Top edge chapter 12

Spongebob squarepants

“I’ll leave.”

In the end, Shen Siwei chose to compromise.

With the mask back in his hands, Shen Siwei sat motionless on the sofa, staring at Klet who was washing dishes by the sink, contemplating how he could get information out of him the hard way.

First, he would knock Klet unconscious and tie him to a chair.

When Klet couldn’t bear the torture any longer, : “Answer my questions truthfully, and I’ll let you go.” he planned it all in his mind

The chances of the first step being successful were very high.

However, if this rogue leader refused to yield, it would become a problem.

The sound of water in the kitchen abruptly stopped, and Shen Siwei immediately avoided klet’s gaze, brushing away the cruel images in his mind, and pretended to casually look at his mini-computer.

“I bought some clothes. Once they’re delivered, I’ll leave on my own.”

“On your own?” Klet wiped the water off his hands. “Are you sure you can safely leave Z City?”

“You said it’s relatively safe during the day,” Shen Siwei replied. “It should be fine.”

There were no sounds outside the window except for the cawing of crows, as if this were not a city but a desolate wilderness rarely visited by people.

Maybe because Shen Siwei finally agreed to leave, Klet seemed to be in a good mood. He didn’t argue about the issue of safety and simply said, “How long until your clothes are delivered?”

“Half an hour,” Shen Siwei answered.

Klet checked the time. “I’ll send someone to pick you up in half an hour.”

His words left no room for negotiation, but Shen Siwei wasn’t annoyed because Klet added, “I have other matters to attend to.”

He decided to sit quietly on the sofa and watch the news. After a while, Klet left.

Ten minutes later, an urgent delivery drone landed on the balcony.

Shen Siwei put on the khaki work uniform he had bought, wore a dark-colored knitted cap, and concealed his aristocratic aura completely. At first glance, he appeared to be an ordinary guy.

If the drone had arrived a few minutes earlier, Shen Siwei might have had a chance to track Klet. But now, he had to stick to the original plan and investigate the power station.

Checking the time, there were still more than ten minutes before Klet’s people arrived.

The apartment had no surveillance cameras. Shen Siwei calmly walked out of the room and unexpectedly encountered knock, who was doing garbage sorting in the hallway.

“Brother Negotiator,” knock put down the trash bag, puzzled as he looked at Shen Siwei’s attire, “Where are you going?”

Shen Siwei naturally wouldn’t tell the truth. “I’m going back to the sky.”

knock blinked his eyes. “I heard that you can see the snow-capped mountains outside the Tree of Life in the sky. Is it true?”

“It’s true.” Shen Siwei rubbed knock’s head and squatted beside him. “Is this someone else’s trash?”

“Yeah!” knock nodded. “I help them sort it, and they give me pocket money.”

Shen Siwei felt a bit distressed. Ignoring the dirty juice, he helped knock categorize the last few bottles and then stood up and handed him ten yuan.

“Use it to buy a drink.”

“Thank you, big brother!”

There were no people on the street, and the shops were closed.

knock probably had to wait until evening to go and buy drinks.

Shen Siwei walked through the complex alleys towards the power station. On the way, he only encountered a few drunk homeless people lying on the roadside.

The number of homeless people guarding the power station hadn’t decreased, but most of them were dozing off with guns in their arms. A few who were awake were either watching videos or playing games, seemingly considering it daytime and not finding it necessary to remain alert.

After waiting nearby for a few minutes while one of the homeless people went to the restroom, Shen Siwei stealthily slipped into the interior of the power station without anyone noticing.

The lower floors consisted of energy distribution devices for various blocks and didn’t have much investigative value.

Shen Siwei was already prepared with an identity authorization card to go to the upper floors. However, he noticed that the access control system had been forcefully breached, indicating that Klet had somehow obviously broken in.

Furthermore, the main surveillance in the power station had been destroyed. It was clear that Klet didn’t want anyone to see what he had done after entering.

In that case, he needed to search for signs of tampering which might reveal some clues.

The central part of the sixth to tenth floors was cut out, housing a massive square-shaped energy receiver device.

The device was within an independent magnetic field, so Shen Siwei had to tighten his mask and cautiously approach the control panel, afraid that any mistake could ruin the mask or suck it away.

The control panel appeared normal. 

Shen Siwei accessed the control system connected to the top-level core power station and found that the software hadn’t been hacked.

So why was the energy supply in the Z City’s western district uncontrollable?

Shen Siwei couldn’t find anything suspicious, so he could only attempt to restart the  system. However, during the restart, according to the system rules, the entire power station would lose power.

In other words, if he restarted, Shen Siwei would likely expose himself.

On the other hand, if this system rule was still in effect, it meant that restarting was a viable option. Once the restart was complete, they would regain control of the power station on the top floor.

Shen Siwei quickly made a decision. The risk was worth taking.

With a few clicks, he accessed the restart interface, patiently waited for the warning page to close, and pressed the “Restart” button.

The expected magnetic field disruption didn’t occur. Shen Siwei, who was prepared to escape, returned to the control panel and found that the control system was indeed restarting, but the power station hadn’t lost power.

“What’s going on?”

Assuming the control system had failed for unknown reasons, if they wanted to cut off the energy supply here, the only remaining option was to target the hardware.

