303: Chapter 303 It's not killing people, it's harvesting goods.

Tang Qiqi rushed from the stairway into B1.

Her candy cane bumped against the edge of the stairs and bounced away, but she didn't look down. A corner of the strip of wind-up recording paper clutched in her hand was soaked with sweat, and half of the pencil handwriting had blurred.

"Great Demon King!"

She slapped the last photo from the wind-up camera onto the master control console.

In the photo, twelve lines that had never existed before appeared on the inner wall of the zero coffin. They were not cracks, nor were they corrosion. They looked like circuit diagrams, yet also resembled a network of blood vessels.

Lin Yuan took the photo.

The lines extended upward from the bottom of the zero coffin, branching into twelve lines, their ends each curving at different angles.

He raised his hand and placed the photo next to the map on the desk.

The direction of the twelve lines completely matched the geographical distribution of the twelve silent well.

"There's more." Tang Qiqi caught her breath and spread out the pendulum data from the wind-up recorder. "The vibration direction of the black marks has changed. It's no longer toward the medical area. It's pointing downward."

She drew an arrow on the edge of the paper with a pencil.

"Toward the Earth's crust."

Lin Yuan did not speak.

"Upgrade the observation clearance of the zero coffin to the highest level." He picked up the wired telephone receiver. "Only you, Liu Qing, and myself are permitted to access the offline data. Su Xiaonuan, Jiang Xiaowan, and the child are to be transferred to independent isolation observation rooms. Medical staff will no longer approach B2."

Su Xiaonuan stamped the official seal at the dispatcher's seat. "Received."

Holding the full set of purely mechanical equipment, Tang Qiqi turned around and ran toward the stairs.

"One every fifteen seconds! I'll keep taking pictures!"

...

B2 observation cabin.

Tang Qiqi squatted in front of the wind-up camera for eleven minutes. Forty-seven photos were arranged in four rows.

Every time the black marks vibrated, the temperature of the outer wall of the zero coffin remained unchanged. No radiation. No sound waves.

However, the mechanical pendulum suspended inside the cabin deviated.

The direction was constant.

Pointing downward.

She transmitted the data through the wired telephone. At the other end in B1, Liu Qing unfolded a paper satellite map—the last batch of offline thermal imaging from three days ago.

"The geothermal anomaly data for the twelve silent well has arrived." Liu Qing's voice came through the receiver. "You call out the sequence."

Tang Qiqi stared at the photo. "The first line lights up."

Liu Qing turned to the first well. "The first well, a synchronized temperature drop of 0.3 degrees appears."

"The seventh line flashes."

"The seventh well flashes accordingly."

"The twelfth line..."

"Synchronized."

Frame-by-frame comparison of the forty-seven photos was complete. Tang Qiqi put down the wind-up camera and wrote a line of text at the end of the recording paper.

[The zero coffin is not passive storage. It is the central node of the twelve silent well.]

[Those Zero Entities crawling out from the wells are not acting independently.]

[Someone is coordinating them.]

She folded the paper and shoved it into the messenger's hands. "Run."

...

B1 master control console.

By the time Lin Yuan finished reading the note, Liu Qing's second conclusion had also arrived.

She marked the thermal imaging changes of all "zombie disappearance areas" frame by frame. Ten minutes before each zombie group disappeared, the surface temperature briefly dropped by 0.3 degrees, then recovered.

The connection line of the temperature drop points—extended from the surface to the nearest silent well, and then converged from the silent well to Jiangcheng.

"The vanished zombies are not dead." Liu Qing wrote a note in the margin with a pencil. "Their energy has been extracted and channeled into the silent well along the underground passages."

Lin Yuan placed the two conclusions side by side on the desk.

The third piece of data followed. Tang Qiqi's handwriting was even scrawlier than the previous two.

[zero coffin weight three weeks ago: 1.2 kg.]

[Now: 1.7 kg.]

[The black coordinate box is getting heavier.]

The weight growth curve overlapped with the timeline of global zombie disappearances.

Perfectly overlapping.

Tang Qiqi drew out the complete link below.

Zero Entity contacts target -> Target is deleted -> Energy flows back to the silent well -> silent well transmit back to the zero coffin.

