Chapter 381: New Arm

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau headquarters. Thirty-seventh underground level.

After passing three iris verifications, two voiceprint comparisons, and a lead-alloy isolation door that opens only for specific palm prints.

Beyond the door is a forty-meter-long white corridor, with fluorescent tubes embedded in the ceiling, the light cold and without temperature. At the end of the corridor is the Investigation Bureau's Research Department secret experimental base, code-named "Forging Furnace".

Qin Zhixia sat in the experimental chair.

The chair was not an ordinary one. Titanium alloy frame, six-point restraint belts fixed her shoulder, waist, and thighs respectively, and a dense array of cables extended from the back of the chair into the main control system inside the wall.

Her left shoulder was exposed.

The skin at the amputation cross-section had initially healed, growing a thin layer of new tissue. Pale pink and tender, it formed a cruel contrast with the scars left elsewhere on her body by cuts and bone spikes.

Research Department chief Lao Song, wearing three layers of gloves, took out a azure-colored mechanical arm from the constant-temperature box.

That arm was very beautiful.

It was beautiful to the point of not looking like a weapon. A matte titanium-blue coating covered the hydraulic drive lines, and six sesame‑sized weird energy interfaces were set into the joints, allowing "Ignorance" to be injected directly.

On the inner side of the forearm was an extremely fine ridge, the reserved blade‑opening groove.

The five fingers were slender, their proportions almost identical to a real hand, and the tactile sensor array at the fingertips was fine enough to distinguish the front and back of a sheet of paper.

But the most core part was hidden in the shoulder's coupling ring—a circle of thirty‑six micro‑needle arrays forming a neural coupler, each needle coated with an active medium extracted from contained weird remains.

To interface with the nervous system, all thirty‑six needles must simultaneously pierce the nerve endings at the cross‑section to establish a two‑way signal pathway.

No anesthetic.

It wasn't that the Research Department was heartless; the mechanical arm's energy circuit reacts anomalously with all known anesthetics—at best burning out the interface, at worst causing permanent nerve damage.

Lao Song lifted the mechanical arm to beside Qin Zhixia's left shoulder and aligned it with the coupling point.

"Qin Investigator, bite this."

He handed her a bite block.

Qin Zhixia took it with her right hand, glanced at it, didn't put it in her mouth, and set it on the chair's armrest.

"No need. Begin."

Lao Song hesitated. He had spent twenty years developing weapons and dealt with all sorts of hot‑tempered combatants, but the calm with which this woman, her left arm missing and her body covered in old and new scars, uttered those two words blocked his professional advice in his throat.

"Well… I'll count three."

Qin Zhixia shook her head.

"Not needed."

Lao Song stopped wasting words.

He cupped the mechanical arm's shoulder ring with both hands, aligned the coupling face with the thirty‑six marked neural anchor points on Qin Zhixia's cross‑section, and shoved it forward.

Click—

The sound of the mechanical engagement was dull yet sharp; at the instant metal met bone and the needle array touched living nerve, Qin Zhixia's whole body jerked upward.

"Ah—"

The restraint straps were stretched to their limit.

Her spine left the chairback, every muscle spasmed, the veins in her neck stood out, and sweat beads on her forehead were flung off before they could form.

Pain.

This pain was not superficial. The sensation of thirty‑six needles simultaneously entering the nerves felt like a burn from the fingertips all the way to the cerebral cortex. Each newly formed signal pathway screamed, and the rejection reaction made her immune system think her body was being devoured by something.

On the Research Department's monitoring screen, Qin Zhixia's heart rate spiked to 192.

Lao Song's palms were slick with sweat as he stared fixedly at the coupling progress bar—47%...... 63%......

Qin Zhixia gritted her teeth.

Blood seeped from her gums.

She did not shout. She didn't make a sound from start to finish.

89%...... 94%......

The last six percent on the progress bar was the hardest to endure. The micro‑latches inside the shoulder ring closed one by one, and each latch drove a needle another 0.3 mm into the nerve bundle.

100%.

All indicator lights switched from red to blue simultaneously.

Coupling complete.

Qin Zhixia's back leaned back into the chair, soaked through. The fabric of her uniform's back darkened by one shade.

She closed her eyes, her chest heaving violently.

The heart rate on the monitor dropped from 180: 170, 150, 130.

Lao Song dared not speak. All six people in the Research Department stood there, silent.

About two minutes passed.

Qin Zhixia opened her eyes.

She lowered her gaze to her left arm.

