"Right, do you know who the Chief is?" Li Ming asked.
"The Chief?" The cripple shuddered, calming his mind, "It must be the head of the organization ’Ash.’
He looked at the screen in the cabin, with the navigation data and surveillance footage flashing by quickly, he hesitated, "You still have the highest authority here?"
"What else?" Li Ming shrugged his shoulders, the cripple wanted to say something but stopped, suddenly feeling as if a layer of black fog had enveloped Li Ming, nearly making him impossible to see clearly.
"Uncle Cripple!"
The cripple snapped back to reality, only to realize that Li Ming had walked up to him at some point, his face filled with confusion, "What’s wrong with you? I called you two or three times."
"That thing on your back, show it to me." Li Ming pointed and said.
"Oh, right." The cripple seemed somewhat at a loss, with a clang, the thing slammed onto the floor, and then he asked, "What exactly do you want with this thing? Isn’t it just a detection device?"
Li Ming didn’t speak, he touched it and completely relaxed, it hadn’t changed.
Seeing that he didn’t speak, the cripple didn’t ask further, and regained his composure, "News of this squad’s death won’t stay hidden for too long. On Silver Grey Star, you’re the only target, you must be the prime suspect."
"We should leave here as soon as possible. I have a channel; we can smuggle ourselves to Casakuk first, then from Casakuk to Sand Dust Star."
"The only inter-civilization stargate is on Capital Star, we definitely can’t go there, we can only travel slowly; three to five years should get us to the Inseres civilization, the closest one..."
"Then we find a way to get an identity and go into hiding for a while."
"Uncle Cripple, that’s quite a spiel; I’m tired just listening to it," Li Ming shook his head and interrupted, "I’m not planning on leaving for the time being."
"Not leaving?" The cripple widened his eyes, "Don’t think you can take on Ash just because you’ve taken down these people. Since you have already revealed something special, they will never let you go."
"How do you plan to play it?"
"Of course I can’t outplay them, but what about Professor Wu?" Li Ming asked.
The cripple was taken aback, "Professor Wu..."
"If we do as you say, it’ll be at least a waste of five to six years, and we might not even get a bit of resources."
"Though Professor Wu doesn’t have much influence now, a dying camel is still larger than a horse; it’s certainly no problem to just protect you," the cripple nodded but frowned again, "But why would he protect you?"
"What do you think?" Li Ming smiled, the cripple held back, and glared at him fiercely.
"I’m already in my forties or fifties, I’ve had my fair share of enjoyment. Since you want to play, let’s play, worst case scenario, we die together."
The cripple grumbled and picked up a smoking pipe from the pile of sundries on the ground.
"Hey, this kind of old thing is rare." He examined it for a while, then rinsed the mouthpiece with water, lit the leftover tobacco inside, and found a corner to sit down and puff away.
Li Ming, holding the detector, walked into a cabin door, closed it, and placed his palm on it; twenty thousand points of metal energy drained away.
Li Ming placed it inside the Control Bar and tried to activate its power.
The Control Bar actually dematerialized directly, as if it had been temporarily locked.
And he keenly felt that some change had occurred in his body, an indescribable energy continuously emerged, soaking into every part of his body.
"In a moment, I should possess what’s called the potential for refinement."
Li Ming pondered, and when he came out, the cripple was sitting at the edge of the cabin, still puffing away.
He, on the other hand, walked straight to the console and took out the advanced USB drive that he had found on Chen Songnan.
The slender cylindrical device had a port at the bottom.
He pulled out a data cable from the console and plugged it in; a window popped up on the virtual screen in front of him--"Unable to retrieve data!"
It wasn’t identifiable, which Li Ming had expected. Quantum encryption is an extremely simple yet brute-force method of encryption. The randomly arranged passwords are almost endless; only the entangled quantum key can unlock it.
"What is this thing?" The cripple grew curious and came over for a look.
"A USB drive with quantum encryption," Li Ming casually explained, his hands moving like phantoms on the virtual keyboard, with numerous data windows popping up and disappearing.
"Quantum encryption?" The cripple was quite astounded, "The stuff inside must be no small thing, huh?"
"Beep-Beep-"
A red warning window appeared on the virtual screen, Li Ming frowned slightly, "Can’t unlock it?"
"You want to crack it?" The cripple was even more astonished, coughing twice as white smoke came from his mouth and nose, "Quantum entanglement, you know, the constantly changing encryption method, can only be matched with a quantum key."
"Without a team, and server terminal cooperation, you’re dreaming if you think you can crack it."
Li Ming naturally understood.
"Advanced hackers, still not enough." Li Ming muttered thoughtfully, hesitating for a moment before finally deciding to upgrade the mini-intellect.
This thing, definitely couldn’t be handed over to Qin Xiao just like that.
Four thousand points of metal energy were immediately consumed, and the mini-intellect underwent a metamorphosis, its metal shell becoming more exquisite, all physical buttons disappeared, it didn’t grow larger but instead shrunk to the size of a wristwatch.
[Mini-Intellect--D: A more professional computation support tool.]
...
Control Effect: Hacking Techniques--Advanced
Control Ability--Computation Enhancement: Temporarily upgrade hacking techniques to master-level.]
"Master-level?"