socalfunplaces Chapter 74 Intelligence Broker Quan Dakai
Chapter 74 Intelligence Broker Quan Dakai
Deep inside the dimly lit sewage pipes, the sun never shines.
The damp brick walls were covered with sticky, dark moss, and murky water with a rusty smell dripped from the pipe joints at the top.
That finger looked truly frightening, making the agent's heart skip a beat at first glance.
The blood around them had not yet completely coagulated, and it was dripping down the smooth metal slope, one drop at a time, onto the iron fence below, making a faint dripping sound.
The agents did not approach rashly.
As a player accustomed to modern special operations tactics, he knew all too well that any unusual setup was a deadly trap. He stood at a safe distance, his gaze lingering for a moment on the cut of the severed finger.
The fractured surface of the skin and flesh was as smooth as a mirror, and there were no signs of tearing or cracking in the center of the bone. There was no charring from fire, nor necrosis from freezing.
This is a purely physical guillotine trap that relies solely on the powerful energy storage of a spring and the downward pressure of gravitational potential energy.
The agent's gaze slowly moved down, catching sight of several bent and deformed thin wires scattered in the dirty water at the bottom of the gate.
The native stuntmen of the ruined city were clearly trying to follow some ancient tradition, attempting to rely on their ears to press against the door panels to locate the pins in the hydraulic lock by sound.
However, those who blindly try and fail simply don't understand how to calculate the torque of metal meshing. If a single spring is mis-triggered, the overhead counterweight will fall, and the intricate gears will become a guillotine that cuts everything in its path.
To crack the physical mechanism, we cannot follow the designer's ideas; we must fundamentally disable its power source.
The agent turned around and looked at the sewer pipe wall beside him.
At the junction of the waterline, years of excrement, domestic waste, and heavy metal wastewater have long since mixed and fermented, settling into a semi-solid, extremely dense layer of black sludge.
"yue..."
The complex smells made the agent feel nauseous; surely playing a game shouldn't cause such a terrible ordeal.
But the agent felt relieved when he realized he was all alone and no one else would see him being so disgusted.
He drew his short dagger and cleanly cut off a piece of the tattered leather lining from the outside of his thigh, wrapping it tightly around his right hand.
He walked up to the pipe wall and pried off a large chunk of sticky, ammonia-smelling sludge.
The mud also contained small pebbles and a few bones of some unknown animal.
Upon closer inspection, he couldn't resist picking it up and smelling it.
yue……
The agent frowned, picked up the lump of filth, walked to the alloy door, raised his hand, and roughly smeared the clump of mud mixed with bone fragments into the core operating gap of the brass component.
To ensure everything went perfectly, he broke off a thicker rat leg bone and wedged it tightly against the edge of the spring's pressure relief valve.
After doing all this, the agent took a half step back, raised his leather boot, and kicked the vibration sensor area below the door hard.
The dull thud activated the defense mechanisms inside the door.
The counterweight hidden within the wall crashed down, and the brass components, receiving power, immediately began a reverse strangulation operation. However, the once perfectly sealed mechanical tank was now filled with high-density sand, grime, and bone fragments.
The hydraulic rod desperately applied pressure, but was stubbornly held back by the unreasonable filth. With two crisp snapping sounds, the two copper teeth on the main gear flew off, smashing against the stone wall and sparking. Immediately afterwards, the rat bones in the pressure relief valve were crushed, but the mud and sand completely blocked the bearing.
After a violent spasm, the entire hydraulic system completely jammed and became paralyzed.
The agent stepped forward, pressed down on the door panel, and pushed hard. The alloy door, which had lost its locking mechanism, let out a mournful sound and slowly opened inward.
Behind the door was a relatively dry underground workshop filled with the smell of machine oil and cheap tobacco. The shelves against the walls were piled high with all sorts of parts and mechanical wreckage of unknown origin.
Behind the worktable in the center of the room sat a gaunt old man.
