Chapter 247: Curtain Rises

Among the shareholders present, some who had been more deeply involved and knew certain inside information turned pale at Schultz's words.

"Schultz, what do you mean by this?!"

Schultz smiled at the few of them and said, "You should know what I mean."

The most basic power of Disqualified Monsters and Original Armed came from the virtues and ugliness within the human heart; this was no secret to the major shareholders and the Grade-Nine partners other than Xiao En.

The Hymn Project required a sufficiently powerful villain at its start—powerful enough to destroy the world, powerful enough to unite all of humanity.

In a performance, a good villain is sometimes more important than a good protagonist.

The Hive?

No, no, no—the Hive is nothing but a junkyard. Its energy is too muddled, its appearance too poor, its foundation too weak, and its evil not pure enough.

Even if a powerful Disqualified Monster were to fuse with the Hive and temporarily suppress the imbalance among the many powers, that would only be suppression—falling far short.

Only a fool like Mo Ke would think that such a being alone could play the role of villain, and even fret anxiously over it.

Still, one cannot blame him entirely. After all, a person's perception is largely shaped by the information he receives. The intelligence Mo Ke saw was all what Schultz wanted him to see; his misjudgment is forgivable.

Mo Ke's stupidity lay in his arrogance—he overestimated the Federal Investigation Bureau far too much, and overestimated his own ability far too much as well.

Watching Jeffrey push the grotesque embryo before everyone, Schultz offered Jeffrey a smile of acknowledgment.

Only by discarding all the messy, crude parts and absorbing the essence nurtured by the Hive to birth a perfect creation—the Son of Sin—could one serve as the great villain about to take the stage.

He turned to look at the panicked, whispering shareholders, a trace of apology on his face.

In truth, in his plan, many of the small and mid-level shareholders had no need to be here. But because of certain accidents, Farrell, whom he had cultivated for a long time, had been converted into a Disqualified Monster ahead of schedule and then killed off by those outsiders. So the gap left by Farrell had to be filled from these people.

Farrell's death was directly tied to his and Xiao En's squabble over performance. In a sense, Xiao En bore part of the blame—when one's own child acts up and causes trouble, one must, as a parent, make some gesture of acknowledgment.

Schultz looked at the crowd, bowed slightly, and said:

"My apologies. But humanity will remember you."

At Schultz's command, Jeffrey pressed the button on the glass jar. The Son of Sin, soaked in nutrient fluid, began to pulse in its slender, translucent chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The heartbeat was slow and powerful, its sound as if carrying a magic that made every antique in the room resonate in unison.

"Damn it, what's happening? My chest is so tight!" a fat man clutched his chest and wailed. With every beat of his heart, his entire body's blubber trembled along, and such tremendous force nearly shattered his ribs.

"Stop! You bastards, stop it now!" a burly man drew his pistol, preparing to fire at Jeffrey and the glass jar.

But the moment the gun was drawn, a laser shot down from the ceiling, melting both the gun and the hand holding it.

Schultz shook his head. This was Hymn Tower; the fully automated defense system was Hymn Corporation's core business. Attempting to attack with firearms would only bring trouble upon oneself.

Anyone who could appear here, even the smallest shareholder, was a figure of standing out in the world; naturally, they would not sit and wait for death.

Some tried to flee the conference room; some, seeing Schultz and Jeffrey had brought no bodyguards, prepared to take them down barehanded.

But the moment they charged at Schultz or the conference room door, it was as if they had struck an invisible wall—no matter how hard they pushed, they could not advance a single inch.

Only then did the people realize they had all been locked inside a transparent box.

Morez coughed violently, each cough as if it would expel his heart. But he bore down through the coughing, walked to the air wall, stared through it at Schultz, and asked in a hoarse voice:

"Why!"

Morez's wealth could rank in the top ten across the entire Federation. Unlike other top tycoons, Morez had been a shareholder of Hymn Corporation even before Schultz took it over; when Schultz was a child, he had personally delivered Christmas gifts to Schultz several times.

He had not, like other top tycoons, merely provided funds and waited to share the fruits at the end. Instead, from the very beginning of the Hymn Project's preparations, he had moved to Wielde City, just to witness every change with his own eyes.

He and Schultz had always talked about everything; he was a deep participant in the Hymn Project. He did not understand why he too was among those Schultz had calculated against.

