3: Chapter 3: Being Watched by the State

The nation has a department called the "General Bureau of Special Affairs," which specializes in handling matters that science cannot explain. The Ninth Bureau is the most mysterious within the General Bureau.

At this moment, the atmosphere in The Ninth Bureau's command center was so tense it could be wrung out like water. On the large screen, a thermal imaging video captured from high altitude played on a loop; the target was exactly the abandoned construction site where Jiang Ning had stayed.

In the footage, a blurry figure was busy at the site, moving things and arranging patterns. Then, a surge of energy began to gather there, forming a small vortex.

"The energy fluctuations have been stable for over ten hours," a technician reported. "It doesn't match any high-energy phenomena in our database."

Sitting in the commander's seat was a middle-aged man named Director Zhao Lixin, the deputy director of The Ninth Bureau. He pointed at the center of the energy vortex on the screen: "What on earth is this energy?"

A white-haired old professor responded; he was a physics authority who had been urgently summoned. "Director Zhao, it's too difficult to analyze," Professor Chen said. "Its structure is very strange; it vibrates intensely, yet it seems alive. We're temporarily calling it 'spirit particles.' The key is that it doesn't obey the law of conservation of energy; it's as if... it just appeared out of thin air."

"Appeared out of thin air?" Director Zhao Lixin frowned. "Professor Chen, you can't just say things like that recklessly."

"I know that, of course," Professor Chen gave a bitter smile. "That's why I said 'as if.' But this is our closest guess to the truth so far. This energy is 'remodeling' the elementary particles in the surrounding environment; this completely overturns our existing physics."

Director Zhao Lixin fell silent. He trusted Professor Chen's rigor; if even he was talking like this, then this matter was serious.

A brand new energy source of unknown nature that could exist stably.

When these terms were put together, the weight was immense. It could bring about a new industrial revolution, or it could be a world-destroying weapon.

"What about the field team?" Director Zhao Lixin asked the communications officer.

"Reporting to Director Zhao, Team One has reached the perimeter. They've confirmed there is only one active target at the center of the energy source: a female, around twenty years old, identity untraceable. The target left the site half an hour ago and is heading toward the city. Team One is following her without making contact."

The screen switched to photos taken by the field team using a telephoto lens. In the photos, Jiang Ning was wearing strange, tattered clothes, holding a box of fried rice and eating with great relish.

"A young girl?" A murmur broke out in the command center. Everyone felt this was a bit ridiculous. Could the person who caused such a huge commotion really be this poor-looking girl?

Director Zhao Lixin didn't dare let his guard down. He had seen too many wolves in sheep's clothing.

"Check her identity. Use the Skynet System to trace all her movements back to before she appeared at the site," Director Zhao Lixin ordered.

A few minutes later, the technician's reply left everyone dumbfounded.

"Reporting to Director Zhao... we can't find anything. In the Skynet System, her earliest record is from yesterday afternoon, appearing out of thin air on the abandoned site's surveillance. It's as if... she teleported there."

Teleportation!

If saying "spirit particles" was a challenge to physics, then this word was like pinning science to the ground and beating it.

Director Zhao Lixin remained silent, his mind racing. A woman of unknown origin appeared out of thin air and possessed a new energy technology. She wasn't aggressive; instead, she got hungry and tired like a normal person and even accepted fried rice from a stranger. What was going on?

"Director Zhao, what do we do now? Do we apprehend her?" an operations team leader asked.

Director Zhao Lixin shook his head.

"No. The situation is unclear, and the risk of taking action is too high." He thought for a moment and made a decision. "First, raise the secrecy level to the highest. Seal off everything within five kilometers of the construction site; say it's for pipeline repairs, and let no one in. The field team will continue to follow her, but they must not be exposed. I want to know her every move—who she meets, what she says, and what she's interested in."

"Finally, and most importantly," Director Zhao Lixin's gaze swept across the room, "establish a special task force called the 'Urban Old Industrial Area Renovation Planning Project Department.' I will lead the team personally, and Professor Chen will serve as the technical consultant. We will take the initiative to contact her."

