Chapter 44
Chapter 44: Little Brat’s Dad Can’t Catch Little Brat’s Mom, So He Won’t Let Anyone Sleep
“0011, close all the doors to the command room.” Chong Ming spoke, then made a quick decision and ordered the warship’s artificial intelligence monitoring system: “Start the automatic search program for abnormal energy fluctuations across the entire ship.”
As soon as his voice fell, bang, bang, bang, bang, four heavy sounds rang out. The four thick doors of the command room closed almost at the same time, slamming shut with a deep rumble.
All the ship’s energy detectors, heat sensors, and supernatural ability scanners started up, entering full sensing and capture mode.
Jiang Tea Tea had already run out of the command room. When she heard the heavy sound of the doors closing, she stopped running and looked back at the tightly shut command room doors.
She clicked her tongue. If she did not have only twenty percent of her spiritual power left, so little that she felt as weak as a chick, she could flip this whole warship over and make everyone on board, along with that golden loach, fall from the sky and eat dirt.
Right now, the most important thing was to find a way to leave this warship and get down into the primeval forest below, so she could absorb Mother Earth’s nutrients and heal her body.
Jiang Tea Tea acted as soon as she thought of it. She turned invisible, ears pricked, and rushed around like a headless fly, running wherever the noise was loudest.
In less than three minutes, the power system of the command room was fully restored. The holo projection screens that had vanished in front of Chong Ming reappeared and refreshed within thirty seconds.
Cai Xi Chao operated her light-brain wrist terminal as she walked to the Commander in Chief’s side. Her fingers never stopped flying over the virtual keyboard, and her eyes never left the holo projection screen in front of her.
She circled the Commander in Chief once before finally speaking: “Commander in Chief, that same unknown energy that Cadet Jiang Tea Tea released when she killed the three-headed giant python is fluctuating the strongest right around you.”
Chong Ming’s brows drew together: “You mean that unknown energy entity is within my arm’s reach?”
Cai Xi Chao nodded, then shook her head: “Yes, just now it was within your reach. Now it is weaker. Look at the energy entity fluctuation chart.”
Chong Ming looked at the screen Cai Xi Chao projected in front of him. On the screen, the fluctuation curve of the energy entity had dropped from a peak value of one hundred down by half and was still sliding downward.
That meant the person who could use this unknown energy had been following him all along, using it to cut the power to the command room and to the healing department.
Because Cai Xi Chao had detected and locked onto it, that person had pulled the energy back, so the collected energy fluctuation curve kept going down.
Besides being able to control this energy, that being could also turn invisible. The monitoring system could not detect it, and it could not be seen by the naked eye. Only when the energy fluctuated could they catch a trace of it.
Chong Ming said: “Minister Cai, I want to see the latest footage of Cadet Jiang Tea Tea. Connect and project it for me.”
“Yes, Commander in Chief.” Cai Xi Chao answered, then projected a new holographic screen and kept typing quickly on the virtual keyboard.
Chong Ming’s sharp, eagle-like gaze swept over the huge command room.
Nearly two hundred staff members were in the command room, each busy at their own station. Not a single staff member seemed abnormal.
Other than a bucket on the table beside him, with a palm-sized sapling planted inside it, there was nothing in the command room that did not belong there.
“Commander in Chief, Cadet Jiang Tea Tea is sleeping.” Using the most advanced satellite technology, Cai Xi Chao locked onto Jiang Tea Tea’s position, zoomed in step by step, then used transparency technology to display Jiang Tea Tea’s sleeping posture on the giant screen.
Chong Ming looked at the giant screen. On it, Jiang Tea Tea lay sleeping deeply. She was covered with Cheng Lin Yue’s jacket, her back resting against the tent entrance. She lay there stiff and upright, arms folded over her chest, snake blood still smeared on her face, eyes tightly shut.
“Commander in Chief, I checked the satellite replay.” While Cai Xi Chao spoke, she brought up a holo projection replay. “After the eight members of the squad that took out the other twenty-nine military academies found a spot to rest and camp, Jiang Tea Tea set up a tent and lay down.”
“Up until now, she has slept for two hours and ten minutes. Based on how much she moved when she killed the three-headed giant python, she is exhausted. Even sleeping more than eight hours might not be enough for her to recover.”
Chong Ming thought for a moment, then looked at the palm-sized sapling on the table at his hand. “The unknown energy fluctuation inside the command room has already dropped to ten percent.”
“So the person using that unknown energy entity is no longer in the command room.”
Cai Xi Chao answered respectfully: “It might still be here, or it might not. It can release and pull back this unknown energy freely. Wait…”
Cai Xi Chao’s voice cut off. She dragged the holographic screen that was tracking the unknown energy over to the bucket with the sapling. The curve on the chart started to rise.
She stared at Chong Ming in shock. “Commander in Chief…”
Chong Ming had already seen it. A fireball had appeared in his hand, wrapping around the entire bucket, sapling and all.
Chong Ming called: “Deputy Officer Ai, scissors.”
Deputy Officer Ai was like a walking treasure chest. With a twist of his wrist, he pulled a pair of scissors out of his space knob storage device and handed them to his Commander in Chief.
Chong Ming took the scissors and snipped off the top of the little tree that was wrapped in the fireball. In an instant, the sapling in front of him turned into a bug whose head had been cut off. Thick black liquid gushed from the stump of its neck as its body writhed and struggled.
Even though Cai Xi Chao and Deputy Officer Ai had trained under the Commander in Chief countless times and had been on real battlefields fighting the insectoid race and other species, and had seen plenty of corpses, they had never seen anything like this. A sapling turning into a bug right in front of them.
