Star Rank Hunter

Chapter 407: Chamonidineʼs Other Notebook

Cillin, Ci Jincheng, and Feng Haichao returned along their original route. They had mapped out several evacuation routes before the operation, ensuring they had a way out and wouldn’t panic if they were discovered or something else went wrong.

However, it had been over ten minutes since Gleyre returned to his office, and he hadn’t reacted at all. He hadn’t sounded the alarm or sent extra personnel to investigate. It seemed Gleyre hadn’t noticed anything unusual, hadn’t had time to notice anything yet, or perhaps... was there another reason?

Cillin wasn’t being paranoid, but he couldn’t shake a strange feeling. He felt no sense of accomplishment from completing the mission, nothing worth celebrating.

How strange...

Regardless, no alarms were going off in the experimental base. Ci Jincheng hurried to notify the others to retreat, afraid the sirens would start blaring the next second and make things much more troublesome.

The instruments Knight and his group carried automatically copied all accessible information in their vicinity. As long as they remained undiscovered, they only needed to walk around; they didn’t have to deliberately crack database passwords. They wouldn’t dwell on anything with extremely high security either. Their primary objective was to see if Dream Tapir experiments were being conducted here and gather related information; everything else was secondary. If Cillin and Ci Jincheng’s group were discovered, the others would create chaos across the base to attract attention and relieve the pressure.

So far, things were going quite smoothly.

After receiving Ci Jincheng’s retreat signal, Knight led the other two members of his group back along their planned route. On this trip, he had seen many of the Sixth Army’s research developments in related fields, but none of it looked particularly outstanding or advanced, which disappointed him greatly. However, the news from Cillin’s end diluted that disappointment.

Any information on the Dream Tapir was exhilarating. Right now, every little bit counted. There was simply too little information available about this thing.

After regrouping at the planned rendezvous point, the group left the same way they had come. They waited for passing cargo ships or transport aircraft, found a suitable one to sneak into, and departed.

Somewhere outside the borders of the Sixth Army’s territory, Kang Man and several others waited in an aircraft. Only after a Sixth Army cargo ship left did Kang Man’s aircraft drop its stealth and reveal itself. In the sky not far away, a cat was flying toward them, dragging several people behind it.

“That cat...” A person beside Kang Man started to speak but stopped, his face deeply conflicted.

He hadn’t expected a cat to be useful in this kind of way.

Kang Man shook his head, pressed a button, and opened the cabin door to let them in.

“How did it go?” Kang Man and the others ran over to ask before Cillin’s group could even find their footing.

Ci Jincheng gave an “all clear” hand signal. Joy appeared on Kang Man’s face, and he ran back to the cockpit to begin the return trip at full speed. He couldn’t wait to see the data they had gathered.

Although this trip hadn’t been particularly earth-shattering, the information they had found was enough to excite everyone. With this data, research on the Dream Tapir would speed up, and perhaps they could soon avert the impending disaster.

Knight and the others had already started resting. Their nerves had been taut throughout the operation, and even while being dragged through the air by Wheeze, they had remained hyper-vigilant against anything suddenly appearing around them. Now that they were finally back, they needed to quickly recover their strength.

Ci Jincheng didn’t rest. He looked through the data in his hands. He hadn’t had any time to review it during the operation, especially the core data on the Dream Tapir that Cillin had acquired. He rapidly flipped through the research files.

Ghost Claw had already found a spot to turn invisible and sleep. It wasn’t far from Ci Jincheng. If that cat came over to bully it again, it could quickly seek Ci Jincheng’s help and avoid getting its feathers plucked once more.

In truth, Wheeze had absolutely no interest in bothering Ghost Claw. In its mind, Ghost Claw wasn’t even qualified. If it wanted a fight, it should go find that stinky rat. If it wanted to tease a pet, it had to be something on the scale of that blue-skinned guy—the kind of big fellow that could stand upright. And for playing games, it would naturally look for Czedow, Sigma, or Moon. Therefore, Ghost Claw wasn’t even within its scope of consideration. With nothing to play with and nothing to eat, all Wheeze could do was sleep.

