NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 8
**Chapter 8: Sea Without Light 08**
Kui Xin quickly flipped through the pages.
“Mission: Completely blow up the port of Hei Hai City to prevent the Kraken, a giant cargo ship, from docking in Hei Hai City. This is Mission Plan A.”
“If Plan A is chosen, the port demolition must be completed before August 11th. After August 11th, the Kraken will enter the waters of Hei Hai City, and the mission will fail.”
“Mission Plan B: Secretly board the Kraken to install explosive devices and sink it.”
“If Plan B is chosen, it must be blown up before the Kraken enters the waters of Hei Hai City on August 11th.”
“The ultimate goal of the mission is to prevent the Kraken from entering the vicinity of Hei Hai City. Repeat, the ultimate goal of the mission is to prevent the Kraken from entering the vicinity of Hei Hai City.”
From this mission briefing, Kui Xin sensed an air of urgency.
What exactly was the Kraken? Why was Mechanized Dawn willing to go to such lengths to prevent it from arriving in Hei Hai City?
The Kraken was a giant cargo ship; the ship itself should have no abnormalities. The only abnormalities could lie with the cargo it carried!
What cargo could have made Mechanized Dawn so concerned… no, so fearful?
They even decided to blow up the port to destroy the ship just to prevent the cargo-laden vessel from entering Hei Hai City.
What was being transported on the Kraken?
Kui Xin suppressed her palpitating heart and continued to review the mission materials.
“Port Zone No. 5 large cargo ship dock. Warehouse 6308 in Zone D is regularly supplied with arms; supplies can be collected if needed. The Ruby Red Bar on Peace Avenue in the Harbor Zone is a public safe house for organization members, equipped with medical equipment and weapon maintenance tools, and will regularly replenish small firearms and ammunition. The entry code is ‘A glass of intoxicated deep blue.’ The owner of the Hunter Shooting Club in the North Zone can provide mission funding. The third-floor mechanical prosthetics laboratory of Rick Technology Company can provide technological assistance to mission executors…”
The more Kui Xin read, the more hair-raising it became.
This Mechanized Dawn organization was frighteningly powerful.
She laid out these details clearly—first, Mechanized Dawn had the capability to mobilize the port warehouses of Hei Hai City as armories. Second, they had many organization members in Hei Hai City, so much so that a public safe house was needed as a meeting place. Third, they seemed very wealthy, with dedicated personnel responsible for allocating mission funds. Fourth, Rick Technology Company likely directly belonged to Mechanized Dawn, or it was a front company created by them.
Silverface looked at Kui Xin: “Have you finished? Anything you want to say?”
“I’m calculating how many lives I need to prepare for this mission. Is a hundred enough?” Kui Xin humorously remarked under immense pressure.
“Just go execute the plan,” Silverface said indifferently, “Even if it takes lives, as long as we can prevent the things on the Kraken from entering Hei Hai City, our sacrifices will be worthwhile. If we die, it doesn’t matter; our comrades will continue to complete the mission before August 11th.”
Kui Xin deeply suspected that Mechanized Dawn was actually a brainwashing organization, and the person in front of her, codenamed “Silverface,” had probably been thoroughly brainwashed, caring little for their own life.
She looked down at the time on her wristband.
The date in the Second World was July 28, 2086, and the current time was 00:23, deep in the night.
“We have less than half a month to complete the mission with the other teams,” Silverface said, “It’s quite urgent.”
“Got it, I’ll devise an action plan as soon as possible,” Kui Xin said, “However, as an intern security officer, I also have things that must be accomplished; those from the Investigation Bureau are not easily fooled.”
“The Investigation Bureau, the puppets of the consortium,” Silverface scoffed, “You’re responsible for gathering intelligence, and I’ll handle the execution; we can discuss the plan together.”
Kui Xin nodded slowly.
She stood in the living room with Silverface for a while. Seeing that he had no intention of speaking, she finally said, “I need to do my own thing; you do as you wish.”
Kui Xin was uncertain about the interaction model among the members of Mechanized Dawn’s execution squads and didn’t know if there were any customary rules during mission execution. Saying “you do as you wish” was sufficient to express the end of the conversation.
Moreover, Kui Xin indeed had her own business to attend to.
Under Silverface’s watchful gaze, she carefully inspected every room in the house. The room of the morning sun was a bedroom with a small wardrobe. Another room was a secondary bedroom used as a storage room. The balcony held two pots of nearly dying green plants.
Kui Xin turned to the kitchen. The kitchen was fully equipped with pots and pans. She opened the old refrigerator with peeling paint and found some ingredients inside.
This house had a distinctly lived-in feel, but unfortunately, the owner had died, and Kui Xin was a squatter.
She closed the refrigerator door, walked straight into the bedroom, and began rummaging through the wardrobe.
There were no unsealed intimate clothing in the wardrobe, so Kui Xin took a bath towel and found a clean set of home clothes before stepping into the bathroom, slamming the door shut with a bang.
Silverface expressionlessly stared at the bathroom until the light turned on and the sound of water began to flow, at which point he slowly realized—this woman was taking a shower.
He immediately shifted his gaze and retreated to sit by the sofa, his hands resting neatly on his knees, like a well-behaved elementary school student.
Kui Xin was somewhat in the mindset of “if the pot breaks, let it break.”
Since things were already so terrible, she couldn’t keep compromising herself. The worst outcome would be death, but before dying, she still wanted to struggle a bit longer. Maybe through her struggles, she might just make it to the end?
