Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 307 Ventilation Ducts
"That's the only way." Captain Geng said, "So what are you going to do next?"

"Since we haven't found any more clues outside, we plan to enter Factory No. 1 for investigation," said Ding Chao.

"Okay, be careful."

The field operators of Team 67 gathered again in front of the main entrance of Factory No. . After a final test with the memetic detection equipment to make sure there were no abnormalities, Ding Chao nodded to a short operator wearing tactical goggles with myopia.

The field operator's name is Sharma. He is one-quarter Indian and is also the communicator of the 67th field team.

India is a very strange country. Its illiteracy rate is as high as 0.2%, but the number of programmers accounts for % of the total population, which is even higher than that of the Xiazhou Federation, where the illiteracy rate is only %.

On the other side of the ocean in the United States, Indian programmers account for more than 70% of all programmers in the United States. Even the last CEO and chairman of the number one IT company in the United States, "JIT", is an Indian.

Sharma may have inherited the amazing talent of Indian programmers. He has shown extraordinary talent in computer programming since he was a child. He has won many championships in various programming competitions in elementary school, junior high school, and high school. It's a pity that this guy went astray when he was in college and became a hacker. Relying on his excellent skills and loopholes in the security system of a private bank, he stole virtual currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank's account.

According to federal cybersecurity laws, this amount is enough to put Sharma in jail for life... Fortunately, the money had not been spent when he was arrested, and his talent was noticed by military leaders, which saved him from jail... His identity was also changed from a shady hacker to a white hat working for the military.

After Ye Jiu knew Sharma's ability, he used his persistence to dig this person over - of course, there was another most important reason: Sharma himself was also very interested in investigating and studying strange things... He had seen many confidential files related to strange things when hacking into the official federal database. Since then, he has been deeply fascinated by these dangerous and strange things.

In addition to his talent as a programmer, Sharma's Indian ancestry gives him another hobby: courting death.

After Ye Jiu and Sharma sent out the invitation, the two hit it off immediately - the man had feelings, and the woman was interested... Not long after, Sharma naturally left the army and became a member of the field department of the Tianfu City Weird Things Research Institute.

"It depends on your ability, Sharma," said Ding Chao.

"Just watch it, team leader." Sharma walked forward and stuck a suction cup that was shaped very similar to a stethoscope on the door lock of the factory gate. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground and took out a laptop from the bag behind him.

He plugged the other end of the "stethoscope" into the computer. As his ten fingers rapidly tapped on the keyboard, strings of dense codes scrolled wildly on the screen.

One minute, two minutes...

Four minutes, five minutes...

Ten minutes passed, the code on the screen was still scrolling, but the door made of special alloy did not move at all, and beads of sweat oozed from Sharma's forehead.

"How long will it take?" Ding Chao frowned and asked softly.

"I... I'm not sure." Sharma's voice was a little dry. "To be honest, similar security programs are much more complicated than this one. I have cracked a lot of them... But this door lock is too weird. Every time I am about to crack it, its underlying code will be directly reset, causing my previous efforts to fail... Logically speaking, this level of security program cannot be achieved to this extent!"

"I don't understand." Ding Chao, who knew nothing about computers, shook his head. "Can you describe it in more popular terms?"

"It's like I'm in a maze. Every time I'm about to reach the exit, the path inside the maze will become unrecognizable, and my position will be reset to the center of the maze... This is not a very clever security measure, because its biggest drawback is that it requires a very high computing power."

"How high?" Ding Chao couldn't help but ask.

"At least we need a supercomputer to meet this demand... There is only one supercomputer of this kind in the entire Shuzhou area, and that is located in the Weird Things Research Institute in Tianfu City." Sharma wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and muttered.

"If we use the supercomputer in the Weird Things Research Institute, can we crack the door lock?" Yin Xiang asked.

"Yes, but it will take at least six to eight hours." Sharma said, "I estimate six to eight hours, but the specific time..."

"We don't have that much time." Ding Chao interrupted him, "You continue to crack the door lock, and the others think about whether there is any other way to enter the factory without using brute force."

"Can we use a laser cutter to cut a hole in the wall and then get in?" suggested a field operator.

"Difficult." Ding Chao shook his head immediately. "Before I set out, I looked at the design drawings of the No. 105 factory. The thinnest part of the factory's outer wall is one and a half meters thick. Apart from the concrete outer wall, the interior is all made up of steel structure modules. If the laser cutting machine has a high power, it may damage the equipment placed against the wall. If the power is low, it will be difficult to cut it quickly... At the same time, when cutting, the internal steel structure will transmit the high temperature to the interior of the factory, which will also damage those precision equipment... No!"

"How about digging a tunnel?" the field operator said again.

"The steel structure outer wall is fourteen meters deep underground, and we don't have suitable excavation tools now... How many hours do you plan to dig?" Ding Chao said helplessly.

Just when everyone was at a loss, Yin Xiang looked up and saw a vent covered with wire mesh more than 20 meters above the ground. Inside the vent, a few dirty propeller blades were slowly turning.

"Ventilation vent!" Yin Xiang said, "We can get in through the vent!"

"Ventilation vent..." Ding Chao fell into deep thought.

Although the production workshop of Factory No. 105 is fully enclosed, the staff lounge, office and other rooms inside the factory are still connected to the outside world through ventilation holes - But Ding Chao remembered very clearly that the design drawings stated that the ventilation ducts inside the factory were all of a size of mm by mm, and a normal human body could not fit in at all... unless this person was an acrobat who had mastered the "bone shrinking skill".

"I can't get through the vent..." Ding Chao said, "It's too small..."

At this moment, his eyes fell on Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu.

Ling Xiao is still a child, and his stature is even shorter than that of the skinny Sharma... As for Jiang Yu, she was originally thin, and her infectious meme came from Tai Sui. From a certain perspective, she could really use the "bone shrinking skill".

