176: Chapter 176 The End of the Double-Passing Gate

The air in the top-floor auction hall felt as if it had been frozen solid.

Cold sweat streamed down Li Xiaoyao's forehead and along his cheeks. He stared fixedly at the electromagnetic pistol pressed against his forehead, the high-frequency, ghostly blue current jumping at the muzzle stinging his skin.

"H-how do you police have this kind of weapon!" Li Xiaoyao rasped.

Gu Changan ignored his question entirely. The gun in his hand remained pointed steadily at the center of his brow.

The corner of Li Xiaoyao's eye twitched violently. He was unwilling to accept this. In the Tang Dynasty, he was a State Preceptor who could summon wind and rain; as long as he could escape back there, the laws of modern society could do nothing to him.

His thumb snapped down, forcefully twisting the emerald-green jade thumb ring. It was the carrier for the System of the Dual-Traversal Gate.

"Hum——"

In mid-air, a giant, ghostly blue gate of light instantly tore through the air. From within the light gate, the bustling sounds of peddling from the ancient city of Chang'an could be vaguely heard, and one could even smell the scent of soil belonging to over a thousand years ago.

"Gu Changan! I have a million troops in the Tang Dynasty! Just you wait! I'm going to go drag out the red-clothed cannons and level your Bureau of Anomalies!"

Li Xiaoyao let out an arrogant roar, kicked off hard with his feet, and launched himself like a shell fired from a cannon, diving directly toward the light gate.

If he could just get half a leg inside, he would be completely free.

Gu Changan stood his ground, not even moving his gun muzzle.

"Domain Solidification, activate." Gu Changan issued the command in his consciousness.

A translucent ripple of energy, invisible to the naked eye, exploded instantly with Gu Changan at its center. The spatial coordinates within a thousand-meter radius were completely locked. Any form of spatial travel or displacement turned into dead data at this moment.

Bang! An extremely dull thud echoed throughout the hall.

Li Xiaoyao maintained his diving posture, his face slamming hard into an invisible wall of air.

The crisp sound of his nasal bone breaking was clearly audible.

He slid down the invisible barrier to the floor, clutching his blood-covered nose and letting out a scream like a slaughtered pig.

The ghostly blue light gate beside him, which had originally led to the Tang Dynasty, flickered violently like an old television with a bad connection, turned directly into a sky full of static, and finally dissipated completely.

"My gate! My Tang Dynasty!" Li Xiaoyao collapsed on the floor, disregarding the excruciating pain in his face, and scrambled desperately to grab the remaining specks of light in the air.

Gu Changan walked over and stepped on Li Xiaoyao's right wrist.

A tremendous pressure came from the sole of his leather shoe, and Li Xiaoyao loosened his hand in pain.

Gu Changan bent down and forcibly stripped the emerald-green jade thumb ring off his thumb. He casually tossed it into a specially made signal-shielding box.

"Spacetime jumping? This counts as illegal cross-dimensional border crossing." Gu Changan looked down at him from above. "Did you get a visa for this?"

Chen Xiaobei walked over holding a handheld biological detector. As soon as the instrument neared Li Xiaoyao, the red alarm light on it began to flash frantically.

"Director Gu, this guy has a high-risk unknown biological reaction on him."

Gu Changan nodded, pulled a pair of medical rubber gloves from his pocket, and put them on. He reached out, pulled open the collar of Li Xiaoyao's expensive suit, and pinched a black bug from the folds of the shirt collar underneath.

Gu Changan tossed the insect, which was kicking its legs desperately, into a transparent evidence bag.

"It's quite large; a purebred flea from the Tang Dynasty, at that." Gu Changan looked at Li Xiaoyao's desperate face. "Li Xiaoyao, trafficking protected national cultural relics, with an involved amount of one billion. Using illegal channels for smuggling, and evading a massive amount of taxes."

Gu Changan shook the evidence bag in his hand. "Plus one more charge. Bringing in foreign harmful species without the approval of the National Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, suspected of endangering national ecological security."

Li Xiaoyao completely broke down.

