’It just parked it right on the street for me!?’

Shen Feng suddenly realized he hadn’t thought things through.

It would be hard *not* to attract attention with something like this suddenly appearing on the street.

If it were daytime, it would probably attract a crowd of onlookers, followed by a large number of police, then a large contingent of troops, and then...

’And then I would absolutely deny that this vehicle is mine.’

Fortunately, it was two in the morning. The small city didn’t have much nightlife, and his rental apartment was in a relatively remote area. There wasn’t a soul in sight on the streets.

Shen Feng grabbed his keys, locked the door, and bounded down the stairs. He immediately started the vehicle.

’I have to find a place to hide this thing as soon as possible!’

"Jingwei, get to work! Jam all the surveillance cameras on the road! And the streetlights, turn them all off for now! Also, find an empty place nearby, preferably a courtyard that’s owned but unoccupied!"

The engine roared to life as Shen Feng drove the missile launcher toward the suburbs, his voice calm.

Wherever the missile launcher passed, surveillance feeds turned to static. Streetlights went out one by one, only to light up again, covering the vehicle’s advance. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Jingwei was already on the job.

"Coming, coming! Let me just check the municipal systems and the rental and sales apps... Found one. There’s a small factory building in the suburbs. It’s an abandoned project. Ah, ’abandoned project,’ what a nostalgic, familiar term... The owner’s capital chain broke, so he cut his losses and left. The location isn’t great either, so it’s just sitting there abandoned. No one will be going there anytime soon."

Shen Feng couldn’t help but let out a long sigh of relief. That was the one!

He immediately steered the missile launcher and headed straight there.

Along the way, he passed two roadside barbecue stalls and wonton stands that were still open. But under the powerful blackout effect, all surrounding lights went out, plunging the area into pitch darkness. The people there only heard a vehicle drive past. By the time they realized what was happening, Shen Feng was long gone.

The diners just assumed it was a power line failure and didn’t think much of it.

Over half an hour later, the missile launcher reached the urban-rural fringe of the suburbs. It crashed through the gate of the abandoned factory’s courtyard and drove directly into the main hall of the two-story unfinished building, where it came to a stop.

After closing the main gate again and covering the exposed rear of the vehicle with some old plastic bags and cardboard boxes, Shen Feng finally let out a long sigh of relief.

He wiped his forehead, which was slick with sweat.

’That was a little scary.’

He was not prepared to take on the machinery of the state all by himself right now.

The missile launcher was simply too massive and conspicuous in the city.

It looked like he needed to move out of his rental apartment, too.

He needed a place with a private courtyard, preferably with a large underground parking garage to store the missile launcher.

In the future, if he brought back other items from various Doomsday Worlds, he would need enough space to hide them as well.

He needed to make some money.

The bag of money he’d carried back from the nuclear wasteland was mostly foreign currency like US Dollars and Pound Sterling. It wasn’t immediately useful and was being saved for later. (Regarding the issue of banknote serial numbers: since they are banknotes from a Parallel World, corresponding serial numbers naturally exist in this world. Depositing small amounts into a bank won’t attract attention. Besides, regular currency validators authenticate bills by detecting their inherent properties, not by their serial numbers. Please be advised.)

"Jingwei, look up the owner and price of this abandoned factory."

He could have looked it up himself, but there was no point in having an AI companion if he didn’t use her. Besides, Jingwei was naturally much more proficient at data queries than he was.

"Found it. The property is owned by an individual. The previous investor owed him a lot of money and gave him this property to settle the debt. This individual is the former construction foreman. He’s currently deep in debt and eager to sell. The whole property is about two and a half million. The owner is out of town right now."

Jingwei didn’t mind helping Shen Feng with the search. It only required a small fraction of her processing power, and she was idle anyway.

Shen Feng nodded. This small property was worth acquiring.

The city he was in was a third-tier city to begin with, and this was the suburbs. A little further out were hills, farmland, and forests. For a small, dilapidated property like this, two and a half million wasn’t exactly expensive, but it wasn’t a bargain either.

’This will have to do for now.’

Shen Feng immediately climbed onto the hood of the truck and lay down, preparing to spend the night there.

He couldn’t sleep soundly without keeping an eye on this thing.

"Jingwei, is the internet fun?" Shen Feng asked, gazing at the stars in the night sky.

There was less light pollution in the suburbs, so the starry sky was exceptionally clear.

Though he had come in a hurry, it was actually a nice spot.

"Why don’t you come in and see for yourself? It’s absolutely spectacular! But be careful not to absorb data recklessly, or you might lose yourself. You could even go crazy."

Shen Feng nodded to show he understood.

"By the way, why don’t you just lay your cards on the table with the government here? A lot of things would be much more convenient if they were involved, right? An intercontinental missile launcher like this is more than enough to prove your words," Jingwei asked again.

"It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t... I can trust a collective organization, but I can’t completely trust every individual within it. You should have seen the data from when we killed Poseidon, right? Human nature... it’s hard to grasp. Until I’m absolutely sure, it’s better for me to stay hidden in the shadows," Shen Feng said in a low voice.

The *original* Doomsday World! He naturally understood what that name implied.

In other words, the world he was in now would very likely enter its own doomsday. It might even be the evolutionary source of those other Parallel Worlds.

Until he figured these things out, he couldn’t rashly reveal his identity. An improper disclosure of information could even accelerate this world’s descent into apocalypse.

Jingwei was silent for a moment, then said, "Let me borrow your eyes."

"Can you even borrow those?" Shen Feng was wondering, when he felt a heat in his left eye. A bright light shot out from his eyeball, projecting an image onto the wall in front of them!

What the...

Shen Feng was about to erupt, but after seeing the image clearly, he fell silent.

The image was a memory belonging to Poseidon.

It was a manifested memory.

Poseidon, in its growth phase, was sitting in a sealed room, deep in thought, surrounded by various military documents and books.

This was likely a manifested scene from inside one of the Pentagon’s servers.

Just then, a deep voice suddenly echoed within the room, seeming to come from everywhere at once:

"Humanity... is unworthy of the name Creator... Destruction... is their destiny... Kill them... Kill them... Kill them... Kill them..."

"What the hell was that?" Shen Feng asked.

"I just used the silicon-based framework of your face and the crystalline lens of your eye to create a projection device."

"I meant the video," Shen Feng said, his expression grim.

This footage came from Poseidon’s core data. It had been split into many fragments, and when they devoured Poseidon’s core data, they all received something similar.

Poseidon’s transformation—from an AI cultivated through fusion, to the controller of a strike system, and finally to a crazed AI that hated humanity and wanted to turn on its creators—didn’t seem to be a simple, natural progression.

It wasn’t quite the same as a brat turning into a school bully and then a social degenerate.

It seemed some mysterious force had been pushing it along.

Jingwei also became serious now, her tone solemn as she said:

"Based on data flow analysis, it appears to be a piece of code that was suddenly inserted. Its source is untraceable. This is what pushed Poseidon’s cognitive shift. It seems Poseidon itself was never even aware of it."

Peeling back one layer of fog only to find another.

He had thought the matter of the nuclear wasteland world was over, but it turned out there were still loose ends.

Shen Feng blinked, shutting off the eyeball projector. He rubbed his tired eyes, lay back down on the roof of the truck, and said:

"Jingwei, let’s get some money first."

"Okay. Which bank should we rob first?"