Chapter 30: The Otherworld Investment Delegation

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When Yuan Zhu returned to the hall, everyone had changed into new outfits and was carrying briefcases filled with weapons. They had the air of business elites preparing to head out for negotiations.

Well, the wizened old grandmother with a face full of weathered wrinkles, the rainbow rooster-comb-haired man dressed like a monkey in a crown, and the burly black uncle who looked like a rampaging mass murderer somewhat broke the illusion. Their appearances dragged down the team’s professional image and likability by quite a bit.

“Baa-aah…”

Ah, and there was also a naked little lamb, wagging its tongue as it rubbed affectionately against the old grandmother, completely out of place amid the team’s businesslike style.

“Excellent! You all look much more presentable now.” The captain applauded softly, pleased by the visual improvement brought about by their clothing.

Even the most hopeless country granny, blood-soaked butcher, and timid street thug looked spirited and fashionable after putting on their brand’s outfits. They no longer looked quite so much like expendable cannon fodder destined for an early death.

This was what it meant to change one’s fate!

A person’s bearing determined their destiny, while clothing changed their bearing. Therefore, for the inhabitants of other worlds, Fluffy King luxury children’s clothing was an absolute necessity.

“Ahem. Now, everyone, take out your respective communicators—the mice. I’ll teach you how to use them. Their tails have been modified and contain safe cleansing needles. They will pierce your skin, draw your blood, and store it inside a blood pouch. During the blood draw, spiritual-frequency authentication will activate automatically. You only need to calm your mind and sense it carefully. Once you establish a connection with the communicator, you can control it through your thoughts.”

“Now look at its abdomen. There are eight exoskeletal limbs embedded in its body. Once everyone has finished drawing blood, you can inject your own blood into the ‘limb cavities’ of other people’s communicators to complete signal binding. Put simply, I represent the first limb on the left. I will inject my blood into the ‘Left One’ cavity of each of your communicators. Once we enter the mission world, you need only focus your mind on that limb to summon me and communicate.”

Yuan Zhu counted them. Including the captain, there were eight people. Every modified mouse was pierced through by eight insectlike, segmented exoskeletal limbs. So the new recruits were specifically limited to seven people, right? Each person represented one spider leg—no more and no fewer.

Emm... So this was the Phantom Troupe, was it?!

“All right, everyone, begin. Once authentication is complete, line up here for one-on-one signal binding.”

A sharp pain came from the back of Yuan Zhu’s hand. A needle protruded from the mouse’s tail and pierced precisely into a vein, greedily drawing his blood. Then, as though replenished with life, the half-mechanical head began rotating with a series of clicks, while red lights flickered inside its metal eye sockets.

At the same time, the Immortal Scripture within Yuan Zhu issued a mild alert. The little sprite reported in sync, “Boss, described in Earth terms, an external plugin has been detected attempting to establish a Bluetooth connection—spiritual, that is. Do you approve this action?”

Yuan Zhu said, “Approved!”

A faint burst of static appeared in his mind before quickly fading away. It was like a small player window appearing on a phone screen: a view emerged in his consciousness, with the option to turn it on or off. This was the unique perspective of the mouse’s mechanical eye. The image was somewhat blurry, and the signal suffered from a delay as well. It was nowhere near as perfect as the view from the serpent tail in his Tiger Demon form, which synchronized flawlessly, like another version of himself.

The little sprite marveled, “Oh? This is rather fun.”

Under her control, the mouse in Yuan Zhu’s hand—which had already been thoroughly dead—suddenly began to convulse violently, rising like a corpse brought back to life. Its half-mechanical head turned this way and that with startling animation. Then the exoskeletal limbs embedded in its body withdrew one by one from its chest and abdomen. Like a spider or centipede, they supported the mouse’s body as it crawled up Yuan Zhu’s arm, moving nimbly and circling around.

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“Holy crap! A mouse-style spider-crawling drone?” Yuan Zhu exclaimed in amazement. It actually had externally attached soul bones—upgrading from four-wheel drive to eight-wheel drive.

The most advanced toy he had ever played with in his previous life was a remote-controlled shuttle. Yet now he had obtained a mind-controlled mouse-style all-terrain drone capable of crawling along the ground, burrowing through holes, climbing trees at ninety degrees, and hanging upside down from ceilings at one hundred and eighty degrees. It could make calls, synchronize video, and store and exchange data.

What a treasure.

Yuan Zhu was not the only one amazed. Even the worldly-wise female investigator and the silent, cold, utterly unapproachable black butcher were captivated by the little mice and began fiddling with them in earnest, enjoying themselves immensely.

“Once authentication is complete, you’ll have plenty of time to familiarize yourselves with the controls. For now, confirm one another’s codenames, then exchange blood. The mission is about to begin.”

Under the captain’s arrangements, everyone took turns binding signals with the other mice.

Following the left-for-men, right-for-women principle, Yuan Zhu seized Left Two, while Lu Rang took Left Three and the silent black butcher took Left Four. The women were, in order, the investigator, the college student, the baker girl, and the old grandmother.

As for the little goat? Everyone ignored it.

Once everything was complete, the captain raised his left arm and clenched his fist.

“Ready? Teleportation begins!”

