"Here, this thing is yours now."
On a night of torrential rain, Liu Ma casually tossed the Mechanical Bible in his hand to Chen Kong.
Chen Kong caught the Church tome that had tormented him all night in a flurry, then examined it curiously.
Its gilded cover and the gears that turned endlessly upon it
made its extraordinary nature obvious at a glance.
After looking it over, Chen Kong kindly asked, "Old Liu, you're just giving this thing to me? Your boss won't dock your pay for it?"
Liu Ma was utterly unconcerned.
"Dock it if they want. I don't live off my salary anyway—I live off the company's original shares."
"The only reason I run missions is to complete my Star Source's Perfect Awakening."
As he spoke, Liu Ma suddenly pulled out his Data Terminal and began fiddling with it.
A moment later, Chen Kong's Data Terminal suddenly vibrated.
A classified file labeled Star Mark was being transferred to his Data Terminal.
Once he saw the contents of the file,
Chen Kong's pupils instantly contracted.
What the file recorded was precisely what he had been desperate to learn about: Star Core Awakening.
Yet after reading the information within,
a trace of doubt rose in Chen Kong's heart.
Because he realized that this file seemed to have been recorded entirely from the perspective of Star Beasts.
After all, every successful case documented in it was a Star Beast.
There was not a single Starborn among them.
"Liu Ma, where did you get this file?"
Having put his suit back on, Liu Ma shook the acid rain from his hair and answered, "Three years ago, Caroline used the quantum network permissions she had back when she was at the base to send it to each of our Data Terminals."
"But it