Chapter 105: Confiscating the Family

Opening the description for the newly unlocked skill, Yuxing nearly got defeated again by that dense, lengthy string of ornate light-nation characters. The readability was terrible. No, perhaps it was simply that he was unaccustomed to it.

Yuxing spent five minutes, enduring the discomfort, painstakingly deciphering those few lines of text.

The skill's name was called "Infusion."

Merely from the name, Yuxing could not tell what the skill did, but after reading the full description, he understood.

This was the skill Torregia used to control the mechanical Dilos, manipulating the machinery through the input of his own will.

Excellent. Yuxing had discerned the pattern behind these skills. The first originated from Grimm's "Gate," the second from the "Penetration" trait of the Light Giants, which was nearly universally adapted to every environment throughout the cosmos. The third returned once more to Grimm.

Yet the threshold for using this skill was high. It demanded a basic understanding of the target machinery on the part of the user. Upon activation, multiple "Black Boxes" would manifest on the mechanical body—encapsulated interfaces, all of which could be "touched." Yuxing therefore needed to know at least which Black Boxes to touch and what effects they would produce—

For example, the communicator on the desk featured several Black Boxes, one of which triggered a ring, originally intended only for incoming calls. Yuxing could activate it directly. Another was a storage device; attempts to trigger it yielded no response.

Furthermore, just like the "Gate" skill, this "Infusion" skill also displayed a 200/200 counter, the meaning of which Yuxing could not discern. It appeared to represent a usage limit, for triggering the ring reduced it to 199/200, while failed attempts produced no change at all.

But why, when he had previously used the "Gate" to teleport, had the counter on the "Gate" remained unchanged?

This was the crux of Yuxing's confusion.

Yet he quickly abandoned further speculation. Perhaps he should seize an opportunity to inquire of the restraint device's developer; blind guessing here served no purpose.

Feng Ma approached the desk, squatted down, and examined the Malgdo Star person, who was gradually weakening. The figure lay sideways on the floor, utterly silent except for faint tremors.

"How should this one be handled?"

"Just leave him. Such injuries leave him unable to speak, and he holds no value even as a tongue."

While speaking, Yuxing emptied the desk, rummaging through a large quantity of files and even locating a safe.

"Feng Ma, do you know the password for this safe?"

Yuxing had no idea what lay inside; retrieving distant items was far too burdensome.

"I know."

Feng Ma immediately recited a string of numbers.

The Malgdo Star person on the other side had already bled out to the point of unconsciousness, yet upon hearing Feng Ma's numbers, a sliver of awareness unexpectedly returned. He stared in disbelief, but could not even turn his head to locate the source of the voice.

Yuxing knew that when Feng Ma had concealed himself within the gem, he had possessed full consciousness—a fact Feng Ma himself had revealed. Over the years, he—that is, the necklace—had been traded endlessly among extraterrestrials.

Given that this Malgdo Star person had worn the gem necklace continuously, Feng Ma must have seen and heard far more—

Including the safe's password.

Hearing the movements from the Malgdo Star person's direction, Feng Ma spoke with embarrassment, "You open this safe every night to inventory its contents. You said it yourself—you cannot sleep without counting once, can you? So do not blame me for memorizing the password~"

It was exceedingly difficult to forget after such prolonged exposure.

Thus Yuxing opened the safe without issue, extracting files and what resembled an electronic flight key, all of which he removed.

Feng Ma introduced them to Yuxing with familiar pride: the "electronic flight key" was the key to the small escape vessel hovering above the Starport Tower, the very one Malgdo Star person had piloted during his escape from the Wicked League's auction ship. It had since been repaired, supplies arranged, and it stood ready to flee at any moment.

Had the city's sky controller not been in his possession, he would have escaped long ago.

The file, meanwhile, was a circuit schematic for a monster brain-control chip.

The instant Yuxing glimpsed the front-view illustration on the cover, he understood. It was precisely this design—the very chip he had crafted with his own hands when he was young.

"Why is this blueprint here?"

Yuxing pondered while tapping the paper with his knuckles, muttering to himself.

It seemed this blueprint was not even an auction item.

"He stole it," Feng Ma explained. "Recently he used the pretext of maintaining the monster weapons for the Starport Tower arena to visit the Armory outpost and borrow repair fluid, only to rummage through the archive room."

"What would he do with this? Is he planning to develop monster weapons as well?"

Yuxing wondered. Such advanced technology would be useless to an individual; it was like handing over fighter-jet blueprints, as if one could hand-craft a plane without industrial foundations—mere waste paper.

"Probably... this is evidence," Feng Ma continued. "Publicly, cosmic regulations forbid the development of monster weapons. The Interstellar Alliance is the primary proponent, yet secretly..." He chuckled.

"..." Yuxing understood. This was a leverage point; the Malgdo Star person likely intended to sell the information that "the Interstellar Alliance is developing monster weapons" after escaping, in revenge for his coerced submission.

So Yuxing accepted it without hesitation and would deliver it to the captain upon return.

Feng Ma, seeing the blueprint safely stored, continued, "Yuxing, more still—the third book from the left in the third row of the bookshelf over there hides a stack of credit chips."

Yuxing extracted the book and opened it, revealing a hollowed slot in the middle of the page containing roughly a hundred credit chips—fixed-denomination credit points circulating exclusively among the Interstellar Alliance's member worlds, all of small value.

Feng Ma went on, "And beneath the base of that desk lamp lies an envelope..."

The Malgdo Star person: "Mmmph!"

Yuxing shifted the desk lamp aside and lifted the envelope. Inside was a handwritten console operation manual and an authentication card, the unlock password clearly written upon it. Yuxing was deeply moved; he spared this dying captive the indignity of torture.

Defensive mechanisms surrounded the demon shards atop the Starport Tower—traps, force fields, laser nets capable of sealing intruders within and reducing them to fragments. Yet with this authentication card, all would cease to function.

Feng Ma pressed on without pause: "And atop the bookshelf, leaning against the wall, there was a small box concealed."

The Malgdo Star person: "...!"

Yuxing continued his thorough search, glancing up at the high bookshelf. Without Feng Ma's guidance, he would never have noticed what lay hidden. He fetched a chair from nearby, stepped upon it, and carried the wooden box down.

Opening it revealed several controllers shaped like car keys. Yuxing recognized them at once—the controllers for the monster weapons. Their functions were straightforward: only orders to attack, move, stop, or hibernate.

Yuxing held one controller beside the brain-control chip blueprint and quickly discerned the correspondence between the command signals and the chip's pin packaging zones.

It was not that he possessed extraordinary talent; he had known nothing of this field previously, merely...

Yuxing stared at the design diagram, lost in thought.

The arrangement of these signals and lines was clearly engineered to facilitate his use of the "Infusion" skill.

Much like the communicator on the desk, where countless lines tangled together and several Black Boxes overlapped one another, controlling it was exceedingly difficult—the true challenge lay in locating the correct Black Box.

Yet the monster brain-control chip had separated lines and signals with absolute clarity, undoubtedly raising manufacturing costs. In fact, the Armory had encountered this issue; they had attempted to modify the system to cut expenses, only to discover that even minor alterations severely disrupted control-signal efficiency, rendering the entire apparatus unstable.

They had no choice but to yield.

This led Yuxing to believe that the diagram in his hands was not a design document for the monster brain-control chip, but an operational guide for employing the "Infusion" skill to control the monster brain-control chip.

Was this coincidence?

Or...

The suspicion arose unbidden: perhaps the designer of this scheme was...