In the early morning, sunlight streamed through the large glass windows into the office of the Special Operations Section of the Amber City Investigation Bureau.
The chill accumulated overnight was dispelled, but a subtle restlessness permeated the air.
The twin sisters, Wei Jianxian and Wei Siqi, were huddled together by a desk, their heads bowed as they whispered in low voices.
"Sis, did you see it last night? That white light—it shot up so high," Wei Siqi gestured with her hands, a trace of fear in her eyes.
"I saw it. Even from that distance, it was blinding." Wei Jianxian was relatively more composed, but her brow was slightly furrowed.
"The internet is going crazy. Everyone's saying something different—meteorites, new weapon tests, high-level supernatural descents."
"Is there no news on the bureau's internal channels?"
"Nothing. It seems the information is being strictly suppressed."
Although they were twins, the sisters had their own independent lives and weren't always stuck together.
Late last night, that terrifying white light tearing through the sky had briefly turned night into day, startling many night owls.
However, as they came to work at the Investigation Bureau today, there didn't seem to be much discussion about it among the staff.
Even if the sky were falling, the Amber City Investigation Bureau remained as nonchalant as ever.
At ten o'clock sharp, an emergency bulletin from headquarters, marked with the highest-level red alert, ignited the atmosphere in the office.
It wasn't about the soaring white light from last night, but another equally shocking piece of news.
Chijing City was confirmed to have completely fallen.
The content of the bulletin was concise: the entire territory of Chijing City had been completely submerged by endless seawater from the forbidden zone, the Phantom Sea. The city's structures had collapsed, turning it into a massive inland saltwater lake. Furthermore, the water level was still rising and spreading outward. A large number of marine supernatural creatures were congregating within it, and the danger level was extremely high.
The Investigation Bureau headquarters had officially abandoned Chijing City, designating it as a high-level supernatural domain: the Sunken Capital.
Headquarters had dispatched elite investigators to the surrounding areas to establish a blockade, strictly forbidding any unauthorized approach.
The news of Chijing City's destruction was heavy, yet it didn't come as too much of a surprise to the members of the Amber City Investigation Bureau.
Over the years, the tragedy of a city falling and turning into a supernatural domain was not an isolated case.
What truly shocked them, leaving them somewhat dazed, was the global wanted order issued directly by headquarters immediately following the bulletin.
【Investigation Bureau Headquarters · Highest Wanted Order】
(Permission Level: S)
Wanted Number: HX-00174
Subject: Yue Shi
Danger Level: S
Charges:
Colluding with high-level supernatural creatures and drawing in seawater from the forbidden zone, the Phantom Sea.
Directly causing Chijing City to be submerged, leaving millions of citizens displaced and the city's functions completely destroyed.
Suspected of murdering multiple investigators from the Chijing City Investigation Bureau and stealing bureau weaponry and supernatural objects.
Betraying humanity and endangering world security and stability.
Subject Information:
· Name: Yue Shi
· Former Affiliation: Amber City Investigation Bureau, Special Operations Section
· Physical Characteristics: Male, 25 years old, height 186 cm, long black hair (see attached image for details)
· Known Supernatural Abilities:
· Concealment: High-level invisibility, evades conventional detection.
· Defense: High-level defensive capabilities, able to withstand conventional physical and supernatural attacks.
· Shadow Manipulation: Controls shadow creations, mostly in the form of ravens, for attack and reconnaissance.
· Finger mutation: Attacks carry strong corrosive and withering effects.
· Spatial Ability: Can tear or distort space, suspected of possessing short-distance teleportation capabilities.
Warning: The target's mastered abilities may far exceed those listed; he is extremely dangerous!
Processing Instructions:
· Investigators from all global branches are to report to headquarters immediately upon discovering the target and may use all necessary means to contain him as the situation dictates.
· Any organization or individual is strictly forbidden from harboring or assisting the target.
· Those providing effective leads will receive a significant reward from headquarters.
Attached: A recent high-definition photo of Yue Shi [a candid shot taken at a street corner]
Upon seeing this wanted order, the Special Operations Section office fell into a deathly silence.
They all recognized the person in the photo.
The colleague who had once shared this room with them.
"This is insane. Colluding with supernatural creatures to drown a city... that's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it?" Wei Siqi whispered, her face full of disbelief.
But thinking carefully about Yue Shi's previous reckless style of operation, it didn't seem particularly strange that he could do something like this.
Although Yue Shi had served in the Amber City Investigation Bureau, no one was worried that the bureau would be implicated at this moment.