Schultz looked at Morez expressionlessly and said lightly:

"Why? When you were negotiating with the White House about how to coordinate from within and without, to squeeze and carve up Hymn Corporation, I never asked you why."

Lei Mengde, this double agent for both the Zhongqing Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service, had by a twist of fate become Morez's assistant and earned special favor; Morez had not detected Lei Mengde's identity in the slightest.

Perhaps over all these years, Schultz had pretended not to know of Morez's dealings with the White House, giving Morez the illusion that he had Schultz's complete trust—so much so that he would even agree to such an outlandish plan.

If this had been over a decade ago, when Schultz had just begun Hymn Corporation's rise, this old fellow would not have dared act so brazenly.

Schultz spoke softly to Morez through the air wall:

"I have never trusted any of you—any single one of you here."

Morez tried to speak, but the moment he opened his mouth he spat out a mouthful of fresh blood. The next instant, under the violent heartbeat, his ribs all snapped at once, jutting outward from within.

The outward-flaring ribs opened Morez's chest cavity, revealing that the organs, flesh, and bones inside his body had all turned into a pool of black liquid.

Once exposed to the air, the black liquid seemed drawn by some attraction and flew toward the embryo in Jeffrey's cart.

The liquid looked solid, but was in fact a form of energy; it passed through the air wall and the glass jar without any obstruction and burrowed into the embryo's body.

Immediately after, the chests of everyone present opened one after another, and black liquid traced various arcs as it burrowed into the embryo's body.

In less than five minutes, all the shareholders present had collapsed to the floor. Inside the glass jar, the embryo's eyelids twitched slightly, as if about to awaken at any moment.

Just as the scene fell silent, Schultz suddenly turned his head and looked toward the Grade-Nine partners.

"Feeling relieved, are we? Baker, Upton, Byrd."

The three who had been named had only just opened their mouths to speak when they suddenly realized their chests had already been opened; streams of black liquid flew out from within them.

Schultz looked at the Son of Sin, whose eyes had cracked open a sliver, and said softly, "Those who should exit the stage have already exited. Now, it's time for the actors to take their places."

Outside Hymn Tower, Wielde City had plunged into chaos because of the appearance of Disqualified Monsters and Buck.

Inside Hymn Tower, a great purge targeting shareholders and moles was unfolding; already, the prelude of the Hymn could be heard.

Outside was so lively, yet the members of the Iron Armor Regiment, currently located underground, were entirely unaware of any of it.

Flashing back to a little over an hour earlier—four Disqualified Monsters were rampaging through Wielde City. Mo Ke led people out of Hymn Tower to retrieve the Disqualified Monsters and confirm the Hive's safety. Fei Guang and the others, noticing unusual movement outside, were wondering whether to go out and watch the excitement, when they discovered that one of the two targets they had previously selected had made a move.

Fei Guang and Qian Ye entered the hidden room on the 90th floor, and after seeing the massive screening computer, selected two people from the database as observation targets.

A Gold Badge employee and a Grade-Seven supervisor—the two ranked first in virtue and sin value respectively.

In Fei Guang and Qian Ye's plan, as long as they kept their eyes on these two, they would have a chance to slip into the location the computer had designated for them.

Now the target had made a move, and with Hymn Tower temporarily emptied due to the chaos outside, it was simply a heaven-sent opportunity.

Feiguang and Qianye refused to miss this opportunity; they followed the target, a top employee, down to the underground garage with three other members of the Fully Automated Defense System unit.

Before the operation, Qianye stuck a leaf on each of them; though they were not invisible, everyone around them unconsciously ignored their presence—not just with their eyes, but even when switching to camera feeds, the machines themselves deliberately avoided capturing them.

The leaves Qianye used were part of a skill she mastered, called One Leaf Obscures the Eye.

One Leaf Obscures the Eye is a C-rank skill; by its original strength, it matched high-level stealth, capable only of fooling basic cameras, not Saint Song Corporation's black-tech surveillance systems.

But when combined with Qianye's occupational skill, the effect surged dramatically, surpassing ordinary B-rank concealment skills and only slightly inferior to A-rank stealth abilities—yet the cost of One Leaf Obscures the Eye was more than ten times cheaper than a B-rank stealth skill.

!

This is the occupational system of the Abyss Game: when a player changes class, they do not gain an independent skill tree, but rather a single trunk.

When a compatible skill is grafted onto this trunk, it receives class enhancement and unleashes power far beyond its original limit.