Shen Siwei didn’t waste time at the control panel. He went directly to the basement through a hidden emergency staircase.

“Different from the bright rooms on the upper floors, the basement was filled with intertwining pipelines.

Shen Siwei accessed the  map on his little computer and quickly located the large central energy receiving pipeline.

The energy overflowing from the top floor was transported to various energy stations through these pipelines.

Regardless of what trick klet had pulled, as long as Shen Siwei destroyed the pipeline , the western district’s City Z would come to a complete halt.

When that happens, klet would undoubtedly bring people to repair the pipeline, giving Shen Siwei a good chance to investigate what klet had done.

With this in mind, Shen Siwei jumped onto the pipeline.

Destroying the pipeline was different from rebooting the system; the pipeline would definitely trigger an alarm.

But Shen Siwei couldn’t afford to care about that anymore. He struck downward with all his strength, heavily smashing the outer wall of the pipeline.

If klet hadn’t taken away his mask just now, Shen Siwei could have let him experience the force of his punch.

The pipeline produced a dull sound, accompanied by the flashing of red warning lights.

Shen Siwei punched with all his might, and the cracks on the outer wall of the pipeline grew larger and larger.

With one final blow, Shen Siwei leaped high into the air and then jumped down forcefully. With a loud “clang,” the pipeline interface directly disconnected from the receiving device.

The cries of the displaced people resounded in the surroundings. Shen Siwei quickly opened the map and arrived at the hidden elevator door that led to the city’s sewage system. He also smacked down the elevator door and took refuge in the even more complex sewage tunnels.

After walking for about ten minutes with his head down, Shen Siwei found a secluded corner, lifted the manhole cover, and climbed out of the sewer.

There were no signs of the displaced people chasing after him, so he sighed in relief. But at that moment, he saw an AI janitor working diligently not far away.

How was it possible?!

Shen Siwei was startled. After the energy station ceased operation, the entire city’s network should have been paralyzed. How could the AI janitors still be working?

He quickly found a self-service car charging station and confirmed his suspicion – the energy station was indeed operating normally.

“Colonel, it’s me.” Shen Siwei roamed through the city, being cautious to avoid surveillance. “I can now confirm that the western district’s City Z energy station has completely escaped the control of the higher-ups.”

After explaining the situation briefly, Moran on the other end of the communicator sounded quite surprised.

“You mean that an energy station can still generate power on a large scale autonomously?”

“It appears so.”

Moran fell silent for a moment and then spoke with a solemn tone, “I will report this to the higher-ups first. You continue investigating klet’s background.”

“Okay.” Shen Siwei didn’t have anything else to say and was about to disconnect the communicator.

But at that moment, Moran suddenly asked, “Why didn’t you contact me to change your hair color and eye color when you went out during the day?”

Shen Siwei was instantly caught off guard.

The last time he went out for investigation was at night, and changing his hair and eye color wouldn’t make much difference.

However, this time he went out in broad daylight, considering safety, he should have contacted Moran to change his appearance.

But Shen Siwei just didn’t want to contact Moran.

He was not used to Moran’s ambiguous tone of conversation, nor did he like the feeling of his body and appearance being controlled by others.

He pursed his lips and said, “There’s no need. There’s no one on the streets during the day.”

There was silence again on the communicator.

“Okay.” Moran switched to a gentler tone. “Take care.”

Walking aimlessly on the road, Shen Siwei couldn’t help but reflect on himself.

If he and Moran were truly lovers, did his words just now hurt him?

Love was something that had never been part of Shen Siwei’s life, and he didn’t know how to face the existence of a “lover.”

But then again, why did he inexplicably get involved in a romantic relationship?

…And with his superior, no less.

He shivered, hugging himself. It was only now that Shen Siwei realized that his skin could still get goosebumps.

There were too many question marks in his mind, but at this moment, investigating klet was still more important.

So who exactly was this person who could change the local energy stations?

A scientist? A mechanical fanatic? A master of modifications?

Initially, Shen Siwei had planned to quietly lurk in the city for the next few days. But now it seemed he had to return to klet’s side.

Not knowing the door password, Shen Siwei couldn’t go through the front entrance to return to klet’s house.

He had no choice but to go to the adjacent building, jump onto the adult goods signboard he disliked, observe for a while, and then return to where he had left through the balcony.

There were no changes to the items in the room, not even a wrinkle on the sofa, exactly as Shen Siwei had left them.

He sank into the sofa, relaxing his whole body, leaning his head against the back of the couch, and absentmindedly gazing at the ceiling.

Perhaps he needed to understand klet comprehensively.

This person was a tough nut to crack; negotiations or investigations would never yield results without real effort.

With that in mind, Shen Siwei lifted his head again and observed the cluttered items in the room.

The stones of the Desert Waves, the venomous needles of the Distorted Scorpions… he seemed to be quite skilled at hunting monsters.

His gaze swept over every corner of the room, finally landing on a row of CD shelves.

There were many discs on the shelf. In this era, very few people still used discs to watch movies.

Shen Siwei’s intuition told him that those were definitely not ordinary discs. Perhaps they contained some important information.

However, when he walked to the CD shelf and picked up one disc, looking at the cute cartoon cover, a profound confusion flashed across his face.

“SpongeBob SquarePants?””