113: Chapter 113 Overt and covert investigations: A first glimpse into the ways of the world

Ling Ye adjusted his breathing, reining in his slightly sharp gaze and replacing it with the pallor and calmness of someone just recovering from a serious illness, fitting for "Ling Ye's" age (this was, in fact, an authentic performance), and walked towards the direction of the community commercial street in his memory.

The Oak Street Community was not large, and the commercial street was only a short strip, with old shops on both sides whose signs were mostly aged holographic projections, flickering unsteadily.

It was still early; many shops had just opened, and there were few pedestrians on the street, mostly residents exercising early or catching the morning floating bus.

Ling Ye first entered a shop with a sign that read "Old Chen's Grocery."

The shop was small, and the shelves were stocked with various daily necessities, simple tool parts, plainly packaged synthetic food and nutrient agents, and even some local handicrafts from the Azure Planet (such as bookmarks pressed from blue oak leaves).

The air was filled with a faint smell of machine oil and some kind of cleaning agent.

The shopkeeper was an old man with graying hair, wearing old-fashioned optical glasses, and was holding a tool to repair a retro radio model.

Hearing the doorbell ring, he looked up and adjusted his glasses: "Yo, Little Ye? Discharged? Are you feeling any better?" His tone was familiar and filled with concern.

Ling Ye searched his memory and recognized this as Uncle Chen, who had run a shop in the community for decades, watched "Ling Ye" grow up, was warm-hearted, and sometimes allowed Neighbors who were tight on cash to buy on credit.

"Morning, Uncle Chen. Much better, thanks for asking." Ling Ye nodded, his voice softening slightly, and walked to the shelves, his gaze scanning quickly.

He knew exactly what he needed: high-energy, easy-to-store portable food (compressed energy bars, nutrient paste), a few sets of sturdy, dirt-resistant, and easy-to-move-in work clothes (the original owner's clothes, which were too "academic" or appeared decadent, were unsuitable), a sturdy multifunctional backpack, a set of basic tools (multifunctional knife, portable lighting, rope, water purification tablets, etc.), and... some cash (although credit points were generally accepted, cash was more discreet in certain situations).

"Looking to buy something? Feel free to look around; I just got a new batch of flavored nutrient paste, strawberry flavor, you young people might like it." Uncle Chen put down his tools, wiped his hands, and walked over.

"Yeah, I need to restock a few things." While browsing, Ling Ye asked seemingly casually, "Uncle Chen, has the community been quiet at night lately? Before I was hospitalized, I think I heard someone mention that it's been a bit noisy at night?"

"At night?" Uncle Chen thought for a moment and shook his head. "This old man sleeps early, I haven't heard anything. But the delivery guy, Little Li, seemed to mutter something the morning before last, saying he passed by the Old Factory District in the middle of the night and seemed to hear some movement. He thought it was just wild dogs and didn't pay it any mind. Why, did you hear something?"

"No, I was in the hospital. I was just asking casually, worried about not resting well at night." Ling Ye picked up two packs of energy bars labeled "High-Energy Military Flavor (Unflavored)" and selected a few basic nutrient pastes. These military-style flavors usually didn't sell well, but they had the highest energy density and were the most durable for storage.

"Oh, then don't worry, this old community of ours has always had decent security. It's just that the Old Factory District has been abandoned for some years, so it's normal to occasionally hear some small animals." Uncle Chen didn't think much of it, but seeing what Ling Ye was picking out, he was a bit surprised. "Little Ye, are you buying these... for a field internship? Did the academy arrange something?" He remembered that Ling Ye was studying starship maintenance, which had nothing to do with wilderness survival.

"Yeah, the academy might have some extra training, so I'm preparing in advance. I also want to... exercise more." Ling Ye explained vaguely, picking up a set of dark gray work clothes to check the size.

Uncle Chen looked at Ling Ye's still-slender frame and slightly pale complexion, sighed, and didn't ask any more questions, assuming the child wanted to become stronger after experiencing recent events. He said, "Exercising is a good thing, but do what you can. This set of work clothes is wear-resistant synthetic fiber, the size should be right. The tools are in that corner, pick them out yourself, and I'll give you a discount."

High-Dimensional Information Perception had been in a low-activity state since entering the shop.

