Chapter 161 A Free Piece of News

While the majority of people were still frantically pulling out weeds everywhere, and a tiny few had only just discovered the existence of a company called Weeds Technology, Lin Huang had already completed his verification, confirming that Weeds Technology had zero connection to this second stage of the assessment.

"Weeds, what on earth does it actually refer to?" Having left Weeds Technology behind, Lin Huang found himself feeling somewhat troubled.

Opening the Hunter Forum, Lin Huang used his Bronze Hunter clearance to search the keywords "weeds," "Beixuan City," and "Stronghold 7B24" once again.

After sifting through results for quite a while, he still failed to find any useful information.

"Even the Hunter Forum has nothing on this..." Lin Huang furrowed his brows, feeling as though his investigation had hit a dead end.

"If I were a true hunter trying to track down a piece of information that can't be found anywhere on the internet or the Hunter Forum, what would I do..." Lin Huang lowered his head, muttering to himself. Putting himself in someone else's shoes allowed him to break free from his own perspective. As his voice trailed off, he abruptly stopped in his tracks and raised his head. "I would definitely resort to alternative channels for gathering information, even unofficial ones!"

Upon reaching this realization, Lin Huang immediately used his Emperor's Heart Ring to open the complete map of Beixuan City, quickly locating the black market.

He walked into a nearby unmonitored alleyway, disguised his face with a scar, and kept his original black suit on, simply draping a gray trench coat over it before stepping back out onto the street.

Hailing a beast-drawn carriage by the roadside, he instructed the driver to head straight for the black market district.

More than an hour later, the carriage arrived at the black market. Lin Huang paid the fare, alighted, and walked straight toward a narrow lane.

In any given city, figuring out the location of the black market, knowing what kind of people to approach for various needs, and understanding how to behave once inside—Lin Huang had already learned all of these things during his time at the Purple Crow Rookie Training Camp.

With his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, Lin Huang entered the alley with a blank expression.

The lane was quiet, and Lin Huang's appearance as an unfamiliar intruder drew the attention of quite a few people. However, upon noticing the scar on his face and his world-weary, indifferent expression, no one dared to provoke him casually.

Lin Huang quickly found a bar, pushed open the door and stepped inside. His outfit immediately attracted the gaze of several patrons.

Ignoring them, he walked straight to a stool in front of the bar counter, tapped his index finger three times against the surface, and said to the bartender, "Give me a Black Tendril."

The bartender was a tall, slender young man. He glanced at Lin Huang and, a moment later, slid a cup containing an ink-black beverage across the counter.

The corners of Lin Huang's lips curled upward as he reached out and picked up the cup.

Glancing at the side of the cup's bottom, he saw a short string of characters engraved there:

B-012

Lifting the glass, Lin Huang stood up and headed toward the basement of the bar.

Arriving at the door of room B-012, he noticed the indicator light above the door was green, so he pushed it open and walked right in.

This was a room resembling an office, completely devoid of any clutter.

Behind a mahogany desk, a middle-aged man wearing black-framed glasses pointed to the stool opposite the desk. "Sit."

Lin Huang took off his trench coat, hung it on the clothes rack by the door, and walked over to sit down at the desk. He placed the glass on the desktop with the side bearing the engraved room number facing the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man glanced at the cup, a smile finally appearing on his face. "What would the guest like to consult about?"

"Two words: weeds," Lin Huang stated simply and directly, revealing the purpose of his visit.

"Weeds?" Upon hearing the word, the bespectacled man seemed somewhat surprised, but he quickly and imperceptibly composed himself. "Regarding weeds, what does the guest wish to know?"

"Everything," Lin Huang said, then added after a brief pause, "Especially its connection to Beixuan City."

"Understood, just a moment." The middle-aged man brought up several windows in front of him, but the interfaces were opaque; the back facing Lin Huang's direction was entirely pitch black, leaving him unable to see anything.

A moment later, the bespectacled man nodded. "The total is 1.8 billion credit points."

"That's not a cheap price. Are you certain your information is worth that much?" Lin Huang looked at the man expressionlessly.

"Rest assured, it is definitely worth every coin," the bespectacled man replied with a smile.

"Fine," Lin Huang agreed readily.

"Transfer the credit points to the transaction chip, please." The man slid a green chip the size of a thumb across the desk.

This type of transaction chip prevented the leakage of information between the parties involved. The buyer would transfer the credit points directly to the chip, and the seller would then read the chip to deposit the funds into their own account. This way, neither party could see the other's personal account details.

Furthermore, these transaction chips were incapable of storing personal account data. The moment a scan concluded and the funds arrived, the account information would automatically erase itself, completely eliminating any risk of a data leak.

In contrast, the built-in anonymous transfer function of the Emperor's Heart Ring offered a much lower level of security.

Lin Huang took the chip, transferred the 1.8 billion credit points, and handed it back to the middle-aged man.

The man set the chip aside, produced a black chip from his inventory, scanned it with his own Emperor's Heart Ring, and began transferring the data.

A short while later, the data transfer was complete. He closed all the windows on his screen, picked up the black chip, and handed it across the desk toward Lin Huang.

"The information you requested is all inside."

Lin Huang nodded, took the black chip, stood up, and walked over to the coat rack. After putting his trench coat back on, he reached for the door handle, preparing to leave.

The bespectacled man's voice suddenly came from behind him. "Let me give you a complimentary piece of news."

Lin Huang paused with his hand on the door.

"About an hour before you arrived, someone else came looking for almost the exact same information. And that person didn't look like a benevolent character at all."

"Many thanks!" Without turning around, Lin Huang acknowledged the tip, pulled the door open, and stepped out.

Leaving the bar, Lin Huang walked out of the black market, his heart feeling somewhat heavy.

"I arrived here around eleven o'clock. The other person was here an hour earlier, arriving around ten-something. But the assessment started at nine, and taking a beast-drawn carriage from the Hunter Association here takes over an hour. This means that the moment the person left the Hunter Association, they came straight to the black market for information without even bothering to investigate Weeds Technology."

"Someone who comes straight to the black market for information right off the bat... following behavioral patterns, there is a very high probability they are from the dark world..." Lin Huang quickly arrived at this deduction.

The dark world planting spies within the Hunter Association was something that had happened before.

Of course, Lin Huang was not a hundred percent certain. He could not completely rule out the possibility that the other person possessed exceptionally high intelligence, managed to deduce certain details he had overlooked, bypassed Weeds Technology entirely, and came straight to the black market for answers.