The data analysis room fell into an eerie silence.
But the Source Energy reading for that green dot—Lin Yi—was now down to just 470. He had stopped where he was and was slowly recovering.
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The muscles in Zhang Weidong's face twitched. He slowly straightened up, let out the breath he'd been holding, then wiped his face with one hand and scolded Zhao Tan with a helpless, amused look. "Damn! You nearly gave me a heart attack, kid!"
Only then did he understand just how casually Lin Yi had said "clean things up" and "Stardust Rank."
This hadn't been the thrilling, desperate battle they'd imagined. It had been more like a precise, efficient demolition job.
Over the next few hours, the atmosphere in front of the screens in the data analysis room grew rather peculiar.
After thinking it over, Zhang Weidong realized there didn't seem to be anything especially important on his schedule that afternoon. So he simply stayed, pulled up a chair beside Zhao Tan, and sat down. The two of them, along with several technicians who had quietly gathered after hearing the news, watched in silence as the green dot strolled through the area around Nest No. 1 with the grace and efficiency of the Grim Reaper.
Every time it stopped, one or more red-highlighted dots quietly went dark.
From the afternoon until night had fully fallen, the green dot worked like the most precise of street sweepers, gradually wiping away the "stains" from that area of the map.
In the end, when the green dot began returning to the settlement at a steady speed, a reassuring stretch of empty space had clearly been cleared along the edge of the area marked as Small Nest No. 1.
By the time Lin Yi piloted Little Flying Ball down