As if realizing something, Rovni holstered her gun and asked Zheng Yang, “How did you detect them?”
“Perception. I have better senses,” Zheng Yang said.
At the moment, Zheng Yang was feeling rather impressed by just how well a gun could work. He would have had a far harder time dealing with those invisible mosquitos if he hadn’t had an enchanted gun in his hand.
But then again, he thought the way the round burned the entity to ash was incredibly wasteful, as there was nothing left for both his spirit vessel and the vessel spirit to feast on.
Now that he knew how mosquitos like those fared in battle, he considered using regular rounds in his future encounters with them so his spirit vessel and vessel spirit had something to eat afterward.
At that thought, he swapped out the magazine in his Desert Eagle with the one carrying regular rounds.
His act of pulling out his gun all of a sudden caused both Rovni and Ricky to draw their guns right away and stand on guard.
That was how Zheng Yang had just acted, after all—drawing his gun all of a sudden.
He was speechless. Ignoring their reactions, he simply swapped out his magazine and holstered his gun again without saying anything.
Rovni and Ricky looked at each other, the corners of their eyes twitching.
“Rovni, the mission was to look into the truth of the goats’ slaughter, right? Is the mission considered complete, then?”
Zheng Yang opened the mission module, clicked on “complete,” and uploaded the pictures of the burning mosquito as proof. He seemed to have seen the 300 contribution points waving at him already.
Rovni stayed silent and confirmed the mission’s status on her phone.
The very next moment, everyone back at the bureau received a notification that Zheng Yang had completed yet another mission.
The 300 contribution points were sent to Zheng Yang’s account. He sent Ricky 100 points and said, “You were a part of the mission too. Here’s 100 points for you.”
“Great! With these 100 points, I can finally get two focus potions to enhance my meditation efficiency,” Ricky exclaimed with glee.
Zheng Yang stared daggers at him.
“Contribution points can be exchanged for potions?” he thought.
Ricky turned his eyes away from Zheng Yang, acting like he was oblivious to his stare.
“When you become an official member, the system will open up an exchange module for you. When that happens, you can trade your contribution points for precious potions, materials, weapons, and even training methods,” Rovni explained with a smirk, looking like she was having a good time toying with him.
Suddenly, Zheng Yang felt that he had been duped, seeing as how none of them had told him the truth about what contribution points could be used for.
…
Despite having killed two huge mosquitos one after another, the old cowboy didn’t look pleased in the slightest, looking more worried instead. If there was a second one, there would be a third one. His goats wouldn’t be safe until every single one of those monsters was eliminated.
Later, Rovni fetched a jacket from her car and stayed around at the farm. All three of them talked with Anthony the cowboy. Other than goats, the cowboy also had cattle, which were kept right beside the goat pen. Furthermore, there was more than one farm around these parts, which made Zheng Yang wonder why the mosquitos only targeted Anthony’s goats.
“What’s so special about his goats, I wonder,” Zheng Yang thought to himself.
Having considered the possibility that someone was controlling the mosquitos, they went on to ask Anthony if someone had a grudge against him, particularly the kind that would make both parties severely hostile towards each other.
Anthony thought this over for quite a long time before finally mentioning someone he thought was most likely the one behind all this.
“Someone asked to buy my farm, and I refused. If someone is behind all this, it’s definitely that guy and no one else. But I don’t know the guy and have no way of contacting him. He came to my door and made the offer, and he didn’t give me any way to contact him.”
Dawn broke. No other mosquitos came, and the goats suffered no losses.
Zheng Yang headed back with Rovni in her car to join the second meeting.
They analyzed the possibility of someone controlling the mosquitos from behind the scenes, as well as if this person was related to the mysterious culprit behind Desmond’s disappearance.
Rovni eventually decided to use her authority and ask the police to have their helicopters search the woods deep in the mountains. Her gut feeling told her that the Order of Holy Spirit may actually have a hidden lair there.
Emily did say that Rovni had a very sharp intuition.
After the brief meeting was over, Zheng Yang had a simple breakfast with the team instead of returning to his boat and then headed out with the helicopter.
All seven metahuman operatives were fielded in that operation, and they headed towards the mountains dozens of kilometers away in two helicopters.
Zheng Yang headed out with Rovni’s team. The helicopter they were taking had a larger cabin with glass windows and long-range cameras. The four of them could easily observe the woods beneath them using binoculars and tablet monitors.
The helicopter hovered above the woods, and Zheng Yang peered down into them with a pair of binoculars, thinking to himself.
“I wonder how high a mosquito like that can fly,” he thought. “Would it actually do a suicide run at the chopper just because I’m in it?”
Things would take a dire turn if that were the case. In his past life, Zheng Yang had seen a movie with a scene where a huge flock of birds actually crashed into a helicopter because they were in a hurry to get up high into the air.
Zheng Yang voiced his concerns to Rovni, and the pilot at the front chuckled. “Sir, if there really is a mosquito that huge, it definitely won’t be able to fly this high and could only stick close to the ground. Besides, you’re talking about movies. Helicopters are far from being that weak, and unless the fuel tank is punctured and ignited, the helicopter isn’t gonna blow up. The worst that could happen is a damaged tail rotor, causing the craft to spin about as it crashes.
“Our choppers have been installed with countermeasures to specifically address those kinds of issues. The tank is covered with layers of bulletproof plating, and the rotor is covered with a screen. Those things aren’t as weak as you’d imagine, since they’re capable of making something this heavy fly, after all. The rotors pack a terrifying force, and most things that ram into them end up being splattered into mush. Have you ever heard of a regular ceiling fan cutting someone’s head off?”
So, that’s how it is, eh?
Zheng Yang thought over what the pilot said, but he was still on edge. Even if the huge mosquitos were indeed incapable of causing catastrophic damage to a helicopter, there might be other eldritch entities around, and they would be alerted to presence. He had to take all this into consideration, and the best thing he could do to avoid all of that was to sit out the mission so as to reduce the variables at play.
However, if he kept out of the mountains, the eldritch entities from the Order of Holy Spirit would simply sit still and do nothing, and the probability and efficiency of the SPB locating the lair of the Order of Holy Spirit would be infinitely reduced.
Furthermore, Zheng Yang also planned to raid the lair for what he was looking for. An ancient, extremist organization like that might actually have information regarding spirit vessels, as well as upgrade scrolls, spirit power cores, and other important materials for upgrades.
After weighing the risks and possible rewards, Zheng Yang eventually decided to take the chance. He was already there, after all, and it was still safer being in the air than on the ground.
“I have a better sense of danger. If I tell you to climb, you have to climb immediately, as fast as you’re able to. Even better if you can maneuver while doing so,” Zheng Yang informed the pilot through the walkie talkie in a serious tone.
The pilot knew that these people were the real deal, so he simply put his thumb up as a sign of acknowledgment, ready to execute said orders as soon as they were given.
The helicopter continued to hover above the woods while Zheng Yang and the others on board continued to look for anything suspicious, ruling out one area after another as they did so.
After returning to base once in the afternoon, the helicopters gradually headed for the centermost region of the mountains.
“Can you get closer to that sinkhole?”
Rovni pointed at a round sinkhole on the monitor and zoomed in to have a better look.
Zheng Yang used his binoculars to look at it through the window and saw the rocks and fauna at the bottom of it. That sinkhole had a diameter approaching 100 meters. Because the edges had eroded and continuously collapsed, the sinkhole had a funnel shape, with its deepest part being about 20 to 30 meters deep.