“...?” A hushed voice came from beside him. It belonged to the young man from the Night Watch responsible for coordinating with him, nicknamed “Rat.” A streetwise sharpness showed in his eyes and brows. He had a habit of licking his lower lip as he spoke. “Just finished checking the place. There’s a three-minute gap during the shift change at the museum’s back entrance, ten seconds longer than you predicted. Guess the guards were dragging their feet because it’s cold tonight.”
Cheng Xing sat up, his back against the cold brick wall. His fingertips tapped lightly on the ground. He had just run through Rat’s intel again in his head. The pale blue screen of the War Simulation System still lingered on his retinas, streams of dense data sinking down along his nerve endings before finally stopping at the yin-yang node on the museum’s basement level. The place was marked “Artifact Restoration Room,” but the simulator clearly showed a faint barrier of soul energy laid down by the underworld beneath it, sharing the same source as the conservative faction’s aura he had sensed in the Blood Pool Abyss. “A ten-second margin of error is acceptable,” he said. His voice was a little hoarse from just waking up, low and measured from years spent on the frontier. “The main entrance’s infrared alarm runs on two systems. Are you sure you can hack it for three minutes?”
