Li Lin was awakened from a deep sleep by a noisy phone ringtone. And along with the ringtone, a spiritual warning from the bottom of his own heart suddenly appeared.
As a well-trained agent of the Special Operations Bureau, he almost instantly realized that something was happening. He was instantly jolted awake, jumped from the bed of the temporary rental house to the floor like a catapult, and then grabbed the phone on the bedside table while rushing to the window facing the street.
"This is Li Lin," he answered the phone and said quickly, while sitting in front of the window and pointing a device with a complex lens group at the street below. "What happened?"
Song Cheng's voice immediately came from the receiver, sounding unusually serious. "Have you observed anything on your side?"
Li Lin paid attention to the light and shadow refracted in the lens device, and at the same time, he glanced at the laptop that was automatically monitoring the data next to him. After quickly pulling the monitoring log, he quickly said, "The monitoring data is all normal. There was only one very small-scale energy fluctuation at one o'clock in the morning—it's a very normal periodic 'surge' in the borderland…"
"…Xu Jiali has already set off in advance. He should be there soon," Song Cheng said in a deep voice. "You maintain surveillance of the block, but even if you observe something, don't go out casually. Just report it at the first time—remember, before Xu Jiali is in place, absolutely do not leave the base alone!"
"Huh? Ah, okay, got it!" Li Lin was stunned for a moment, and quickly agreed. Then he couldn't help but ask, "What happened?"
"…A large-scale spatiotemporal dislocation and reset of unknown origin is happening in the borderland, once every five to ten minutes."
Ignoring Li Lin's cry of surprise, Song Cheng took a deep breath after hanging up the phone and looked up at the huge screen at the end of the command hall.
The screen showed a plan of the entire "Boundary City." And outside the map, there was a three-dimensional structure constructed by countless curves and identifiers, as well as a large amount of frantically refreshing monitoring data and remote monitoring signals.
The huge command hall was brightly lit. The staff of the Special Operations Bureau in black uniforms were staring at the screens in front of various terminals. From time to time, people entered and exited the hall from the side doors, passing on the situation of other departments, or bringing more bad news.
"There have been a few small spatiotemporal dislocation phenomena in the past two days, but the scale was not so large, nor did they happen so frequently," a female Special Operations Bureau employee in a black professional skirt muttered behind Song Cheng. "The spatiotemporal structure of the borderland is special. This kind of thing has happened before, so the alarm level of the report at that time was not high…"
"Now it seems that this is more like a test before some large-scale action," another person's voice came from the side. "Now 'they' have officially started… damn it, we were careless."
Just then, a report came from a certain terminal, interrupting the conversation behind Song Cheng. "Rift generation detected! Pointing to Chawen-12b, precise location still cannot be confirmed… attempting to trace the source!"
Song Cheng frowned tightly and said nothing, just silently counting in his heart.
A dozen seconds later, he heard the follow-up report—
"Rift closed! Source tracing failed! Spatiotemporal structure restored!"
Such reports had been repeated many times in this hall—once every few minutes.
The interval was not very stable, but it was basically within ten minutes. The duration of each time was not very precise, but it would not exceed thirty seconds. It seemed to be man-made, but… what was the meaning of doing this? And more importantly… who could do such an absurd thing?!
"Rift generation detected! Pointing to White Dragon-4c, precise location cannot be confirmed, attempting to trace the source…"
"Rift closed! Source tracing failed…"
Song Cheng's frown grew tighter. And just then, a slight buzzing sound suddenly interrupted his thoughts. The next second, a screen next to him lit up.
A woman who looked less than thirty years old, with a dignified appearance but a cold temperament, appeared on the screen.
She was wearing a white skirt suit. Her grayish-white long hair was tied into a loose single ponytail at the back of her head. Her eyes were also grayish-white, different from ordinary people, and the color of her pupils was extremely light. The whole person gave people a… feeling of lack of color.
The moment he saw this woman, Song Cheng's back straightened visibly, and a slightly stiff and bitter smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.
"Director," Song Cheng greeted. "We are still tracking…"
"How is the situation now?" the gray-haired and gray-eyed woman called the director interrupted Song Cheng, her voice cold and calm.
"The rifts are still constantly generating and disappearing, and we still can't trace the source. But at present, we can basically confirm that this phenomenon is harmless to the borderland itself—the spatiotemporal structure has not been destroyed."
"Not been destroyed?"
