95: Trial on the Ruins

"Boom—!!!"

The loud explosion was like an invisible giant hand, violently clutching the entirety of Mining Area No. 7. Chen Feng abruptly looked up from his data analysis, his heart instantly seized by a cold premonition.

Immediately after, a piercing alarm tore through the deathly silent air of Ashen Earth Star.

He rushed out of his office, just in time to see a flare of fire, mixed with black smoke and blue electric arcs, rising from the Technical Workshop in the distance.

"Damn it!"

Chen Feng’s face turned pale instantly, and he rushed toward the scene of the accident at top speed. When he arrived, the workshop was already surrounded by people, the air thick with a pungent burnt smell and the characteristic ozone scent left after energy dissipation.

The door of the Technical Workshop had been blown out of shape. Reno, covered in soot and dust, was leading several Guards as they carried two people out. One was an unconscious Lao Mo, and the other was a Technician with severe burns on his legs.

Medical robots quickly moved forward to take over the injured, while Reno, like an enraged lion with bloodshot eyes, searched for something in the crowd.

Just then, Su Li arrived.

She was still in her meticulous business attire, her expression as cold as ice that hadn't melted in ten thousand years. She held a holographic tablet that was refreshing a stream of data. It was as if she hadn't come to handle a disaster, but to review a substandard report.

"Su Li!"

Reno’s roar silenced the surrounding noise. Like a wall, he instantly blocked Su Li’s path.

"You still dare to show up?" Every word Reno spoke seemed to be squeezed through his teeth. He pointed at the injured who had just been carried away, then at the messy fire scene, his voice trembling with extreme rage. "Do you see this? This is the two hundred thousand credits you saved! This is your 'optimal solution'!"

The surrounding Guards and workers also cast hostile and condemning looks at Su Li. Those gazes were like knives cutting into her.

"Supervisor Reno, please calm down." Su Li didn't even look up at him, her gaze still locked on the data tablet. "According to my system's preliminary analysis, the direct cause of the accident was..."

"I can't calm down!" Reno swiped away the data tablet in front of her and roared, "All I know is that if we had used the high-precision sensors Lao Mo applied for, none of this would have happened! You don't care about their lives at all! In your eyes, they're just a string of numbers on your damn KPI report!"

"You're just a cold-blooded executioner!"

These words, like a heavy hammer, struck everyone’s heart. Su Li’s body stiffened imperceptibly for a moment.

She finally looked up. In those sharp eyes, there was no anger, only a nearly cruel calmness.

"Emotions won't solve the problem, Supervisor Reno." She raised the data tablet again, displaying a line of red-highlighted data to everyone. "Preliminary data shows that at the moment the Energy Harmonics appeared, the operator had a 1.5-second golden window to manually abort the program. But he didn't."

Her voice was cold and clear: "Therefore, according to the operating manual and the definition of responsibility, this was an operational error by the technical team, not a problem with my budget plan."

"You..." Reno trembled with rage, pointing at Su Li but unable to say a word. He couldn't refute the cold data, but the fury churning inside him almost burned him to ashes.

A fierce argument erupted completely in front of everyone, right outside the Medical Center where lives were being saved.

"Everyone, shut up!"

An unquestionable voice boomed like thunder, instantly drowning out all the noise.

Chen Feng had finally arrived.

His face was terrifyingly grim, and his eyes showed no favoritism, only a suffocating authority. Everyone's gaze instantly focused on him, and the noisy scene became so quiet that a pin drop could be heard.

He didn't look at Reno or Su Li; he walked straight between them toward the emergency room.

Inside the emergency room, Lao Mo had already woken up, his face as pale as paper. Seeing Chen Feng enter, he struggled to sit up.

"Boss... I've failed you..." Lao Mo’s voice was weak and raspy, his eyes filled with pain and self-reproach. "It was... I was too confident. When the system alarm went off, I hesitated for a moment... The responsibility is all mine, please punish me!"

Chen Feng looked at him silently for a long time before slowly speaking, "Now is not the time to assign blame. Your only task right now is to recover well."

After saying that, he turned and left the emergency room, giving orders to Su Li and Reno behind him.

"You two, follow me."

The three returned to the ruins of the Technical Workshop. The burnt smell in the air was even stronger, and charred wires and melted metal components were everywhere.

Chen Feng didn't make any judgment; he simply said to the Technician clearing the scene, "Retrieve the Reactor's 'Black Box' for me and use the highest authorization to recover the data inside."

Half an hour later, a fragmented but core-data-intact information stream was projected into the air in the middle of the ruins.

Everyone held their breath.

"Found it... the data log from 0.1 seconds before the accident." The Technician's voice trembled slightly.

A blinding energy curve appeared on the holographic projection.

It was like a sword perpendicular to the time axis, instantly soaring from a steady baseline to a peak, and then vanishing in the next instant.

The Technician pointed at the annotation on the curve and read with difficulty: "Lethal high-frequency Energy Harmonics, peak... duration... 0.03 seconds."

0.03 seconds.

This number, like a bolt of lightning, struck the minds of everyone present.

It was far below the limit of human reaction time.

It was even far below the minimum effective detection threshold of the three cheap sensors connected in parallel in Su Li’s plan.

Data—the coldest, most irrefutable data—proved that this was not anyone's operational error.

Reno stared fixedly at that number. The anger and roaring on his face had long since vanished, replaced only by a deep silence and powerlessness.

Su Li also looked at that lethal data curve. On that face that had always been as cold as a mask, for the first time, a trace of indescribable shaking appeared.