Chapter 6 Special Incident Handling Center

The time spent waiting always felt exceptionally long.

Lin Yuan sat on a discarded tire, his eyes darting toward the entrance of the scrapyard every now and then, his heart pounding with anxiety.

He didn't know who would show up. Would it be police in uniform, scientists in white lab coats, or perhaps those mysterious figures in black suits and sunglasses like in the movies?

Time ticked by second by second, and the surroundings were terrifyingly quiet. He could even hear the sound of his own heartbeat accelerating from nervousness.

He felt a bit of regret. Had he made things sound too bizarre over the phone? What if they came and realized he was just bragging? Would they arrest him for filing a false report?

But the moment he thought of that deep, black metal plate, his confidence returned.

That thing was real; it wasn't a figment of his imagination. As long as they came, saw it with their own eyes, and tested it themselves, they would definitely believe him.

About an hour or so passed.

Just as Lin Yuan was about to fall asleep from waiting, a faint sound of a car engine drifted in from the distance, growing louder as it approached.

He perked up, stood up abruptly, and looked toward the entrance.

A black, unmarked, ordinary sedan slowly pulled up to the entrance of the scrapyard. Its headlights weren't on high beam; they just quietly illuminated a small area at the entrance, appearing very low-key.

The car doors opened, and two people stepped out from the driver's seat and the front passenger seat respectively.

One man and one woman, both dressed in ordinary casual clothes. The man wore a dark jacket, and the woman was in a sharp, practical tracksuit. Both looked very young, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old.

The man was of average build and plain appearance—the kind you wouldn't be able to pick out in a crowd. The woman wore her hair in a simple ponytail, her eyes bright, exuding a sense of sharpness and capability.

Were these the "mysterious figures" Lin Yuan had imagined?

They looked more like two ordinary community workers.

Lin Yuan felt a bit doubtful.

After getting out of the car, the two didn't come in immediately. Instead, they stood at the entrance, scanning the environment of the scrapyard with vigilant eyes. The man kept his hand in his jacket pocket, as if ready to pull something out at any moment.

"Are you Mr. Lin?" the man named Zhang Wei asked, his voice very steady.

"Yes, it's me," Lin Yuan replied quickly.

"We are from the Special Incident Handling Center," Zhang Wei stated his identity concisely, while pulling an ID out of his pocket and flashing it from over ten meters away. "We received your report and have come to understand the situation."

Special Incident Handling Center?

The name actually sounded like it meant business.

Lin Yuan nodded and pointed to the center of the yard: "The thing... is right there."

Zhang Wei exchanged a look with the woman named Li Na, and then they walked in, one after the other. Their posture while walking was peculiar; they appeared relaxed, but they always maintained a distance that allowed them to support each other at any moment.

The two walked up to Lin Yuan but didn't get too close.

Li Na scanned Lin Yuan, then asked, "Mr. Lin, are you the person who called? Were you under any duress?"

"It's me, and I wasn't under any duress," Lin Yuan answered honestly.

"Very good." Zhang Wei nodded, his gaze passing over Lin Yuan and landing on the black metal plate not far away. "Is that the thing?"

"Yes, that's it."

The two stepped toward the metal plate. Lin Yuan followed behind, wanting to explain a few things, but Li Na raised her hand to stop him.

"Mr. Lin, please stay where you are. Do not approach."

Lin Yuan had no choice but to stop.

Zhang Wei walked up to the metal plate and crouched down, but he didn't touch it with his hands, only observed it carefully. He took out a small, mobile phone-like device from his pocket and scanned the metal plate.

A string of green data lit up on the device's screen.

"No harmful radiation, no biological activity, no strong electromagnetic waves," Zhang Wei said in a low voice to Li Na beside him.

Li Na nodded, took out a briefcase from the backpack she was carrying, and opened it.

Lin Yuan craned his neck to look, only to see the case filled with various precision instruments and tools he couldn't understand.

Li Na reached out with a gloved hand, gently scraped a tiny, almost invisible amount of powder from the metal plate, placed it into a test tube, and added a few drops of reagent.

The liquid in the test tube didn't change at all.

"Composition unrecognizable." Li Na shook her head, her tone tinged with confusion.

Zhang Wei's expression also became serious. They had handled many strange and bizarre things, but this was the first time they had encountered a substance whose composition could not be analyzed at all with portable equipment.

"You said on the phone that you tried to cut it?" Zhang Wei turned his head and looked at Lin Yuan.

"Yes." Lin Yuan pointed to the ruined plasma cutting gun nearby. "Using that—it's imported and very powerful. But after spraying it for a long time, it had no reaction at all, and the gun itself burned out instead."

He pointed to a pile of damaged tools nearby: "And these, hammers, hydraulic shears—I've tried them all, but it's useless."

Zhang Wei and Li Na exchanged a look, both seeing a hint of gravity in the other's eyes.

They had seen people file false reports to gain attention and had seen mentally unstable individuals talking nonsense, but this was the first time they had encountered someone like Lin Yuan, who had physical evidence and spoke with clear logic.

Especially after seeing the plasma cutting gun that had clearly burned out from overload and the hydraulic shears with chipped edges, their skepticism had already faded by seventy or eighty percent.

Zhang Wei pondered for a moment and said to Li Na, "Bring out the heavy equipment."

Li Na nodded and took out a tool from the briefcase that looked like an electric drill but had a more sci-fi design.

"This is a 'Piranha-7' portable ultrasonic drill. The drill bit is made of polycrystalline diamond composite, specifically designed to deal with ultra-high-strength unknown substances." Zhang Wei explained to Lin Yuan, his tone carrying a sense of confidence.

This item was standard issue for their unit; even the hardest material on Earth could be drilled through with it.

Li Na put on her goggles and started the drill.

"Hum—"

The drill emitted a high-frequency, almost inaudible vibration, and the drill bit began to rotate at high speed.

She aimed the drill bit at a corner of the black metal plate and pressed it down steadily.

"Zzzzz—"

A teeth-gritting grinding sound rang out, and even a string of tiny sparks flew off.

Zhang Wei and Li Na's eyes were locked tightly on the spot where the drill bit met the metal plate.

One second. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

The drill's rotation speed began to drop significantly, and the sound it emitted became increasingly strained.

Suddenly, a crisp "crack" sound!

The high-speed rotating drill bit—the polycrystalline diamond drill bit that claimed to be able to drill through anything—actually... snapped in half!

The broken half of the drill bit flew off, spinning on the concrete floor.

And on the black metal plate, at the spot that had been drilled for so long, there was only a shallow, almost negligible white dot.

The air seemed to freeze at that moment.

The expressions on Zhang Wei and Li Na's faces shifted instantly from professional and confident to utter shock.

The two stared blankly at the white dot, then looked at the drill in their hands which was now missing half its bit, unable to say a word for a long time.

What... what the hell kind of hardness is this?!

This didn't conform to any physics common sense they knew!

Zhang Wei's Adam's apple bobbed, and he swallowed hard. He turned around abruptly, took an encrypted satellite phone from his pocket, and walked quickly to the side. For the first time, his voice showed obvious fluctuation.

"Calling Center! Calling Center! This is Donghai-01! Repeat, this is Donghai-01!"

"On-site confirmation: the target object's physical properties are severely anomalous! Our portable equipment is ineffective! Repeat, portable equipment is completely ineffective!"

"Requesting support! Requesting support! I am requesting... to elevate the incident level to Level Two! No! Level One! I am requesting to elevate the incident level directly to a Level One priority!"