For most people, even though the upcoming 8.20 conference was drawing everyone’s attention, today was just another normal day. Once work was done, it was time to sleep, and tomorrow would be business as usual.
But for some, the real carnival was just about to begin.
Inside a meeting room, masked figures appeared as holograms in their assigned seats, waiting with obvious anticipation.
“Don’t worry, everyone. What happened last night won’t happen again,” the host assured the shareholders. “To make sure Bubble 109 is successfully torn open, we’re sending our top captains to guard it personally and keep everything on track. Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether last night’s machine failure was caused by a worker entering the wrong information or by a traitor.”
He clapped his hands, and the heavy doors of the meeting room slowly slid open. Every masked projection turned to look.
A massive shadow slowly walked in from outside. As he drew closer, an overwhelming pressure filled the entire room. Even though the shareholders weren’t physically present, they still felt a sudden chill run down their necks.
He was a towering man, dangling a cigarette from his mouth. A jagged, stitched-up scar ran across the rough skin of his left cheek, stretching from his temple all the way down to his jawline—looking like he had barely survived the claws of some wild beast. His eyes were dark, cold, and completely devoid of humanity. Anyone who looked at him would immediately think of a ruthless, bloodthirsty executioner.
A collective gasp echoed through the room.
“Shi Gang!”
“Shi Gang, the former Director of the Tribunal Division!”
“Shi Gang is actually in our organization?”
“An international fugitive hunted by both the police and the underworld! The global bounty on his head is a whopping one billion!”
“One billion is only because if it were any higher, nobody would even dare to try catching him. Otherwise, it’d be way more!” Bounties could tempt people to take risks, but when the reward got too crazy high, it only bred fear. With a bounty like that, what kind of terrifying monster were they dealing with? Would they even make it back alive?
When Shi Gang walked over, the host smiled.
“Allow me to introduce them to our shareholders. These are Captain Shi Gang and Captain Qiao Ming, two of our ten strongest fighters. This time, they’ll lead their subordinates and make sure Bubble 109 is successfully destroyed.”
Only then did everyone notice a thin, frail-looking man standing next to Shi Gang. Beside Shi Gang’s massive frame, he looked very pale and delicate. His presence was so faint, and he seemed to suffer from extreme social anxiety, desperately trying to shrink himself and hide in Shi Gang’s shadow.
With Shi Gang towering there, people only glanced at the thin man before shifting their burning gazes back to the giant.
“Whoa, can he take on Qiu Fa?” one shareholder who didn’t know Shi Gang’s history asked excitedly after hearing the whispers around him.
The moment he finished speaking, the room went dead silent. Everyone stared at Shi Gang, as if they all had the same question on their minds.
The previous Director of the Tribunal Division versus the current one—who was actually stronger? Even though many claimed Qiu Fa was the strongest in Hualan, very few had actually experienced his terror firsthand. Besides, there was always a bigger fish in the sea.
The host didn’t know the answer either, and since the question was getting a bit awkward, he was about to smooth things over when Shi Gang let out a cold, raspy laugh.
“When I was grinding that kid’s head into the dirt, some of you in this room weren’t even born yet.” His hoarse voice was deep and icy, dripping with bone-deep hatred as the scar on his cheek twitched.
Someone blew a loud whistle, thoroughly thrilled by his words. No one doubted Shi Gang. After all, he was the former Director, and Qiu Fa had been thrown into prison at the age of five, only getting released around sixteen or seventeen under government supervision. Shi Gang had plenty of opportunities to stomp on his head back then.
“In that case, our celebration tonight is bound to go smoothly.”
After all, with someone who could go toe-to-toe with Qiu Fa, even if he couldn’t win, he could easily buy enough time. The ultimate goal was the destruction of Bubble 109 anyway. As long as the machine kept running until the timer hit zero, winning or losing the fight didn’t matter at all!
“It’s a done deal,” Shi Gang said, a sadistic smile playing on his lips.
They left the meeting room, put on their disguises, and headed out with their respective teams toward Bubble 109.
Meanwhile, at the Wu Family Lake Island…
Since the big conference was scheduled for tomorrow morning, the members of the Wu family were very hyped up tonight, looking ready to pull an all-nighter. After all, they weren’t the ones who had to attend, so they could easily sleep through the next day.
But the two people who should have been the most stressed—the head of the Wu family and the young heir, father and daughter—were casually playing chess in the living room. The family head’s hearty laughter erupted every now and then, followed by his annoyed daughter slapping his arm, probably because he was trying to take back a move again.
