Along the way, he didn’t say much, spending the time feeling out his own physical abilities.
Starlight, meanwhile, was still immersed in the joy of being accepted into The Seven, her steps light and her eyes darting around like a child entering an amusement park for the first time.
When they passed the giant aquarium in the center of Vought Tower, he stopped to take an extra look.
A grouper was swimming in the tank, its grayish-brown body, mouth opening and closing, and eyes turning turbidly.
Chen Mo stared at it, thinking to himself: “Turn around.” The grouper turned around in place.
Chen Mo: “Swim to the left.” The grouper swam to the left.
Chen Mo: “Come back.” The grouper swam back.
It wasn’t sound.
He hadn’t made any noise; his lips were closed.
He was just “thinking,” and the fish had received it and executed it.
This wasn’t a “conversation.” This wasn’t what The Deep thought was “talking to fish.” This was Psychic Power.
An ability to issue commands directly to the consciousness of marine life, requiring no language, no sound, just pure projection of will.
Chen Mo’s heart skipped a beat.
That idiot The Deep, having this kind of ability, actually thought he was just “chatting” with fish?
He didn’t even realize he could control them.
He just heard their responses and was satisfied with this thin “communication,” never once testing the boundaries of his ability.
It was like someone holding the button to launch a nuclear missile, thinking it was just a doorbell.
“Wow.” Starlight’s voice pulled him back from afar.
“Pretty impressive, right?” Chen Mo walked over, following the script’s lines.
“Look at this.
We have two satellites in Earth’s orbit that can basically read the license plate number of a fleeing vehicle from 600 kilometers up.” Chen Mo introduced it as he walked inside.
Just now, he keenly felt something touch him.
It wasn’t a physical touch.
It was on the level of consciousness.
Like a spiderweb gently brushing against the back of his head, or like someone dropping a pebble into a pool of water, the ripples spreading out, just enough to reach where he was standing.
Chen Mo’s steps didn’t pause.
He could feel it.
In the corner at the end of the corridor, in the alcove with the giant potted plant, there was a mass…
of something.
Invisible, yet it existed.
Like a piece of transparent jelly suspended in mid-air, occupying about the space of a human body.
Its consciousness was blurry, not as clear and distinct as the fish.
But Chen Mo could feel it.
If he had been standing here before he transmigrated, he definitely wouldn’t have noticed.
The original The Deep wouldn’t have noticed either.
That subtle sense of anomaly would have been dismissed as air conditioning drafts or the building’s own micro-vibrations, automatically filtered out by the brain.
But this transmigration, the process of one consciousness being shoved into another body, seemed to have expanded something within him.
Psychic Power.
Or consciousness intensity.
Or whatever you want to call it.
In any case, he could now feel that “non-existent” thing.
Translucent.
Chen Mo’s back instantly tensed up.
It was him.
Right there in the corner at the end of the corridor.
Not speaking, not moving, perhaps even deliberately suppressing his breathing to the lightest level.
Just crouching there, like a spider perched on the edge of a web, waiting for prey to make a mistake.
He was monitoring.
Did Madelyn Stillwell arrange this, or was it Homelander?
Or to be more direct, did Translucent come on his own initiative?
After all, this guy’s greatest pleasure was standing naked behind people, watching to see when they would realize they weren’t alone.
Chen Mo took a deep breath, pushing all the sense of anomaly to the deepest part of his consciousness.
His face showed no change in expression, and he even tried to keep his heart rate at its normal pace.
“Oh my god, I used to use a police scanner I bought from eBay.” Starlight exclaimed, her attention completely captured by Vought International’s technological prowess.
She didn’t sense anything unusual, and of course she wouldn’t; Translucent was a professional.
“That’s Homelander’s, right?” Starlight said, pointing to the head seat.
“Yeah, that’s right.” Chen Mo pulled out a chair next to it.
“You’ll have your own seat soon enough.
You can try it out first.” Starlight slowly walked over, her fingers gently resting on the back of the chair, as if touching a precious work of art.
Something was shining in her eyes.
“I really never thought I’d be standing here one day,” she said softly, her voice trembling slightly.
“This used to only exist in my imagination.” She sat down.
The chair was a little too big, and her shoulders weren’t wide enough to fill the sides of the backrest, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she was sitting here.
In The Seven’s conference room.
Starlight took a deep breath, looked up at Chen Mo, and her lips moved.
Chen Mo watched her.
According to the original plot, he was supposed to say something now.
This girl didn’t know what was going to happen next.
She didn’t know what kind of place Vought International was.
She didn’t know what kind of lunatic Homelander was.
She didn’t know that what she thought was a “dream come true” was actually the beginning of another nightmare.
She thought she had made it to shore, but in reality, she had just been scooped out of a pond and thrown into the ocean.
“Hey,” Chen Mo began, his voice gentler than he had expected.
“Do you know what I was thinking when I sat here for the first time?” Starlight shook her head.
“I was thinking, ‘Did they make a mistake?
When will security rush in and drag me away?'” Starlight was stunned for a moment, then laughed out loud.
“Really?” “Really.” Chen Mo shrugged.
“I still think that occasionally now.” He pulled over a chair from the side and sat down, leaning back slightly to make himself look as relaxed as possible.
Translucent might still be crouching in some corner, but he couldn’t worry about that now.
“Listen, Starlight,” he said.
“You’ll be nervous, you’ll be afraid, you’ll feel like you don’t deserve to sit here—all of that is normal.
But you being able to stand here isn’t because they ‘chose’ you, it’s because you were qualified to begin with.” Starlight’s eyes lit up.
“Anyway, that’s my experience.” Chen Mo waved his hand, his tone returning to that nonchalant cadence.
“Just consider it me talking nonsense.” He didn’t say “Welcome to The Seven.” Because honestly, he wasn’t even sure if this counted as a welcome.
Starlight lowered her head, looking at the mirror-smooth tabletop in front of her, and was silent for a few seconds.
Then she looked up, the corners of her mouth curling into a genuine, unperformed smile.
“Thank you, The Deep.” Chen Mo nodded and didn’t say anything else.
In his consciousness, that figure in the corner was still there.
Translucent hadn’t left.
But he didn’t make any moves either.
Perhaps he was just waiting, waiting for Chen Mo to “do” something.
Waiting for that traditional part of every new recruit’s onboarding, waiting for The Deep to finish his greasy “welcome ceremony” according to the script.