Ten thousand I am across the heavens

In the past few days, besides cooperating with other external entities to carry out reconnaissance plans, Lan Cheng has also been diligently learning hacking techniques. Unlocking his genetic potential has led to a massive explosion of human potential. This all-around improvement means even his learning ability will be enhanced.

After unlocking their genetic potential, each individual attribute might only see a 10-20% increase. However, once all attributes are improved, the difference between them and ordinary people becomes like that between two different species. After all, the benefits of "all attributes" are immense, even extending to learning ability, inspiration, and talent.

Lan Cheng inherited a portion of the memories, and coupled with his rapid learning, he was able to survive in the new round of exploration beyond the Black Wall by exploiting weaknesses, no longer needing Lucy's protection. He could even lend a hand, helping Lucy fend off attacks from artificial intelligence.

"Sister Anna is recovering so quickly. If we can really find the important technology, we should be able to take a few days off. Exploring such a dangerous area every day, I'm really afraid that one of us will make a mistake one day."

Blue City raised a data barrier, blocking an attack by artificial intelligence. Then, glancing back at the black wall, it transmitted data covertly, saying, "We can't be monitored from here, so I'll be honest with you. My initial disagreement with your escape plan stemmed from the lack of preparation and the haste. It was very likely that we wouldn't escape, and we might even get ourselves killed."

However, I have made sufficient preparations this time. Next, I will send you a topographical map of the entire secret base, which I obtained using some special methods. I will then plan an escape route. The time to escape will be in three days. Three days later, someone will be waiting for us outside. Do not tell anyone else about the escape plan. When you escape, just open the door for them.

I suspect that one or two of us are undercover agents. If we reveal the entire escape plan, we'll definitely be reported.

Lucy's eyes widened; she hadn't expected that in just a few days, Anna had devised a complete escape plan, even specifying how she would temporarily cut off the power to the secret base, thus buying them more time to escape.

The method for cutting off the power was actually very simple. In Blue City, whose profession was repairing sewers, he could simply take on a job that day and accidentally sever the main power cable for the entire block. Although the secret base had a backup power source, it would take time to start up after years of inactivity. Combined with the cover they had taken beforehand, their safe evacuation was sufficient.

"But how do we open the gate when the power is off? When the power is on, we can try to open the gate by hacking into the system. But when the power is off, the gate is locked and we can't open it at all."

"Don't worry, this is easy." Lan Cheng was prepared for this: "We're both small, so either of us can easily pass through the underground cables and maintenance pipes. There was a problem with the underground pipes here before, and they were repaired. Originally, there were iron railings in the maintenance pipes, but they were removed after the last repair. Although an iron gate was installed later, I've already managed to get my hands on the key to the gate. When the time comes, as long as one of us climbs over, we can easily open the gate from the outside using the mechanical mechanism."

In addition, I had already marked the locations of all the guards on the map beforehand. Someone outside will cooperate with us to take out the guards as quickly and silently as possible.

Lucy hadn't expected that even outsiders had been involved in their escape plan. But Anna was the person he trusted most here. The trust between them had been tested by life and death.

After waiting quietly for three days, the two decided to set off. According to the map, the water room was the closest to the exit. They went to the water room together under the pretext of fetching water. From there, they could clearly see the sluice gate entrance and the guards stationed there. However, the guards seemed somewhat distracted. The prisoners were all teenagers, and neither their physical strength nor their weapons posed any threat to them.

That's how it was supposed to go, but in the washroom, Lan Cheng turned on the tap and filled a basin with boiling water, then began a silent countdown in her mind. As she counted down to the last few seconds, the entire underground base suddenly lost power, plunging everything into darkness. Emergency lights beeped rapidly, but the dim light still made it impossible to see anything for a short time. The guard tensed up instantly, not understanding what she was doing, when a basin of scalding water was poured over her.

Lan Cheng threw down the basin in his hand, and while the guard was screaming and unable to open his eyes due to being scalded by the boiling water, he grabbed the mop and used it like a spear, stabbing it hard into the guard's neck. The mop did not have a spearhead, so it could not kill the person, but it accurately stabbed the artery, causing the person to lose consciousness and knock the guard to the ground without any hesitation.

"I'll go open the door first. Get ready to slip away. You can call the others to come with you. If there are more people, we can spread the guards' fire."

Upon hearing this, Lucy nodded and immediately followed their original plan, running back to the dormitory entrance and shouting, "The base is out of power! The guards have been knocked unconscious! If you don't want to die here, take this opportunity to escape!"

After the power outage, the base was plunged into darkness. Amid the chaos, other staff and guards rushed out, but they couldn't see their surroundings clearly, and they didn't know what to do. One by one, they took out their mobile terminals, turned on the flashlight function, and tried to see their surroundings.

Just then, the gate started to rumble as it operated. Lan Cheng had already crawled through the underground cable maintenance tunnel and arrived outside the gate. He began to manually crank the gate handle and use the emergency manual switch to open the gate from both sides.

The commotion finally convinced all the children trapped inside, and they rushed toward the opened gate.

At the same time, the emergency power supply was activated. Although the voltage was unstable, causing the lights in the corridor to flicker, at least basic lighting was available. Lucy was the first to run out of the gate and saw Blue City on the other side.

"Come with me!" Lan Cheng reached out and grabbed Lucy's hand as she ran towards him. Instead of running aimlessly down the corridor like headless chickens, the two turned sharply to the side at the fork in the road ahead. As they passed the electrical box in the corridor, Lan Cheng casually opened it and pulled the main switch.

