Departure

The possessors of spatial abilities... have disappeared?

Yue Shi was slightly stunned. He immediately thought of that thread, which his Insight vision had interpreted as a single word: 【Bridge】.

The initial ability he gained after sacrificing it was 【Banish】.

Both seemed to be related to "space."

Zhong Mo probably wasn’t lying this time.

Yue Shi didn’t press further on that topic and instead changed the subject. “Do you know about the Mysterious Garden?”

“Of course. It’s a human forbidden zone that was completely taken over by the supernatural long ago. Basically, no one who goes in ever comes out,” Zhong Mo replied.

Yue Shi asked, “What exactly is the situation inside the garden?”

Zhong Mo chuckled. “How could I possibly know that? Do you think I’m some kind of Magic Conch? Anyway, why are you asking about this?”

Chen Biao’s cryptic words before he died—“The supernatural entities of the Mysterious Garden are very interested in you”—still weighed on Yue Shi’s mind.

Naturally, he couldn’t tell Zhong Mo the truth, so he casually made up a plausible reason. “A plant-type supernatural entity appeared in Amber City recently. It’s highly contaminating and its whereabouts are still unknown, so I wanted to see if it had any connection to the Mysterious Garden.”

Zhong Mo suggested, “Intelligence on the major forbidden zones is top secret. You won’t even find scraps of information on the Supernatural Forum. If you want to know, you’d be better off checking through the Investigation Bureau’s internal channels. It’s more reliable than asking me.”

“Fair enough.”

Having exchanged their pieces of intelligence, the two had nothing more to discuss and ended the call with a mutual understanding.

...

The next day.

The morning sunlight streamed through the office window, falling onto Yue Shi’s desk.

He sat upright, a report on the recent frequency of supernatural activities in the city spread out before him. His fingers occasionally tapped on the keyboard, making him look incredibly focused and professional.

However, this was merely a facade.

His consciousness was split into three distinct parts.

One part maintained his body’s basic "working" state, while another was browsing the Supernatural Forum.

The forum was filled with junk information, sensationalized headlines, and explicit images.

【Shocking! Famous transcendent singer Yin Runa caught doing this in a mall fitting room! Photos included!】 When clicked, it turned out to be just a blurry surveillance screenshot accompanied by a nonsensical article from clickbait accounts.

【Latest biotechnology expected to break the reproductive isolation between humans and the supernatural...】 The main content was just a string of meaningless characters and a parody meme.

There were too many bizarre, trolling posts, drowning out truly valuable information in a sea of garbage.

Yue Shi browsed through them rapidly with a blank expression. He strongly suspected that this junk information was the work of the authorities, intended to pollute this unregulated platform and weaken its influence through trivialization and low credibility.

His third part of consciousness was connected to the ravens high in the sky.

Through the ravens’ vision, he saw a convoy driving through the Chaos Zone: four heavy, armored transport vehicles surrounding a containment vehicle equipped with advanced facilities. Overhead, two gunships provided low-altitude escort.

The ravens maintained a safe distance, keeping a constant eye on them.

Yue Shi was somewhat puzzled. Even if this mission was important, was it really necessary for Lyu Huan to bring everyone sent by headquarters?

What was the point of taking all the non-combat personnel into a supernatural domain...?

Meanwhile, inside one of the vehicles.

“Captain, you went to see Director Tang yesterday... how did the talk go?” Zhao Huaisha asked curiously, breaking the oppressive silence in the car.

Hearing this, Lyu Huan turned his head and offered a gentle smile. “It was fine. Director Tang was busy with affairs, so we only had a brief chat.”

His answer was flawless, and his tone was as steady as ever.

Zhao Huaisha, however, frowned slightly, a faint trace of undetectable confusion and... discomfort flickering in her eyes.

As she looked at Lyu Huan’s profile, she suddenly felt something was off.

The captain was still the same captain—his expressions, demeanor, and tone of voice hadn’t changed at all—but something just wasn’t right.

She couldn’t put her finger on it. If she had to describe it, Captain Lyu didn’t feel like the close, reliable fatherly or brotherly figure he usually was today. Instead, alarm bells were ringing in her subconscious, making her instinctively want to move away.

She shook her head, attributing this strangeness to the captain being in a bad mood after being given the cold shoulder by Director Tang yesterday.

She turned to look at the scenery flashing past the window, her tone tinged with dissatisfaction. “The Amber City Investigation Bureau is really too much. They actually didn’t send a single person to assist us! Even if we wouldn’t allow them to interfere, couldn’t they at least pretend to cooperate for the sake of appearances?”

Lyu Huan only smiled faintly at her complaint and didn’t respond.

A ripple of emotion rose in Zhao Huaisha’s heart. Amber City had almost completely slipped from headquarters’ control, yet headquarters could do nothing about it.

This was the privilege brought by absolute power!

It truly was... something to aspire to.

The convoy rolled over the desolate road and finally came to a halt a hundred meters away from the Qingshan Sanatorium.

The helicopters circled in the higher reaches of the sky, not daring to approach the building too closely.

Along the way, vagrants in the dilapidated houses of the Chaos Zone had occasionally poked their heads out to look, but they quickly withdrew upon seeing the convoy’s emblem, as if they had seen something more terrifying than the supernatural.

Everyone got out of the vehicles and gazed at the deathly silent sanatorium building in the distance. It stood there quietly, its outer walls peeling and mottled, desolate and ruined.

But at this moment, many people felt an inexplicable sense that the building was alive, like a crouching giant beast coldly watching them, the uninvited guests.

A gust of wind swept by, rustling the withered leaves on the ground.

Faint, blurry black silhouettes seemed to emerge behind the windows of the sanatorium building.

But when Zhao Huaisha and the others focused their attention to distinguish them, those figures vanished instantly, as if they were merely an illusion.

Yue Shi watched all of this from afar through the ravens’ vision.

He had left the container holding that thread at the Qingshan Sanatorium. He wondered if that was why headquarters was so certain about sieging this place.

Did these people know the specific situation inside the Qingshan Sanatorium?

Yue Shi had personally walked through it floor by floor, inspecting the wards one by one, and had experienced a small taste of the various tricky methods used by the supernatural entities within.

Back then, the director had been trapped in the toilet. Now that the director had escaped and taken full control, the level of danger here was on a completely different level.

Three very bizarre supernatural entities were still locked on the fourth floor, and the key to their ward doors was currently with Yue Shi.

However, if the director wanted to open those doors, he probably wouldn’t need a key, would he?

“Everyone wait here. I’ll go in first to take a look,” Lyu Huan said, his tone calm.

The group nodded silently, and no one tried to dissuade him. In a place like this, redundant concern was meaningless.

Furthermore, Lyu Huan didn’t need anyone to accompany him. His strength spoke for itself; if others went in with him, they likely wouldn’t be able to help and would only hold him back.