Players Invade Cyberpunk-Chapter 660 - 212: Yilin: The Inherent Vices of a Certain Group_3

"Oh! I'm also a Masked Rider. When I grow up, I want to fight bad guys too."

Nishikawa Lingmei jumped down from the high stool and, holding her milk tea, mimicked a pose in front of the Masked Rider. Her adorable action made the eyes of the other players in the ice house light up. They quickly captured the moment and uploaded it to the official website, causing a frenzy of excitement on the forum.

The graffiti framed and hanging in the office was seen by players as an irreplaceable legendary artifact boosting morale by +100.

While a few were having fun, the ice house owner, the cop, walked in and ordered a meal at the counter.

"A milk tea and a beef fried rice."

Although there was synthetic sirloin, it was nothing like real beef, apart from the taste. It was loose and had no chewiness, being a compressed mixture of cloned pure lean meat + fat + tendons, barely better than nothing.

Standing at the counter, Miki saw it was the owner and respectfully said,

"Alright, the meal will be ready shortly."

Then she called out to her daughter, still playing joyfully in the back,

"Lingmei, go greet the customer."

"Okay~~"

Everything owned by players, including Lin Miao, followed electronic procedures. Even the cop had to pay if Lin Miao came here to eat. From cost of materials to logistics, to staff wages, income, and profit, everything was calculated to three decimal places, and every corner of the store was monitored. Even a piece of meat falling on the ground would be counted as loss.

Though Miki cherished this hard-earned job, not everyone thought the same. Within half a month, many players recruited NPCs from society had changed for the third time.

The cop sat across from the Masked Rider, and after receiving the milk tea passed by Lingmei, did not avoid the other players, speaking directly to the Masked Rider,

"Do you remember some time ago when the vixen mentioned the large mysterious space underground in the Taiping Continent?"

"I remember. That guy used to hang out in the sewers every day, stinking like a real vampire. I'm really scared he'll stop being human one day."

The Masked Rider realized and asked,

"Does he have new information?"

"Yes." The cop nodded.

"He got it from an old Haitian."

Since the Stone Ridge Mountain incident, Haitians and players had increasingly communicated. Lin Miao even entrusted part of the program development work to Placid and his people, while hacker players frequently visited for technical exchanges.

"The old man said that over twenty years ago, while working on a construction site on the Taiping Continent, they encountered a hollow when the pile foundation was driven too deep. They poured dozens of truckloads of concrete into it but couldn't fill it, so the contractor simply opened the hole and sent people down to investigate."

"They discovered a massive laboratory underground, almost a quarter the size of the Taiping Continent. It seemed to be a relic from the 2020s, with military technology logos scattered throughout the ruins...."

"WOW."

At this moment, not only the Masked Rider, but many players around also gathered to hear the latest insider information.

"Military technology? What does it have to do with the Taiping Continent?"

The cop: "How would I know? I heard it from the vixen, he heard it from the old man, the old man heard it from his brother, his brother heard it from...."

"Stop, stop." The Masked Rider quickly interrupted, "Enough about that, get back to the relic."

"Ahem... The contractor, after discovering this, thought of making a quick buck before the news got out. However, for some reason, many died, and the survivors went mad. Later the disturbance attracted military technology and the Ye family, who cement-closed it like a tomb."

"Ah... Where's that tomb?"

Although eager to ridicule how similar this development was to Chernobyl, the Masked Rider was more curious about the so-called relic's entrance.

"Well, it should be over there."

The cop pointed towards the wall in the distance at the entrance.

"....Isn't that Dog Town?"

"Yeah, Dog Town."

The cop tapped the table, with a deep tone,

"Also, the waters of the Taiping Continent might be deeper than we think. Do you remember the Cleaner?"

"Remember, the one by the roadside."

The newbie listening to the boss's explanation chimed in.

In Night City, the Cleaner was the most frequently encountered local monster by newcomers. They dropped a lot of equipment and implants, but their level was low, and their combat strength was a tier below other gangs.

"From my experience as a cop in Kowloon, like Huang Ban to the Tiger Claw Gang, military technology to the Sixth Street Gang, there's definitely someone behind the Cleaner. And that person is in the biggest black market in Night City — Dog Town."

"Given the Cleaner's crime frequency, they harvest a considerable number of mid to low-end cyber implants annually. As far as I know, their presence is in almost every city across America. Such a quantity of implants can't be absorbed by the local market alone, so they all have to flow through Dog Town, the largest black market in North America."

Kowloon, if nothing else, is known for smuggling.

Since the 1950s, the smuggling industry in Kowloon has only grown day by day. From drugs, guns to pig trotters, and seafood, shipping to the mainland or smuggling to Kowloon, the billions-dollar industry can't be eliminated because of the huge profits. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

That's why the cop has a lot to say on this matter.

"So, I conducted a private investigation. Guess who the buyer behind these low-end cyber implants is?"

A newbie skeptically asked,

"Could it be the Chinese? Doing the Huaqiangbei smuggling foreign garbage thing again?"

The cop: "No, from the information we gathered, Tokyo University is fully capable of domestic production without importing a large number of low-end foreign junk. There's someone else."

"The buyer is the Soviet Union, meaning the Cleaner is backed by Soviet Petrochemical."

"And it's not just the Soviet Union involved in Dog Town; military technology, Zeta Technology, and Peizhuo Petrochemical, all these major corporations are sending smuggled goods in. This mission isn't just high level; taking it on head-on, we absolutely don't have a chance of winning."