The recent maintenance revealed a major security vulnerability in the base. The transformer box, which should have been unable to control the power supply to the corridors and critical facilities, was found to have had a broken wire during the maintenance, requiring rewiring. During this process, a slight tampering occurred, causing a short circuit when the main switch was turned on. The tripped fuse led to a power outage throughout the corridor. Sentinel robots, which had been extending from the corridor walls and were poised to be obliterated by the sentry cannons, were now unusable due to the power cut.

Not only that, Lan Cheng also lifted the cover of an underground maintenance pipe, found a small box among the scattered pipes, grabbed the small box, and continued running outside with Lucy.

Although the base covered a considerable area, it was still within Night City and couldn't be too large. After circling the corridors several times and avoiding the most heavily guarded areas, the two were almost at the exit. But just then, two drones emitting red light blocked their path. The drones' machine guns had an almost 100% hit rate, and their infrared scanning left them nowhere to escape. Now exposed to the drones' vision, if they didn't give up the fight, they could be shot down at any moment.

Lucy stared at the exit of the underground base, gritting her teeth in despair, wanting to rush out. But seeing the drones' guns pointed at her, she ultimately had no choice but to raise her hands. The thought of freedom slipping away so close was even more despairing than having no chance of escape at all.

However, at that moment, Lan Cheng pressed the button on the box in his hand. Lucy immediately felt a sharp pain in the back of her neck and almost fainted. At the same time, the two drones in the sky also instantly emitted black smoke and crashed to the ground.

"A small EMP generator can instantly destroy electronic devices within a hundred meters. All the interceptors we face next will be human, or even electronic prosthetics. They will all be damaged in the impact just now. Only those prosthetics with a relatively high degree of mechanization and that do not rely much on chips have a chance to easily withstand the impact."

Lucy's cybernetic prosthetic head was damaged in the electromagnetic pulse, and now she has truly become an ordinary, frail girl, enduring the pain in the back of her head as she runs towards the final exit with her companions.

Normally, even if they reached the exit, they wouldn't be truly free. The residential area above, serving as cover, still houses a large number of base personnel. Two seemingly defenseless girls would have a very difficult time escaping even if they managed to get out of the exit.

But as soon as the power outage began, the residential areas on the surface were already affected.

Each of the twelve Blue Cities, equipped with walkie-talkies that offered considerable resistance to electromagnetic pulses, entered the residential area as if preparing for war. Each carried dozens of tranquilizer darts, fired from air rifles.

In a cyberpunk society where drug abuse is rampant, these narcotic drugs are readily available. Illegal clinics prescribe medication to prospective cyberpsychotics without any regard for the patient's well-being. Large doses of narcotics and psychotropic drugs can be obtained in bulk simply by paying money.

The twelve Blue City warriors came from all walks of life. In ordinary times, they seemed like just honest, hardworking people. But when they donned their gear and charged into the battlefield, each of them displayed the ruthlessness and determination of a battle-hardened warrior. After all, they were veterans of the battlefield. Even if they hadn't wielded weapons for some time, the experience and instincts they had accumulated on the battlefield allowed them to instantly regain their fighting spirit.

The staff at the base were, in the end, just ordinary people. Although Night City had many gang fights and other conflicts, these small-scale skirmishes were nothing compared to the soldiers who had experienced real wars where thousands of people were killed or wounded. In their view, these people's understanding of war was almost non-existent.

Although the 12 people only had ordinary walkie-talkies, they had carefully divided the battlefield into sections before the attack. When they saw a possible enemy location, they would immediately report the location, and teammates who were able to launch an attack on the corresponding position would fire a shot immediately.

In their dazed state, each of them was a sharpshooter. Their non-lethal weapons, though lacking armor-piercing capabilities, always had exposed skin. Even if it was just through a gap in their prosthetic body, a single hit from a tranquilizer dart would deliver a large dose of the drug and instantly bring the person down.

The security personnel were the first to be taken away; the outer security personnel were on rotation and resting. There were only about a dozen of them in total, and they were the first to realize the danger when the power went out. They had just grabbed their weapons and were preparing to be on guard when they were hit by a powerful tranquilizer dart before they could even see their opponents clearly, and were lying on the ground in the blink of an eye.

The staff at the other bases were simply unlucky. Blue City hadn't intended to target them specifically; they were merely suppressing any enemies who dared to show their faces. As a result, some staff members who were unaware of the situation peeked out from inside a building, only to be hit by a bullet and fall unconscious before they could even understand what was happening.

Anna's powerful control of the situation meant that no one could stop her and Lucy from escaping. The distance was only a few hundred meters, and in no time, the two, panting heavily, had completely escaped the cover of the secret base.

Lan Cheng led Lucy to the shadows of a building where a cheap modified car was parked. Lucy hesitated, but Lan Cheng pulled her into the car, which then sped away, taking them far away from this place that could leave a lifelong scar.

"There really was someone to meet us! How did you manage that?" Although Lucy had escaped the terrifying base, she was still trembling and hadn't recovered from the tension. She clung tightly to Lan Cheng's arm, refusing to let go.

As the driver, Lan Cheng immediately started making up a lie: "After Anna broke through the black wall, she threw a lot of messages in bottles outside the black wall. Anyone who broke through the black wall could find these bottles."

My boss found one of them, and following the instructions on the bottle, he established a dangerous communication channel outside the Black Wall. Your escape plan was designed using this communication channel.

"And who are you people?"

"Us? We're the outlaws of Night City, a special group that walks the line between the law and the gray areas. If you have to give us a name, you can call us... Cyberpunk."

[To be continued]

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