"Yes, although those rifts are temporarily classified as 'spatiotemporal dislocations,' it's just that their surface properties are similar. What exactly that thing is… it's hard to say," Song Cheng said with a bitter smile. "Every time it generates, it doesn't really tear space-time, but…"
He held it in for a long time, and finally recalled the description given by the technical expert just now, and then continued, "It feels as if that is the original structure of space-time—the moment the rift is generated, it's as if the borderland has always had such a stable passage to a distant place. And when the rift disappears, it's as if it has never appeared, without impact, without catastrophic collapse, and so far, no reports of casualties have been received."
The gray-haired woman listened quietly and did not speak for a long time.
Song Cheng also did not speak, just waited patiently.
"The 'special location' you sent people to monitor before, has there been any change?"
"No, that place is now the 'quietest' place in the entire Boundary City, as quiet as a black hole," Song Cheng sighed. "This is the most abnormal thing. Now everyone knows that there must be a problem there, but the biggest problem there is that no problems can be seen—I have already sent the best deep divers from the second team over, and in addition, I have arranged for two additional monitoring teams to approach that street from other directions…"
"What do you think the purpose of the people who did these things is?" the gray-haired woman suddenly asked.
"…It's hard to say," Song Cheng thought for a moment and said cautiously. "At first I thought it was some kind of attack, but now it seems that they are just constantly opening and closing one rift after another. It's almost been a whole night, and no one has even been disturbed…"
"Could it be some new 'Dark Angel' phenomenon?"
"It shouldn't be. When a Dark Angel appears, it must be accompanied by a large-scale loss of control of Otherworlds and large-scale damage to the present world. It's not so 'harmless'," Song Cheng immediately shook his head. "And recently, there have been no reports about those angel believers. If there really is a new Dark Angel, those cultists won't be so quiet."
"It's not a Dark Angel, so it's fine."
"Yes, as long as it's not a Dark Angel," Song Cheng sighed. "But then again, if this is 'man'-made, then… what kind of 'man' is that? What are they trying to do with such a big commotion…"
His latter half of the sentence was completely self-talk. The gray-haired woman on the other side of the screen broke the silence after thinking for a few seconds—
"This world is very large, and there are still too many ethnic groups and ancient individuals that we have not yet come into contact with," she said softly. Although her face was still very young, a certain vicissitude was inadvertently revealed in her words. "And our universe is very young, so much so that many 'theorems' and 'laws' have not yet been generated… learn to adapt, Little Song. Our work has never been about dealing with the 'known'."
"…I understand."
The gray-haired woman nodded, and then as if she felt something, she suddenly looked up in a certain direction—her almost colorless, light-colored eyes froze for a moment, and then she broke the silence softly, "It's calmed down."
Song Cheng looked up and at the hall.
No new rift generation reports came.
…
A knock on the door at a specific frequency sounded. Li Lin stood at the door, used his spiritual intuition to confirm the aura outside the door, and only then did he step aside and open the door.
A strong man nearly two meters tall lowered his head and squeezed into the door of the rental house. He was dragging a huge black box behind him that looked very much in line with his height and physique.
"This place is really crowded," the strong man looked back at Li Lin who was standing by the door. "It's more crowded than the landing craft I was in the day before yesterday."
Li Lin rolled his eyes. "It's also more spacious than your broken car—you can even drive it here from the bureau, so don't complain about my place."
The strong man chuckled twice, and while pushing his heavy big box to the wall, he sat on the sofa in the living room and let out a long sigh of enjoyment.
"Alright, at least it's a place where people should stay—this sofa is much more comfortable than the hard rocks and scalding sand of Amein-IX."
Li Lin watched the strong man in front of him with a bit of a toothache.
The best and most senior deep diver of the Second Action Brigade of the Special Operations Bureau—Mr. Xu Jiali.
He was very unaccustomed to dealing with this fierce man.
The main reason for his discomfort was that on the first day he joined the team, after seeing the name "Xu Jiali" on the personnel roster, he went around asking people about her. Then at the welcome party, a strong man of 1.98 meters walked over, patted Li Lin on the shoulder, and introduced himself as Xu Jiali—that self-introduction was deafening at the time, and even now, Li Lin would still tremble when he saw him.
But Mr. Xu Jiali himself was completely unaware of this. He had lived with this name for thirty years and had long been used to it…
How did that saying go—the Second Brigade of the Special Operations Bureau, that's a place where crouching tigers and hidden dragons are…