fantasy novels Chapter 238 Cleaning Up the Internal Traitor
Chapter 238 Cleaning Up the Internal Traitor
Su Yunqing squatted in front of the load-bearing pillar.
The silver light bestowed by Yao Guang covered it.
Twelve people.
Nine of them were already cold.
The blood in his body was completely drained by the magic circle, and his skin clung to his bones like a specimen compressed in a vacuum.
The remaining three still have gas.
Her breathing was so shallow that you had to put your hand to the tip of her nose to feel it.
Su Yunqing's healing light penetrated the wound, and it began to heal.
But the lost blood cannot be conjured up out of thin air.
She turned the treatment intensity up to the maximum, and activated the shield conversion simultaneously, keeping the vital signs of the three people at the minimum acceptable level.
"Blood transfusions and fluid replacements are needed."
Su Yunqing raised her head, sweat beading on her forehead.
"I can only stall them, I can't take them with me."
Lu Yan turned to Zhao Leiguang and Shen Xinglin.
"Escort the wounded up and hand them over to the medical team on the perimeter."
Zhao Leiguang held a shield horizontally in front of him as a stretcher base, his movements as swift as if he had done it a hundred times before.
Shen Xinglin had already put away his lance and pulled the steel bars off the hostage with his bare hands.
The sound of metal separating from flesh was very short.
His face was expressionless, but his hands were as steady as a machine.
The three people were laid flat on the shield.
Zhao Lei carried the load towards the elevator shaft, while Shen Xinglin brought up the rear.
The two disappeared around the corner.
The basement fell silent again.
Xiao Qianyu was rummaging through things in the corner.
She planted her halberd in the ground as a lamp stand, the dragon shadow on the blade emitting a cold blue light.
Broken glass, organ specimens, and charred fragments of documents.
Her gloves were stained with blood of unknown origin.
When she reached the bottom of the third shelf wreckage, she touched a hard object.
Laptop computer.
The screen was shattered, the casing was deformed, and the gaps in the keyboard were filled with dark red, dried blood clots.
She opened the lid and tried it, but there was no reaction.
"The hard drive is probably ruined."
Wen Yue leaned over for a look and made her judgment.
Xiao Qianyu didn't give up. She turned the computer over and removed the bottom cover.
"The hard drive is indeed broken."
Her fingers brushed aside the fragments and touched the memory stick.
"But this one is still here."
Lin Chuxue lay down beside her, the lollipop moved to the left corner of her mouth.
"What's the use of a RAM stick? It's all wiped out when the power is off."
"This is a military-grade encrypted copy."
Xiao Qianyu carefully pulled out the memory stick.
"The power failure protection module writes communication logs to a non-volatile cache."
She handed the memory stick to Lu Yan.
Lu Yan took it and inserted it into the tactical terminal he was carrying.
The data reading took more than ten seconds.
Most of it is garbled text.
However, one communication log had an absurdly low level of encryption—it wasn't encrypted at all.
The same code name kept appearing in my log.
shepherd.
The coordinates sent are located in Jincheng.
The receiving end's IP address hopped seventeen times.
From Jincheng to Chengdu, from Chengdu to northern Myanmar, from northern Myanmar to Eastern Europe, from Eastern Europe to North Africa.
The last jump, and he disappeared.
"They fled overseas."
Wen Yue stared at the redirection path on the screen.
Lu Yan closed the tactical terminal and tucked it under his arm.
"Walk."
---
Dragon Guard Headquarters.
Qin Wangshan took the memory stick and the crystal powder in the sealed bag.
He inserted the memory stick into the intelligence department's mainframe, and the communications logs were displayed on the big screen.
The words "shepherd" are highlighted in red.
Qin Wangshan stared at the screen for five seconds.
Then the internal database was opened.
The search results popped up.
"The Shepherd" - appeared in a border smuggling intelligence report three months ago.
Labeling level: Low priority.
Archived by: Zhou Zhengyang, Level 3 Analyst, Intelligence Analysis Department.
Qin Wangshan's fingers hovered above the keyboard.
Where is Zhou Zhengyang now?
The staff officer next to him accessed the personnel system.
"I submitted a sick leave application two weeks ago. The diagnosis stated acute gastroenteritis."
"When will you return?"
"Not specified. Contact information..." The staff officer paused for a moment.
"The phone is switched off, and no one answers the door at the address."
Qin Wangshan slammed his palm on the table.
The sound wasn't loud.
But everyone in the command center stopped what they were doing.
"Sever all his social networks."
Qin Wangshan stood up.
"Retrieve all of them, including communication records, financial transaction records, and travel data."
I need results within ten minutes.
The intelligence officers were practically poking their fingers through the keyboard.
The data was transmitted back faster than expected.
Qin Wangshan's expression grew increasingly grim.
Zhou Zhengyang's bank account has seen seven overseas remittances in the past three months.