The old man had a long, thin braid and wore a rather elaborate Tang suit embroidered with a golden dragon. He wore frameless glasses. This man was none other than Quan Dakai, a renowned intelligence broker in the abandoned city.
The agent clearly recognized the NPC, but strangely, the Quan Dakai in his memory should be a slightly overweight middle-aged man, so how did he become a skinny old man?
It's a bit unbelievable.
At this moment, the well-informed Quan Dakai was leaning back in his chair, holding a glass of dark red, inexpensive wine.
According to his usual script, as long as someone manages to push open this door alive, he will slowly sip his wine and, in a hoarse and mysterious voice, express his appreciation to the top assassin who has just escaped death.
The alloy door opened, and Quan Dakai's lips curled into a smile as he was about to speak.
A pungent stench, a mixture of the high temperature from gear friction and the fermentation of years of sewage, rushed in through the open door, like a tangible shockwave.
Quan Dakai's smile froze. He instinctively took a deep breath, then his eyes widened, bloodshot.
He sprayed the wine in his mouth directly onto the blueprints on the table. The underground boss of the ruined city bent over, clutching his neck and dry heaving.
His prized, deadly machine, used to filter the elite, was utterly destroyed by a lump of lowlife scum.
The agent stepped across the threshold and casually tossed the rag wrapped around his hands into the metal bucket in the corner.
He didn't even glance at Quan Dakai, who was coughing and leaning against the corner of the table, his tone completely flat:
"Find Dakru to change your job. Also, inquire about the whereabouts of a batch of exhaust parts left behind by Edelstein."
After hearing this, Quan Dakai wiped the wine stains from the corner of his mouth and gasped for breath.
The way he looked at the agent was as if he were looking at a madman with horrified disbelief. The Flying Swordsmen of the ruined city valued elegance, secrecy, and killing without leaving a trace, while this country bumpkin in front of him was a savage thug who only cared about the outcome.
He suppressed the churning in his stomach, opened a drawer, took out a crumpled piece of scrap paper, and slammed it onto the wine-stained table.
"The technique...cough...is very unique."
Kwon Da-kai's voice trembled. "But Dakru never sees nobodies. Deeper into the sewers, in the junkyard, there's a crocodile-infested area teeming with mutated creatures. The Wild Boar Brotherhood has been lurking there lately. Go to Junk Station Number One and retrieve the delivery slip they hid in the corner. Prove you can work under the noses of living beings before we talk about parts."
The agent stepped forward, picked up the piece of paper with a simple route drawn on it, and quickly scanned the coordinates with his eyes.
He glanced at the workbench, where several exquisitely crafted daggers coated with poison and a few black cloaks that could absorb light for invisibility.
However, the agents ignored these devices.
He walked straight to the pile of scrap in the corner of the workshop, and after rummaging through it for a while, he picked out three empty glass bottles that were originally used to hold spirits.
Next, he tore off several strips of coarse burlap that had been covering the waste and were emitting a pungent, musty smell. Finally, his gaze settled on a bag of industrial quicklime used to bury corpses and absorb odors.
He opened the cloth bag and stuffed handfuls of grayish-white powder into the satchel at his waist.
Quan Dakai finally caught his breath, and looking at the agents' illogical ransacking, his expression twisted again.
"What are you going to do with this garbage?"
Quan Dakai couldn't help but question, his voice unusually hoarse from gagging, "Concealing your tracks requires blending into the darkness, and you're going to throw a bunch of stinking burlap and powder to your death?"
The agent stuffed the last piece of quicklime into his waist pouch and fastened his belt.
True concealment requires no hiding.
He wrapped the burlap, which had a strong, sour smell, around his neck and shoulders, covering the lower half of his face.
"You just need to make the target feel that you are more unbearable than the surrounding environment."
Leaving behind this puzzling statement, the agent turned and stepped out of the dilapidated alloy door, returning to the chilly depths of the sewage pipes.