502: Chapter 502 How can you prove you're still Su Mingyuan?

The Gu Mother was still panting inside the cage.

Su Mingyuan withdrew his thoughts and turned around.

"Why are you all looking at me like that? Did something grow on my face?"

No one answered.

After a moment, Tao Zhe spoke, his voice devoid of emotion.

"Group Leader Su, let's go back first. This is no place to talk."

Su Mingyuan swept his gaze across everyone's faces, his heart skipping a beat.

He suddenly caught the underlying meaning.

That trick just now, from his own perspective, was a demonstration and a reassurance.

But how did it look in the eyes of this bunch of people?

A person who had fallen unconscious just twenty minutes ago wakes up and can press a Cultivator at the Nascent Soul Stage to the ground and rub them into the dirt with a single thought.

Far from reassuring anyone, this scene was terrifying enough to scare people to death.

Su Mingyuan opened his mouth, then swallowed his words back down.

Explaining at this moment would only make things worse.

"Let's go."

From the resettlement area back to the Central Command was a total of just over three hundred meters.

The more Su Mingyuan walked, the more he felt something was off.

When leaving the resettlement area, the eighteen guards had all put away their guns.

But he had sharp ears, and the whole way he didn't hear a single crisp sound of a safety being engaged.

In other words, the safeties on all eighteen guns were completely off right now.

Chen Rong followed half a step behind and to his side.

Although it was the same distance as before, his position used to be on the rear right, shielding against sneak attacks from outside.

Now he had moved to the rear left, stuck awkwardly right in the blind spot of his raised hand.

This wasn't protecting him; this was guarding against him.

Entering the Central Command, the door closed, and Su Mingyuan sat down in the main seat.

Tao Zhe, Chen Rong, Lin Wan, and Zhang Dabiao stood in a semicircle.

He picked up the completely cold cup of tea on the table and took a sip.

"All right, stop being so tense. Ask whatever you want to ask."

Everyone looked at each other.

After a long while, Tao Zhe spoke first after all.

"Group Leader Su, I speak bluntly, please bear with me."

"Speak."

"Before their parasites were activated, those people like Li Ming were exactly like normal people. Eating, standing guard, submitting reports—no one could spot any problem."

Su Mingyuan's hand holding the cup paused for a moment.

He understood Tao Zhe's meaning.

Tao Zhe continued speaking, not very fast, sounding like he was reading a test report.

"You suffered a Divine Sense attack and were unconscious for twenty minutes. When you woke up, the person who made a move dropped to their knees and called you master. In front of dozens of people, a butterfly even flew out of your head."

"We just witnessed the Gu Mother's methods of controlling parasites. If she could stuff one into a logistics soldier's brain, why couldn't she stuff a more Advanced one into yours?"

"From our perspective, the most reasonable explanation is not that you subdued the Gu Mother."

"It's that the Gu Mother put something in your brain, and the kneeling in the resettlement area was a token of allegiance she performed for us to see."

As his voice fell, the room was so quiet that only the whistling wind from the vent remained.

Zhang Dabiao's face flushed red, and he stepped forward.

"Tao Zhe, what are you spouting..."

"Brother Zhang." Lin Wan reached out to stop him, her eyes not leaving Su Mingyuan. "Let him finish. You don't know how terrifying the parasites are."

Su Mingyuan sat there without getting angry.

"Your suspicions are right."

Zhang Dabiao was stunned.

"If I were standing in your position, I would suspect even more harshly." Su Mingyuan put down the cup. "That's exactly the kind of game she plays."

"Let me hit you with another blow."

"When Li Ming was controlled, his mind was clear and he didn't lose a single bit of memory; it was just that his body wouldn't obey. So don't think about asking me any classified secrets to verify my identity. I can spit out nuclear weapon codes on the spot, but if there really is something in my brain and it speaks through my mouth, the answers will still be word-for-word identical."

"The path of questioning won't work."

Zhang Dabiao had originally raised his hand, wanting to say that they could ask about something only Group Leader Su knew, but the words reached his throat and he swallowed them back down.

