Team China had split into squads before entering Raccoon City. One of the squads was the main combat force for the final battle despite being only six in number, comprising of Zheng and Xuan, who were top tier in the realm. The squad’s strength was incredible, enough to forcibly go against team Devil... Of course being able to go against them didn’t guarantee victory. These were two separate matters.

The other squad were more in number and although they couldn’t quite match up to the first squad, they still had experts of various fields. They also had team China’s number two strategist Xiao Honglu. It was a team existing specially for ambushes. As long as a suitable opportunity arose, they could suddenly charge out to give a ferocious bite... and it would be one that cut to the bone.

They only needed to occupy a single missile base based on Xuan’s initial request. Occupying all wasn’t necessary as while Xuan had given them a lot of the super virus, its volume wasn’t too much. Several warheads would be enough to disseminate the virus throughout the city. Using such a team and a strategist did seem to be overkill, but there was no other choice. Only Honglu could familiarly operate various kinds of modern weaponry and fire missiles apart from Xuan in team China.

And to avoid the squad from being too weak and making clone Xuan not fix his sights on Zheng and the rest, this team had become this current situation. They were powerful in certain extremes and could launch sudden attacks, but they were unable to pose a fatal threat to team Devil and the Angel Alliance...

“What an awkward position... we can’t possibly be spending this final battle as deliverymen, right?” Honglu muttered as he sulked.

They were at a missile base’s missile firing platform. Honglu had in the long time since entering the realm, enjoyed reading books of all sorts in his spare time. This was indeed lived up to his reputation as a genius, or someone with a highly developed central nervous system. Although he wasn’t quite at Xuan’s level, he would still be a pinnacle strategist in other teams.

When Honglu said this and everyone all spontaneously looked at him, the little boy’s face reddened and he said hurriedly, “Fine fine. No need to look at me like that, I was just grousing a little. Relax, I’ll be carefully considering the intent behind Xuan’s scheme. I won’t say anything more about not understanding.”

Frankly speaking, the act of splitting up hadn’t been one Honglu approved of. But in that situation where they lacked any usable intel or clues, he couldn’t not agree as he wasn’t able to come up with another actionable plan. He couldn’t match up to the greatest strategist Xuan under the circumstances of having equal intel and clues. So, he could only helplessly agree to split up.

(But... Is Xuan’s splitting up this time purely as he said, just to disseminate the virus and affect team Devil’s line of vision?)

Honglu couldn’t understand Xuan’s scheme and calculations. What was deep in the recesses of that man’s mind couldn’t be guessed by anybody... except he himself.

Hence, after plucking many hairs and under the repeated questioning of the other squad members, Honglu finally snapped that he didn’t know, revealing the true disposition of his age group... a childish tantrum.

Honglu only finally meekly apologised to the rest when he entered the missile base and began to operate the platform’s controls. After all, the squad’s mission wasn’t one that would let him throw a child’s tantrum. He had to guess Xuan’s intent, just like in Independence Day, and lay the scheme for the final battle in concert with him!

(But I really don’t get what Xuan is thinking? Is this squad really just to confuse team Devil’s line of sight? That doesn’t make sense. After all, the foundation of our hypothesis is that we think team Devil has some sort of omniscience. That’s how they can know we split into squads. But if they do have some kind of omniscience, there’s no way clone Xuan will be confused by such a small trick. They’re Xuans after all and they have both stand at the highest level of intelligence.)

Honglu pulled his hair off in vexation. He looked at a missile soar into the sky towards Raccoon City. His heart was instead becoming less and less confident at what was going on as he repeatedly guessed at Xuan’s thoughts.

Honglu inhaled a deep breath. He suddenly asked Lan who was besides him, “Big sis Lan, let me ask you something. Let’s say there was a pair of eyes that could constantly monitor you at every moment and know every action of yours. It can also watch someone else, but the pair of eyes can only keep track of what he’s doing when it’s watching him and won’t know what’s happening during the times it’s not watching. Let me ask, how would you pass a message you don’t want the eyes to know to the other person?”

