Chapter 498

The blizzard was still raging, millions of diamond-dust particles shimmering in the searchlight beams; the distant mountain ranges were visible and then hidden, their outlines blurred and unclear.

Site-17 was close.

Sofia pressed against the porthole, watching the world buried by wind and snow below.

In the white world, the gray-black tarmac, the white circle, and the capital "H" character were incredibly conspicuous.

However, when Sofia stood on the tarmac, no one came to greet her.

If it were truly like this, that would be fine.

But reality was worse.

The employees of Site-17 were avoiding Sofia as if she were some kind of mobile infectious pathogen.

They had seen her arrival.

Several employees wearing lab coats ducked into the building;

The employees by the parking lot resisted the urge to leave and instead dodged away slightly;

The engineers who had come to inspect the helicopter kept a strange distance from her; if she walked in their direction, they would step back and turn in another direction.

If only Moose were still managing this place...

Sofia thought sadly.

She wasn't some green-skinned creature that could grow out of the dirt, nor was she a monk with a saintly gaze that could make anyone pregnant just by looking at them.

She was just an unremarkable Site Director who could enter the Sea of Memories and see the memories of others.

Yet she was being guarded against like this...

Just because she was a Site Director with Level 4 clearance in the Foundation?

It seemed the conflict between the management and the lower-level employees at Site-17 was far more severe than she had imagined.

Sofia sighed.

When Moose was still at Site-17, it was much livelier here...

But regardless, the reception was just a formality, one of the steps.

She couldn't just cast aside and abandon the truly important matters because of a poor reception.

She had enough time to tentatively make her way through the facility, walk through the sterile corridors, go down the mysterious stairwells, until she reached her destination.

Find the room where the target was located.

Of course, she could seek help from the site's employees—but she would have to endure that strange distance, that subtle fear.

Sofia raised her eyes and watched quietly as an employee at a fork in the road suddenly turned onto another path.

I am not a humanoid anomaly... nor am I a reality bender... Honestly, what on earth have the high-level staff at Site-17 been doing?

Treating employees like D-Class personnel and throwing them to anomalies with cannibalistic tendencies?

Sofia felt it was best to go by herself.

The Xianzhou "Luo Fu".

"How realistic..."

Watching the scene of Site-17 employees avoiding Sofia one after another, Qingque just felt it was perfectly normal.

If viewed from the perspective of the person involved, Sofia, the employees' behavior was undoubtedly incomprehensible.

But if you changed the angle...

Subordinates avoiding their superiors... this seemed like a matter of course.

Just like her; if she wanted to slack off, she had to reduce the frequency of her appearances in front of the Diviner Fu, but she also couldn't make any major mistakes, so as not to lose her rice bowl.

"Wait... this plot is so familiar..."

Qingque immediately put down the files in her hand, pinched her chin, and turned to think about where that strange sense of familiarity came from.

After some thought, the petite girl finally reached a conclusion.

It was a plot from an AI novel video she had seen on the internet not long ago; the male protagonist followed the principle of not trying, not taking responsibility, and not being proactive—the main focus was a philosophy of lying flat.

But this was still different from the situation at the Foundation.

"I feel like those employees... it's not just as simple as avoiding trouble."

"It's more like a kind of fear."

Qingque recalled that for her, this expression usually appeared when she was skipping work to play "Celestial Jade" and suddenly realized the Diviner Fu was nearby.

Winding left and right inside Site-17.

Sofia felt as if she had a built-in "living person avoidance" field.

As long as she was on the path forward, whether it was a doctor at Site-17, security personnel, researchers, or logistics staff, they were all pushed away by her superpower.

Finally, she found the room.

But something was wrong.

This room was not in the containment sector, but in the medical sector.

This was very unusual.

What was even more unusual was that the sign on the wooden door was engraved with the words "Temporary Asset Care."

Truly magical.

Sofia directly ignored the questions in her mind; she stared at the wooden door for a good dozen seconds, then took a deep breath and placed her hand on the handle.

Aside from the clothes on her back, she carried nothing extra; she brought neither self-defense weapons nor items to suppress anomalies.

Subsequently, she turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The thick smell of disinfectant rushed into her nasal cavity, and what met her eyes was a hospital room layout that perfectly matched the scent.

In the center of the room sat a medical bed, on which lay a young man in a coma, with an IV needle in his hand, receiving an infusion.

And standing by the bed was a woman.

She was wearing a white coat; she could be a doctor, a nurse, or more likely, a researcher.

Seeing Sofia push the door open and enter, the woman was stunned for a moment, then her gaze fell on the other person's name tag.

Upon realizing that the person was a Site Director, she instantly became tense, feeling like she was on pins and needles.

"Oh my god!"

She opened her eyes wide in terror, immediately turned around, picked up the documents on the bedside table, and while saying, "I'm here to get the registration form! I'm leaving right now," prepared to leave the room.

Another employee scared by Site-17... Sofia recalled the changes in the other person's expression and gaze and instantly understood their reaction.

Although Sofia had no interest in tormenting this poor lady, she had many questions to ask.

So, she closed the door behind her with a "click."