Well, the guy had blocked off the path himself.

Tao Zhe adjusted his glasses.

"Then we check directly."

He shouted out toward the outside, and two researchers carried in an equipment case.

Various testing equipment was set up.

"Ultra-narrowband mode, sensitivity maxed out, focus on scanning below the brainstem."

The instrument hummed for half a minute.

"Everything is normal," the researcher reported. "The brainstem, medulla oblongata, and upper spinal cord show no foreign body signals."

Zhang Dabiao slapped his thigh. "Isn't that it then!"

"It's not that simple."

The one pouring cold water was Tao Zhe himself.

"With Li Ming and the others, we scanned them three times before we caught sight of the parasites. If the Gu Mother has cultivated an even more Advanced model in her hands, this machine of mine is just a decoration."

He retracted the probes, his expression not looking too good.

"The machine saying there isn't any only proves that the machine didn't find anything. Those are two different matters."

Zhang Dabiao scratched his head.

"Then what should we do? Machines don't work, questioning doesn't work, we can't just cut his head open directly, can we?"

"There is still one other method."

Chen Rong spoke up.

"It was Lin Wan's and my Divine Sense that first sensed something was wrong with those people."

"No matter how well parasites can hide, they cannot hide from Divine Sense. My Divine Sense will go directly into Group Leader Su's brain; whether it is clean inside and whether there are any foreign things will be known at a single probe."

"But there is a prerequisite: it requires the person's permission."

Four gazes fell squarely onto Su Mingyuan's face.

Su Mingyuan did not answer immediately.

Lowering his head, he rubbed the rim of the cup with his thumb, one stroke after another.

If he agreed, what about that skeleton deep within the Sea of Consciousness?

Once Chen Rong's Divine Sense entered, it would collide head-on with an evil object that had created billions of zombies.

By then, it wouldn't be a matter of Group Leader Su possibly having a bug in his brain; it would be Group Leader Su raising something a hundred times more terrifying than the Gu Mother inside his brain.

Before the fire was extinguished, a bucket of oil was poured on first.

But what if he didn't agree?

Suspicion was a thing that couldn't be suppressed; it would only ferment.

Starting from today, every order he signed would fall into the ears of these people, and whether they would listen or not would be a completely different matter.

On one side was a potential accident; on the other, an accident had already happened.

On the side of the Evil Bone Skeleton, it might not necessarily be a bad thing, since it had already recognized him as its master; on the side of human hearts, the rift was right before his eyes.

Thinking of this, he raised his head and stood up.

"Very well, I agree."

"But before that, three things must be done first."

"First, activate the core personnel incapacitation contingency plan. From now until the verification ends, my command authority is frozen, battlefield command is handed over to Zhang Dabiao, and overall coordination is handed over to Tao Zhe."

"Second, connect to Elder Qin via an encrypted line and report everything truthfully, detail by detail. For a matter of this level, covering it up is the biggest flaw."

"Third, record the entire verification process and archive it."

Zhang Dabiao's mouth opened.

"Group Leader Su, there's no need to make such a big fuss, right?"

"We must make it this big. Whenever we encounter this kind of thing from now on, whatever is done today will be done in the future."

Ten minutes later, the encrypted line connected to the capital.

Su Mingyuan combed through the whole matter from start to finish—the unconsciousness, recognition of master, suspicion of parasitism, and verification plan—not missing a single thing.

On the other end of the line, Elder Qin listened quietly and remained silent for a long time.

So long that Tao Zhe almost thought the signal had disconnected.

Then the old man spoke, just one sentence.

"Complete the procedure."

After a pause, he added half a sentence.

"After it's done, have Mingyuan call me back."

The phone hung up.

Zhang Dabiao scratched his head and muttered softly.

"What does Elder Qin mean by those words? The first half sounds like he doesn't believe it, and the second half sounds like he does."

No one paid him any attention.

An open space was cleared in the center of the Central Command, and Su Mingyuan sat down cross-legged.

Chen Rong sat down opposite him, pressing both hands onto his temples.

"Group Leader Su, are you ready?"