Whether a player builds a skill system aligned with their class, and how many class-compatible skills they possess, are crucial factors determining player strength—and why members of large organizations are so powerful.

Large organizations possess abundant skill libraries; their core players can channel all resources into optimal skill combinations.

For example, Booker's trio each possessed skills that synergized with their class, allowing them to trade blows with Feiguang's group despite lacking proficiency in player-vs-player combat.

With One Leaf Obscures the Eye, Feiguang's five-man team followed the target to the underground garage, where a special field vehicle waited.

The field vehicle had no windows; its body was fully sealed and levitated above the ground, transmitting no vibration from the surface.

The man assigned to deliver the target to the lab was Oliver, manager of the High-Energy Weapons Division.

While the two prepared, the Iron Armor Team members imitated Third Brother, each finding spots to cling to the vehicle's exterior.

With their physical conditioning, no matter how fast the vehicle sped, they could not be shaken off.

Once the two inside were seated, the field vehicle began moving slowly. To them, it felt as if they were hovering in place—no motion sensed.

But Feiguang and the others clearly saw: the vehicle drove straight ahead, reached a special intersection, underwent scanning and authentication, then the ground beneath it sank, revealing an underground tunnel.

The field vehicle crept slowly through the tunnel—slower than Feiguang's grandmother jogging—likely to minimize jolts, disorienting passengers and preventing them from estimating distance or direction.

The two-kilometer tunnel took ten full minutes to traverse; the vehicle then carried them through a second gate requiring Level-9 clearance to open.

At the tunnel's end, Oliver led the target into the lab; before he could even introduce him, the target rolled his eyes and collapsed to the floor—then two strangers appeared before him.

The two who showed themselves were subordinates; Feiguang and Qianye remained hidden, wary of any trick from Oliver.

The two subordinates restrained Oliver and interrogated him about the lab.

After prolonged questioning and repeated verification, they discovered Oliver knew nothing—he had never set foot in this lab before; transporting targets here had always been Farrell's duty.

Oliver produced a workflow document, edited by technical consultant Jeffrey, detailing every step of the operation with precise instructions and accompanying diagrams.

Oliver claimed he had followed every step exactly as written.

Catching a clueless Oliver wasn't the worst; worse was the note at the end of the workflow: the field vehicle was autonomous, pre-programmed to return automatically in one hour.

The Level-9 clearance to open the tunnel and lab was bound to the field vehicle, not to Oliver; if they missed the vehicle, the lab doors would seal permanently.

This meant Feiguang's team had only one hour.

Feiguang's team had no time to continue interrogating Oliver.

Interrogation still consumed time.

They scattered quickly, searching the lab for any useful intelligence.

Unfortunately, none possessed high-tech hacking skills nor Wu Chang's talent for reading resentment; their chaotic search yielded nothing.

The method of stowing away on the field vehicle could only be used once; if they failed to seize this chance, next time they tried to enter, the difficulty would multiply tenfold.

Feiguang spared no effort, pulled out a contract, and called in outside help again—reviving the computer.

The revived computer acted as before: first using Realm-crushing hacking techniques to upgrade its own clearance, then rapidly extracting data from the lab.

It soon discovered the manufacturing method for Primordial Armaments and, following that data, infiltrated the deepest recesses of Saint Song Corporation, searching for something specific.

The search lasted ten minutes—much longer than the time it took to locate the hidden room on the 90th floor.

When the data intrusion ended, the computer screen updated, revealing a new location.

Feiguang's team stared at the screen, frowning in unison—why was the location right here?

After checking repeatedly, they realized the location was directly above them—the square on the surface.

Feiguang said slowly: "Looks like we need to return to the surface first."

No sooner had Feiguang spoken than the entire underground lab trembled; everyone's faces darkened with alarm—earthquake? Automated defense system activation?

Neither—it was the entire underground lab rising upward!

The Iron Armor Team rushed to the lab entrance, only to find the autonomous field vehicle now completely powered down; they tried using their laptop's Level-9 clearance to open the door, but the door's status read: permanently sealed, with maximum clearance lock.

They could only watch helplessly as the ceiling above them opened layer by layer—the lab ascending like a colossal elevator all the way to the surface.

As the ascent halted, they reached the surface; before they could even take in their surroundings, a massive shadow descended from above and landed before them.

Then Schultze's voice echoed from above.

"Come, vile outsiders, dogs of those who claim divinity—let me see what you're made of!"

(End of Chapter)