"Can you two... give it a try?" Ding Chao asked.

"Me? I should..." Jiang Yu was stunned for a moment, raised his head and looked at the narrow vent, his expression a little hesitant, "Should, should be possible."

"I can try." Ling Xiao's answer was straightforward.

"I will use a drone to clear the way for you. The communication inside the factory is not blocked. If the drone ahead finds something wrong, you can withdraw immediately." Ding Chao said again. "Okay... okay." Jiang Yu nodded.

With the help of other operators, the two quickly removed all the excess equipment on their bodies, leaving only a set of tight combat uniforms on their bodies, without even shoes left.

Ling Xiao hung the holster containing the "God-killing Gun" around his neck and held a sheathed military dagger in his mouth.

Jiang Yu replaced his weapon with a foldable shortbow, which he tied tightly to the outside of his thigh with an elastic band. On the other side, he tied several arrows specifically for the shortbow and a curved hunting knife with serrations on the back.

She let the ponytail at the back of her head loose, then braided it into a pigtail and tucked it into the collar at the back of her neck.

After being "transformed" into a hunter, her hair grew back, black and thick, completely different from its previous sparse appearance.

A field operator climbed to the side of the vent using a climbing suction cup, cut the wire mesh with a welding gun, and removed the fan from the vent.

Then, everyone used pulleys and rappelling ropes to lift Ling Xiao and Jiang Yu to the front of the ventilation vent.

Jiang Yu glanced at the dark vent and subconsciously felt some resistance.

"Let me go in first." Ling Xiao saw Jiang Yu's hesitation and said directly.

"Still... I should be in the front." Jiang Yu gritted his teeth, "I'm older than you, and I'm also a hunter, so I should be the first one to lead."

"Whatever you want." Ling Xiao said, still with that expressionless look on his face.

A remote-controlled car-shaped drone was first placed into the ventilation duct. After the drone moved forward for a minute, Jiang Yu carefully untied the rappelling rope on his body and got into the ventilation duct.

Next came Ling Xiao, who was biting the dagger.

The pipe was very narrow, and with Jiang Yu's slender figure, she couldn't even stretch her arms and legs - she could only curl up into a ball, like a caterpillar, and crawl forward in a wriggling manner.

Fortunately, the Tai Sui meme gave her amazing muscle strength and some anti-human movements with some joints that ordinary people simply cannot do. Even when crawling, Jiang Yu's speed is not too slow.

Thanks to his outrageous family environment and scarce material conditions, Ling Xiao is relatively thin and short even among his peers. Compared to Jiang Yu, a former athlete, he can crawl on all fours in the ventilation duct with ease.

"The drone found nothing unusual." Ding Chao's voice came from the two people's headsets, "We can continue to move forward and maintain this speed and distance."

"Understood...Understood." Jiang Yu replied. Her voice was very low, as if she was afraid of waking something up.

Ling Xiao, biting the dagger, did not answer. He just followed Jiang Yu closely and crawled forward silently.

From Ling Xiao's perspective, as long as he looked up, he could see the curve of Jiang Yu's hips outlined by the tight combat uniform and the white feet under her buttocks - but Ling Xiao, who was deprived of all emotions by Anna, would not think about those matters between men and women at all. The only thought in his mind was how Jiang Yu could perform those incredible movements with his human body structure.

"Are you two okay?" Ding Chao asked, with some worry in his tone.

"I'm fine... My body wasn't used to it at first, but it's much better now." Jiang Yu replied while squirming in the pipe.

Ling Xiao uttered "hmm" in a nasal tone, indicating that he had no problem either.

"I just looked at the design drawings of Factory No. 3 again. The one you entered is the A ventilation vent. The ventilation vent is connected to three employee lounges, a locker room, a general equipment storage room and an entertainment room on the fourth floor of the factory. These six rooms have exits. The closest one to you should be the entertainment room... Move forward another meters and turn a corner, and you will see it."

Just as Ding Chao said, after Jiang Yu climbed twenty meters and twisted his body to squeeze through the right-angle bend with great effort, he saw a downward branching pipe not far ahead. The light, which was cut into countless small pieces by the mesh, was projected up from below and shone on the wall of the pipe.

"The entertainment room is below. The drone is not equipped with additional equipment and cannot open the pipe opening. We have to rely on you." Ding Chao said.

"it is good……"

Jiang Yu crawled forward a short distance, and stuck her upper body in the main ventilation duct, while her lower body stretched into the branch duct - the branch duct was only half a meter long, and Jiang Yu's bare feet immediately stepped on the cold metal grille.

"Just use brute force... to kick it open?" Jiang Yu asked.

"Well, try to be careful."

After getting a positive answer, Jiang Yu took a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the main pipe with both hands, concentrated his strength on his right leg, and stepped down hard.

With a "click", several screws used to fix the metal grille flew out instantly, and the severely deformed metal grille also fell down at the same time - fortunately, the floor of the entertainment room was covered with a thick layer of flocked carpet, and the metal grille did not make any alarming noise when it fell on it.

Jiang Yu breathed a sigh of relief, loosened his hands, and fell into the room.

The area of ​​this entertainment room is not very large, only about 30 square meters at most. It has no windows, only a tightly closed door.

A pool table was placed in the most conspicuous position in the room. Two old leather sofas were placed against the wall, and two dart boards were hung on the wall.

There is an electric mahjong table near the door...but there seems to be something wrong with the mahjong table. There is a constant sound of gears getting stuck inside, as well as the slight sound of mahjong tiles colliding with each other.

"I'm coming in." Jiang Yu said while pressing the headset, "There are no traces of humans or strange creatures in the room."

(End of this chapter)