Curled up asleep on Cillin’s lap, Wheeze wasn’t resting well either. It could sense Cillin’s mood, and his aura wasn’t suited for sleeping.

“What’s wrong?” Wheeze stretched out a paw and scratched Cillin’s pants.

Deep in thought, Cillin looked down at Wheeze’s curious face and scratched the cat’s chin. “It’s nothing. Just thinking. There’s something I haven’t quite figured out yet.”

“You humans just love to overthink blindly. Thinking so much makes it easy to turn into an idiot,” Wheeze said solemnly.

Cillin smiled but didn’t reply.

Being completely carefree wasn’t an easy thing, either.

Cillin had a strange feeling, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Although the latest information indicated that Gleyre still hadn’t shown any unusual reactions, Cillin couldn’t shake off this lingering sense of oddity. As soon as he closed his eyes, he thought of Gleyre’s office. Then, his brain would replay the entire process of their previous operation step by step.

Every single detail of the mission replayed in Cillin’s mind.

‘What was wrong?’

‘Where...’

Cillin kept his eyes closed as the scenes reproduced themselves in his head. Gleyre’s chair lingered in his mind for a long time. Then going down that passage and arriving at the underground laboratory. Turning invisible, passing by those busy labs, then another passage, and then those guard bugs. Cillin could clearly remember the feel of the antennae on the tips of those guard bugs’ noses.

‘The guard bugs...’

Cillin suddenly opened his eyes.

There was definitely something wrong with those guard bugs!

Anyone who passed through the corridor, whether familiar or a stranger, would cause the guard bugs to react. Familiar people just wouldn’t trigger a warning. But the guard bugs Cillin had seen... were too docile. So docile it seemed they hadn’t been stimulated by any scents for a long time.

Wasn’t that the core laboratory? Wasn’t Gleyre supposed to check on it every day? Even for Gleyre, his familiar scent should have stimulated a stress response from the guard bugs. However, their current state wasn’t like that at all! It looked as though they hadn’t been stimulated by any foreign scents for at least five days.

Cillin pondered the inconsistencies. He was thinking so deeply that he didn’t even notice his fingers, which had been scratching Wheeze’s chin, were now tugging on the cat’s whiskers. Wheeze looked at the deeply immersed Cillin and flicked its ears. ‘Forget it. I’ll let him pull them for a while. Once he snaps out of it, I’ll definitely extort a huge compensation fee from him!’

While Cillin and the others were leaving the Sixth Army’s territory and heading back to Ci Jincheng’s place, inside that base, in Gleyre’s office within the Third Experimental Zone, Gleyre sent out a message: “This place has finally been discovered.”

After turning off the communicator, Gleyre wore a bizarre smile as he looked at his chair. The chair was currently dismantled. There were scratches in a certain spot on its bottom. Every time it descended, an imperceptible scratch would be added to the bottom of the chair, and Gleyre habitually counted these scratches every day.

It was hard to imagine that in a place filled with all sorts of advanced instruments and equipment—a place where even naturally shed dead skin cells would be detected—Gleyre would use such a primitive and simple physical method to know if anyone had entered the underground laboratory.

In fact, the place Gleyre valued most in the entire experimental base wasn’t the underground experimental zone or that core laboratory, but the journey the chair took from above ground to below. The imperceptible scratches added to the bottom of the chair during this process were exactly what Gleyre waited for every day, and every time he went out, he would habitually count them.

“Finally, they’re here, hehe.” Gleyre sprawled over his desk, his body trembling with laughter, looking just like a mentally deranged patient.

...