He had thought that by obtaining the Dual-Traversal Gate, he could become the world's richest man, or even dominate two worlds. He never expected his grand ambition would end up dying because of a tiny Carbon-14 detector and a few Tang Dynasty fleas.

"Take him away. Notify the Municipal Epidemic Prevention Station to seal off the entire auction center and conduct three rounds of the highest-level deep disinfection." Gu Changan waved his hand.

The Special Police officers swarmed in, handcuffed the limp Li Xiaoyao, and dragged him out.

The next morning. The top-secret underground laboratory of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over a dozen of the country's top historians, physicists, and agricultural ecology academicians were gathered around a metal laboratory table. Resting on the table was the jade thumb ring.

Gu Changan leaned against the heavy blast door and lit a cigarette.

"Director Gu! This is simply a miracle in human history!" An old historian wearing thick-rimmed glasses slapped his thigh in excitement, tears streaming down his face. "With this channel, we can go directly to the Tang Dynasty to investigate the most authentic customs and conditions! Those ancient books and fragments lost in the flames of war can all be recovered!"

Beside him, an elderly agricultural expert with gray hair was dancing with excitement, waving the feasibility report in his hand. "It's not just history! The Tang Dynasty's environment was not polluted by modern industry. The rice and wheat there possess the most primitive and pure gene pools! For our country's agricultural breeding and food security, this is a subversive strategic resource!"

Gu Changan watched this group of crazy scientists and exhaled a puff of bluish-white smoke.

In the hands of the state apparatus, this illegally smuggled Dual-Traversal Gate cheat had completely turned into a hacked version of a historical research machine and ecological introduction pod.

As for Li Xiaoyao.

Because of the combined punishment for multiple crimes, and the extremely huge amount involved in the case, he was sentenced directly to life imprisonment.

He could only spend his days in the Northwest Third Maximum Security Prison, operating a sewing machine while reminiscing about his days as a State Preceptor in the Tang Dynasty.

Gu Changan returned to his office at the Bureau of Anomalies.

He had just hung his windbreaker on the coat rack when Chen Xiaobei walked in quickly, carrying a thick file.

"Director Gu, we've got work. A case transferred from the Municipal Public Security Bureau's Criminal Police Team; the nature of it is very severe." Chen Xiaobei slammed the file heavily onto the desk.

Gu Changan pulled out his chair, sat down, and opened the first page of the file.

A photo with a heavy mosaic blur came into view. In the photo was a young man, thin as a rail, lying in an intensive care unit, his body covered in life-support tubes. His skin was shriveled like sandpaper, completely devoid of the healthy complexion of a normal person.

"In the old district of Donghai City, the century-old martial arts hall, Xuantie Sect." Chen Xiaobei pointed to the text on the file. "In the last month, Sect Leader Ye Cangyun suddenly made a high-profile comeback, declaring he wanted to launch a revival of ancient martial arts."

Chen Xiaobei picked up the remote control and turned on the LCD screen on the office wall.

The screen played a short video. In the video, a thin, gaunt old man wearing a black Tang suit, under the gaze of a group of wealthy individuals and reporters, slammed a fist violently into a half-meter-thick slab of raw iron.

The raw iron slab was actually punched with a concave fist print, and spiderweb-like cracks covered the surrounding area.

The scene erupted in wild cheers.

"This old man is extremely unscrupulous in taking Disciples. The registration fee alone is one million. If you want him to personally teach Internal Skill, which they colloquially call 'Opening the Meridians' internally, the starting price is five million." Chen Xiaobei turned off the video.

Gu Changan pointed to the photo in the file. "What's the deal with this kid?"

"This is the only son of the local building materials tycoon, Boss Wang. A week ago, he paid five million to participate in Ye Cangyun's 'Opening the Meridians' ceremony." Chen Xiaobei lowered his voice. "Halfway through the ceremony, the kid passed out on the spot. When they got him to the hospital, his organs were in a state of extreme failure, as if his life force had been instantly drained."

"The family went to the martial arts hall to demand an explanation. As a result, they had their legs broken by the Disciples under Ye Cangyun, and were forced to sign a voluntary waiver of liability. This old man is now being worshipped as a living immortal in the wealthy circles of Donghai City, and no one dares to provoke him."