"arrive?"
Under the moonlight, the black sports car without its lights on stopped silently on the side of the road.
To put it nicely, Gardner Psychiatric Hospital is located near mountains and rivers; to put it bluntly, it is in the wilderness and is basically surrounded by isolated houses.
It would be too conspicuous to drive a car past a place like this at night, so Xia Xu and Grant only went nearby and walked.
Grant, who was sitting in the passenger seat, got out first, followed by Atuo, who jumped out of the back window. Finally, Xia Xu opened the door and walked out of the driver's seat, casually taking out his silver-white smart glasses and replacing them with his gold-rimmed plain glasses.
"What is this? Are you COSing this as a futuristic warrior?"
When Grant saw Xia Xu take out a pair of such high-tech glasses, he couldn't help but look at him sideways and was speechless.
"You have the werewolf gene but I don't. Without it, I can't even see the road clearly, how can I walk on the mountain road?"
Xia Xu shrugged.
Gardner is located on a small hill. It is not a mountain forest, but it has a certain slope and is surrounded by many trees. Normally, you can go up directly along the concrete road, but there are surveillance cameras along the way.
This type of security monitoring is basically a closed-circuit system. Unless you go to the scene in person and break into it, it is difficult to hack into it. In order to avoid alerting the enemy, they plan to go around it from the side.
But when it comes to nighttime operations, both Atuo and Grant, the half-werewolf, have certain night vision abilities, but he doesn't.
However, this is not a big problem. After he changed the smart glasses from AR mode to VR mode, they rely on the multi-spectral lenses in the corners of the eyes to capture visual information for secondary processing and presentation. Night vision is just a basic function.
Not to mention night vision, functions such as thermal imaging, field of view adjustment, object recognition, and dynamic tracking have been improved bit by bit thanks to Xiao Baihua's powerful code editing capabilities.
The two men and the dog quickly entered the forest from the edge of the road.
Walking silently amid the chirping of insects and croaking of frogs, in this dead and noisy night, even the sound of breathing becomes particularly heavy and harsh, and the crunching sound of dead branches and rotten leaves being trampled becomes even more irritating to people's nerves.
“Woo woo!”
Suddenly, Atuo, who had been following closely at Xia Xu's feet, suddenly bit his trouser leg and pulled it, letting out a low whimper.
"There are many light sources ahead. They should be people, and there are quite a few of them."
Xia Xu immediately became alert and called up the auxiliary module of the smart glasses to operate it. Soon the dark forest scene in front of him changed rapidly. As the night deepened, spots of light appeared in the darkness.
This is a visual enhancement system based on image processing technology. By processing parameters such as light and contrast, it can transform visual images to varying degrees as needed.
For example, now we use algorithms to calculate the light source in the visual image that is difficult for the naked eye to detect, and then process it in terms of contrast and other aspects to turn it into an image that can be viewed visually.
This method collects visible light, so the distance can be much farther. Otherwise, if it relies on thermal imaging, the effective distance of portable equipment is basically only a few meters or more than ten meters.
"Why didn't I see it? Where did you get this black technology?"
Grant was somewhat surprised and puzzled, but at this moment when he had no time to say more, he chose to trust his companions and made a quick decision: "Climb up the tree, hide for a while, and see what's going on."
Now they were walking on a mountain road, and a normal person would obviously not go into the forest late at night.
He nimbly climbed up a nearby tree with a dense crown, then reached out and pulled Xia Xu up.
As for Atuo, there was no need to worry. If he really wanted to hide, he would be better at it than the two of them. Besides, he was a dog, so it would not matter even if he was discovered.
After hiding for a while with bated breath, a large number of light sources visible to the naked eye soon appeared in the forest. These light sources were floating all the time and looked like flashlights or something like that.
As the light source approached, the sound of footsteps trampling dead leaves and the faint noisy voices of people soon reached my ears.
"These men are searching the mountain."
Xia Xu and Grant looked at each other in the tree canopy.
These people were moving forward at a distance from each other, obviously searching for something.
Moreover, these people were equipped with guns, but Grant, who was very familiar with this, recognized at a glance that these were not live ammunition guns, but some type of anesthetic guns.
"Let's go, let's evacuate first."
Xia Xu's mind raced and he suddenly changed his mind.
"Not going to Gardner?"
Grant frowned. "It's impossible for such a small number of people to conduct a carpet search of the entire mountain. We may not be discovered."
"No, I just went out to get something."
Xia Xu didn't say much, just jumped down from the tree canopy and called on Grant and Atuo to evacuate quickly.
They turned back the same way. Going down the mountain was naturally much faster than going up. Soon, the two men and the dog were out of the forest and back to the Venom supercar.
"What on earth do you want to get? Why did you come all the way back?"
Although Grant followed his companions because he chose to trust them, he was obviously still somewhat dissatisfied and confused at this time.
"To get the equipment, of course."
Xia Xu quickly activated the brain control program of the smart glasses, and the storage compartments on both sides and the trunk of the Venom supercar popped open at the same time.
Click!
Ten metal balls popped out at the same time, rolled on the ground for a few circles, and then stretched out their eight spider legs. They flowed from both sides of Xia Xu and quickly flew into the woods.
In fact, there is more than that. The two spider-like predators in Atto's backpack have also come out at this moment, and merged into the team silently like a thousand rivers returning to the stream. The twelve spider-like predators each ran in one direction.
“This… this…”
Grant stared at the scene in amazement, pointed at the spider, then at Xia Xu, his expression filled with astonishment and a hint of horror.
In the darkness of night, those spider-like predators look no different from real giant spiders at first glance, but a closer look reveals that they are mechanical devices, which also makes people wonder and be amazed.
"Those people just now are obviously from the Gardner Mental Hospital. They are searching the mountain right now so someone or something must have escaped."
Xia Xu explained casually while operating the machine: "The thing that made Gardner search the mountain so ostentatiously must be something extraordinary. Finding him may help us get more information than sneaking in."
This is simple logical reasoning.
There is only one isolated hospital here, the Gardner Mental Hospital. It is obvious that the only one who can send so many people in the middle of the night is probably Gardner.
What they were searching the mountain for was naturally an object that could move. Something that was worthy of such a big fuss could be either a test subject, an internal defector, or an insider who accidentally discovered the truth.
Being at the center of the vortex of the plot of "Attack on Titan", there is a 99% chance that this kind of character is a plot character, and is definitely a relatively important supporting role.
Whether it is to understand the plot or to grasp the situation inside Gardner Mental Hospital, finding the hunted person before the mountain search team is obviously much simpler and more direct than continuing to sneak into Gardner.
"No, where did you get these things? Is technology so advanced now?"
Grant was obviously not concerned about these reasons at the moment, but the spider! The mechanical spider!
"Didn't anyone tell you?"
Xia Xu looked at Grant in surprise, then he poked the frame of his glasses with his index finger and said, "Now, I'm Spiderman!"
(Translation: I am Spider-Man)