After Cillin and the others returned to Ci Jincheng’s place, Cillin borrowed his equipment and contacted Natta. Natta had also been one of the targets assassinated by Mist not long ago, but he had been lucky and only suffered injuries, which were now mostly healed. Following the war between the two regiments, Cillin had visited Natta and confirmed he was in no fatal danger. Although Natta’s strength wasn’t at the very top among Vanguard’s higher-ups, his vigilance and self-preservation abilities definitely ranked near the front. Otherwise, in that assassination, two higher-ups stronger than him wouldn’t have tragically died while Natta merely sustained heavy injuries.

Cillin and Natta would contact each other occasionally. Cillin didn’t know many of Vanguard’s higher-ups; Songba Leruo, Bate, and Natta were the ones he was relatively familiar with. These three had also helped Cillin a lot, so he would get in touch with them when he was free. Most of the time, however, none of them had much spare time.

“Yo, what made you think of contacting me, kid?” On the screen, Natta seemed to be in fairly good spirits.

“Just checking to see how you’re recovering, and I wanted to verify a few things while I’m at it,” Cillin said.

“Oh?” Natta raised a graying eyebrow. “Let’s hear it. If I can answer, I definitely won’t hide anything.”

“It’s about Senior Chamonidine.” Cillin looked at Natta. “I want to confirm whether you really gave me all of Senior Chamonidine’s records regarding parasites, just like you said before.”

Natta wasn’t particularly surprised by Cillin’s question. There was currently a faint sense of unease within the Galactic Alliance. They had heard some rumors, and as Vanguard higher-ups, Ji Feng also shared top-secret information with them.

After a moment of silence, Natta stared at Cillin again and sighed. “That thing... I promised him I wouldn’t take it out easily. Even if the Commander asked, I wouldn’t just hand it over. Chamonidine said that in the hands of certain people, that thing would become a weapon of mass destruction.”

As Natta said this, he also observed Cillin’s facial expressions, trying to guess what he was thinking. To his surprise, however, Cillin was extremely calm—so calm it was as if he had already guessed what Natta was about to say next.

“What do you know?” Natta asked.

Cillin shook his head. “I know a bit of what you guys know. When the time comes, once the disaster breaks out, whether the regiment plans to stay away from densely populated areas or abandon our original bases, no matter what happens, I plan to stay. That’s why I need some of Senior Chamonidine’s records.”

“Fair enough. If you find a solution, we won’t need to go searching for shelters anymore,” Natta said.

Although Natta said that, in reality, Ji Feng had already selected the shelters long ago. They were all remote planets, some even with a Class-C habitability rating. Even if the living conditions were poor, it was still better than suffering in the central regions. Not just Vanguard; the other Hunter regiments had likely already chosen their escape routes as well. And the purge of the Hunter circle that had originally been planned had gradually quieted down—who knew what news the various parties had received.

It was merely a surface-level calm. Not long ago, when Ji Feng convened a meeting of the higher-ups, they had already decided to make their move and snatch a batch of resources before the disaster broke out. Vanguard and Blue Butterfly would be taking action against Heaven of Ascendant Life in the near future. None of this was known to outsiders. All outsiders knew was that the Hunter regiments had received news and were preparing to flee.

Natta stepped away for a short while, and when he reappeared, he was holding a notebook in his hand.

“This is another notebook apart from the Parasite Code. Originally, Chamonidine planned to record all of this in the Parasite Code, but he later chose to record it separately.” As Natta spoke, he opened the notebook and showed it to Cillin page by page. The notebook wasn’t actually that thick; flipping through it page by page, he quickly reached the end.

“What do you think?” Natta looked at Cillin with a smile, hoping to catch a hint of frustration on his face. However, when he saw that Cillin still wore that infuriatingly composed expression that made people want to slap him a few times, Natta forcefully swallowed the teasing words he had prepared.

Natta was willing to bring out this notebook that Chamonidine had specifically warned him about for two reasons. One was the hope that Cillin could find a way for Vanguard to better avoid this disaster. If Cillin succeeded, it would absolutely be an immense boon for Vanguard, and their resulting influence in the Hunter circle would be unimaginable.

