267: Chapter 267 You lay out a nationwide control network, I'll have the capital dismantle it for me.

The gate to the Inner Circle of Tiangong No. 1 had just lifted.

Qin Yumo tossed a sealed box onto the inspection table.

The corners of the box were stained with mud, and there was dried blood near the latch.

"It was scavenged by the Min City relocation team."

The lid opened.

Dozens of crosses were packed into the black shock-absorbing foam.

Wood, silver, iron—the styles varied, but they all bore the same carvings on the back.

Feng Qingwu handed over a clipboard.

"Forty-seven in total."

"The testimonies of the holders don't match."

"Some say they are talismans for blessings, some say they ward off corpse poison, and others say that with these crosses, they can collect food at coastal relief stations."

She turned to the next page.

"All of these people have come into contact with Holy Court personnel."

"Six of those teams were originally headed to Shanghai."

Lin Yuan finished scanning the records.

"Take them to B2 and dismantle them all."

Tang Qiqi called out over the comms.

"It's been a while since I've opened a blind box; my hands have been itching for it!"

Su Xiaonuan approached with a tablet in her arms.

She first confirmed that Lin Yuan was uninjured, then her gaze fell upon Yu Qingyi.

Her old hair clip was fastened neatly.

Her coat was buttoned up to the collar.

Yu Qingyi walked half a step slower than before she left.

Su Xiaonuan paused for a beat, then lowered her head to pull up the permission page.

"Miss Yu, please enter your return information."

"Alright, Housekeeper Su."

Yu Qingyi placed her hand on the identification area.

Jiang Xiaowan stood at the doorway of the living room.

She first looked at Qin Yumo.

"Where's my dad?"

"He's not dead."

Qin Yumo unsheathed her twin blades and handed them to the inspector.

"Demerits for fighting."

"Position retained."

"Feng Sanhai punished him by making him count supplies for seven days."

Jiang Xiaowan pressed her hand against her abdomen.

"That's it?"

Qin Yumo glanced at her.

"Do you want me to add more?"

Jiang Xiaowan swallowed the rest of her sentence.

She had originally wanted to beg Lin Yuan to transfer General Manager Jiang Xiong back to Jiang City.

But Lin Yuan walked past her, leaving only his back behind.

Since Lin Yuan saw his son at the last cat party, Jiang Xiaowan had not entered the master bedroom again.

And she couldn't bring herself to ask Housekeeper Su.

Yu Qingyi followed behind.

Jiang Xiaowan's lips moved, but she ultimately sat back down on the sofa and shoved the crumpled picture of the bag under the cushion.

...

B2.

Tang Qiqi put on her goggles and fixed the first cross onto the cutting table.

The blade sliced open the outer shell.

crystal core powder fell into the tray.

Two metal wires, as thin as hair, were wrapped around the core, with dense patterns pressed beneath them.

Tang Qiqi poked at them with tweezers.

"That's it?"

"Even a stabilizer valve from a capital city mech is more complex than this."

As soon as the tweezers gripped the core.

A white light lit up from within the patterns.

In the second-floor study, Anar stood behind Lin Motong, who was doing homework, and platinum-fine threads emerged from the base of her wings.

The second cross lit up in response.

The third.

The fourth.

Inside the sealed box, all forty-seven crosses resonated in succession.

The monitoring screen turned red across the board.

[Abnormal Mental Energy signal detected.]

[Target: Anar.]

[Repeated Command: Saintess, return to your position.]

Anar's four wings spread slightly.

The tips of her feathers brushed against the metal floor, carving three shallow marks.

Tang Qiqi hit the isolation switch.

"Cut the network for the research level!"

The rolling shutters closed.

External communications were severed.

Su Muxue raised her hand and flicked out condensation needles, freezing the crosses around the cutting table into a layer of frost.

"Don't touch the core."

She pulled up the brainwave records from when Anar lost control and aligned them to the same timeline.

The two sets of curves overlapped.

Superimposed.

Overlapped again.

Su Muxue stared at the screen for over a dozen seconds.

"Dismantle the rest."

Tang Qiqi turned her head.

"Still dismantling?"

"Dismantle."

The outer shells fell off one by one.

The internal structures were all identical.

crystal core powder.

Metal wires.

Mental Energy carvings.

Su Muxue projected the comparison chart onto the main screen.

"Every single device is repeating the same command."

"The greater the quantity, the stronger the pull."

"They cannot generate a new controlling consciousness; they can only amplify the existing soul anchor within Anar."

She picked up the clipboard and wrote down the conclusion.

[Mental Energy Relay.]

Tang Qiqi stared at the forty-seven overlapping curves.

"Laying out so many crosses, it turns out it's just to provide signal boosting for the bird-person?"

Lin Yuan said, "Thaw them all."

Su Muxue turned her head.

"After the white light is superimposed, it's many times stronger than the radio signal from Wan City back then."

"Do as I say."

The personnel on the research level stepped back.

Su Muxue retracted her needles.

The layer of frost shattered.

All forty-seven crosses lit up simultaneously.

The white light converged along the metal table, twisting into a single beam.

"Saintess, return to your position."

"Saintess, return to your position."

"Saintess, return to your position."

Forty-seven voices overlapped.

