Star Rank Hunter

Chapter 312: Pinpointing Targets [Part 2]

The location of the unstable wormhole was some distance away from the capital star region, so he was bound to pass by some of his targets’ homeworlds. Cillin decided to check them out and secure their aid first if they turned out to be as capable as he thought they were.

Cillin was collaborating with Xi Kai in this matter, so he gave him a part of the name list. Xi Kai promised to monitor these people with his robots and feed Cillin information so he could better decide if they really were the experts he wanted.

Xi Kai was still deeply interested in the Origin robots, but he also wanted to check out the Gen Family’s original world and a whole new star system. He might be able to find a way to recreate the Origin robots there, and Sigma was there anyway.

When Guan Feng’s project was fully complete, the attention on Cillin had finally started to die down as well. Recently, the academicians were more concerned about the possibility of existing theories being overturned. In fact, every big debate on Return had resulted in a huge shockwave within the academic circle. A lot of new progresses and breakthroughs had been made thanks to them.

In the past, people would rather refer to or repeat another person’s experiment or research with minor differences. For example, Researcher A had researched Material B using Experiment C, so another researcher would conduct the exact same experiment but switch Material B to Material D. These kinds of research cost money and time even though they were almost the same thing, and they almost never resulted in major breakthroughs or practical use at all.

But today, new debates, new topics and new projects were being discovered and researched almost every day, and this was exactly the kind of new activity the Mist Bodhisattva Emperor very much wanted to see. Not all of these researches would bear fruit, but it was still way better than the old situation of funding repeats of existing experiments and giving lazy researchers the excuse to look busy when they really weren’t.

After he confirmed that most of the eyes were looking somewhere else, Cillin left the capital star region in secret. Everyone thought that he was still working at Guan Feng’s workshop.

“Do we really have to create our own black box?” Moon asked.

He and his deceased companions had searched the area—including the place Genya was dragged to a different star system against his will—many times already, but they never found anything useful. Today, Moon had given up all hope of finding the black box, but for some reason he thought that Cillin might just be able to accomplish what countless people had failed to for a millennium.

Moon was a robot, so he could afford to wait decades for an effort to bear fruit. But Cillin was just human, and he wasn’t even close to being as long-lived as a robot. This was the main reason Moon had extracted blood samples from the animals of AF1. All of the animals he selected had pretty long lifespans, and some of them could even live for several centuries. This was the first time in centuries Moon found a human who was actually both talented and agreeable by his standards, so he wanted to beef up his database and find a way to extend Cillin’s life safely.

There were actually multiple existing ways to extend a human’s life already such as artificially-induced hibernation or chemical modification. However, these modifications usually affected the brain, and Moon wasn’t willing to extend Cillin’s lifespan at the cost of his IQ. It was the same reason why none of the Xi Family members of the old had chosen to artificially extend their lifespan even though they had the technology and capability to carry it out. He didn’t even tell Wheeze about his plan.

Moon overlooked something, however. He didn’t know that Cillin’s constitution was quite different from a standard human being. It was why Wheeze never worried that Cillin might be short-lived. They were of similar “races” after all.

The first planet Cillin was going to visit wasn’t a well developed planet by any means. It was almost as backward as Old Chang’s planet, there was a clear divide between the commoner area and the city area, and most importantly, one third of the population were made up of aliens; mostly enslaved aliens.

The planetary government favored city people over commoners, and they definitely favored human beings over the universally detested aliens. They were the lowest existence on the entire planet and the main source of cheap labor. Unless an alien was willing to work as a slave, the only place for them to go was the shabby and terrible commoner area.

Cillin didn’t need to lift a finger. Wheeze and Moon had easily negated the planetary defense network and protected his spaceplane from detection. He flew to a concealed spot where the robots were waiting for him.

“This is the latest data of the target. His health is pretty bad, however. If the situation continues, he won’t live past this year,” the robot sent over to monitor the target reported among other things.

Cillin had expected this. The target’s research could be very harmful to the human body, so the research institutes usually constructed layer upon layer of protection just to keep their researchers from succumbing to the effects. And even then, they had to receive regular medical care and treatment to ensure that their bodies wouldn’t develop malignant changes due to radiation or other energy disruptions.

On the other hand, the target’s environment and research conditions were inferior to the research institutes in every possible way. He obviously couldn’t afford a research lab with perfect safety conditions. He couldn’t afford to spend tonnes of money undergoing regular medical care and treatment either. His physical condition had started deteriorating since a long time ago, and the lack of better treatment only served to quicken the decline of his health. There was even a time multiple parts on his body showed signs of malignant growth in succession. It was almost a miracle that he was still alive today.

After accepting the fake ID the robot handed to him, Cillin, Wheeze and Moon started moving toward the city. His fake ID gave him more freedom and reduced the amount of attention he might’ve attracted on this planet otherwise.

Cillin first traveled to a place at the perimeter of the city. His target actually lived in the commoner area, but he had other plans in mind.

He also sent the robot back to the target in case something happened while he was gone.

The city center was without a doubt the most prosperous part of a city, and the further away from the city center, the bleaker things looked until finally, one arrived at the commoner area.

Inside a small and quiet alley, three gaudily-dressed youngsters were dragging a struggling young woman toward the deeper parts of the alley. One of them was covering her mouth to keep her screams from being heard. They kept an iron grip on the girl’s limbs, and a sinister smile was plastered to their lips.

There were people who walked past the alley and saw the struggle, but they simply ignored it and moved on almost as if it was a common everyday sight. The three men were clearly bad people, and meddling in their business would only result in bad things. Plus, anyone who stared at them for too long got shot with a “stare at me again and I’ll dig your eyes out” look, so the people were even less inclined to help the woman.

After the three youngsters dragged the girl to end of the valley, they threw her against the wall and sealed off the path completely. There was nothing here except mice, flies and a tonne of trash.

This alley was so secluded that even the cleaning robots barely frequented this place, much less the patrols. Therefore, this alley and other similar locations were hotspots for underworld people to carry out shady businesses and long-dead, sometimes incomplete bodies.

Too scared to wipe the tears on her face or straighten out her messy hair, the girl scrambled to her feet, wrapped her arms around herself and shrank into the deepest corner she could find. The shivering girl looked as pitiful as she was scared.

“You could’ve walked a different path, but no, you just had to run into us. Blame yourself for your own misfortune.”

The three youngsters slowly closed in on the girl. One of them was even starting to unzipping his pants.

Suddenly, a nearby mouse scouring the heap of trash for food froze and felt the hair on its body standing on their end. In an instant, it abandoned even the rice biscuit it found and escaped to the underground.

Blood splattered against the walls in high speed, followed by the sounds of several heavy objects thudding against the ground. The smell of blood mingling with the stink of nearby trashes was especially nauseating.

There were no groans of pain or final words. The guy unzipping his pants would never be able to complete the motion because he and his companions lay dead on the ground with their vulgar smiles still plastered to their faces. They never realized what happened to them until they were dead.

The pitiful-looking girl rose to her feet and patted away the dust on her clothes. The fear in her eyes earlier was completely gone, and she looked so calm it was as if she just dumped some trash. She walked up to the youngsters, took everything valuable she could find and put them away carefully. But just when she turned around and prepared to leave, she abruptly discovered a man with a gray cat sitting on its shoulder standing at the exit of the alley. The cat was watching her with curious eyes.

“Sha Rou?”