Chapter 35: The Second Squad, a Den of Hidden Dragons and Crouching Tigers

Li Lin was jolted awake from the depths of sleep by a noisy cell phone ringtone. Accompanying the sudden ringing was a spiritual warning from deep within his own heart.

As a Special Operations Bureau agent with excellent training scores, he realized almost instantly that something was happening. He snapped fully awake, springing from the bed in his temporary rental like a rocket, landing on the floor, then grabbing his phone from the nightstand while rushing toward the window facing the street.

“This is Li Lin,” he said rapidly into the phone, at the same time crouching by the window and pointing a device with a complex lens assembly down at the street below. “What’s going on?”

Song Cheng’s voice came through the earpiece immediately, sounding unusually grave. “Have you observed anything on your end?”

Li Lin kept one eye on the light refracted through the lens device while glancing at the laptop monitoring data automatically beside him. He quickly pulled up the monitoring log and spoke rapidly. “Monitoring data shows everything normal. There was only one very small-scale energy fluctuation at one in the morning—a normal periodic ‘surge’ in the Borderlands…”

“…Xu Jiali has already set out early. He should be reaching you soon,” Song Cheng said in a低沉 voice. “Keep monitoring the block, but even if you observe something, don’t go out casually. Report immediately—and remember, until Xu Jiali is in place, absolutely do not leave the safe house alone!”

“Huh? Oh, okay, copy!” Li Lin hesitated for a moment, then quickly agreed, and immediately couldn’t help asking, “What exactly is happening?”

“…The Borderlands are undergoing large-scale spacetime dislocations and restorations of unknown cause, occurring every five to ten minutes.”

Song Cheng ignored Li Lin’s exclamation on the other end. After hanging up, he took a deep breath and looked up at the huge screen at the far end of the command hall.

The screen displayed a flat map of the entire “ Border City .” Beyond the map, there were three-dimensional structures formed by countless curves and identifiers, along with a flood of monitoring data and remote surveillance signals scrolling madly.

The vast command hall was brightly lit. Special Operations Bureau staff in black uniforms stared intently at terminals around them, while occasionally someone entered or exited through the small side doors, relaying information from other departments or bringing more bad news.

“There were also a few minor spacetime dislocation phenomena in the past couple of days, but they weren’t this large or this dense,” a female Special Operations Bureau employee in a black professional skirt suit muttered quietly behind Song Cheng. “The spacetime structure of the Borderlands is special; such things have happened before, so the alert level reported at the time wasn’t high…”

“Now it looks more like a probe before some large-scale operation,” another voice came from the side. “Now ‘they’ have officially begun… Damn it, we got careless.”

Just then, a report came from a terminal somewhere, interrupting the conversation behind Song Cheng. “Fissure detected! Targeting Chawen-12b. Unable to confirm precise location… Attempting traceback!”

Song Cheng frowned deeply, said nothing, and silently counted numbers in his mind.

More than ten seconds later, he heard the follow-up report—

“Fissure closed! Traceback failed! Spacetime structure restored!”

Such reports had repeated many times in this hall—once every few minutes.

The intervals were not entirely stable, but basically within ten minutes. Each duration was also not exactly precise, but never exceeded thirty seconds. It seemed artificial, but… what was the point? And more importantly… who could do something this outrageous?!

“Fissure detected! Targeting White Dragon-4c. Unable to confirm precise location. Attempting traceback…”

“Fissure closed! Traceback failed…”

Song Cheng’s frown deepened. Just then, a faint humming sound interrupted his thoughts, and a screen beside him lit up the next second.

A woman appeared on the screen. She looked less than thirty, with dignified features but a cold, detached temperament.

She wore a white skirt suit, her gray-white hair tied into a loose single ponytail at the back of her head, and her eyes were an unusual gray-white with very pale pupils. The whole person gave off a feeling… as if lacking color.

Seeing this woman, Song Cheng’s back visibly stiffened a bit, and a somewhat stiff wry smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Director,” Song Cheng greeted. “We’re still tracking…”

“What’s the situation now?” the woman addressed as Director interrupted Song Cheng, her voice cool and calm.

“Fissures are still constantly appearing and disappearing. Still unable to trace back, but for now it’s basically confirmed that the phenomenon is harmless to the Borderlands itself—the spacetime structure hasn’t been damaged.”

“Haven’t been damaged?”