Jiang Qing’s mother, Jiang Yu—who was now the highly controversial matriarch of the Wu family—sat a short distance away, knitting a sweater while watching TV. She noticed Jiang Qing’s unusual restlessness. Ever since he came home from his shift at Bubble 109 tonight, he had stood up and sat back down on the sofa multiple times.
Surprised, she warmly asked if something was going wrong with his work.
“I’m fine,” Jiang Qing replied.
A flicker of disappointment crossed Jiang Yu’s eyes. She opened her mouth to speak but ended up staying silent.
Ever since his father died, she had felt like something was off with her son. He had always been a smart kid, often showing his childish side to his parents, but after that incident, he completely changed. As his mother, she sometimes even felt a bit scared of him because certain details made her too terrified to think deeper.
For instance, how did she manage to become the caregiver for Wu Ying’s mother so smoothly? And why, shortly after her death, did that “accident” happen with the head of the Wu family, turning her into Wu Ying’s stepmother and the new matriarch? Was that really just an accident?
She didn’t dare think about it. She refused to doubt whether Jiang Qing had pulled some strings behind the scenes.
Jiang Qing ignored his mother. He was indeed feeling very anxious. He knew that Bubble 109 would be wiped out in just a few hours, vaporizing a hundred thousand lives and dealing a massive blow to the country and the Atavist families.
That blow would strip the Atavist families of all their special privileges, reducing them to the level of ordinary citizens—which was exactly what he wanted. But…
Jiang Qing glanced over at Wu Ying, who was still playing chess with the family head.
He had always been playing a high-stakes game, a crazy gambler who would always side with whichever team looked like they were going to win. And in a way, this was also his way of securing a future for the person he loved.
But now, he was beginning to wonder who would actually win this gamble. The future had become blurry and impossible to predict. If he had to say why, it was because two wild cards he had never expected had suddenly entered the game:
The mysterious information broker and the ever unpredictable, rule-breaking Long Jin.
If he placed the wrong bet, those one hundred thousand lives would cost him absolutely everything.
Yet, it was too late to stop it now. Nobody could.
Jiang Qing thought back to the people he had seen at Bubble 109 tonight.
The organization had ten top-tier fighters who were legendary even on a global scale—absolute monsters, every single one of them. Each of them commanded their own squad composed of Atavists they had recruited from all over the world.
The organization had deployed both Shi Gang and Qiao Ming. Surely, his meddling with the instructions last night had put them on high alert, causing them to go all out like this. Just remembering the way Shi Gang had looked at him made a chill run down his spine.
Shi Gang and his men were known for their cruelty. If you fell into their hands, death would be the kindest outcome you could hope for.
Shi Gang was definitely planning to slaughter the people inside the bubble. Jiang Qing had noticed that after the machine was moved in, they hadn’t turned it on immediately. The only logical explanation was that Shi Gang was waiting. He wanted to wait until the bubble was locked and the doors were sealed shut before starting their bloody feast. If they turned the machine on right away, they wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy their long-awaited ‘fun.’
After all, massacres were Shi Gang’s absolute favorite hobby. He became one of the most infamous international fugitives after slaughtering six entire villages in Hualan and then several towns abroad. His victims included quite a few Atavists and gang members, which was why neither the authorities nor the criminal underworld could stand him.
But even worse than Shi Gang and his goons, there was another, far more terrifying fact. It made him realize that even if he alerted the Tribunal Division or the government right now, it would still be too late to stop the tragedy at Bubble 109.
Just last night, the organization’s scientific research wing made a sudden breakthrough and rushed to manufacture an upgraded version of the membrane-breaking machine. While the original machine took three hours to completely detach a little bubble from the spatial globe, this new model only needed an hour and a half.
On top of that, once it was anchored, it couldn’t be moved. The only way to stop it was with a specific command. If it suffered any external attack or if a wrong command was input, it would explode. The explosion would release the organization’s newly developed genetic-virus bomb. Airborne and highly infectious, it would target both Atavists and the ordinary workers in Bubble 109 alike, carrying a horrific mortality rate of eighty percent.
So, no matter how he ran the numbers, even if the entire Tribunal Division mobilized with Qiu Fa leading them personally, the travel time combined with the stalling tactics of those two powerhouse squads meant it was impossible to prevent this tragedy.
Perhaps he shouldn’t stress over it so much. Since it couldn’t be stopped anyway, and speaking out would only bring disaster on himself, staying silent was his only real option.
