127: Golden Cicada Shedding Its Shell

"Beep."

A soft notification sounded on Chen Feng's personal terminal, the faint glow of the screen piercing the darkness of the abandoned storage room in Hecate's private auction house.

"Is it done?" Chen Feng asked in a low voice into the terminal.

"It's done," Lao Mo's voice carried a hint of irrepressible fatigue and excitement. "The goods are in hand, lying safely on my workbench."

"Very good." Chen Feng let out a long breath, his tense nerves relaxing slightly.

However, before he could enjoy the joy of success, an emergency message from Su Li popped up on the screen, the bright red font looking like an alarm.

"Chen Feng! J has obtained the port's surveillance permissions and is initiating the highest-level 'Emergency Security Protocol'! He's going to review all data streams from the past forty-eight hours! You must evacuate immediately!"

"He reacted that fast?" Chen Feng's pupils constricted suddenly.

"Yes, he's completely enraged," Su Li's voice was calm but rapid. "According to my model's calculations, it will take him at most twenty minutes to complete the data backtracking and cross-referencing for the auction house area. You only have a twenty-minute window!"

"That's enough." Chen Feng turned off the communication without any hesitation.

He turned and went to the employee locker room, which was filled with the strange smell of sweat mixed with cheap perfume.

"These clothes are probably more expensive than all the clothes I wore in my previous life combined." Chen Feng looked at the well-dressed noble young master in the mirror, wearing a silver mask, and smiled self-mockingly.

He quickly took off the expensive formal wear, and along with the mask, crumpled it into a ball without a hint of regret and stuffed it into the material recycling pipe in the corner. That was the entrance to the incinerator; in a few seconds, this outfit worth hundreds of thousands of credit points would turn to ash.

From the bottom layer of the locker, he took out a greasy canvas bundle that he had hidden long ago.

When he reappeared, he had transformed into a port maintenance worker wearing dirty overalls and smelling of engine oil.

"Hey, kid, stop right there!"

Just as he stepped into a busy logistics corridor, Chen Feng ran head-on into a team of Alliance Agents conducting inspections.

The lead agent's eyes were sharp as a hawk's, and the scanner in his hand swept over him, emitting a piercing alarm.

"You, have you seen anyone suspicious?" the agent asked sharply, his hand already on the pistol grip at his waist.

Chen Feng seemed startled by the display, then his face showed an expression of extreme impatience. Using a heavy local accent, he pointed at a group of noble guests behind him who were hugging dancers and were dead drunk, complaining loudly:

"Suspicious people? Officer, you're asking me? Look at these rich guys! Pouring expensive wine on the floor, vomiting everywhere, and even peeing on my maintenance robot! If you ask me, besides us workers, which one of them doesn't look suspicious?"

"You!" The agent was choked up by his self-righteous complaining.

"What about me? I can't do this job anymore! If Lady Hecate finds out her central air conditioning is clogged because of these people's vomit, see who she comes for first!" Chen Feng threw the wrench in his hand onto the floor, looking like he was ready to quit.

"Fine, fine, get lost! Don't get in the way here!"

The lead agent was intimidated by his realistic attitude and the mention of "Lady Hecate," and waved his hand impatiently. This was Hecate's territory; no one wanted to cause unnecessary trouble.

"Hmph, bureaucrats," Chen Feng muttered, picked up the wrench, and walked past them swaggeringly without glancing at them again... Inside the Omni-Dimensional Trade Alliance's mobile command vehicle.

"Find him for me!" J's voice sounded like it was squeezed out from between his teeth. "Cross-reference all biological signals, spaceship engine signals, and capital flow signals that have left the auction house area! I want to dig him out from the grave of data!"

...Chen Feng dodged several newly added surveillance cameras and slipped into the machine room of the central air conditioning system.

The huge turbine fans made a deafening roar; this was a natural blind spot for surveillance.

He skillfully pried open a ventilation duct grille that had a structural vulnerability mentioned in the "Raven" intelligence and crawled inside.

The duct was filled with the smell of dust and rust, but for Chen Feng, it was much safer than the eyes of the agents outside.

After crawling for about ten minutes, he finally saw the exit.

Below the exit was the port's automated garbage disposal center.

He took a deep breath and jumped down, falling into a huge disposal pool filled with stinking organic waste.

*Splat!*

The slimy, foul-smelling liquid instantly submerged his knees.

Chen Feng endured the nausea that made him want to vomit, trudging through a mountain of garbage composed of rotting food, discarded packaging, and unidentified liquids.

Finally, he found the sealed cargo box that Reno had left beforehand, marked with an inconspicuous cross in the corner.

He pushed open the lid with effort and crawled inside.

The box was filled with the expired military nutrient paste they had purchased earlier, and the sour, rotten smell was almost suffocating.

Chen Feng curled up in the corner and closed the lid.

"Grabbing cargo box number 774..."

A massive automated mechanical arm precisely picked up the cargo box and loaded it onto an inconspicuous short-haul cargo barge... On the wanderer's cargo deck.

With a heavy docking sound, the cargo box was smoothly transported into the hold.

Chen Feng crawled out of it, emitting a stench that would make even the most smell-insensitive creature recoil.

"Boss!" Reno and Lao Mo, who were waiting there, immediately rushed forward.

"I'm fine," Chen Feng waved his hand. "Let me take a shower first; I feel like I'm about to be pickled in this smell."

Fifteen minutes later.

Chen Feng walked out of the shower room wearing clean combat fatigues, feeling like he had finally come back to life.

However, Su Li's emergency communication request came in almost at the same time, her holographic projection's pretty face full of solemnity.

"Chen Feng, the situation has changed!"

"Speak."

"J's investigation has yielded results! Although he didn't find any traces of your escape, however..." Su Li's voice paused, every word feeling like a thousand-pound weight.

"However, he discovered the payment we made to the 'Skull Crusher' mercenary group for the feint plan!"

"He has already guessed that our next step is a frontal assault!"