At the end of the arrow was a question mark: What happens after it's filled?

The last photo followed. Tang Qiqi observed the bottom layer of the zero coffin with a wind-up microscope—beneath the black marks, there was a deeper structure. It looked like a mirror surface, but it did not reflect any light.

She tested it with the tip of her pencil. It was not deleted.

The mirror surface vibrated once. The weight of the zero coffin dropped from 1.7 to 1.69.

Zero point zero one kilogram had vanished.

It was not deleted. It was transmitted away.

Tang Qiqi's note consisted of only eight words.

[It is not the destination. It is a transit station.]

...

Lin Yuan picked up the wired telephone.

The mechanical relay made three turns. The independent line to Beijing was connected.

"The goal of the End is not destruction." Lin Yuan skipped any pleasantries. "It is recovery."

The other end of the receiver fell silent for five seconds.

Lin Yuan continued. "How long has your Project Ark Zero been researched?"

Adam's voice came through, steady in tone: "Longer than you think."

Lin Yuan's right hand hung by his side, his thumb slowly rubbing against the seam of his trousers once.

"Don't make me ask a third time."

This silence was even shorter.

"Correct," Adam said. "The goal of the End is to erase the entire Superpower Era. All products modified by the Red Moon—Espers, zombies, crystal cores, mutated ecosystems, and player Systems—will be completely recovered and zeroed out. Let the world return to the primitive state before the Red Moon descended."

Lin Yuan gripped the receiver.

"My SSS-rank Devouring Superpower is essentially homologous to the End's recovery mechanism." Adam's voice had no fluctuations. "I perceived this matter earlier than anyone else. Project Ark Zero is not meant to counter the End."

He paused for a beat.

"It is to seal a portion of human genetic samples into non-Superpower media before the End completes its recovery. So that the human species itself will not be wiped out along with it."

"So that's why you wanted Jiang Xiaowan's physical examination data before."

"Ordinary human reproductive data is the core Materials of the Ark Project," Adam said. "Espers cannot reproduce. You are the only high-level Esper who can propagate with ordinary females. Your descendants may be the only living life forms left after the End completes its recovery."

Lin Yuan did not reply.

He put down the receiver.

...

Two notes were delivered to the desk almost simultaneously.

Tang Qiqi's: [The transmission frequency of the zero coffin's mirror layer is consistent with the signal waveform that disappeared when the System went black screen. The player System is also being recovered.]

Liu Qing's: [The Superpower waveforms of all known player System holders are disappearing one by one from global satellite records. It's not a shutdown. They are being deleted from history.]

Lin Yuan stacked the two notes together.

He took a folded old piece of paper from his inner pocket. On it were the last four lines of text displayed before the System went black, which he had copied down by hand outside the delivery room.

[Detection target: Newborn.]

[External System interface: None.]

[Genetic structure: Natural closed loop.]

[Rating: Unable to establish.]

Natural closed loop. Unable to establish a rating.

The last thing the System did before disappearing was to mark his daughter—and admit that it could not define her.

Tang Qiqi's final set of data was sent from B2. When the zero coffin vibrated, the black marks shifted toward the medical area. But the instant of that cry in Chapter 300, the black marks retreated.

It was not attacked. It was not suppressed.

The transit mechanism failed in front of that child.

The scanner scanned a blank piece of paper. There were no marks on it that could be "recovered".

Lin Yuan pressed the four lines of text to the bottom layer of the file.

"Su Xiaonuan."

"Present."

"Add a purely physical barrier to the isolation room of Jiang Xiaowan and the child. Do not use crystal cores, do not use Superpowers, and do not use any energy source that can be recognized by Zero Entities."

Su Xiaonuan wrote down the execution order, and the official seal fell.

In the direction of the outer wall, the Zero Entities were still advancing. But the latest data sent back by the paper tape showed that their advancing speed had dropped by another notch.

It was not because of the defense line.

Inside Tiangong No. 1, the energy of most Espers had already been zeroed out. There were fewer and fewer things left to harvest.

And that child, who was not on the recovery list, lay quietly in the incubator.

The white mist at the edge of the breathing mask rose and fell together.