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Chapter 417: Chapter 418: N77

He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but when this ability returned to Abigail, Chen Xuan caught a subtle change on her face.

It clearly wasn’t the joy of recovering something lost, but to call it sadness... that didn’t quite fit either.

Melancholy was perhaps a more accurate word.

It was like having to set off again after a brief rest at the end of a long journey. Even if the departure mattered more, people still couldn’t help feeling reluctant to part with the ease of that rest.

Maybe she had hoped to put this ability down.

The change flickered and vanished; Abigail quickly returned to her usual calm, then started chatting with Honglian about the past.

And that chat went on for over an hour.

Chen Xuan also picked up quite a few old stories about the Organization in the process.

For example, the Organization’s biggest human resources pool was the various shelters and orphanages everywhere... They had poured massive resources into "charity," just so they could recruit those ill-fated children at the first possible moment. Even if those kids never awakened any abilities, they could still enter the Organization as ordinary officers via examinations, and thereby secure a stable job.

From this angle, the Organization really was doing a great good deed.

At the very least, it was a hundred times better than all those places that claimed to be shelters in name, but in reality treated people as goods to be sold.

When they parted, Honglian took a small red box out of her shoulder bag and handed it over.

"And this is?" Abigail reached out to take it, asking curiously.

"A gift for you." She curled her lip. "I was going to give it to you the moment we met, but then you pissed me off."

"Sorry." The other woman opened the box and took out what was inside... It was a pair of earrings, silver pendants with a green cat’s-eye stone the size of a fingernail at the end; the craftsmanship looked quite delicate.

"I picked them. Felt like they’d really go with your eye color," Honglian said. "But looking at you now, they don’t seem all that suitable anymore."

"Because I don’t have a single accessory on me?" She laughed. "No, I like them a lot. Thank you."

"Eh?" Honglian said in surprise. "They won’t conflict with your rules?"

"I never set a rule that I had to dress plainly." Abigail shook her head. "Rules mean keeping every day as much the same as possible, so wearing accessories would only add to my burden. But if it’s something from you, I don’t mind wearing it every day. It can even increase my strength..."

"How’s it going to increase your strength?"

"I’ll put them on every morning when I get up and take them off before bed; wash them once every three days, washing must last a full three minutes, in three steps: first, wipe with alcohol—"

"Okay, okay, stop right there!" Honglian hurriedly cut her off. "Forget it, that strength can stay un-increased."

As it turned out, Abigail didn’t follow this rule to perfection.

Because when they met again that night, she was already wearing the gemstone earrings on her ears.

He had to admit, she and these gemstone earrings really did suit each other.

It wasn’t that she was particularly beautiful.

It was that her simple outfit and eye patch together formed a kind of most plain, basic background, so whatever color you added onto that background would stand out as especially striking.

These earrings were just like that.

As if they had torn open a faint, hazy slit in her airtight shroud.

The purpose of meeting that night was very simple as well: to let Chen Xuan sound this strange object out before the Organization started taking it seriously.

With Abigail leading the way, their entry into the warehouse didn’t arouse anyone’s suspicion. After all, the shipping company was still a key target of the investigation; Organization officers were coming and going in the building at all hours, whereas the company staff had all been put on leave to keep them from disturbing or tampering with evidence at the scene.

The three quickly found the Soul Forge Rodiya had mentioned.

"So old... It looks like scrap metal," Honglian remarked.

That was also most people’s first impression of it.

It was just too crude, as if it had been cast in one go from molten iron, without any polishing afterward—a big hunk of iron, plain and simple.

"So this is a strange object..." Abigail said thoughtfully. "It really doesn’t live up to its name in appearance."

"You’ve never seen one before?" Honglian asked curiously.

"Of course she hasn’t," Chen Xuan answered for her. "The Jiang City branch only went under two months ago. I’d bet the whole business of the Organization robbing that other world for loot still hasn’t been declassified."

But Abigail shook her head. "I first heard the term ’strange object’ about half a year ago. Headquarters even set up a special research department just to study these mysterious items. But it is true that this one was shipped from the Jiang City branch; Chief Xiao Canong even received a commendation because of it."

"That early?" Chen Xuan said in surprise. That practically overlapped with the Five Rings Machinery Factory incident. In other words, not long after the Organization entered that world, Xiao Canong had already gotten his hands on some strange object?

He looked over at Honglian, who spread her hands helplessly. "Don’t look at me, I don’t know a thing. Xiao Canong was with Wang Qianduan and Zhang Yingzi most of the time. While we were still setting up camp in the wild, the three of them had already gone into the city."

In fact, the place they had first arrived at should’ve been a ruin—but after history was overwritten, Honglian no longer remembered that part of their experience.

"Do many people know about this?" Chen Xuan asked.

"No, it’s classified. I only found out because I have a friend in the intel team," Abigail replied. "And my understanding basically stops at knowing the name. There are just too many secrets hidden inside the Organization."

Chen Xuan nodded, silently thankful that the Demon had ultimately blown up his own building and turned a large number of strange objects waiting to be ’traded’ into ash along with it. If the Organization had gotten them all, who knew what kind of monstrous tricks they’d have come up with.

As for why the Soul Forge had ended up stored at New City Port, that wasn’t hard to guess.

It needed souls as raw material to operate. To the Demon, it counted as a usable tool, but to the vast majority of ordinary people it was just a pure chunk of iron, so heavy you’d think twice about selling it for scrap.

Liuli had also said that the disparity between strange objects was greater than that between heaven and earth.

Obviously, the Organization would focus more on those strange objects that could easily display extraordinary power.

"Speaking of which, how do you even use this thing?" Honglian looked it over from left to right, even reached out to knock and tap at it, but it showed no reaction.

"If it were easy to use, it would’ve been hauled back to HQ long ago," Chen Xuan said confidently. "Let me."

He switched himself over to the Mind Reading Technique, then pressed his palm against the surface of the forge table.

In an instant, it was as if the cold metal surface rippled like water, and a strange flow of thoughts surged from the point of contact into his mind.

"Human, you’ve come."

The voice was slow and old, like someone who had already stepped into old age.

That’s more like it, Chen Xuan thought. Strange objects, whether extraordinary or mundane, shared one common trait: they possessed consciousness. But to communicate with the Soul Forge, the prerequisite was being able to understand the language of souls.

Rodiya just happened to possess that kind of ability.

"Do you have a name? A designation will do," he replied with his thoughts as well.

"N77."

Having a designation proved that it too was a legacy of the Angel Alliance.

"N77, what’s your stability rating?"

That was also what Chen Xuan was most eager to know. Once a strange object was awakened, it needed to be "used"; otherwise, it would become unstable. As for what would happen when it went unstable... that depended on the specific effect of the object.

"By your standards: 85."

That was quite stable.

Chen Xuan let out a small breath. "And if you lose control, what happens?"

"I will forge the souls within a radius of five hundred meters into coins."

N77 replied slowly, its tone like someone casually discussing how many eggs to fry for breakfast.

Chen Xuan felt a chill run down his back at that. A radius of five hundred meters? Given the population density at New City Port, that would probably mean several thousand coins in one go. And if there happened to be a cruise ship docked at the port... that would be a full-blown horror story.

"But... why coins?"

"In Hell, they are hard currency."

Where exactly was Hell? Chen Xuan didn’t want to ask any further.

"I’d like to know, how many kinds of things can you forge souls into?" He decided it was better to clarify the key questions first.

"Human, countless kinds." N77’s voice buzzed in his mind. "But you can only comprehend four of them: currency, destiny, memory, weapon."