The second reason was the notebook itself. Natta had looked through it many times, but he still hadn’t discovered anything. He couldn’t understand it.

Yes, he couldn’t understand it. Thanks to Chamonidine, Natta knew a bit about parasites, and he could comprehend some of Chamonidine’s previous notebooks. However, he didn’t understand a single damn thing in this notebook! Because it was all code!

Chamonidine had said that this was his recorded code of life. Anyone who could understand his Parasite Code should be able to understand this as well.

So Natta often found himself thinking, ‘Have I seriously still not figured out the Parasite Code?’ Within the entire Vanguard, aside from Cillin, Natta was arguably the most familiar with the Parasite Code. Who could have guessed that he wouldn’t be able to decipher the other notebook Chamonidine had left behind?

“Is that all?” Cillin asked.

“That’s it. There are also some specimens, but you already know about them. Even though you didn’t take them all, you’ve seen every single one. That’s truly everything,” Natta said, snapping the notebook shut. He wasn’t going to hand this record book over to anyone. He didn’t mind letting others read it, but he absolutely refused to let it leave his possession—at least, not yet. If it got lost or ended up being used for the wrong reasons, he would be doing Chamonidine a massive disservice. Even when Ji Feng had asked for it, Natta had refused, only allowing him a brief glance. And the result of that single glance? Ji Feng’s face had contorted in sheer frustration, mirroring the exact expression Natta had worn the very first time he looked at it.

No matter how important something was, it was completely useless if you couldn’t understand it.

“We’ll leave it at that, then. Get plenty of rest. I won’t waste any more of your time—we’ll talk later.” Without waiting for Natta to blow up at him, Cillin cut the connection.

Staring at the disconnected communicator, Natta’s face twitched. ‘Did he really just toss me aside after getting what he wanted?’

He seriously wanted to drag Cillin back here and kick him a few times. Furthermore, curiosity was clawing at Natta’s heart like a frantic cat. ‘Judging by Cillin’s reaction, he actually deciphered it, hasn’t he? Has he? He must have. But why the hell hasn’t that little punk said anything about it?!’

Torn, Natta hesitated for a moment before deciding against telling Ji Feng. He didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up for nothing.

Meanwhile, after firmly imprinting the contents of Natta’s secretly guarded record book into his memory, Cillin headed into Ci Jincheng’s laboratory sector. Ci Jincheng had specifically arranged a personal lab for him there.

Wheeze crouched on an adjacent countertop, watching Cillin input a long string of unintelligible characters, extract specific sections, piece them together, and convert them...

He repeated this process dozens of times. Wheeze was practically falling asleep just watching, yet Cillin’s hands showed no signs of slowing down. Letting out a wide yawn, Wheeze padded over to a cabinet near the lab’s entrance, sprawled on top of it, and closed its eyes to rest. With the cat standing guard, absolutely no one was going to barge in and disturb them.

Cillin’s hands flew across the interface. Although he was repeating the same general process, the resulting sequence was different every single time. Over a hundred distinct sequences were already displayed on an adjacent monitor—all pieced together by Cillin—and that number was still climbing.

When Cillin had first seen the characters in that notebook, he hadn’t understood them either. But by recalling Chamonidine’s notes and key emphases from the Parasite Code, he began to spot subtle clues hidden within the text. They were only clues, though; it was still up to Cillin to verify the rest.

Now, after assembling several of these sequences, his initial theory was confirmed.

Every sequence he decoded was a specific genetic sequence belonging to some type of parasite. Decoding them was merely the first step. Once the initial assembly was complete, Cillin would have to filter and extract data from these sequences all over again. It was a colossal process of calculation and analysis that a computer simply couldn’t handle on its own, as it required cross-referencing concepts from the Parasite Code.

According to Cillin’s predictions, once everything was fully decoded, the final result would reveal the original, unedited genetic information of the Dream Tapir—its purest form before it had ever undergone any modifications!