grabbed left 2, Lu Rang left 3, the silent Black Butcher left 4. The women’s group in order: Investigator, university student, Bread Girl, old woman. As for the little goat? Ignored by everyone.
After completing all this, the captain raised his left arm alone and clenched his fist: “Ready? Teleport starting!”
The surrounding light suddenly dimmed, a sensation of weightlessness and dizziness hit, body and spirit as if frozen, unable to perceive if time was flowing? When consciousness reconverged and thinking became clear, the chirping of birds was already heard by the ear, a breeze brushing past.
Opening his eyes, the light wasn’t glaring, passing through dense branches, casting spots of light on people.
This was a forest, the birds inhabiting it startled by the Mao Mao King Business Squad. ‘Whoosh’ wings flapping sounded together, a black mass rising to the sky, flying off into the distance. Clearly full of life, but giving an atmosphere pregnant with ominousness.
Yuan Zhu focused and observed, visibility extremely high, no beast paths or small roads nearby visible, ground covered by a thick layer of fallen leaves, with clumps of dried white marks on top, the air’s smell dull and not fresh.
The game sprite’s voice also sounded in his mind: “Great Desolation Immortal Scripture: Otherworld Exploration Mode activated, continuously searching for useful information in the surrounding environment for you…”
Beside him, Lu Rang looked excited, gripping the pipe wrench tightly, scanning empty air nervously on guard. The Black Butcher also silently gripped his bone cleaver, breathing roughly, looking left and right.
“No need to be nervous, confirmed safe nearby.”
Not sure what method the captain used? He just stood with eyes closed for about 1 minute, then confidently spoke, letting everyone relax their guard.
Then he said: “Everyone’s first mission, still unclear on our team’s style, and the content and focus of executing missions.”
Meng Xiyue countered: “Isn’t it just enough to sell children’s wear?”
The captain shook his head: “You were recruited by Happy Home, the duties you need to fulfill are not just simply selling children’s wear. Next time you enter a Bubble World, the primary task is to determine the current world’s environment, if safe, if there’s pollution outbreak? Then, based on experience, explore the world’s strength upper limit, danger index, investment index. Then examine ecological environment, resource abundance. Local civilization development level, native characteristic culture… Which power systems the Bubble World internally accommodates…”
“After figuring out a Small World’s basic situation, need to judge if it’s suitable as a raw material production site for Mao Mao King’s high-end textiles? If suitable for large-scale farming of unique caterpillars, or other planting crops. If not suitable, but local residents live affluent with developed civilization, can it be converted into long-term consumers, conduct fair trade.”
Listening to the captain’s description, Yuan Zhu automatically substituted the ‘colonizer’ perspective, finding everything logically consistent. You can even force natives to low-wage overtime, planting crops, farming caterpillars, opening farms, then sell products back to them at high prices, achieving perfect cycle. (I’m really too kind, even willing to pay remuneration!)
“For this mission, everyone follow my command, just get familiar with the basic process. This is an unknown new world, our next work is exploration and recording.”
Yuan Zhu responded first: “Received!”
After simply identifying direction, the captain chose a direction and explained: “Most of you haven’t mastered supernatural ability, so perception hasn’t been developed. The direction I chose shows a trend of energy gathering, theoretically the core of this ‘Bubble World’. If there’s local civilization, they should settle nearby.”
In the captain’s introduction, each Bubble World has varying barrenness. But all have crude energy cycles similar to ‘spirit vein, earth vein’. All brain-normal creatures have the instinct to tend towards high-energy areas for living.
As for whether this high energy is some kind of pollution?
Come on, for native creatures of a polluted world, they’re long accustomed to coexisting with pollution. Pollution itself is precious energy, heaven and earth spiritual energy in their eyes… After all, even the Present World openly admits pollution = get stronger, cultivation is a controllable and orderly progressive self-pollution process.
…
During the squad’s advance, the captain instructed everyone to release their bound ‘Teletubbies’ for auxiliary scouting and danger detection.
The mice come with crude disguise program, can be manually controlled by mind multitasking, acting as crawling drones. Assisting scouting, infrared night vision, sonic monitoring, detecting pollution level.
If keeping the mouse by side, can enjoy its invisible blessing increasing pollution resistance, and mid-short range calls. But everyone’s clothes also have defense functions, so the mice were all released for scouting.
Yuan Zhu modified the case into backpack mode, pistol bound to leg side, holding semi-automatic firearm, trudging deep and shallow in the dense forest.
With the game sprite’s help, a large amount of Mountain Lord predation, tracking, survival experience from the Boss template gradually synced with his perception, thoughts, knowledge memory, bit by bit weaving and fusing, enhancing his wilderness adaptation ability. Especially in woodlands, it felt like releasing the tiger back to the mountain, at ease like returning home.
“Slurp!”
Eye corner glimpsed the little goat led by the old woman, Yuan Zhu involuntarily swallowed saliva. A thought rose in his heart to pounce and raw bite it, slap over its body with one palm, then bite through the cervical vertebra, let it slowly suffocate, then carefully savor.
All sorts of begging… beg beg beg…