As long as Director Tang, who oversaw Amber City, was still there, no one would dare to easily come here to hold them accountable.
In fact, when headquarters issued the wanted order, they had deliberately avoided placing any blame on the Amber City Investigation Bureau, maintaining a very cautious posture.
"Little Bai." Ling Xun walked over to Bai Wanyang, who seemed somewhat distracted, and asked, "You used to be on fairly good terms with Yue Shi. Can you still contact him?"
Bai Wanyang looked up, his face filled with bitterness. "Section Chief, I haven't been able to contact him for a long time. There's been no news since he left last time."
After a pause, Bai Wanyang lowered his voice. "I didn't expect him to go this far. It's so fucking surreal..."
Ling Xun nodded and didn't press further. It was as if the sensation and the wanted order caused by Yue Shi were merely trivial matters.
Changing the subject, Ling Xun's gaze fell on the bruises and band-aids on Bai Wanyang's face. "What's been going on with you lately? Your condition is so poor, and you're covered in injuries?"
At those words, Bai Wanyang's face slumped even further, and he sighed heavily. "Don't even mention it. I've been incredibly unlucky these past few days. I've choked on cold water several times, and the equipment malfunctioned for no reason during training. I'm lucky to be alive."
Ling Xun's brow furrowed slightly. He reached out and patted his shoulder, saying meaningfully, "Pay more attention. A person doesn't just run into this much bad luck for no reason."
Ling Xun said nothing more, leaving only that pointed reminder before turning to leave.
Bai Wanyang sat alone at his workstation, looking at the bruises on his arm and falling into deep thought.
When exactly did he start becoming this unlucky?
...
Fluorite Valley was a mid-sized city famous for producing a certain type of luminous mineral.
It was mid-morning, and the streets were teeming with cars and people, filled with the bustle and vitality of an urban center.
A handsome man with hair reaching his waist was walking leisurely through the crowded streets.
He had a tall, straight posture, and a simple black trench coat looked like a supermodel's outfit on him. He should have attracted many eyes.
Yet miraculously, the hurried passersby all seemed to look right through him.
Their gazes naturally slid past him, treating him as a background element with zero presence.
Yue Shi walked with his head down, holding a new phone in his hand.
Displayed on the screen was that fresh wanted order—his own wanted order.
"Colluding with the supernatural creatures of the Phantom Sea, leading to the destruction of Chijing City," Yue Shi read the charges softly, a smile on his lips.
"Heh, I suppose these charges are quite accurate."
After all, the flooding of Chijing City was indeed something he had indirectly caused.
This wanted order wasn't an injustice.
The order publicly disclosed some of his abilities, listing several of the more prominent ones.
But it was only a portion.
Yue Shi didn't care in the least.
He had too many abilities—so many that he sometimes had to stop and think about which one was appropriate to use.
Why would one's true trump cards be easily exposed to others?
What Yue Shi did take note of was that the complete destruction of Lab 0 was met with silence in this wanted order and across all official news channels.
No one mentioned that earth-shaking explosion, as if it had never happened.
The authorities seemed to be deliberately blurring and covering up the matter.
Yue Shi's identity as a transmigrator had not been exposed either.
Perhaps Lab 0 hadn't given up on researching transmigrators.
Or perhaps they had done such a good job with secrecy that no one else knew about the transmigrators even now.
"Hey, hey, hey, Yue Shi." The phone screen lit up on its own.
Ghost's voice came from the speaker. "You should be free now, right? Hurry up and tell me—transmigration! What exactly is the deal with transmigration? How did you actually transmigrate? I'm so curious!"
Yue Shi's attitude was very perfunctory. His gaze swept over the shops along the street as he replied casually, "It's exactly what you think. I transmigrated from another world."
"Details! I want details!" Ghost pressed relentlessly.
"Was it a soul transmigration, or did your whole body cross over? Before you transmigrated, were you saving a little girl and then got run over by a mud truck? Or was it something even more bizarre?"
Yue Shi: "Right, right, right. Everything you said is correct."
Ghost: "Damn! Are you even listening to me? Can't you be a little serious!"
Yue Shi: "No."
Ghost: "..."
Ignoring Ghost's endless questioning, the fellow had lost interest in everything else; no matter what topic was discussed, it would eventually wind back to the matter of "transmigration."
Ghost wanted to know what the environment of the other world was like, as well as its civilization, language, history, literature, art...