The surrounding light suddenly dimmed. A sensation of weightlessness and dizziness swept over them, while body and mind seemed to freeze, making it impossible to tell whether time was still moving. When consciousness gathered again and his thoughts became clear, the chirping of birds had already reached his ears, and a gentle breeze brushed across his face.

When he opened his eyes, the light was not harsh. It filtered through the dense branches, casting spots of brightness across their bodies.

They were in a forest. The birds living there had been startled by the Fluffy King Business Elite Team. A great flurry of wings rose into the air, and the birds flew away into the distance. The forest looked full of life, yet somehow carried an ominous atmosphere.

Yuan Zhu observed carefully. Visibility was extremely high, but there were no animal trails or paths nearby. The ground was covered by a thick layer of fallen leaves, across which lay clumps of dried white residue. The air was heavy and stale.

The little sprite’s voice sounded in his mind as well. “Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture: Otherworld Exploration Mode activated. Continuously searching for and recording useful information about the surrounding environment...”

Beside him, Lu Rang looked excited. He tightened his grip on the pipe wrench and nervously scanned the empty space for enemies. The black butcher silently tightened his hold on the cleaver, breathing heavily as he surveyed their surroundings.

“No need to be nervous. I’ve confirmed that the area is safe.”

No one knew what method the captain had used. He had merely stood with his eyes closed for about a minute before speaking with certainty and telling everyone to relax.

Then he continued, “This is your first mission, so you still don’t understand our team’s operating style, nor the contents and priorities of our assignments.”

Dream Creek Yue asked in return, “Isn’t selling children’s clothing enough?”

The captain shook his head. “You were recruited by Happy Home. The duties you must fulfill are far more complicated than merely selling children’s clothes. From now on, whenever you enter a Bubble World, your first task will be to determine whether the current environment is safe and whether widespread contamination has occurred. Next, you must use your experience to assess the world’s upper limit of strength, its danger index, and its investment index. After that, investigate the ecological environment and the abundance of resources, the level of development of the native civilization, the distinctive culture of the inhabitants, and the systems of power compatible with the Bubble World...”

“Once you understand the basic conditions of a small world, you must determine whether it is suitable as a production site for the high-end textile materials used by Fluffy King. Is it suitable for large-scale breeding of unique woolly caterpillars or other agricultural crops? If not, but the local inhabitants are wealthy and civilized, can they be converted into long-term consumers and engaged in fair trade?”

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Listening to the captain’s description, Yuan Zhu automatically adopted the perspective of a colonizer and found that everything suddenly made perfect sense. You could even force the native inhabitants to work long hours for low wages, grow crops, breed woolly caterpillars, and establish farms, then sell the products back to them at high prices, creating a flawless cycle.

I’m truly too kind. I’m even willing to pay them!

“For this mission, follow my instructions and familiarize yourselves with the basic procedures. This is an unknown new world. Our task from here on is exploration and record-keeping.”

Yuan Zhu took the lead in responding. “Understood!”

After determining their bearings, the captain chose a direction and explained, “Most of you have not mastered supernatural abilities, so your perceptive faculties have not been developed. The direction I’ve chosen shows signs of energy gathering. In theory, it should be the core of this Bubble World. If a native civilization exists, it should have settled nearby.”

According to the captain’s introduction, Bubble Worlds varied in how barren they were. Yet all of them possessed rudimentary energy cycles resembling spiritual ley lines or terrestrial veins. Every creature with a functioning brain possessed an instinct to live in areas of high energy concentration.

As for whether that high energy might actually be a form of contamination...

Please. For native creatures living in a contaminated world, coexisting with contamination was something they had long grown accustomed to. Contamination itself was precious energy—the world’s spiritual essence, as they saw it. After all, even the present world openly acknowledged that contamination equaled strength. Cultivation was simply a controllable and orderly process of progressively contaminating oneself.

...

As the team advanced, the captain also taught everyone to release their bound “antenna babies” to assist with reconnaissance and danger detection.

The mice came with rudimentary camouflage programs. They could be controlled manually through divided attention, serving as crawling drones for scouting ahead, infrared night vision, sonic surveillance, and contamination-level detection.

If the mice stayed by their owners’ sides, they could provide an invisible blessing that increased resistance to contamination, as well as short- and medium-range communication. However, everyone’s clothing also possessed defensive functions, so the mice were all sent ahead to scout.

Yuan Zhu converted his briefcase into backpack mode, strapped a pistol to his thigh, and carried a semiautomatic firearm as he trudged through the dense forest, placing one foot firmly and the next uncertainly.

With the little sprite’s assistance, vast quantities of hunting, tracking, and survival experience drawn from the Boss Template gradually synchronized with his senses, thoughts, knowledge, and memories, intertwining and merging bit by bit to enhance his ability to adapt to the wilderness.

The forest in particular felt wonderfully familiar. It was like a tiger returning to the mountains—a sense of ease and freedom, as though he had come home.

“Slurp!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuan Zhu caught sight of the little goat being led along by the old grandmother. He could not help swallowing.

A thought rose from the depths of his heart: to pounce on it and tear into it raw, knock it over with one paw, bite through its cervical spine, let it suffocate slowly, and then savor it piece by piece.

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