Deputy Officer Ai could not help letting out a soul-deep question: “Commander in Chief, what kind of high-tech is this? How can a sapling turn into a living bug?”
Shock flashed through Chong Ming’s golden eyes too. Then he used the scissors in his hand to poke at the deformed, twitching bug that had died mid-struggle and said: “This might not be high-tech. It might be something outside our understanding…”
“Beep, beep, beep.” The 0011 artificial intelligence monitoring system sounded an alarm, cutting off Chong Ming’s words: “Commander in Chief Chong Ming, an unknown energy fluctuation has appeared in the power maintenance department on the ship’s left wing. Please head there at once. Please head there at once.”
Chong Ming shot to his feet and tossed the scissors onto the table. “0011 monitoring system, connect directly to my audio. Do not startle the snake in the grass.”
“Seal all the hatches in the maintenance department and keep watching.”
The 0011 monitoring system answered: “Yes, Commander in Chief.”
Chong Ming started walking quickly as he spoke: “Deputy Officer Ai, notify all personnel in the power maintenance department to enter combat readiness.”
“Minister Cai, come with me to track the energy.”
Cai Xi Chao and Deputy Officer Ai answered in unison: “Yes, Commander in Chief.”
Using her sharp hearing, Jiang Tea Tea stayed invisible as she followed the sounds all the way to the door of the power maintenance department. Inside, she saw a group of people checking the ship’s entire power system while muttering about how strange it was that the healing department and the command room had lost power at the same time today.
Jiang Tea Tea listened to them chatter for a long time and then noticed that the wall she was leaning against was actually a window. Through it, she could see the stars and the moon outside.
That meant if she broke the window, she could escape this warship and fall into the primeval forest below, where she could eat and drink to her heart’s content.
She acted right away. Jiang Tea Tea curled her fingers into a fist, wrapped her hand in spiritual power, and punched the glass with brute force.
With a crack, a thin line appeared in the glass where her fist hit.
Everyone in the power maintenance department stopped what they were doing. They all stared at the window in disbelief. The glass of a super warship that normal artillery fire could not even shatter had cracked right under their noses.
Right after that, the doors of the power maintenance department slammed shut. The people inside looked at the sealed doors, then at the window, still too stunned to react. Only when Deputy Officer Ai’s voice came through their invisible earpieces, ordering them to enter wartime state, did they snap back to themselves and grab their weapons.
Before they could even get their weapons into their hands, the small crack in the glass spread into a huge one. With a loud bang, a whole pane of glass exploded into shards and flew outward.
Night wind rushed into the cabin. The warship blared an alarm, and the engineering maintenance department received an emergency repair order from the 0011 artificial intelligence.
By the time Chong Ming reached the maintenance department, the energy fluctuation graph on Cai Xi Chao’s light-brain wrist terminal had already turned into a straight, calm line.
“Commander in Chief!”
“Commander in Chief!”
The people in the power maintenance department had not expected the Commander in Chief to come. They held their weapons in one hand, saluted him with the other, and called out to him.
Chong Ming strode quickly to the window. The engineering maintenance department had already raised a backup armor plate to block the wind that was blowing into the ship.
“It ran.” Cai Xi Chao said: “Commander in Chief, it smashed the glass and escaped.”
Chong Ming glanced around the power maintenance department, then raised his head to look at the surveillance system mounted at the door. A cold light filled his golden eyes. The creature with that unknown energy was provoking him, provoking him right under his nose.
Chong Ming said in a deep voice: “0011, notify the heads of all departments to conduct a full self-check.”
The 0011 artificial intelligence replied: “Yes, Commander in Chief. The self-check order has already been sent to the heads of all departments on the warship.”
Chong Ming pressed a hand to his earpiece: “Deputy Officer Ai, notify Li Ao, the director of the supernatural ability institute, and tell him to rush over from the capital planet using his fastest speed-type ability.”
Deputy Officer Ai’s voice came through his earpiece: “Yes, Commander in Chief.”
Jiang Tea Tea relaxed her body and let herself fall from more than two thousand meters up in the sky.
Stars twinkled in the night, the moon shone bright, and trace elements in the air poured into her body one after another, nourishing her.
She deliberately drifted in midair for more than ten minutes before finally dropping into the primeval forest. When she landed, she turned into a tree. She released her invisibility, stretched her trunk, and grew into a lush, vibrant tea tree. She stood tall in the forest, roots digging deep and working hard to drink up the rich organic nutrients in the soil.
Chong Ming went back to the command center. The bug in the bucket, the one that had been snipped in half, was already dead. All the pus had drained from the corpse. Its once plump body lay shriveled on the damp soil, giving off a foul stench.
Deputy Officer Ai and the others did not dare to speak, or even breathe too loudly. They stood to the side, shrinking their presence as they went back to their own work.
Chong Ming pulled out his command chair and sat down. Dozens of holo projection screens floated in front of him. His gaze landed on the screen that was showing the squad that “wiped out the other twenty-nine military academies”, and he gave an order to the thirty army corps commanders.
“Commanders, wild training is wild training. As the name says, it is wilderness survival training. It is not limited to day or night. The point of having you drill the cadets is to make them understand what their physical limit really is.”
“Let them learn that in the original tropical jungle, besides mutated snakes, scorpions, insects, and ants, besides aberrant beasts, there is also your drill instructor team chasing them down.”
“Especially at night. Out of seventy thousand cadets, only one squad of eight outstanding members appeared. How could we bear to let them sleep? Chase them and see where their physical limit lies.”