"Proactive contact?" Professor Chen was a bit worried. "Isn't that too risky?"

"If you don't enter the tiger's den, how can you catch the tiger cub?" Director Zhao Lixin stood up, his tone firm. "Rather than guessing blindly, it's better to ask her directly. Find out who she is, where she came from, and what she wants. Also, what exactly is the technology she holds?"

He looked at the small energy vortex on the screen and added, emphasizing every word: "This technology must be in the hands of the state."

...

Jiang Ning had no idea she had been targeted by the nation's most mysterious department. Having eaten and drunk her fill, she found a park bench, preparing to make do for the night.

She sat cross-legged and tried to absorb the bit of energy gathered by the Spirit Gathering Array. Although it was chaotic, having some was better than nothing. The energy entered her body, circulated according to the "Azure Cloud Art," and slowly transformed into spiritual power, storing itself in her Dantian.

This process was deathly slow. After a whole night, the tiny bit of spiritual power in her Dantian wasn't even enough to cast the simplest Cleansing Technique.

"The efficiency is too low." At dawn, Jiang Ning opened her eyes, very dissatisfied. The effect of that crude Spirit Gathering Array was too poor; it had to be modified.

She returned to the abandoned construction site, looked at the ugly thing she had made yesterday, and began to ponder how to optimize it.

"The iron in the rebar isn't pure; it needs to be refined. The concrete blocks are too loose; they need to be reinforced. I'm also missing a core formation eye to stabilize the energy."

She worked as she thought. She took out several of the best-looking pieces of rebar from her Storage Pouch and used two large stones as a hammer and anvil, clanging away as she smashed them. She didn't have spirit fire, so she could only use the clumsiest physical method, striking again and again to knock the impurities out of the rebar.

A passing elderly scavenger saw her and stopped curiously. "Little girl, what are you doing? Can you really hammer something useful out of that scrap rebar?"

Jiang Ning ignored him, focusing on the rebar in her hands. Under her repeated hammering, that rusty piece of rebar actually began to brighten and shrank slightly, looking much sturdier.

The scavenger stared dumbfounded, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. This girl's strength was simply too great, wasn't it?

Jiang Ning didn't stop. She used the same method to process over a dozen pieces of rebar and plugged them back into yesterday's array nodes. Next, she found some scrap copper wire, twisted it into fine threads, and wrapped them around the array base, creating more complex energy circuits.

Finally, from a pile of trash, she dug out a head-sized piece of granite with a relatively clean texture and placed it in the center as the formation eye.

After finishing this, she cut her finger again and used her blood to draw the activation rune on the formation eye.

This time, the commotion was much clearer than yesterday.

With the array as the center, a visible vortex of air formed! Dust and fallen leaves within a three-meter radius were swept up, gathering toward the formation eye. The messy energy in the air was sucked in, filtered, and refined more efficiently. Jiang Ning could clearly feel that the concentration of "spirit particles" at the center of the array was at least ten times that of yesterday!

"Now this is more like it." Jiang Ning nodded with satisfaction.

Meanwhile, on the roof of a tall building several kilometers away, The Ninth Bureau's monitoring team was in an uproar.

"Reporting to the command center! The target energy source's intensity has surged! It's more than ten times yesterday's!"

"The energy fluctuations have also changed; they're more stable! My god, she's... she's upgrading that energy device!"

Through real-time video, Director Zhao Lixin and Professor Chen watched Jiang Ning smash rebar and twist copper wire with her bare hands, upgrading a device that could overturn physics as if she were playing with building blocks. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

After a long while, Professor Chen finally spoke tremulously: "Old Zhao... I was wrong before. This... this isn't physics; this is theology."

Director Zhao Lixin swallowed hard, picked up the communicator, and ordered with an unprecedentedly serious tone: "Prepare to initiate the contact plan. Send out the word: I want to meet her."