“Yes, although those fissures have been temporarily classified as ‘spacetime dislocations,’ it’s only that their surface properties are similar. What they actually are… is hard to say,” Song Cheng said with a wry smile. “When each one appears, it doesn’t really tear spacetime, but rather…”

He struggled for a moment, finally recalled the description given by the technical expert earlier, and continued, “It feels like that’s the original structure of spacetime—the moment the fissure appears, it’s as if the Borderlands have always had such a stable passage leading to a distant place, and when it disappears, it’s as if it never existed. No impact, no catastrophic collapse, and so far we haven’t received any reports of casualties.”

The gray-haired woman listened quietly, remaining silent for a long time.

Song Cheng also kept quiet, just waiting patiently.

“That ‘special location’ you had monitored earlier—any changes?”

“No. Right now it’s the most ‘calm’ place in all of Border City , calm like a black hole,” Song Cheng sighed. “That’s the most abnormal thing. Everyone knows something’s off there, but the biggest problem with that place is that you can’t see any problem. I’ve already sent the best deep diver from the Second Squad over, and also arranged two additional monitoring teams to approach that street from other directions…”

“What do you think the person responsible for all this wants?” the woman suddenly asked.

“…Hard to say,” Song Cheng thought for a moment and spoke cautiously. “At first I thought it was some kind of attack, but now it seems they are just continuously opening and closing one fissure after another. Nearly a whole night has passed, and they haven’t even disturbed anyone…”

“Could it be a new ‘Gloomy Angel’ phenomenon?”

“Probably not. Whenever a Gloomy Angel appears, it inevitably comes with large-scale otherworldly chaos and widespread damage in the real world. It’s not this ‘harmless,’” Song Cheng shook his head at once. “Also, we haven’t received any reports about those angel worshippers recently. If a new Gloomy Angel really appeared, those cultists wouldn’t stay so quiet.”

“As long as it’s not a Gloomy Angel, it’s fine.”

“Yeah, as long as it’s not a Gloomy Angel, it’s okay,” Song Cheng sighed. “But then again, if this is man-made… then what kind of ‘person’ would that be? They’re causing such a huge commotion—what exactly are they trying to do…”

The latter half of his sentence was completely muttered to himself. The gray-haired woman on the screen broke the silence after a few seconds of thought—

“This world is vast, and there are still too many races and ancient individuals we have not encountered,” she said softly. Her face was still young, but her words inadvertently revealed a certain world-weariness. “And our universe is very young, so many ‘theorems’ and ‘laws’ have not yet formed… Learn to adapt, Xiao Song. Our work has never been about dealing with the ‘known.’”

“…I understand.”

The gray-haired woman nodded, then seemed to sense something. She suddenly looked up in a certain direction—her nearly colorless pale pupils froze for a moment, then she broke the silence softly: “It’s calmed down.”

Song Cheng raised his head and looked at the hall.

No reports of new fissure formations came.

…

A knock with a specific rhythm sounded. Li Lin stood at the door, using his spiritual intuition to confirm the presence outside, then stepped half a step to the side and opened the door.

A big man nearly two meters tall hunched over to squeeze into the rental apartment, dragging behind him a huge black case that seemed very fitting for his height and build.

“Your place is really cramped,” the big man said, turning his head to glance at Li Lin standing by the door. “Even more cramped than the landing pod I was in two days ago.”

Li Lin rolled his eyes. “Still roomier than your rattletrap of a car—you managed to drive it here from the bureau, so don’t complain about my place.”

The big man chuckled, pushed his heavy case against the wall, and sat down without ceremony on the sofa in the living room, instantly letting out a long, contented sigh.

“Well, at least it’s a place fit for a person—this sofa is way more comfortable than the hard rocks and scorching sand of Emein-IX.”

Li Lin’s teeth ached a little as he looked at the big man in front of him.

The best and most senior deep diver of the Second Operational Squad of the Special Operations Bureau—Mr. Xu Jiali.

He really wasn’t used to dealing with this muscle-bound man.

The main reason for his discomfort was that on his first day joining the squad, when he saw the name “Xu Jiali” on the personnel roster, he went around asking everyone about the person. Then at the welcome party, a big man who was one meter ninety-eight tall walked over, patted Li Lin on the shoulder, and introduced himself as Xu Jiali—that self-introduction was thunderously loud, and even now Li Lin would still get a jolt whenever he saw him.

But Mr. Xu Jiali himself had no idea. He had carried that name for thirty years and had long since gotten used to it…

As the saying goes—the Second Squad of the Special Operations Bureau, truly a den of hidden dragons and crouching tigers…

(The chapter ends)