Yue Shi didn't want to answer. His attention was focused more on those two Record Beads.
He had overwritten the physical state of that hunched-back old man, replacing it with his own full-health state.
At this moment, the three records stored in the 【Record Bead: "Engraving"】 were: a fairly powerful defense-type supernatural power, the coordinates of the birthplace of the Curse Aggregate, and Yue Shi's own peak physical state.
Combined with the 【Replication Bead: "Reflection"】, this meant Yue Shi could reset his state at any time.
As long as he wasn't instantly killed and his mind wasn't interfered with, he could immediately recover to his peak.
But even so, Yue Shi still felt it wasn't secure enough.
The pressure and horror from that Strange Tree radiating chaos last night had been far too intense.
Just thinking back on it made his skin crawl; his body and soul felt a sense of rejection and disgust.
"A plant-type monster... it probably came from that Mysterious Garden," Yue Shi's eyes darkened.
"Why would they be interested in me?"
Yue Shi carefully traced back his past. Ever since entering Amber City, he seemed to have a particular destiny with the supernatural creatures of the Mysterious Garden.
Bee Woman, Parasitic Mushroom, Life Vine... were these successive encounters really just a coincidence?
Yue Shi was completely puzzled; he didn't believe he had any connection to that forbidden zone.
"I can't figure it out."
He rubbed his temples and finally decided to give up on thinking.
For troubles he couldn't figure out, he had only one way of handling them.
"I'll just find an opportunity later to kill all those monsters in that garden."
Simple and crude, it fit his principles perfectly.
Then, Yue Shi took out a member list he had snatched from the Lab 0 archives from his extra-dimensional space.
The list was very thick.
There were many people to kill.
If he said he would kill their whole families, he would definitely do it.
Yue Shi would rather kill the innocent by mistake than let a single one go.
He could release his malice for any random reason, let alone a legitimate one like "revenge."
Meanwhile, Yue Shi's gaze swept across the interior of the extra-dimensional space.
Although he hadn't successfully looted the supernatural object containment vault of Lab 0, he wasn't without gains.
In one corner of the space, quite a few "collectibles" he had snatched up were imprisoned.
The Ripper, the Sweet Plum Fairy, the Succubus Vase who had been turned into a limbless stump...
These were all products of Lab 0; perhaps they would be useful in the future.
Suddenly, a commotion came from the street in the distance.
Someone shouted at the top of their lungs, "Someone's going to jump over there!"
Like a boulder thrown into a calm lake, many passersby stopped in their tracks, their expressions varying.
Many spectators rushed toward the source of the sound.
Not far away, on the edge of the rooftop of an approximately twenty-story office building, a figure was teetering.
It was a man who looked quite young, with messy hair and wrinkled clothes, radiating a sense of decadence from being drained by life.
He leaned on the guardrail, his body tilted forward, his gaze hollow as he looked down at the street below. He seemed to still be hesitating, having not yet taken that final step.
The wind blew against his thin clothes, adding a few more layers of misery.
The crowd of onlookers below became a cross-section of society.
Some kind-hearted people had already taken out their phones to call the police, describing the location and situation.
Others held up their phones, lenses pointed at the figure on the roof, filming short videos.
Still others, seeking excitement, shouted and jeered:
"Hey, are you going to jump or not?"
"Don't be so slow, you're wasting time."
Yue Shi stood on the outskirts of the crowd, watching the scene expressionlessly.
Suddenly, he heard two onlookers beside him talking in low voices.
"Poor thing. So young, why would he be so desperate? There's no hurdle you can't get over."
"What's there to pity? He's a gambler! He owes a mountain of debt, his wife ran off with the kid, and his parents were literally worked to death from stress. People like him, who gamble until their families are ruined, are better off dead. It's more peaceful."
"A gambler? Then it really is his own doing. But it is strange—several gamblers have died around here lately, haven't they? It's been all over the local news headlines..."
Yue Shi's eyebrows twitched slightly as he heard their conversation.
At that moment, the man on the roof moved.
Perhaps provoked by the jeering below, or perhaps because his heart had completely collapsed, the decadent young gambler closed his eyes and leaped.
"Ah!"
The crowd of onlookers erupted in screams and a clamor of morbid satisfaction.
The gambler slammed heavily onto the ground.
The dull thud of the impact reached Yue Shi's ears clearly, even from a distance.
Blood bloomed and spread across the pavement.
The sirens of rescue vehicles approached from afar. But clearly, they were a step too late.
Rate on N.U.
