Having achieved his goal, Chen Mo was in high spirits, and there was a rhythm to his walk.
His footsteps were light, his shoulders swayed slightly, and his fingers tapped an imaginary beat at his sides.
He had walked the path from the 80th-floor elevator to the 58th-floor corridor hundreds of times, but never before had he felt the corridor lights were so bright, the air conditioning temperature so pleasant, and the carpet patterns so pleasing to the eye.
He even whistled at his reflection in the elevator wall—it was off-key, but it was enough to convey his current mood.
This step was crucial; he hadn’t expected Madelyn Stillwell to so easily agree to let him disappear freely every day.
Perhaps it was because The Deep was a dispensable character, and no one took him seriously at all.
However, Chen Mo didn’t care at all; he now had a very important task to complete.
That was to set Translucent up to die early; if nothing went wrong, Hughie would soon arrive at Vought Tower to sign a settlement agreement.
After A-Train killed Robin, the wealthy and powerful Vought International, in order to hush things up, took the initiative to pay a settlement fee to Hughie, the boyfriend, on the condition that Hughie sign an agreement to waive any further pursuit of liability.
Hughie would come to Vought Tower, sign the agreement, and then, under Butcher’s instructions, plant a bug in the conference room.
This was The Boys’ first infiltration of Vought International—crude, primitive, and full of amateurish naivety.
To be honest, Chen Mo didn’t think this bug would be able to overhear anything at all; The Seven’s conference room was cleaned every day, and they would check every corner, every outlet, and every chandelier.
An amateur bug placed there would be discovered in less than two days.
By then, Hughie would definitely not be able to escape.
It had to be said, when it came to sabotaging teammates, Butcher was the expert.
He used a spiel about “justice” to lure Hughie in, making him complete the most dangerous part of the mission while completely unaware of what he was actually doing.
Hughie thought he was avenging his girlfriend, but in reality, he was acting as cannon fodder for Butcher.
In the original series, Translucent was blown up on either the second or third day, wasn’t it?
It was Frenchie who got the inspiration from watching TV.
Chen Mo couldn’t remember the exact day, but he remembered one thing: Translucent’s death was the first real attack The Boys launched against Vought International.
Before that, Butcher only collected information, tracked targets, and observed from the shadows.
After that, the team The Boys he led became true hunters.
Now, Chen Mo was ready to give Hughie a little hint, ensuring Translucent wouldn’t see tomorrow’s sun.
After all, no one likes a transparent person who spends all day squatting in the corners of hallways, in the women’s restrooms, or in places you have no idea about.
Or one day, while you’re in the restroom taking a leak, he’s right above your head watching you excrete fluids from your body, then getting off on it.
That’s truly disgusting.
Chen Mo shivered, feeling a wave of revulsion.
He returned to his suite, spent a few minutes packing his things, took off his signature uniform, and changed into yesterday’s clothes.
Then, he took the elevator to the first floor and walked out of Vought Tower.
The morning sun in New York was lovely; the sky was a washed-out blue, with a few clouds hanging lazily on the horizon, like white paint casually smeared by someone.
The air was a mixture of car exhaust and the greasy smell from hot dog stands, along with a hint of moisture drifting in from the direction of the Hudson River.
Chen Mo walked down the steps, followed the sidewalk east for a few dozen paces, and sat down on a plastic chair in front of a coffee shop; this was Hughie’s inevitable route.
He ordered an Americano, paid in cash, and sipped it slowly from the paper cup.
The coffee was bitter, without sugar or milk—a taste he had only become accustomed to after transmigrating.
Caffeine could stimulate the mind; while drinking, Chen Mo tried to practice his Telekinesis.
He planned to try Optical Invisibility first.
Smashing tables, creating craters, crushing rocks—these were rough jobs, brute force, the primary stage of Telekinesis, much like an infant waving its limbs in a swaddle, hitting things without knowing what it was hitting.
Optical Invisibility was different.
Optical Invisibility required Telekinesis to work at a microscopic level; it required him to manipulate light.
What was the scientific principle of Optical Invisibility again?
As a heavy TikTok user, Chen Mo remembered seeing an analysis by an expert on TikTok, which mentioned two ways to achieve it.
But he only remembered the principle of the “Rochester Cloak”; it could be achieved with two pairs of lenses with different focal lengths.
At the time, he had been so amazed that he had even experimented with it at home, and the results were stunning.
As for the invisibility shield, to be honest, he didn’t understand it.
He decided to do it right then.
He looked at his palm and first used his Psychic Power to condense two pairs of lenses from the air.
The focal lengths of the first pair of lenses had a certain mathematical relationship of positive and negative values, and the focal lengths of the second pair were the reciprocals of the first pair.
When light passed through the first pair of lenses, it was compressed into a thin line, and when it passed through the second pair of lenses, it was expanded back to its original width.
It was somewhat similar to pinhole imaging.
Chen Mo tried hard to control his Psychic Power, conjuring up different lenses.
He suspended the two pairs of lenses above his palm.
The core parameters of the Rochester Cloak were: the distance between the first set of lenses equals the sum of the focal lengths of the first set of lenses, and the distance between the two sets of lenses equals half the sum of the focal lengths of the first set and the second set.
He lowered his head and looked at his hand.
His palm had disappeared; the gray concrete floor of the coffee shop showed through that blank space.
There was a circular sunlit spot on the ground, and that spot was also completely visible within that blank space.
His arm seemed to extend directly into the air, but when he clenched his fist, he could feel the existence of his palm.
He laughed out loud, a “humph” escaping through his nose, accompanied by a breathy sound.
There was no one else at the entrance of the coffee shop; only he sat on the plastic chair, grinning foolishly at his own wrist.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, “I’m fucking awesome.” Chen Mo spread his fingers, and the blank space expanded slightly with the movement.
When he spread his fingers as wide as possible, the tip of his little finger poked out from the blank space.
It wasn’t that the “invisibility failed,” it was that the coverage area of the lens sets wasn’t large enough.
The Rochester Cloak could only form an invisibility zone of a specific shape and size in the middle of the lens sets; anything outside that area was not within the range of invisibility.
He clenched his fist, and his fingers disappeared back into the blank space.
Chen Mo retracted the lenses, and his Telekinesis released the high-polymer structures in the air, dispersing them back into the atmosphere.
“The static one is done; next, I should try full-body invisibility and mobile invisibility.” Just then, he saw Hughie Campbell walking out of Vought Tower from the corner of his eye.