She was a qualified undercover agent, an excellent actress. She was playing the role of an intern rookie from the Investigation Bureau, fully immersing herself into the character and imagining herself as “Kui Xin,” a young girl who had just graduated from university and found employment.
It was completely reasonable for a young girl to take a hot shower after getting soaked in the rain after work; her actions were logical.
Warm water flowed down, and Kui Xin self-hypnotized, repeatedly calming her thoughts to keep them steady.
She spent twenty minutes showering and adjusting her mindset. Twenty minutes later, she put on clean clothes and exited the bathroom, only to find that Silverface was still sitting in the living room.
Upon seeing Kui Xin emerge, he shot her a cold glance before shifting his gaze away.
Kui Xin couldn’t quite understand what this guy wanted.
She towel-dried her hair, turning her thoughts around a few times before saying to him, “What are your next plans…”
“Standby,” Silverface replied.
Standby, where? Standby right next to her? Why wasn’t this guy leaving!
In order to mask her expression, Kui Xin turned and went into the kitchen. She took out a few ingredients from the refrigerator, intending to grab a quick bite.
Since her cranial surgery, she hadn’t eaten and was already starving. Fortunately, the kitchen wasn’t too “high-tech” and still used clean energy like gas. She turned on the fire and put a pot on to boil some noodles.
Silverface was intently watching Kui Xin’s movements as she cooked, and suddenly her stomach let out a grumble.
Silverface: “…”
Kui Xin: “…”
“Do you want to eat?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yes,” Silverface replied quickly.
So, Kui Xin added a handful of noodles to the pot and cracked in two eggs.
Details, this was a detail. She stared blankly at the boiling noodles in the pot.
Through Silverface’s unhesitating acceptance of the meal invitation, Kui Xin judged that he wasn’t as cold and flawless as he appeared; he even… seemed a bit unguarded, trusting his partner.
If it were Kui Xin, she wouldn’t eat food handled by a stranger at this critical moment; perhaps various novels and movies had made her too paranoid.
The noodles were done, and Kui Xin served her portion at the dining table, telling Silverface, “You can serve yourself.”
Silverface stood from the sofa, found a bowl, and with his fingers spread, the noodles along with the remaining egg floated steadily into the bowl without spilling a drop of soup.
Kui Xin’s hand holding the chopsticks trembled slightly.
This was an extraordinary ability! Silverface actually possessed extraordinary abilities!
He sat down with the bowl across from Kui Xin, raised his hand, and lifted the hood to reveal his mask.
Under the mask, his face was pale as snow, with white eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair, his irises a faint pink, and faint red veins showed on either side of his neck and cheeks. Were it not for the faint hint of red, he would resemble a drifting ghost, a lifeless walking corpse.
Silverface’s pale pink eyes glared at Kui Xin: “What are you looking at? Have you never seen someone with albinism?”
She hadn’t seen anyone with albinism, but what Kui Xin cared about wasn’t his unusual appearance, but the extraordinary abilities he had inadvertently revealed.
“I thought you wouldn’t take off your mask while eating,” Kui Xin attempted to change the subject.
“How could I eat without taking off the mask?” Silverface asked in confusion.
“That’s something you should be asking yourself,” Kui Xin said slowly.
Silverface seemed to realize something: “Did you think I wear a mask to look cool?”
“I didn’t say that,” Kui Xin said, looking down at her noodles.
Silverface grumpily picked up a noodle and bit into it, scalding himself. Frustrated, he opened his hand and controlled the noodles to float up and down in the air to cool them down quickly. Once the temperature had finally dropped, he picked up his chopsticks and started eating heartily.
This guy… didn’t seem very smart.
Kui Xin thought thoughtfully.
She made plain boiled noodles, adding only a bit of salt, the taste quite uncomplimentary, yet Silverface was not picky at all, devouring his meal in no time.
His noodle-eating manner reminded Kui Xin of the piglets at her grandfather’s house in the countryside.
“Go wash the dishes,” Kui Xin proposed this request, wanting to see if Silverface would comply.
Without any complaints, Silverface took the two empty bowls to the sink and turned on the faucet.
“Turn the faucet down a bit, water is expensive,” Kui Xin said.
Silverface: “What’s with you and all these demands? This house isn’t yours! The water bill doesn’t come from your account!”
“Playing the role means imitating every detail, whether in front of people or in private. You wouldn’t understand,” Kui Xin provided an impeccable reasoning.
Silverface patiently controlled the water as he washed the dishes, and after finishing, he placed the bowls in the cupboard.
Kui Xin secretly observed; Silverface’s extraordinary abilities seemed related to water, as he didn’t control floating bowls or other objects, only the water flow, which was his medium.
When Silverface first appeared in Kui Xin’s home, she initially thought he was an acquaintance of the original owner, thus she held back.
After a series of conversations and tests, Kui Xin tentatively concluded that the original owner and Silverface were not familiar, and this was probably their first meeting. Because when Silverface took off his mask, he said, “Have you never seen someone with albinism?”
This statement directly proved that the original owner had never seen Silverface’s true face.
If that were the case, Kui Xin could relax a bit more. She was genuinely worried that her partner could be someone extremely familiar with the original owner, a situation where she might inadvertently reveal flaws after just two or three sentences.
Kui Xin was lucky this time.
She encountered Silverface, who didn’t know her well, and fortunately, he didn’t seem to be too guarded against her.
Most importantly, Silverface was an extraordinary ability user.
If she killed Silverface, could she deprive him of his abilities and gain extraordinary powers for herself?
**Author’s Note:**
Silverface: If you don’t listen and don’t work hard, you can only become Lady Fortune’s plaything qwq