78 Chapter 61: The Massive Conspiracy
Yan Fei returned to the hotel in Kenya where he had been staying and discovered that no one had entered his room, as the several markers he had secretly placed were all still intact. It seemed that the room service staff was trustworthy. Therefore, when checking out, Yan Fei rewarded the staff with a thick stack of RMB, making them dance with joy.
While waiting at the airport, Yan Fei browsed the Kenyan news and saw reports about a battle at the Kenya Museum. The reports said several forces had engaged in battle at the Kenya Museum for unknown reasons; the fighting was intense and involved many light and heavy weapons. Not only did the warring parties suffer heavy casualties, but the Kenya Museum was also leveled during the combat. In the end, the Kenyan authorities didn't even know who the combatants were.
Yan Fei's heart stirred and he hastily checked the date, realizing that this melee occurred shortly after he had been tracking Sam, who stole the rusted gear. At that time, he was engaged in intense combat with a blonde woman. It seemed that the discoverer of the rusted gear was not only himself, the Americans, or Captain China, but there must have been other forces involved as well.
However, these people or forces were destined to be disappointed because their late arrival meant that the object of their attention would become nourishment for the Drone Avatar's upgrade and would never appear in this world again.
After wrapping up his affairs in Kenya, Yan Fei began to shift his focus back to domestic matters.
Before the airplane took off from Kenya Airport, and after dusk had settled, Yan Fei's Drone Avatar began its journey from Kenyan territorial waters, flying low over the sea surface towards Shanghai. After flying for five hours and reaching the vicinity of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, the drone's Energy Points were nearly depleted. Under Yan Fei's control, the drone submerged to the seabed to await the data refresh at 12 midnight local time.
That very night, Yan Fei's flight also took off from Nairobi Airport. On the plane, he closely monitored the time, and when it reached 12 midnight in Nairobi, the Drone Data began to refresh.
Yan Fei found it strange that while he was on the plane, which was flying eastward and had already crossed the 12 midnight time zone of his location, his drone did not refresh its data when he just passed the 12 midnight time zone but waited until it was 12 midnight in Nairobi to do so. What was the basis for this data refresh timing?
After much thought, Yan Fei had a guess: while he was still in the air, the data refresh timing was calculated according to the time zone of his departure location, but once he landed, the time standard for judgment switched to local time. This shattered his hope of exploiting the rules to grant his drone unlimited energy.
However, Yan Fei had too little data to know if his judgment was accurate. But as long as he took a few more flights and recorded the data several times, he should be able to deduce the pattern.
The Drone Data had refreshed, restoring the Energy Points to 100,000, so under Yan Fei's control, the drone set off again. It emerged from the sea surface and began to fly back to Shanghai along its original route. However, while crossing the Kra Isthmus on the Malaysia Peninsula, Yan Fei was more cautious to avoid exposing the drone's location. Fortunately, it was deep night, and though the drone encountered several dangerous situations, it finally managed to cross the Malaysia Peninsula safely and entered the Gulf of Thailand. Then the drone continued northward along the South China Sea towards Shanghai.
With the experience from the first flight, the Drone Assisted Intelligent Brain had recorded detailed terrain maps of the oceans it had traversed, so the second flight successfully avoided hazardous areas. Not only did this increase the Flight Speed of the drone, but it also significantly reduced the waste of Energy Points. As a result, while the outbound journey required two data refreshes, the return journey needed only one refresh to complete.
Thus, while Yan Fei traveled by airplane in the sky, the drone flew stealthily at low altitude above the sea surface. When Yan Fei's airplane landed at Shanghai Airport the next morning, the drone also just returned to the waters near Shanghai; its Energy Points were nearly exhausted. The drone then submerged to stand by, awaiting the next data refresh.
As soon as Yan Fei disembarked from the plane, Lu Pingping, who had come to pick him up, hurried him into the car. In the car, Pingping didn't ask Yan Fei about the specifics of his trip to Africa but anxiously recounted the details of the leak incident to him.
A week earlier, a night-shift worker had sneaked into the control center of the Dream Foods Processing Factory, knocked out the security personnel, and copied all the data for the manufacturing process of the weight loss cookies.
Yan Fei and Lu Pingping had previously considered the possibility of trade secret theft and had already Enhanced the protection of the control center's data and Security Work against external invasions. However, this security focused on external threats, and they hadn't yet considered the possibility of internal breaches. After all, at the beginning, they largely trusted their own staff.
Unknown to them, among these production workers was a Spy sent by others. The spy struck from within, using the most direct acts of violence to crack the security measures of the Factory. Therefore, under the assumption that Yan Fei and Lu Pingping hadn't considered violent methods, the manufacturing process of the most popular weight loss cookies was ultimately leaked.