At this moment, when Ling Ye's gaze inadvertently swept over a dusty glass jar in the corner of the counter, his perception stirred slightly.

The jar contained some colorful, irregularly shaped "Ore" specimens that looked like some kind of children's toys or decorations.

But one fingernail-sized, dull, black "pebble" that seemed stained with rust made Ling Ye feel something... different.

It wasn't an energy fluctuation, but an extremely faint, discordant "sense of residual information" that was out of place with the surrounding environment, yet masked by thick dust and ordinary stones.

"Uncle Chen, what are the stones in that jar..." Ling Ye asked, appearing curious.

"Oh, those? I collected them many years ago, left behind by a passing geology enthusiast who said they were Ore samples from different regions of the Azure Planet and told me to use them as decorations. They're useless, just some stone chips." Uncle Chen waved his hand.

Ling Ye paid the credit points and packed his purchases into his newly bought backpack. As he was leaving, he pointed at the jar as if by chance: "Uncle Chen, can I have that black one? It looks quite unique, I want to... grind it into a pendant or something." He found a very "youthful" excuse.

Uncle Chen laughed: "It's just a broken stone, take it if you like it. It's just gathering dust there." He opened the jar, took out the black pebble, and handed it to Ling Ye.

It felt slightly cool to the touch, hard in texture, and rough on the surface; it truly resembled an ordinary piece of iron Ore or some kind of metal waste.

But held in his palm, that faint "sense of discord" became a little clearer, as if the inside of the stone had "recorded" some brief "information" that was completely different from the surrounding environment, such as extremely high temperatures, intense energy impacts, or... some kind of special radiation field?

But the information was too broken and weak to be deciphered.

Ling Ye thanked him and casually put the pebble into his pants pocket. Useful or not, he would keep it for now.

Leaving the grocery store, he went to a small outdoor supplies and second-hand equipment shop at the corner of the street.

The items here were more miscellaneous, ranging from old camping gear to discarded personal terminal casings, and from homemade small tools to mechanical parts scavenged from some unknown garbage recycling station; it had everything.

The shopkeeper was a taciturn middle-aged man with a scar on his cheek, sitting behind the counter bare-chested, wiping an old-fashioned laser-cutting knife handle, with complex mechanical prosthetic tattoos on his arms.

He glanced at Ling Ye and said nothing.

Ling Ye browsed slowly through the shop, his gaze sweeping over the rusty or oil-stained items.

High-Dimensional Information Perception seemed more active here, perhaps because these old items carried more of the past's "information" and "stories."

He felt that a few items seemed somewhat "special," but the feeling was very vague; it could be the strong emotional residue of the original owner, or perhaps the items had experienced special events.

He eventually only bought a sturdy second-hand water bottle, a multifunctional survival whistle, and a small roll of high-strength synthetic fiber rope.

When checking out, he tried to strike up a conversation: "Boss, I heard the Old Factory District by the community isn't very peaceful? Are there strange noises at night?"

The scarred shopkeeper lifted his eyelids, his turbid electronic eye flashing with a faint light, and stared at Ling Ye for two seconds. His voice was hoarse: "Kid, don't go asking around blindly just after getting discharged. The Old Factory District has been abandoned for over a decade, the pipes are rusted, the structure is loose, and the wind is strong at night—what kind of sounds wouldn't you hear? Mind your own business."

His tone was impolite, even carrying a hint of warning.

But this reaction itself revealed something unusual.

Ordinary people either wouldn't know, or would be as unconcerned as Uncle Chen.

But this scarred shopkeeper seemed to know something about the "Old Factory District" and the "strange noises," and was unwilling to talk more about it.

Ling Ye didn't press further, nodded, paid, and left.

His vigilance regarding the Old Factory District increased by another notch.

This shopkeeper didn't look like an ordinary small businessman; he was more like someone who had complex experiences or perhaps even been in contact with the "gray" areas.

His words might not be false, but they were certainly holding something back.

The shopping was basically finished.

Ling Ye, carrying his bulging backpack and holding the bag of clothes, didn't go home immediately. Instead, he sat down on a bench in the small community plaza at the other end of the commercial street, unscrewed his newly bought water bottle, and took a sip of water. He appeared to be resting, but in reality, he was continuing to observe.

