35: Chapter 35: Fabricated intelligence approved; purchase of eyeballs to patch loopholes.

Zhang Yi lay in his invisible tent, watching Walsh's flawless performance in the conference room through the system screen, his lips twitching slightly.

"Man, weaponizing Russia's deep-earth drilling for geological warfare? That's an even wilder stretch of imagination than Edward's theory about the Great Depression being artificially manipulated."

"Edward used the Great Depression to cover up the Hoover Dam, and you're using Russia digging a thousand-meter deep hole to cover up yours—did you two learn how to fabricate intelligence reports together at the Naval Academy?"

But he didn't have much time to marvel at Walsh's talent for fabrication.

Because he had to focus his attention on another matter.

He knew what Walsh was going to do next.

Four days ago, in the early morning at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Los Angeles,

he had watched through the system screen as Walsh dug up Burton Cramer's grave shovel by shovel, pulling a greaseproof paper-wrapped document bag from a hidden compartment in the coffin,

and then fished out the bullet engraved with coordinates from the bottom of the bag.

He hadn't let the system miss a single detail—the document fragments, the poisoned, blackened bones, the hidden compartment at the bottom of the coffin, and the bullet engraved with longitude, latitude, and depth markings were all under his surveillance.

In fact, those things in Cramer's coffin had been put there by himself.

Of course, not physically by his own hands, but through the system's script correction function.

It was a setting he had fabricated along the way when he spent fifteen thousand emotion points to fix the 'newspaper owner loophole' last time.

The words written on those fragments—'Inside the base', 'Non-disclosure agreement number H-7', 'Silenced upon departure', 'They got that thing, alien technology'...

...were all script texts he had typed out line by line on the system interface.

The coordinates on that bullet were also something he had engraved onto a virtual lead bullet head, carefully calibrating it against a map of Los Angeles after precisely calculating the longitude and latitude.

Only... Zhang Yi's expression darkened slightly.

At that time, he only had fifteen thousand emotion points.

And fixing the loopholes, fabricating physical evidence, and making the entire chain of causality look seamless had consumed the vast majority of them.

So, when fabricating the 'underground secret' pointed to by the coordinates on that bullet, he had made an unavoidable choice:

He only did superficial work.

In other words, he had only fabricated the clues in Cramer's coffin—the document fragments and the bullet.

These were corrections on the level of 'first-tier textual records' and 'second-tier real-world items,' which cost within his budget.

But for the final destination pointed to by those coordinates, a thousand meters directly beneath Cramer's former residence at 124 Colter Street, he didn't have enough emotion points to fabricate its contents.

In other words, if Walsh led people to dig a thousand meters beneath 124 Colter Street right now, even if they dug ten thousand meters, they wouldn't find any alien technology.

The underground secret pointed to by those coordinates was still an uncreated draft to Zhang Yi.

How could he allow his script to have a loophole of this magnitude?

Now that Walsh had already secured his unrestricted authority from the Department of Homeland Security,

things had reached this point, and he absolutely couldn't drop the ball at the final moment.

So, he quickly opened the system mall.

Remaining emotion points: 45,000.

Step one: He needed a method of reverse delivery, something that could silently slip an item deep underground.

He quickly browsed through the mall, scanning several major categories: 'Energy Technology', 'Space Technology', and 'Basic Technology'.

His fingers scrolled down in the air like playing piano keys, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper; most of them were massive items costing hundreds of thousands or millions.

Finally, he scrolled down to the miscellaneous low-price section and stopped in front of an entry highlighted in blue.

[localized spatial teleportation platform (Miniature) — Price: 5,000 emotion points]

[Description: A small spatial teleportation device. Once folded, its size is roughly equivalent to a standard paperback book.]

[Effective teleportation radius is five kilometers. Within this range, any non-living matter can be teleported to designated spatial coordinates.]

[Teleportation does not require physical medium connections and is not obstructed by soil, rock layers, or man-made structures.]

[Note: This device can only teleport non-living matter. Attempting to teleport any form of carbon-based living organisms is strictly prohibited.]

Zhang Yi read through the description and let out a whistle.

A five-kilometer radius. He was currently in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, less than two kilometers in a straight line from Colter Street—more than enough.

No living organisms. That was fine; he didn't plan on teleporting himself down anyway.

'Purchased.'

[Purchase confirmed.]

[localized spatial teleportation platform] has been stored in the system storage space.

[emotion points consumed: 5,000.]

[Remaining emotion points: 40,000.]

Step two: He needed a real piece of 'alien technology' for Walsh to discover.

Zhang Yi opened the alien technology category of the mall.

And then, reality slapped him hard in the face.

Genuine alien technology equipment—even the lowest-grade sample of an alien energy core or the wreckage of a shuttle pod—all cost over a million.

He scrolled through about thirty items, and every single price tag felt like a knife cutting into his dignity.

Sneering, he took a step back and changed the filter to 'Defective/Damaged/Incomplete'.

The prices were still ridiculously high.

A corpse of a Grey Alien: 200,000 emotion points.

A damaged alien pulse pistol: 150,000.

A small alloy fragment of a spacecraft's hull: 80,000.

Zhang Yi took a deep breath and pushed the filter down even further—'the most defective of the defective'.

