Chapter 135: The Heartless Room |
For the entire following week, Shi Rang was practically on vacation.
Aside from wandering around, recklessly spending Shi Shixin's money, and occasionally showing up to handle onboarding procedures, all he did was fabricate some intelligence to fool the Alliance.
Rumor had it that the Alliance was going to assign him a new dedicated intelligence contact. Once that person arrived at their post, they would re-evaluate the cooperative value of the New World Society before considering whether to issue him new communication equipment.
Other than that, he had nothing to do.
Opportunities for Plunder, like his previous cooperation with Ma Cidi, were hard to come by. Finding a suitable Distortion Phenomenon and getting to it before the Management Authority could process it was simply too difficult.
Now that Shi Rang had Phantom Transformation to conceal his identity, he was inclined to acquire another offensive or defensive ability for himself. However, this meant that the original Distortion Phenomenon needed to have similar characteristics, which inevitably meant it would be hazardous. In turn, this increased the difficulty of his operations—such Distortion Phenomena were almost always dealt with immediately by the Management Authority.
The "Mental Shock gesture" recently added to his emergency arsenal was decent, but not practical enough. Shi Rang was preparing to sweep it off his list.
In the event of an emergency, no one was going to stand there and watch him form hand seals.
Over at the Ascension Society, A Piao was very busy as a Head. Unable to contact it, Shi Rang relied on Jing Zi to gather information.
"The Society has an Anomalous Item that can catalyze the strengthening of animals?"
"They refused to tell me the specific details, but after noticing the Management Authority's drastic financial fluctuations over two months ago, the higher-ups decided to use it to enhance a batch of mosquitoes. They launched a harassment campaign against the Management Authority in the border regions, paving the way for the upcoming operations in the Second District."
Jing Zi read from the document.
"Under the effects of the Anomalous Item, the mosquito swarm expanded to hundreds of thousands in just a few days. This led to the administrative collapse of multiple facilities and Management Authority Veil Companies, exacerbating the impact. The mosquito swarm was quickly wiped out by the Management Authority's Mobile Task Force, but the Flyer was the true attack.
"The Flyer was produced by a Cadre contacting the Library. They had previously been besieged by the Alliance and the Management Authority, and were willing to help us exact revenge. The two coordinated to jointly trigger chaos in the Management Authority's operations.
"However, this method can only be used once. They will be on guard next time."
Jing Zi looked up from the document in his hands, waiting for Shi Rang to ask questions.
"Have you found out the reason behind the Management Authority's economic crisis?"
"There are many speculations, but no concrete evidence."
Shi Rang sat in the study chair like a big boss, his fingers tapping against the thick wooden armrest.
The Terminal Station made no mention of the cause behind the Management Authority's localized economic crisis either. It was yet another mystery.
A swarm of super-mosquitoes and a massive amount of flyers merely added to the chaos. Fanning the flames, they ultimately led to the administrative collapse of the Management Authority in the Second District.
These two attacks sounded incredibly rudimentary. Yet, anyone could imagine the horror of a mosquito swarm tearing through the sky like dark clouds at Mach speed, swarming anyone they encountered and sucking them into desiccated corpses. Coupled with the Memetic Contamination that struck when the lower-level employees' mindsets were unstable...
It was an attack launched by taking advantage of their vulnerability.
The moral issues involved made Shi Rang's heart dim for a moment, and ultimately, he kept his questions to himself.
After all, the Management Authority was his enemy.
The Ascension Society could be considered one too, but he could not leave them just yet...
Shi Rang asked, "But isn't the Society's goal to prevent the Star Child Order from seizing the Eye of God?"
"The Second District falling into chaos will lower the Management Authority's response efficiency. The Star Child cultists hiding in the shadows will also notice this opportunity. Intelligence proves they know the exact location of the Eye of God."
"Which means they will act in the near future... No, the Management Authority is definitely on high alert right now. The best opportunity will be when they quell the disturbance and let their guard down."
"Exactly," Jing Zi praised. "This operation was personally orchestrated by The Prism, one of the Heads. They are bound to succeed."
'It sounds like this Head known as The Prism is very familiar with how the Management Authority operates.'
'They even anticipated that a severe loss of liquid funds would result in lower-level employees suffering from Wage Arrears.'
After listening to the report, Shi Rang signaled for Jing Zi to leave. He stayed alone in the study to ponder, but in reality, he went back to searching for a suitable hunting target.
'If only I could obtain some Anomalous Items from the Ascension Society.'
However, there was no way they would allow him to smash an excellent tool, and the disappearance of the item would be impossible to explain. Plunder was his second most important secret—using A Piao's name might be an option, but Shi Rang was not about to strike a deal with the devil.
The Communication Device he had Mounted previously had already disconnected from the Data Center; Shi Rang could not go back.
