Chapter 35: Where Dragons Hide and Tigers Lie: The Second Team

Li Lin was awakened from the depths of his sleep by a clamorous phone ring, and along with the ringing, a spiritual warning from the very core of his heart suddenly arose.

As a special agent with excellent training results, he realized almost instantly that something was happening; his entire body jolted awake, he launched himself from the bed in the temporary rental like a spring, and while grabbing the phone from the nightstand, he rushed toward the street-facing window beside it.

"This is Li Lin," he said rapidly into the phone while sitting by the window and pointing a device with a complex lens assembly at the street below, "What has happened?"

Song Cheng's voice immediately came through the receiver, sounding unusually grave: "Have you observed any situation on your end?"

While monitoring the light and shadow refracted through the lens device, Li Lin glanced sideways at the laptop automatically monitoring data, quickly pulled up the monitoring log, and spoke rapidly: "Monitoring data is normal; there was only a very small-scale energy fluctuation at one in the morning—a normal periodic 'surge' of the Borderland..."

"... Xu Jiali has already departed early; he should be arriving at your location soon," Song Cheng said in a deep voice, "Keep monitoring the district, but even if you observe something, do not go out casually; just report immediately—remember, before Xu Jiali arrives, absolutely do not leave the base alone!"

"Ah? Ah, okay, received!" Li Lin was stunned for a moment, quickly agreed, and then couldn't help but ask, "What exactly is the situation?"

"... Large-scale spatial-temporal dislocation and repositioning of unknown cause are occurring in the Borderland, once every five to ten minutes."

Song Cheng ignored Li Lin's exclamation on the other end; after hanging up the phone, 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," and beyond the map, there was a three-dimensional structure constructed by countless curves and identifiers, along with a large amount of monitoring data and remote monitoring signals frantically refreshing.

The vast command hall was brightly lit; special agency employees in black uniforms stared intently at screens at terminals everywhere, and occasionally someone entered or exited the hall through a small side door, conveying situations from other departments or bringing more bad news.

"There have been a few small spatial-temporal dislocation phenomena these past two days, but the scale wasn't this large, nor did they occur this densely," a female special agency employee in a black business suit whispered behind Song Cheng, "The Borderland's spatial-temporal structure is special; such things have happened before, so the alarm level reported at the time wasn't high..."

"Now it seems this looks like a probe before some large-scale operation," another voice came from the side, "Now 'they' have officially begun... damn it, we were careless."

Just then, a report came from a terminal somewhere, interrupting the conversation behind Song Cheng: "Rift generation detected! Pointing to Chaven-12b, precise location still unconfirmed... attempting source tracing!"

Song Cheng frowned tightly, said nothing, and silently counted numbers in his heart.

Ten-plus seconds later, he heard the follow-up report—

"Rift closed! Source tracing failed! Spatial-temporal structure restored!"

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

The intervals weren't very stable, but basically within ten minutes; each duration wasn't that precise either, but wouldn't exceed thirty seconds. It seemed artificial, but... what was the point of doing this? And more importantly... who could do such an outrageous thing?!

"Rift generation detected! Pointing to White Dragon-4c, precise location unconfirmed, attempting source tracing..."

"Rift closed! Source tracing failed..."

Song Cheng's frown grew tighter, and just then, a faint humming sound suddenly interrupted his thoughts; the next second, a screen beside him lit up.

A woman who looked under thirty, with dignified features but a cold temperament, appeared on the screen.

She wore a white suit, her gray-white long hair tied in a loose single ponytail at the back of her head; her eyes were even different from normal people's, gray-white with extremely pale pupils, giving her whole person a feeling of... seeming to lack color.

The moment he saw this woman, Song Cheng's waist and back visibly straightened a bit, and a slightly stiff bitter smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"Director," Song Cheng greeted, "We are still tracking..."

"What is the situation now?" the gray-haired, gray-eyed woman called Director interrupted Song Cheng, her voice cold and calm.

"Rifts continue to generate and disappear; source tracing is still impossible, but it can currently be basically confirmed that this phenomenon is harmless to the Borderland itself—the spatial-temporal structure has not been destroyed."

"Not destroyed?"

"Yes, although those rifts are temporarily classified as 'spatial-temporal dislocation,' they only approach that in superficial nature; what exactly that thing is... is hard to say," Song Cheng said with a bitter smile, "When it generates each time, it doesn't truly tear the spatial-temporal fabric, but rather..."