People were gradually gathering in the plaza.

There were mothers with children, elderly people walking mechanical pets (a type of intelligent companion shaped like a simulated plush animal), and office workers hurrying along.

Ling Ye's gaze swept calmly, his High-Dimensional Information Perception in a standby state of wide-area reception, not focusing on any specific target but feeling the "information flow" of the entire environment.

Most of the information was mundane—fragments of daily conversation, signal noise from mobile terminals, air currents, and the engine hum of floating cars in the distance.

But occasionally, some fragments would cause a ripple in his perception.

For instance, a man wearing a Municipal Government maintenance uniform was sitting not far away, eating a sandwich. From a side pocket of his toolbag, a corner of a non-standard instrument panel with complex graduations was visible, its style completely different from regular Municipal Government maintenance equipment.

Or, take the two elderly women sitting on a bench opposite, whispering to each other. One of them wore an old-fashioned mechanical watch on her wrist. On the watch face, at the position of the Roman numeral "IV", there was an extremely tiny, non-standard scratch, a shape that reminded Ling Ye of a fleeting, incomplete symbol from the chip information.

Then there was the homeless man at the edge of the square, always keeping his head down, wrapped in a dirty coat, with a broken bowl placed in front of him. When a slightly stronger gust of wind blew by, lifting a corner of his coat hem, Ling Ye caught a glimpse of what appeared to be some kind of non-medical, flexible tubing emitting a faint blue light wrapped around his lower leg. Furthermore, when he looked at a police patrol drone passing through the air, his pupils contracted and shifted for an instant, lacking the numbness of an ordinary homeless person.

Beneath the surface of this seemingly calm, old community, there seemed to be quite a bit of peculiar "sediment" floating.

Ling Ye did not stay long. He stood up and headed toward the community public information station. It was a semi-open pavilion containing public holographic information query terminals, where one could freely access unencrypted public information, community announcements, government documents, basic news, and more.

He queried the public information regarding the "Oak Street Community Old Ore Processing Plant." The data indicated that it was a small processing plant built about fifty years ago, used for preliminary screening and crude refining of associated rare crystals mined from nearby mines. It was closed and abandoned twenty years ago due to the exhaustion of Ore veins, aging equipment, and rising environmental standards. The ownership had changed hands several times, and it currently seemed to belong to a holding company with a very long name and unclear business operations. Most of the equipment in the plant area had been dismantled, but the main building and some underground structures had not been completely cleared due to processing costs; they were simply sealed off with a wall and warning signs.

He then searched for recent local news about Azure Planet, especially reports involving keywords like "abnormal phenomena," "unsolved events," and "folklore" (filtering out obviously fictional entertainment news). There were not many results, but a few caught his attention:

A month ago, at another mining settlement about two hundred kilometers from Dawn City, it was reported that mining robots experienced a brief collective "logical disorder" at night, spinning in place or executing incorrect commands, only to automatically recover after daybreak. The engineering department attributed it to "temporary electromagnetic interference caused by strong solar winds" after testing.

About two weeks ago, an amateur astronomer shooting star trails on the outskirts of Dawn City claimed to have captured a meteor with a "very short duration, abnormal trajectory, and fluctuating brightness," but the observatory did not detect any record of meteorites entering the atmosphere or space debris ablation at the corresponding time and coordinates.

A few days ago, right around the time of Ling Ye's "accident," a node on the Dawn City public network experienced unexplained instantaneous data congestion and a small number of error packets at night. The scope of the impact was small, and the duration was extremely short. The network service provider issued an announcement stating it was a "hardware failure that has been repaired."

Viewed individually, these events could all be explained, but their proximity in time, and the fact that they all involved "electronic device abnormalities," "optical phenomenon abnormalities," and "data abnormalities," made Ling Ye unable to help but connect them to the "magnetic field disturbances," "Crystal-Armored Beast behavioral abnormalities," and "community strange noises" in his mind. If these "abnormalities" were related, then their source might not be a single event, but rather a kind of… diffuse, low-intensity, intermittent "interference" or "influence" quietly occurring in this area.