Each transaction shall not exceed 50,000.
It will not trigger large-scale monitoring.
The time points were marked one by one—all corresponding to the dates of abnormal fluctuations in the domestic secret realms.
Not a single stroke off.
No one spoke in the command room.
The silence lasted for five seconds.
Qin Wangshan took off his glasses and pressed his nose bridge with his thumb.
"Activate the Clean Internet Protocol."
His voice was flat.
The flatness actually sends chills down your spine.
"All personnel who have access to the Stargate core data and the Secret Realm monitoring authority will be investigated one by one."
"Not a single one can be missed."
He turned to look at Lu Yan.
"The mission level of the first squad is immediately upgraded."
"The focus has shifted from domestic eradication to counter-infiltration."
Lu Yan nodded, without saying anything more.
He turned and walked out.
"Lu Yan".
Qin Wangshan called out to him.
"The idea that there's a mole within the Dragon Guard..."
The old man's voice dropped half a tone.
"It was my dereliction of duty."
Lu Yan paused for a moment.
He didn't turn around.
"Don't say things like that until you catch the person."
The door closed.
---
dorm room.
The door lock is engaged.
The curtains were drawn tightly.
Lu Yan threw his coat on the back of the chair and sat on the edge of the bed.
Open your right hand.
The Void Disc rose from the palm of the hand, with black specks of light moving across its surface.
He closed his eyes.
He completely intercepted the information from the last moment before the crystal shattered.
This is not communication content.
It is the high-dimensional frequency itself.
The frequency contains the echo.
The echo of a spatial anchor point.
"Stomach"—a folded space used by higher-dimensional beings to imprison their prey.
He tore one open in Europe.
Knowing the frequency characteristics of that thing.
The echo captured this time is different from the one in Europe.
Deeper.
Older.
It's as if it's existed for a very, very long time.
The disk of nothingness spun faster.
The deconstruction principle of the black lotus peels away the outer shell of frequency.
Three hours.
When Lu Yan opened his eyes, the back of his shirt was soaked with sweat.
The blood vessels on both sides of the temples are throbbing.
It took a lot of mental effort.
But he got the result.
A vague directional range.
Between 34° and 36° north latitude.
105° to 108° east longitude.
He input the coordinates into the terminal map.
The cursor is positioned in the very center of the map of China.
Qinling.
Lu Yan zoomed in on the map with his finger.
Within that area, there is a secret realm coordinate marked in red by the military.
Rank: SS.
Status: Permanently blocked.
Name: Taebaek Abyss.
---
The light in Qin Wangshan's office was still on.
Lu Yan slammed the terminal on his desk.
Qin Wangshan glanced at the coordinates and leaned back in his chair.
"Taibai Abyss".
He repeated the name.
It felt like chewing on something you couldn't swallow.
"Thirty years ago." Qin Wangshan opened a dusty electronic file.
"The first batch of awakened individuals from China went in once. There were 120 of them."
"They came out alive?"
"Three."
Qin Wangshan tapped his fingers twice on the table.
All three of them are mentally unstable. They keep repeating the same sentence.
He pulled up screenshots from the interrogation video from that year.
The three people sat in different isolation wards, their lips opening and closing at the exact same frequency.
"There's something sleeping inside."
Lu Yan stared at the screenshot.
"What if that thing is Pangu?"
Qin Wangshan did not respond.
But his fingers stopped tapping.
Thirty years.
Lu Yan leaned forward slightly.
"No one has been inside for thirty years. It's permanently sealed off."
"We always thought we were protecting people outside."
"But what if it were the other way around—"
"Those things are using our own blockade protocols to disguise the cage as a restricted area."
"Thirty years. Saves the guards a lot of effort."
Qin Wangshan clenched his teeth.
The veins on my temples throbbed twice.
He did not immediately express his opinion.
Instead, he pulled out another document from the drawer.
"This just arrived this afternoon."
Urgent intelligence.
Energy monitoring data of the Taibaiyuan sealing array.
The decay rate has tripled in the past 72 hours.
The red curve drops down like a cliff.
"At this speed." Qin Wangshan's fingernail traced a line at the inflection point of the curve.
"Fourteen days. The lockdown collapsed on its own."
"When the time comes out, whatever it is—"
"We are passive."
Lu Yan stood up.
The chair leg scraped against the floor with a short, sharp sound.
Fourteen days.
He looked at Qin Wangshan.
That's enough.
Qin Wangshan opened his mouth.
The old man probably had a ton of things to say.
What do you mean, "The SS-level secret realm consumed 117 lives thirty years ago"?
What? "Your mental energy has just been used up at a high intensity."
What do you mean, "What if it's not Pangu inside?"
But he looked into Lu Yan's eyes.
In the end, he just nodded.
"I'll coordinate the resources."
Qin Wangshan put his glasses back on.
"Go and prepare your men."