He held back for a long time, finally recalling the description given by the technical expert just now, before continuing: "The feeling it gives is as if that were the original structure of space-time—the instant the rift generated, it was as if the Borderland had always had such a stable channel leading far away from the start, and when the rift disappeared, it was as if it had never appeared at all; no impact, no catastrophic collapse, and even up to now, no victim reports have been received."

The gray-haired woman listened silently for a long time without speaking. Song Cheng didn't speak either, just waiting patiently.

"Has there been any change in that 'special location' you sent people to monitor?"

"No, that place is now the 'quietest' place in the entire Border City, quiet like a black hole," Song Cheng sighed, "The most abnormal thing is this. Now everyone knows there must be a problem over there, but the biggest problem over there is that no problem can be seen—I have already sent the best deep divers from the Second Team over there, and additionally arranged two extra monitoring groups to approach that street from other directions..."

"What do you think the purpose of the person doing these things is?" the gray-haired woman suddenly asked.

"... Hard to say," Song Cheng thought for a moment and spoke cautiously, "At first I thought this was some kind of attack, but now it seems they are just continuously opening and closing rift after rift; almost a whole night has passed, and they haven't even disturbed anyone..."

"Could it be some new 'Dark Angel' phenomenon?"

"It shouldn't be; when a Dark Angel appears, it must be accompanied by large-scale alien realm loss of control and widespread damage in the present world; nothing is this 'harmless'," Song Cheng immediately shook his head, "And recently, no reports regarding those angel cultists have been received; if a new Dark Angel truly appeared, those cultists wouldn't be this quiet."

"If it's not a Dark Angel, that's good."

"Yes, as long as it's not a Dark Angel," Song Cheng sighed, "But then again, if this is 'human' made, then... what kind of 'human' would that be? They make such a huge commotion; what exactly are they trying to do..."

His latter half of the sentence was completely self-talk, while the gray-haired woman on the other side of the screen broke the silence after thinking for a few seconds—

!.

"This world is vast; too many races and ancient individuals we have not yet contacted still exist," she said softly; although her face was still young, her words inadvertently revealed a certain weariness, "And our universe is very young; even many 'theorems' and 'laws' have not yet formed... Learn to adapt, Little Song; our work has never been dealing with the 'known'."

"... I understand."

The gray-haired woman nodded, then as if sensing something, suddenly looked up toward a certain direction—those pale eyes with almost no color froze for an instant, and then she softly broke the silence: "It has calmed down."

Song Cheng looked up toward the hall.

No new rift generation reports came.

A knocking sound of a specific frequency rang out; Li Lin stood at the door, used spiritual intuition to confirm the aura outside, and only then stepped aside half a pace to open the door.

A burly man nearly two meters tall lowered his head and squeezed into the rental room's door, dragging a huge black box behind him that looked very consistent with his height and physique.

"Your place is really cramped," the burly man looked back at Li Lin standing by the door, "More cramped than the landing pod I sat in the day before yesterday."

Li Lin rolled his eyes: "That's still more spacious than your broken car—you can drive it from the Bureau to here, so don't complain about my place."

The burly man chuckled twice, pushed his heavy large box to the wall while sitting on the living room sofa on his own, and immediately let out a long sigh of enjoyment.

"Alright, at least it's a place humans should stay in—this sofa is much more comfortable than the hard stones and scorching sand of Aimein-IX."

Li Lin looked at the burly man before him with a toothache-like expression.

Mr. Xu Jiali, the best and most senior deep diver of the Special Agency's Second Action Team.

He was very unaccustomed to dealing with this muscular man.

The main reason for his discomfort was that on the first day Li Lin joined the team, after seeing the name "Xu Jiali" on the personnel roster, he went around asking people about the person's situation; then at the welcome meeting, a burly man one meter ninety-eight tall walked over, patted Li Lin's shoulder, and introduced himself saying he was Xu Jiali—the self-introduction at that moment was deafening, and to this day, Li Lin still trembles when he sees the other party.

But Mr. Xu Jiali himself was completely unaware of this; he had lived with this name for thirty years and was long accustomed to it...

What was that saying again? —The Special Agency's Second Team, that is a place where dragons hide and tigers lie...

(End of Chapter)