He wandered around the terrifyingly massive data streams of the Terminal Station for a while, searching through the latest reports submitted by the Second District in an attempt to find a Distortion Phenomenon he could exploit.
Soon, he noticed a bizarre file. It circulated through the data streams two or three times before scattering and distributing itself, making it quite conspicuous.
[Application to Revise Testing Plan for Anomaly Project CVA-C-3096]
Shi Rang pulled out a Transcript from it and returned to his personal space to read.
[...Previously, this Anomaly was isolated for 60 days in accordance with incident investigation requirements. During the initial test yesterday, D-74597 entered C-3096 and remained for 24 hours without exhibiting any symptoms of contamination. The subsequent three sets of tests yielded the same results. Currently, long-term stay tests have not been approved, and the expected test results cannot be obtained.]
'Testing an Anomaly can actually run into problems?'
'Can't the Terminal Station perform Locking and Identification on Anomalies? Even with only basic characteristics, they should still be able to conduct tests, right?'
'Are the people in the Intelligence Department really this sloppy?'
Shi Rang waved his hand at the Terminal Station, saying hello by sending a query command.
The corresponding Records immediately appeared before him.
[CVA-C-3096 — "The Heartless Room" (Unarchived)]
[Project Initial Investigation Report:
The Anomaly Project is Room 1 on the 4th floor of Building ■ in ■ Residence, Dongshang City. All personnel entering the Subject will suffer mental contamination, developing psychological changes such as conflict and irritability, which in turn lead to violent behavior, transforming them into C-3096-1.
The exact time required for this transformation is currently unknown, and the transformation is irreversible.
The recorded affected residents since the year 1639 are detailed as follows (Appendix 1). The current residents are Xu ■, Wang ■, Xu ■ (child), Xu ■ (child).]
The Terminal Station's internal prompt read: [Insufficient characteristics. Unable to perform Locking on the Anomaly. Unable to proceed with Analysis.]
'Because the room was in isolation previously, they weren't able to gather enough clues to conduct the Analysis?'
'It feels like there's something wrong with this process...'
'But what's going on with the D-Class personnel going in and not being affected? Could it be that they didn't stay long enough?'
Shi Rang knew what D-Class personnel were. It was one of the cruel secrets of the Management Authority that he dared not look into too deeply. But that wasn't the issue at hand.
Closely linked to the Terminal Station, he could feel the Locking progress of these Records.
To use an inappropriate analogy: if a passing grade for intelligence was an 80, and completing the Locking to proceed with Analysis required at least a 50, the accuracy rate of these Records did not even reach 20.
There was a problem with these initial clues.
As he continued reading down to the "Containment Operation Combat Report," Shi Rang's pupils shrank, and his physical body instantly sprang up from the chair in the real world.
He was right. His intuition was correct—there was a problem with the containment protocol for this Anomaly Project!
Having read the employee manual and being familiar with the archiving process, he finally discovered the discrepancy. According to the "Standard Disposal Regulations" formulated by the Intelligence Department, unless an Anomaly exhibited abnormal movements and explicit malice toward humans, Field Agents were supposed to do their utmost to avoid direct contact with the Anomaly until they had sufficient intelligence support.
Investigate first, perform Analysis next, obtain the Records, and then deploy for containment. This was the standard procedure.
If conditions were restrictive, they should have requested more backup to complete the Locking first and confirm the Anomalous Properties. Everything was supposed to prioritize intelligence.
If even that was impossible, they were meant to isolate the scene first.
However, the action report stated that without obtaining intelligence support, the Field Agents entered the scene and engaged in a conflict with the family of four living in the house. Because the four people inside actively attacked the trespassing Field Agents, they were all killed.
This was a rogue operation, a violation of protocol—and it wasn't even targeting a Distortion Phenomenon, but an Anomaly!
Shi Rang tried hard not to imagine the unfamiliar couple and their two children lying dead in a pool of blood.
He and Ying Shang didn't have children, but he couldn't help but envision a scenario where someone broke into their home and shot them dead.
'Protecting humanity... then who was there to protect this family of four?'
He might not gain anything from this incident, but he had to go and see for himself.
Someone had violated protocol during this operation. They might have misjudged the Anomalous Properties and wrongfully murdered civilians!
Worse yet, this Anomaly was absolutely not as simple as it appeared on the surface. Its superficial properties did not match the actual situation; it was entirely possible that this was another Divine Corpse!
Dongshang City was not too far from the Capital. Since Shi Rang could go there, he would not sit idly by and watch a second Green Island City tragedy unfold!
He took out his mobile phone and checked, finding that Dongshang City was not far from the Capital. It only took three hours by plane to get there. He immediately bolted for the door.
"Jing Zi, to the Airport! We're heading to Dongshang City immediately!"