This time, only a handful of items remained in the mall.

One of the entries made him pause.

[Grey Alien's Right Eyeball (Preserved Ex Vivo) — Price: 20,000 emotion points]

[Description: A complete eyeball organ harvested from a Grey Alien and preserved ex vivo.]

[The photoreceptor neurons and bio-optical reflective layer inside the eyeball remain intact, possessing basic light perception and visual signal conversion functions.]

[The preservation container is a free miniature biological stabilization box provided by the system, ensuring the eyeball maintains physiological activity over the long term in its ex vivo state.]

[Note: As the purchaser, the host automatically gains ownership of the eyeball. Subsequently, the host can remotely control the eyeball's visual functions through the system interface and retrieve its field of view at any time.]

Twenty thousand.

The cheapest alien technology—if an eyeball could even be considered 'technology'.

Zhang Yi's lips twitched.

He remembered how in his past life, when browsing online stores, he would see an expensive piece of clothing, hesitate to pay full price, and start looking at the 'Special Discount' section,

then the 'Clearance' section,

then the 'Defective Goods' section,

and finally buy a defective item with sleeves that were a bit too short, comforting himself by saying it was perfect for summer.

The current situation was exactly the same.

Alien technology -> Defective -> The most defective of the defective -> An eyeball.

'Buy.' Gritting his teeth, he clicked confirm.

[Purchase confirmed.]

[Grey Alien's Right Eyeball] has been stored in the system storage space.

[emotion points consumed: 20,000.]

[Remaining emotion points: 20,000.]

[Included item: miniature biological stabilization box.]

[This box is provided free of charge by the system. Made of high-density organic polymer, it ensures the stored contents maintain constant temperature, humidity, and pressure in extreme environments.]

[Box dimensions: Length 5.2 cm, Width 5.2 cm, Height 3.1 cm.]

Zhang Yi looked at the balance of '20,000 points remaining',

and then at the large black eyeball quietly suspended in the liquid of the transparent stabilization box inside the system storage space, temporarily speechless.

Going from fifteen thousand to forty-five thousand, he had thought he could amass a decent fortune,

but within minutes, forty-five thousand had become twenty thousand.

Five thousand for the teleportation platform,

twenty thousand for an eyeball,

and this thing wasn't even bought for his own use; it was meant to be buried underground for someone else to dig up.

'I spent twenty thousand emotion points to buy an eyeball, and then I have to spend another five thousand emotion points to send it a thousand meters underground, bury it in the bedrock, and wait for Walsh to dig it up, only for it to end up in Walsh's hands...'

Zhang Yi repeated the process word by word, as if conducting some kind of financial audit on himself.

Then he took a deep breath, stared straight at the system interface, and spat out a single word expressionlessly.

'What a loss.'

The system popped up at the right moment.

[Tip: The host does not need to dwell on this too much.]

[Although the eyeball is currently in an ex vivo state, purchase grants permanent ownership.]

[Regardless of who holds the eyeball in the future, the host can remotely access its visual functions through the system interface. This is equivalent to owning a mobile monitor that can be activated at any time, free from physical distance limitations.]

[Furthermore, the very existence of this eyeball will completely eliminate any loopholes in the host's script deep beneath Colter Street—its value is far more than twenty thousand emotion points.]

'You talk a big game, but spending it really hurts.'

Zhang Yi rolled his eyes, rubbed his temples, and resignedly turned his attention back to the operation.

He took the two items out of the storage space.

One was the miniature localized spatial teleportation platform.

Once folded, it was indeed only the size of a paperback book. Its casing was a matte silver-gray metal, cold to the touch.

The other was the miniature biological stabilization box.

The box was a bit smaller than a palm. Inside the translucent casing, a complete, large black eyeball was quietly immersed in the liquid preservation medium, gently cradled.

The deep blue iris on the eyeball, even without being connected to an optic nerve or facial skin, still carried an unsettling silence.

Zhang Yi ran his finger across the smooth surface of the stabilization box, then slid the thing into the teleportation platform's delivery slot.

A positioning input box automatically popped up on the system interface.

He precisely entered the coordinates engraved on that bullet, including the longitude, latitude, and depth: one thousand meters underground.

Confirm.

A faint blue light flashed across the surface of the teleportation platform. There was no sound, no shockwave, and not even a vibration in the air.

Only the miniature biological stabilization box containing the eyeball vanished into thin air right before his eyes.

Teleportation complete.

A line of green text popped up on the host's operation interface's teleportation log a second later.

[Teleportation complete.]

[Target Coordinates: 34°03'09" N, 118°16'52" W, Depth -1000.03 meters.]

[Received Item: miniature biological stabilization box (containing Grey Alien's right eyeball).]

[Status: Delivered. Box structure intact, preservation medium stable.]

Zhang Yi put the teleportation platform back into his storage space, lay back down on his sleeping bag, and switched the screen on the system interface back to Walsh's side.

He had done what he needed to do. The script loopholes on Cramer's end had been completely patched.

Now, a thousand meters beneath 124 Colter Street, an alien eyeball was indeed buried.

It was no longer a blank, unwritten loophole, but a real, detectable remnant of alien technology.

Next, it was all up to how Walsh would dig it up.