This had a certain unsettling similarity in "pattern" to the "erosion" characteristics of the "death and ending" aura exuded by the terrifying entity he had perceived from the chip's imagery—both were imperceptible, progressive, and manifested across multiple Domains.

Ling Ye silently noted down the useful information he had found (including the long name of the Old Factory District ownership company), cleared his search history, and left the information station.

When he returned to the bottom of the apartment building, it was already past ten in the morning. The shopping and investigation had taken nearly three hours.

He did not go upstairs immediately but stood below the building, activating his High-Dimensional Information Perception once more. This time, he did it actively and focusedly to "feel" the apartment building, especially the top floor where he lived.

He "scanned" up floor by floor. Most residents were out for work or school, and inside the apartments, there were only basic standby signals from smart appliances. In his top-floor apartment, apart from his own vital signs and terminal signals, there were no other abnormalities. However, when he "magnified" his perception to feel the energy flow and information background noise of the entire building and its surrounding environment, he once again captured that extremely faint, intermittent "sense of disharmony" that was of the same origin as the black stone in Uncle Chen's shop. This feeling did not come from inside his apartment but seemed to permeate the building Materials, underground pipelines, and even the air—it was very thin, but it truly existed.

This building, or rather the underground or architectural structure of this community, might contain traces of some special "event" or "influence" that had occurred in the past. These traces were too faint to have any effect on ordinary people and were even difficult for instruments to detect; only his converted perception, which was sensitive to "High-Dimensional Information" and "rule abnormalities," could faintly detect them.

Ling Ye understood. He did not linger any longer and turned to go upstairs.

Back in his apartment, he sorted the purchased items, changed into his new work clothes, washed the black stone, and placed it in a corner of his desk. Then, he opened his personal terminal again, this time connecting to the Federation's public academic database (he had basic access rights thanks to his student status).

He entered the long name of the Old Factory District ownership company to query it. The results were sparse, consisting only of some old, vague industrial and commercial registration and equity change records, which showed that the company was a wholly-owned subsidiary of an offshore investment fund named "Deep Space Frontier Capital." The equity structure of "Deep Space Frontier Capital" was extremely complex, layered and nested, ultimately pointing to several anonymous trusts established in tax-free Star Domains outside the Federation.

A typical shell company operation. The purpose was to hide the true owner.

He also tried to search for "Deep Space Frontier Capital" and other companies or projects it might be associated with. The information was fragmented, but he noticed that the entities under or associated with this capital seemed to have dabbled in quite a few "non-mainstream" investment fields over the past few decades: obscure deep space exploration theoretical research institutes, near-bankrupt archaeological instrument manufacturers, private associations studying extraterrestrial civilization ruins (not officially confirmed), and even including… some fringe research projects on "potential applications of psionic energy" and "non-Newtonian biology."

Most of these investments were loss-making or came to nothing, looking like the crazy bets of a venture capitalist. But Ling Ye smelled something different. These investment directions, more or less, all pointed toward the "unknown," the "supernormal," the "extraterrestrial," and "non-mainstream science." There was an overlap in the direction of "curiosity" with the "Deep Space Exploration Research Institute" of the "Star Gate Echo" mission.

Could it be that the "Deep Space Exploration Research Institute" where his parents worked had some connection with this "Deep Space Frontier Capital" hidden behind the shell company, or even with the ownership of the Old Factory District? Was the abandonment of the Old Factory District not simply due to resource exhaustion? Did that ownership company have some other purpose in retaining this seemingly worthless piece of wasteland?

The clues were still fragmented, but the thread was faintly emerging.

Ling Ye closed the terminal, walked to the window, and looked toward the direction of the Old Factory District again. That area, surrounded by walls and warning signs, overgrown with weeds, with rusted buildings faintly visible, appeared particularly quiet in the morning sunlight.

Strange noises, abnormalities, the fog of ownership, possible "Deep Space" connections… and the faint "sense of disharmony" he had perceived permeating the community environment.

Everything seemed to be faintly pointing in that direction.

In the afternoon, he needed to return to the academy to report and participate in the so-called "rehabilitation assessment." That was a necessary step for him to reintegrate into society, and he could also obtain more information through the academy's channels.

But before that…

Ling Ye checked the time, then looked at the quiet community street outside.

He needed a bit of "on-site," more direct perception.