The azure mechanical arm hung quietly at her side, a faint glow flowing through its hydraulic lines. She flexed her fingers—the five titanium joints bending and extending in turn, moving as smoothly as a real hand.

Index finger. Middle finger. Ring finger. Little finger. Thumb.

She clenched a fist.

Qin Zhixia rose from the chair.

The restraints automatically unlocked and sprang open; she took two steps forward and stood behind the test field's line.

The test field was modest, twenty meters square, with shock‑absorbing layers on three walls. In the center stood a target—a half‑meter‑thick special alloy steel plate, designated T‑9, the same material used for the frontal armor of the Investigation Bureau's current main battle tanks.

Qin Zhixia raised her left arm.

The azure glow in the hydraulic lines suddenly brightened, spreading from the shoulder to the elbow, then the wrist, and finally converging on the fist's face.

She did not charge up, nor take a run‑up.

He just swung it straight out.

One punch.

A muffled boom erupted in the sealed space, and the shockwave flipped two folding chairs and a stack of files thirty meters away.

At the exact center of the T-9 alloy target plate, a dent deeper than twenty centimeters appeared. Cracks radiated outward from the dent's core in all directions, and the whole plate shifted backward a full fifteen centimeters—the weld points on the base were torn and deformed.

The Research Department fell silent for three seconds.

Then Lao Song took off his goggles, walked to the front of the target plate, leaned over to gauge the dent's depth, let out a click, and stepped back.

"Heaven above."

He said the three words in an even tone, but his Adam's apple moved twice.

A young researcher beside him had already pulled up the data: "Peak impact force… eleven tons. Lao Song, eleven tons. And that's just a bare fist, without the infusion of 'Ignorance.'"

Lao Song said nothing, turning his head toward Qin Zhixia.

Qin Zhixia stood in place, slowly released her left fist, flexed the titanium alloy joints. The feedback from the connection was so clear it sounded as if her own bones were ringing.

In her Crimson Phoenix Eyes reflected the blue light flowing over the mechanical arm.

When Lao Song spoke again, his professional rationality had returned.

"Perfect compatibility. Energy transmission efficiency is eleven percentage points higher than our most optimistic estimate," he paused, nudging his glasses that were about to slip down his nose, "Agent Qin, your new left hand is far more useful than that old arm."

Qin Zhixia said nothing.

She merely clenched her fist; the faint, brief metallic hum when her fingers met loosened the line at the corner of her mouth.

Same day.

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau headquarters. Strategic Command Center.

A teacup at the head of the long table steamed white vapor. Longjing, pre‑Qingming.

Wei Gong did not touch the tea.

He sat in the black swivel chair, spine straight, hands crossed on the tabletop. The long table before him stretched outward, with eight holographic projection bases on each side. Seventeen blue‑white light columns lit up simultaneously, projecting seventeen faces.

Eastern Europe Defense Zone, Western Europe Defense Zone, Bu Lie Dian branch, North American Union Command, Southeast Asia Joint Defense Zone, Middle East Outpost… the top officials responsible for Weird affairs in all seventeen global regions, not one missing.

This is the first formal battle‑situation review since the Iron Curtain Plan was launched.

The main screen above the long table lit up.

Map. Global map.

Six massive red circles were marked at different locations—that's the coverage of six S‑Class Anomaly Domains. Next to each circle flickered real‑time data: expansion radius, daily casualties, troops deployed, resources consumed.

No one spoke.

The numbers themselves were already heavy enough.

The Weird Domain Forbidden Zone of the North American Union expanded by one‑hundred‑and‑twentieth, spreading into three neighboring states. The Weird Domain in southern Bu Lie Dian has devoured two towns in the past week, and conventional force cannot curb its spread at all.

All six wounds are still bleeding, some faster, some slower.

But all are worsening.

The head of the Southeast Asia Joint Defense Zone broke the silence first, his holographic image showing obvious fatigue.

"Wei Gong, last week we lost three special‑operations squads on the Siam Bay front. Although the advance speed of the S‑Class Anomaly Domain's border has slowed, our troops can't endure the attrition any longer. At this rate, the front will be pierced within three months,"

The female head of the Western Europe Defense Zone quickly added, her Federation lingua franca tinged with a French accent and a whiff of gunpowder: "The evacuation order compliance in southern France is under sixty percent, and border refugee camps have already seen Gospel Church missionary activity. We're fighting on two fronts, severely short on troops."

The overlapping reports in the command center, each spoken by many mouths, carried the weight of blood.

