Now let me explain why things weren't going smoothly. On paper, Yang Yang's team had a top-tier setup. First off, they had the only S-tier fighter, Zhen Nantan. His ability was still a mystery, but his combat power was ridiculous. Then they had the intuition-based national treasure Hao Yunlai, who could sense danger, and word was this mission would've gone cleanly without Hao Yunlai's help.
Then there was the brain, Yang Yang, whose intel was frighteningly good. A lot of their fights were won with information rather than brute force. With a combo like that, what could possibly stop them?
The answer was, this trip's destination was Austin.
Sound familiar? Of course. The underground black market and the slavers' boss had chosen Austin as their sanctuary this time.
Yang Yang's crew had also come to Austin to steal a full set of dehydration tech for vegetables, swiping the nobles' and slavers' most precious grain from a No. 23 freighter. You can imagine how furious the nobles and slavers were. They dropped a ton of money to have Austin run a global manhunt. If anyone from Yang Yang's team showed their face now, the slavers would find out instantly.
Since everyone was in Austin, couldn't Yang Yang and his few people just disguise themselves and hide? No. Austin's reputation had something to do with it. If slavers were coming to seek sanctuary, it meant Austin had real power.
Before the apocalypse, Austin was the capital of Texas, on par with Silicon Valley as a tech hub. Dell had headquarters there, IBM, Amazon, and other research centers had labs, it was a place where computing and tech were top-notch.
After the world fell apart, Austin leaned into tech even harder. With advanced tech and strict equality and security, it became dominant, and lots of farm owners came asking for protection. Austin developed a complete, independent system, turning itself into a utopia of equality, safety, and freedom in America.
When most of Austin was flooded the second year, the mayor rebuilt over the surviving city using a newly developed material to make a massive "castle" that covered the district. It wasn't just waterproof, it was quake resistant, warm in winter and cool in summer, and people started calling it heaven. Countless farm owners and capitalists poured in. If you paid hundreds of pounds of grain (around 45 kg), you could enter the castle. How you lived inside depended entirely on how much resources you had.
So Austin split into two parts.
The huge Castle held two hundred thousand grain dealers and middle-class people from everywhere, gathering the world's top tech and mountains of supplies.
Outside the Castle lived drifters and those who couldn't afford food, people scraping by with odd jobs, though their lives were still much better than most places.
What does it feel like to have cutting-edge tech and computing? Yang Yang's crew found out as soon as they arrived. They were flagged as wanted. Forget getting into the Castle, the outskirts had daily patrols. Any Chinese face would be dragged to the data center for checks, and the Castle had its own sealed grid and layered inspections. You couldn't slip past those.
So Yang Yang reverted to his old trade, killed some locals, flayed their skin, and used it to disguise themselves, planning to hack into the data center and alter records. Then they'd sneak into the Castle to steal whatever they needed.
But Austin's tech was so insane that when Yang Yang went through a full-body scanner, the system instantly matched fingerprints, iris, and facial patterns and flagged the fake leather masks. If Zhen Nantan hadn't intervened, things would've gone very badly.
In front of those machines, two sheets of collagen didn't fool anything, the infiltration failed.
They couldn't go in through the front, so they tried to make a hole in the Castle wall and sneak in. The moment they started breaking things, alarms screamed. They ran for a long time with cameras on their tail, and it took a lot of effort to shake them off.
They tried tunnels, aerial bombardment, and other methods, but nothing worked. Austin protected its central tech and supplies like an egg without a seam. There was nowhere to pry.
On top of that, the slavers had exposed their identities, so everyone, including Jing Shu, was being hunted. Now even entering as a Chinese person meant interrogation.
Of course, if they'd never stolen the slavers' cargo, they wouldn't be in this mess.
"So, up to now, you still haven't managed to get into that big Castle in Austin?" Jing Shu asked with an odd expression. "You can't be serious, could such a talented team be stuck on something so small?"
Yang Yang sighed, "We could get in, it's just a matter of cost. We could bribe an entire guard detail, but every area inside the Castle requires identity verification, and those checks need a random authentication code that links to a registered citizen. We stole some high-tech from their people a couple years ago, and they locked down because of that. This time, they're watching for us."
You live wild, you pay the price sooner or later.
Jing Shu went speechless, that's all on you. The place really was that impressive. Everywhere else was dark and grim, but the Castle bathed the air in a soft, comfortable light. The material was called the Ever-Motion Sun, it stayed lit like a luminous pearl and generated its own power.
This new composite was Austin's prized treasure, and who knows if all the legends about its functions were true.
"And the thing we're after is one of the things they're protecting most closely right now," Yang Yang continued, "So hoping they'll just move the equipment out isn't realistic. We either raid them, or we hack the data center first, but bribing the data center people is unlikely. They're the mayor's inner circle, they lack nothing, they're filthy rich."
Zhen Nantan opened his eyes, they were deep enough to make you dizzy, like a billion stars, "I don't want to use force unless I have no choice. If it comes down to it, I'll bring Snake Spirits and make a scene, while you go mess with the database, how's that?"
Yang Yang squinted, weighing pros and cons. Zhen Nantan's combat power was unquestionable, but causing a riot would expose too many things.
Jing Shu cleared her throat. After listening for a while, she finally spoke, "You guys are stuck in a dead end, you don't need to go through all that. I actually have a plan."
Yang Yang's eyes lit up, "Tell us."
Zhen Nantan glanced at Jing Shu, studying her, "This woman gives me a weird vibe. When I first met her she didn't have it. What've they run into lately?"
Jing Shu flexed her limbs, she'd finally gotten a lot more coordinated these last few days, then said, "Maybe it's because you lot always worked as thieves and never dared to enter openly. Why don't we go in openly and get legitimate identities of our own? Austin's actually welcoming to new immigrants who can pay food. "
"But we're all wanted."