223: They'll be forced to understand.

Qin Zhan encountered no obstacles along the way and arrived once again before that wooden door covered in cartoon stickers.

This time, he couldn't even be bothered to push the door open.

"Bang!" With a kick.

The fragile wooden door, along with its frame, crashed inward with a roar.

The tremendous noise, accompanied by a sky full of flying wood splinters, caused the messy figure inside the workshop to jolt violently.

"What the hell! Who is it! Do you have a death wish?!"

Zhong Huai jumped up from behind a pile of complex energy conduits, still holding a high-frequency cutting gun, his face full of rage at having his train of thought interrupted.

But when he saw clearly that the person standing at the doorway was Qin Zhan, the anger on his face instantly turned into astonishment.

"Brother... Brother Zhan?"

Zhong Huai looked at his captain's face, which was so dark it could drip water, then looked at the pile of door fragments at his feet, and subconsciously hid the tool in his hand behind his back.

"Old Four! We're in trouble!"

Qin Zhan stepped into the workshop, his military boots crunching on the wood splinters with a "creak."

His words were calm, but Zhong Huai could hear a hint of repression before a volcanic eruption in them.

"Ah... ah?" Zhong Huai was a bit dazed. "What happened?"

"See for yourself."

Qin Zhan didn't waste any words and directly shared the encrypted report sent by Zhou Zheng to Zhong Huai's personal terminal.

Zhong Huai opened the report, puzzled.

At first, he still had that cynical smile on his face.

When he saw the title, "Regarding the Discovery of Suspected High-Level Abyss Domain Personnel Activity in the Linzhou Black Market...", his smile faded.

When he saw the words "S-Class Incident," "Annihilation Attribute," and "Unknown Powerhouse," he straightened his body.

Finally, when he saw that familiar name in the attachment, along with Zhou Zheng's private note.

All the expressions on Zhong Huai's face froze.

"What the... hell."

The same curse word, coming out of Zhong Huai's mouth, carried a completely different flavor than it did with Qin Zhan.

It was not shock, nor was it confusion.

It was a kind of shiver mixed with fanaticism, excitement, and disbelief.

"A script! This is a script, Brother Zhan!"

Zhong Huai suddenly raised his head, his eyes shining; he looked like a mad scientist who had discovered a new continent.

As soon as the word "script" came out, Qin Zhan knew his judgment was likely correct.

Yeah. A script.

Aside from this word, there was no more suitable explanation.

He looked at his teammate in front of him, whose face was flushed with excitement, and then thought back to his own irritability when he kicked the door earlier, and a feeling of unspeakable absurdity suddenly rose in his heart.

Qin Zhan, oh Qin Zhan. In the end, you still ended up living as the person you hated the most.

Sophisticated, slick, starting to use the dirty logic of adults to speculate about this world.

"Brother Zhan, don't look at me like that, it's creeping me out." Zhong Huai rubbed his arms, cooling down slightly from that fanaticism of discovering a new continent.

He walked around the door fragments on the floor and cautiously moved closer to Qin Zhan.

"Did you figure it out too?"

Qin Zhan didn't speak, just reached into his pocket, pulled out another lollipop, tore open the packaging, and shoved it into his mouth.

The sweet taste of fruit diffused in his mouth, but it couldn't suppress the cloying irritation at the bottom of his heart.

"Let's hear it." He said indistinctly.

"Heh heh." Seeing this, Zhong Huai's courage grew again. He threw an arm around Qin Zhan's shoulder, lowered his voice, and began to analyze it mysteriously.

"Does it even need to be said? This script is written too damn obviously!"

"Look at that report from Zhou Zheng; it's written watertight. He pushed all the responsibility onto the 'Abyss Domain' and the 'Unknown Powerhouse,' keeping himself completely clean. He's an old fox; this move is flawless."

"But the key is the attachment! Why did he put Lin Yu's file in there? And specifically add words like 'background is extremely special, identity is extremely sensitive'?"

Zhong Huai held up two fingers. "Two purposes!"

"First, passing the buck! He can't afford to offend Lin Yu, let alone investigate him, so he used an encrypted channel to accurately toss this hot potato to you. It means, 'Boss, I can't touch this person, now he belongs to you.'"

"Second, taking credit! It's also telling you, 'I, Zhou Zheng, understood the game and cooperated with the performance. I helped you set up the background board of the 'Abyss Domain Powerhouse' and paved the way; the rest is up to how you play this scene.'"

The plastic stick in Qin Zhan's mouth was bitten until it made a "creaking" sound.

Zhong Huai's analysis was almost exactly the same as what he had just thought of himself.

Only perhaps more thorough and more certain.

"Do you know what the most brilliant part is?" Zhong Huai's eyes lit up again. "The most brilliant part is that the 'Abyss Domain One-Day Tour' plan we made before was never told to anyone!"

"And what happened? People over in Linzhou submitted a perfect report related to the 'Abyss Domain'!"

"What does this mean?" Zhong Huai slapped his thigh.

"It means the big shot who wrote this script either has eyes and ears everywhere to the point of infiltrating us completely, or is capable of divination, calculating exactly what we will think and what we will do! He isn't arranging us at all; he is following our train of thought, handing us knives and evidence!"

"With this move, putting Lin Yu into the Abyss Domain mission is no longer using the back door or engaging in favoritism. It's because he has a major connection to the S-Class Incident and has the 'experience' of fighting against an Abyss Domain powerhouse! We are following the rules and arranging the assessment reasonably and logically!"

"Perfect! This logic is a perfectly closed loop!"

The more Zhong Huai spoke, the more excited he became, and his spit was almost spraying onto Qin Zhan's face.

Qin Zhan felt his brain throbbing with pain as he listened. He pushed Zhong Huai away.

"Enough."

He hated this feeling.

He and the entire Tusk Squad had become pieces on someone else's chessboard. Every step was calculated to death, yet they thought themselves clever.

This sense of powerlessness was more suffocating than facing ten Abyss Domain lords.

"Sigh..." Zhong Huai saw Qin Zhan's irritability, put away his fanatical demeanor, and sighed.

He jumped down from the toolbox beside him, picked up a relatively intact component, and tossed it in his hand to play with.

"Brother Zhan, I know you don't like these twists and turns."

"But living in this world, how can one truly keep oneself aloof? Especially at our position."

Zhong Huai's tone became somewhat long-drawn; he was no longer that mad scientist from before, but instead like an old man who had seen through the ways of the world.

"Do you think that if you don't seek out favors, favors won't come looking for you?"

"If you don't want to be stained by worldly ways, won't the worldly ways drag you into the water?"

"Impossible." Zhong Huai shook his head.

"As long as you are still in this position, as long as you have a bunch of brothers under your command, these things will come looking for you on their own. You can't avoid them."

"You can push this matter aside today for the sake of principle. But what about tomorrow? The day after? You can refuse to give Teacher Gao face, but what about someone with even more face than Teacher Gao?"