Wei Gong did not speak before everyone finished.

Only after the last projection—the Middle East Outpost head finished the casualty list in a trembling voice—did the command center finally fall truly silent.

That silence was more uncomfortable than the noise.

Wei Gong raised his hand and swiped the tabletop touchpad twice.

The map on the main screen switched to a set of curves.

Six lines, corresponding to the expansion rates of the six S‑Class Anomaly Domains. The horizontal axis is time, the vertical axis is daily expansion area.

The left end of the curves was as steep as a cliff—that's the first three days of the Weird Domain's arrival.

But the farther to the right, the smaller the slope.

All six lines are.

Without exception.

Wei Gong finally spoke. His voice was no different from usual, neither high nor low, each word landing steadily on the table.

"I know the situation is severe."

"But everyone, focus your attention on the tails of these curves."

Seventeen gazes converged there at once.

"The derivative of the expansion rate is continuously decreasing. In plain terms— they're still growing, but the speed of growth is slowing."

Wei Gong's finger tapped the touchpad again, and a set of dashed lines appeared beside the six curves—a projection model based on existing data.

"Given the current containment effort, unless an accident occurs, the expansion of the six Weird Domains will approach zero within three to five years. At that point we'll enter the second phase—counter‑offensive. We'll cultivate enough counter‑weird operatives to infiltrate the Weird Domains for targeted elimination, gradually compressing their coverage."

He paused for two seconds.

"The ultimate goal is termination. Not containment, not coexistence. It's to wipe them out completely from the land beneath our feet."

In the holographic projections on both sides of the long table, the ashen death on a few faces was slightly washed out.

But Wei Gong's tone showed no relaxation at all.

"However, that's based on an ideal scenario. At our current stage we still have another enemy."

The main screen switched again.

Heat map. The entire Federation, even the globe—dense orange‑red spots dotted like rashes across almost every major city, some regions already merging into patches.

"—Gospel Church."

Two characters slammed down, and the faint glimmer that had just appeared on the seventeen faces was completely extinguished.

"In the past two weeks, cases related to the Gospel Church have increased by 340%. The infiltration targets have expanded from the lower‑level fringe groups to the civil service system, the military system, and even the peripheral staff of our Investigation Bureau."

Lord Wei's gaze swept from left to right, then from right to left.

Those eyes, which usually saw only turbidity, were unusually clear at this moment.

"Weird Domain is an external wound. It bleeds, but we can stop it, stitch it, and heal it. Gospel Church is sepsis—the infection source lies in the vessels and circulates throughout the body. If we don't burn these rotten sores to the root, the progress of the Weird Domain campaign will be severely hampered, possibly unable to contain them, ultimately causing the Weird Domain to devour all human territory."

He paused for a beat.

"Therefore, our objectives and policies must be highly unified. We must conduct a two‑front operation. Weird Domain, containment. Gospel Church—"

He picked up the untouched cup of Longjing before him and set it on the table edge.

"—No effort spared, a united front of nations, total eradication."

Four words.

The air‑conditioner vents in the command center buzzed, cold air poured down from above, yet no one felt cool.

The lengthy meeting lasted another forty minutes, covering revisions to the details of troop deployment, resource allocation, and Intelligence sharing agreements.

The holographic projections dimmed one by one.

Seventeen blue‑white light columns vanished in succession, and the long table returned to its original emptiness.

Lord Wei rose from his chair, loosened his neck vertebrae stiffened from prolonged sitting, and carried the now‑cooled cup of Longjing back to his office.

The tea was bitter. He still took a sip.

Now the situation of humanity's fight against the Weird has become slightly clearer.

Official Weird controllers are increasing, and their equipment is iterating to become ever more powerful.

Organizations of Weird controllers like Chen Shao will not pose a fundamental obstacle to the Investigation Bureau's fight against the Weird.

As long as we contain the spread of the Gospel Church while continuously advancing the Weird Domain, humanity can relatively maintain a certain degree of leeway.

It will not be a case of neglecting one for the other.

Unless... something else goes wrong at this moment.

When he set the cup down on the table, the office door was slammed open.

There was no knock.

The head of the Data Analysis Center stood in the doorway, a button on the collar of his Doctor's Lab Coat broken off, sweat covering his forehead. He clutched a red‑topped File tightly in his right hand, the paper edges crumpled.

Lord Wei looked up at him.

The head's lips trembled twice before he forced the sound out of his throat.

"Director......"

His tone was completely warped, like a string that had gone out of tune.

"... the trouble has become huge."