The entire research level was echoing.

First-floor kitchen.

Wang Ya was researching how fine the coffee beans should be ground with Wang Xue, when a drop of water suddenly seeped from her fingertips.

She looked up toward the second floor.

After confirming that the power had not bypassed Lin Motong's suppression, she lowered her head again.

"Grind it a bit finer."

Wang Xue looked at her.

"Are you sure?"

"Mr. Lin likes it bitter."

Second-floor study.

Anar's four wings lifted half an inch.

Lin Motong, who was struggling with a math problem, looked up.

She looked at Anar for two seconds, put down her pencil, and hopped off her stool.

The little girl walked up to Anar and raised her hand to pat her wings.

"Alright, alright, be good."

Black and red patterns crawled across the base of her wings.

The platinum-fine threads were pressed back beneath her skin.

Anar dropped to her knees, lowering her head to rest near Lin Motong's hand.

Her four wings folded back in.

The "Saintess, return to your position" command on B2 was still repeating.

But the Saintess they wanted to take away was already kneeling before Miss Lin.

Tang Qiqi's mouth hung open for a few seconds.

She turned and lunged toward the console.

"Connect the amplifier!"

Su Muxue looked at her.

"What are you trying to do?"

"Turn the volume up to the max for the Holy Court."

"So they don't complain about bad signal later."

The forty-seven crosses were connected to the amplification equipment.

The energy output climbed steadily.

The curves on the screen surged to their peak.

Anar lifted her head slightly.

Lin Motong patted her head again.

"If you keep acting up, you're writing my essay this afternoon."

Anar hugged the little bear in her arms tighter and immediately lowered her head again.

[Remote command execution failed.]

[Remote command execution failed.]

[Remote command execution failed.]

Tang Qiqi took off her goggles.

"That's it?"

"Controlled nothing but thin air."

Lin Yuan looked at the crosses on the table.

The Holy Court was still distributing these items along the coast.

This meant they had no idea at all.

Their so-called Saintess had long since taken the Lin surname.

"Su Muxue, write up a report."

"Liu Qing, connect to the capital."

...

Capital city command room.

The encrypted channel lit up.

Adam flipped through the scanned paper documents.

Cross structure.

Coastal relief station coordinates.

Shanghai registrar disappearance records.

Lin Yuan's voice came through the channel.

"Cleaning up the national border is your emergency response team's job."

"I have no interest in these rats."

Beside the conference table, several high-ranking officials' faces darkened.

Just as someone was about to speak, Adam pressed his hand on his thermos.

"Mobilize the national intelligence network."

"Military police, coastal defense, and local Superpower units, conduct a synchronized search."

"If you find identical crosses, isolate them first, then interrogate."

An officer asked, "How should we handle those who resist arrest?"

Adam spat out a goji berry.

"Execute them on the spot."

The order was transmitted out of the command room.

Guangdong, Luhai, Liaonan.

Nodes everywhere received the same feature diagram.

The relay network that the Holy Court had spent weeks laying was, for the first time, placed on the Dragon Country's national purge list.

The communication ended.

Adam did not close the file.

A high-ranking official said coldly, "Lin Yuan handed over the intelligence because he wants the capital to send troops for him."

"I know."

Adam screwed the lid tight on his thermos.

"The Holy Court is laying their web on the Dragon Country's coast, not in the backyard of Cloud Top Palace."

"He is borrowing a knife."

"But the capital must wield this knife."

He raised his eyes.

"Execute nationwide."

...

Liu Qing cut the communication.

"Master, he figured it out."

Lin Yuan smiled.

"Even if he figured it out, he still has to do it for me."

"That's what you call useful."

...

Tiangong No. 1 living room.

Lin Yuan sat on the sofa, holding a cup of coffee newly developed by Wang Ya.

The situation in the Outer Circle was projected onto the screen.

Since Fat Dragon died in battle, his position had remained vacant.

Zhou Heng could suppress riots and guard the gates, but when it came to labor disputes, he would only tell people to move bricks or just beat them to death.

"Yu Qingyi will move to the second floor."

"Take over personnel scheduling for the Outer Circle."

"Labor arrangements, contribution registration, wounded care, and family subsidies—hand it all over to her."

Su Xiaonuan nodded and immediately began operating her tablet.

On the outer wall.

Zhou Heng closed his waterproof booklet; after receiving the appointment, he only replied with two words.

"Understood."

He glanced at the time.

Teacher Xia called out Zhou Niannian again yesterday.

After playing wildly with Lin Motong for three days, she had only written two pages of her winter break homework, and half of it was wrong.

If he didn't take the time to discipline her, his daughter would soon devolve from a rule-type player to a little follower of the zombie horde.

Three days later.

On the horizon, red clouds began to roll, and the fifth Red Moon arrived as scheduled.

Shanghai port area.

The waves that had been slapping against the embankment suddenly stopped.

Three seconds later.

The seawater began to recede.

One kilometer.

Two kilometers.

On the exposed seabed, tens of thousands of rotting sea fish flipped over simultaneously, their heads all facing toward the land.

Liu Qing's alarm pierced into the main control room.

"Master."

"The East Sea has receded three kilometers."

"Under the port... something is floating up."