In the evening, Horn, the sniper 'Death Sentence' Jiang Dong, and Dead Eye were rushing back to their temporary base in the lower district with the results they had observed near Mingde University.
As soon as Horn entered the base, he couldn't wait to tear off the bionic mask from his face.
His Disguise Technique was extremely sophisticated, combined with his unique Cultivation Technique, it could fool various high-tech holographic cameras into not recognizing whether he was disguised.
However, wearing this type of bionic mask was indeed very uncomfortable since, to counteract the cameras' scanning, it was quite suffocating.
"Where's Katya?" Dead Eye Horn glanced inside the room, "Still in deep dive state?"
The deep dive state was a term unique to the hacker world, where, with the help of specific drugs and a nutrient pod, a hacker's mind could enter an undistracted state of focus, thus significantly increasing computational power.
"She's still diving. She's trying to hack into Sky Blue Company's 'Divine Guards' and 'Imperial Guard' combat robots," someone replied, "even if it could slightly hinder their actions it would be good, but her supercomputer 'Wanderer', though portable and mountable on a vehicle, is just average in computational power."
Mechanic Beros pulled out a tactical board: "How about it, did you guys find anything? Any chance?"
Without a word, Death Sentence Jiang Dong walked up to the tactical board and began drawing, "As shown here, this is the best sniping position, if Lin Rui's abilities haven't changed, then as long as he delivers his speech that day and Horn can lure away the nearby defensive robots as planned, I have a 70% chance of assassinating him. However, my sniper rifle's firing speed and power are not sufficient, I need to add some gun accessories, about seventeen million federal coins."
Hearing this, Beros shrugged, as the sniper rifle accessories, with precision requirements at the micron level, were not something he could manufacture by hand.
"Also, the escape. There are no passages to the lower world within 800 meters of this sniping spot. I need you to help carve out a pathway and set up some smart machinery to block any pursuit," Jiang Dong continued.
Beros nodded, this was easy for him—it simply meant a couple of automatic excavators, placing some bombs along the way, and a few small automatic gun turrets.
"However—," Beros paused, looking at Dead Eye Horn, "Katya worried that our employer might be planning to silence us, Horn, what do you think?"
"What else can I think? They definitely have such intentions, 600 million funds—two 6S+ would be enough. However, people at this level are harder to eliminate, that's probably why they want us to continue with the mission."
Horn let out a cold laugh, his eyes disdainful: "So, we can't trust the dark web's escrow service this time. After completing the mission, we must sever all previous contacts, but the key is still whether we can retreat to the lower district as long as we make it down there, no one can touch us."
He then looked back into the room, "Don't worry, when I had Katya contact the employer, I had her probe the employer's background a bit; we've got some leads, which we can also use as leverage to make sure they pay the final amount—"
But at that moment, Horn's pupils slightly constricted.
He smelled a scent of burning coming from inside the room.
Horn strode into the room, heading to the nutrient pod placed there.
His face turned immediately steely blue as he discovered that the operation panel of the nutrient pod had burnt out, and its internal electronic components might have also been damaged.
What was crucial was that Katya, inside the nutrient pod, was completely silent, her eyes tightly shut, her hair spread out in the nutrient fluid.
Horn hurriedly forced open the lid of the nutrient pod and carried Katya out.
But as he touched Katya's body, his heart sank as he sensed that there was no vitality left in her body.
It was likely that her brain was fried in the cyberspace.
They say some powerful hackers can directly interfere with a person's brain cells and spinal nerves through a neural connector.
"How is this possible?" Mechanic Beros was extremely shocked.
The nutrient pod Katya was using for her deep dive was under his surveillance; if anything happened to the pod, it should have triggered an alarm.
Beros looked at the two holographic cameras nearby and several internal defense weapons in the room, his face slightly pale.
He realized that these cameras and the four small fully automated turrets had most likely been hacked.
"Such a formidable person!"
Beros was inwardly alarmed. His defense systems were not connected to the external network; the only connection in this temporary base was Katya's deep dive nutrient pod.
This meant the hacker had bypassed Katya, infiltrated unnoticed, first taken over all the defense systems of the temporary base, and then targeted Katya.
Beros wanted to go to his workshop to check the situation on the server side but was dragged outside by Horn, "This place has been compromised, we need to retreat—"
While speaking, Horn activated his walkie-talkie. For security reasons, they had temporarily disabled the network functions of their smart terminals upon entering the temporary base.
However, he had only just reached the base's main door when he heard a barrage of gunfire outside.