Chapter 101 – HENSHIN!
Lu Zheng reached out and grasped the control room door handle, twisting it tentatively a few times.
“Click.”
The control room door opened.
What luck—the door wasn’t locked.
Lu Zheng curled his lips into a smile, gently pushed the door open, and sidestepped into the control room.
Contrary to his initial expectation, all the lights in the control room were on, making the whole room as bright as daylight.
Yi Ning seemed to have connected all the base’s lights in a single circuit. As long as one was turned on, the rest would follow.
“That’s way too wasteful.”
Lu Zheng couldn’t help but complain.
He looked at the brightly lit interior and exterior, feeling a twinge of pain deep inside.
“If I’m not mistaken, Yi Ning’s base still uses commercial electricity, right? Running all these lights all day long—how much would the electricity bill be?”
Though it wasn’t his money being spent, as someone who had developed a habit of frugality, seeing lights left on in unused areas made him feel deeply uneasy.
What a waste!
“Isn’t there some setup to just turn off the lights outside and leave only this room lit?”
“Click.”
As soon as Lu Zheng finished speaking, all the lights outside the room turned off instantly, leaving only the control room illuminated.
Faced with such obedient lights, Lu Zheng stood in place and blinked, his expression a little stiff.
Two seconds later, he finally closed the control room door, gave an awkward chuckle, and muttered, “Nice.”
Voice-controlled lights were certainly handy.
It’s just that they always responded when he was grumbling, leaving him to stew in his own embarrassment.
But then again, since he was the only one here, that so-called embarrassment only really existed in his mind.
Lu Zheng pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the console, intending to boot up the computer and find the surveillance footage he needed.
As expected, a startup password screen blocked his progress.
Unfazed, Lu Zheng pulled a silver USB-like device from his pocket.
It was a gadget he had once asked Dr. Mandel to help make during a mission—a tool designed specifically for data theft. It was also his greatest asset for extracting data from Yi Ning’s evil scientist base.
Though it had been developed a few years ago and was somewhat outdated, Dr. Mandel, as its inventor, still occasionally helped Lu Zheng upgrade it remotely to ensure its continued functionality.
He bent down, preparing to insert it into the computer’s port.
But before he could plug it in, a sticky note on the desk caught all of Lu Zheng’s attention.
For good reason.
It had a few words and a string of numbers written on it.
“Startup Password: 1234567890”
Seriously?
Staring at the note, Lu Zheng felt a touch of disbelief.
It wasn’t that he was overly suspicious—it was just that the password was ridiculously simple.
Was it really necessary to write it down on a sticky note?
Still, trusting in Yi Ning’s scatterbrained nature, Lu Zheng input the numbers from the note into the password field.
With a hint of internal tension, he pressed Enter.
The computer booted successfully.
Looking at the neat and orderly desktop, Lu Zheng felt a subtle sense of anticlimax deep inside.
Like punching a pillow—no resistance.
Finding the surveillance footage afterward was also a breeze.
For a simple reason.
Yi Ning had already sorted all the files neatly and even placed a shortcut labeled “Surveillance Footage” right on the desktop.
As long as you could read and double-click that folder with a mouse, you could easily find what Lu Zheng needed.
The folder only contained one video file from today, so Lu Zheng didn’t even need to search.
Again, for a simple reason—
Yi Ning had only installed this camera today. It could only record today’s footage.
Oh, wait.
Today wasn’t over yet.
Judging by Yi Ning’s usual habits, it had probably only captured half a day’s footage.
Lu Zheng grimaced and clicked into today’s surveillance file.
Everything had gone smoothly, so why did he feel a strange sense of disappointment?
The large screen at the center of the control room began playing today’s surveillance footage.
Lu Zheng slouched in his chair and lazily clicked the fast-forward button.
After all, the camera’s coverage was limited, and Yi Ning’s base was far from the city—there was usually no one around. Most of the footage would be uneventful.
But it didn’t fast-forward for long before a figure entered the camera’s view.
That Freedom Alliance guy already?
Lu Zheng quickly sat upright and rewound the footage to just before the figure appeared, restoring it to normal speed.
Then, the next moment, a look of helplessness appeared on his face.
It was Yi Ning.
That girl poked her little head out of the main door, glanced around cautiously, then tiptoed out, standing dead center in the camera’s view and began performing all sorts of odd movements.
First, she placed both hands along the seams of her pants, swinging her arms back and forth as her legs marched in place.
Then she raised both arms horizontally, extended them, drew them into fists in front of her chest, bent her knees slightly, and began stretching.
It took Lu Zheng a few dozen seconds to realize.
Yi Ning was doing morning calisthenics!
“Pfft—”
Seeing Yi Ning on screen doing morning calisthenics with such a serious face, Lu Zheng couldn’t hold back his laughter.
Not because she looked bad doing them.
Her movements were actually quite standard.
Clearly, she’d been practicing this routine for some time.
But the thought of Yi Ning, who delighted in provoking others every day, earnestly doing morning exercises each day gave Lu Zheng a strange sense of contrast.
That girl… was kind of cute.
Lu Zheng propped his chin on one hand and sat in front of the screen, watching Yi Ning’s calisthenics performance.
Soon, her routine came to an end. But she didn’t seem inclined to head back inside.
She turned her gaze to the surveillance camera, her right hand extending two fingers to stroke her chin, left hand supporting her right elbow—standing there as if deep in thought.
Yi Ning moved.
She placed her left hand on her hip, stretched her right hand forward with fingers joined and slowly swept it across, then suddenly retracted her right hand to her waist as her left hand extended in turn.
The surveillance camera at the base’s entrance was high-resolution—so clear that Lu Zheng could even see Yi Ning’s slightly trembling lips on screen.
With the bits of lip-reading he had half-learned back in school, Lu Zheng could barely make out what Yi Ning was saying.
It was:
“HENSHIN!”