This analogy sounded incredibly like team China’s current situation of one strong squad and one weak squad. As expected, Lan was lost in thought. The pretty girl’s forehead seemed to protrude slightly more than an ordinary person’s, which gave her a sort of unique charm of the gentle and quiet sort. After thinking it through carefully, she said, “This eye can know everything about me? Does this mean for the moment it starts watching me, or does it mean it can know everything about me from birth to death with just one look?”

Honglu froze upon hearing this. He frowned, “If it knows everything past and future, that’s undoubtedly the domain of a god. Team Devil shouldn’t have reached this level yet, or else they’ll have long since completely crushed team Celestial and us. I think this omniscience should be... you should think of it as a psyche force scan with no limitations of distance or plane.”

“If so, when did these eyes start watching me? If he’s watching me, I just need to find a moment before that and use an encoded method to pass on a message to the other person. As for whether he can understand or not, that’s up to the other person’s intelligence.” Lan said after considering it.

“If so...”

Honglu suddenly said loudly to Zero. “Zero, check all the virus containers Xuan gave us carefully. Check if there’s a message he left us without leaking the virus out!”

Not long after, everyone indeed found a piece of paper Xuan left inside. There were only some strange numbers inside, seemingly without any sense to them. Honglu couldn’t comprehend them whether he used Morse code or any other. In truth, these numbers seemed meaningless, written randomly without any thought put into it.

“What does ‘X’ mean? This is the sole letter on the paper, with the rest being a meaningless stream of numbers. Damn it, don’t tell me I’m supposed to guess it. I really want to see how team Devil’s Xuan tries to guess it!”

𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Honglu turned the paper from side to side. He even wet a small bit of the paper, but the truth told him it was just a piece of ordinary paper that couldn’t be any more ordinary. This meant the letter and numbers on it were hiding some secret. But without any rules being informed, how could anyone easily figure out the irregular numbers someone else randomly scribled? This wasn’t a novel’s plot after all!

“X?

“X? Damn, X what? X-files? That’s not impossible...”

***

Team Devil’s location...

When team Devil split into two squads, clone Xuan had already made Zhang Xiaoxue activate the Godseal Board, or rather, use the remaining causality points to activate it. As long as there were any changes that affected the battlefield, the Godseal Board would have a notification for it, then monitor the location of that team for up to forty eight hours. This was at great cost to team Devil. They would have to endure even more severe spacetime reversal and have to expend almost all of their causality points. It could be said it was an all-or-nothing choice for them.

The Godseal Board was akin to opium. Not using it was an incredible pity, and it was like it seduced the soul. After all, it represented the pinnacle of ancient rune technology. It was the strongest philosophical weapon, also known as causality type weapons. This was the strongest and ultimate weapon of the yellow race’s Saints and Cultivators. It was a completely different path of science from the Western white race’s Saints and Cultivators that emphasised the genetic constraint, biological science and natural science.

“Team China obtained the yellow race Cultivator’s legacy. From the treasures as well as the equipment created by my original that the Godseal Board listed, they should have Cultivation techniques, and a complete set at that.”

Clone Xuan looked at everyone. “Know what this means? If it’s just Cultivation technologies, we already obtained them once in Zu Mountain. You also already trained it to the Nascent Soul stage, right?” Clone Xuan pointed at a middle-aged Chinese man. His get-up was strange. He was wearing spectacles, but his clothes were a set of ancient Chinese robes, and he carried a sharp sword on his back. It was unconventional no matter how you looked at it.

“But your strength isn’t even a tenth of Luo Yinglong. That’s a fact. It’s not that your Cultivation level is too much worse than his, but that you don’t have any other means to attack other than a flying sword. You only have a better body than ordinary people and a few methods to use Refined Qi. But that isn’t much better than other enhancements like the vampire’s Blood Energy, practising Qi or demonic energy... Based on us, that Cultivation that’s been praised to the high heavens doesn’t seem like much. It’s just a slightly stronger technique. But is that the whole truth?”