Chapter 472: There Is a Way

After Lu Yu finished that sentence, the ward was quiet for four seconds.

Four seconds isn't long, but it's enough for the ECG monitor to complete five peaks.

Su Ming's mind was racing. Rebirth. Apocalypse. Twelve years later. Each of those words alone could fill a sci‑fi film, and together they form the standard opening of a psychiatric evaluation report.

But he didn't smile.

Because Lu Yu's gaze was off.

It wasn't the fervor of a delusional patient, nor the chaos of post‑traumatic stress. That look was too clean, clean enough that only a flat factual statement remained, exactly like the tone in an autopsy report that reads "Cause of death: hemorrhagic shock."

Chen Shao was the first to break the silence.

"Rebirth."

He chewed those two words to pieces, as if gnawing a bone he couldn't swallow. The Demon Eye's crimson shifted from dim to half‑bright, indicating he was actively retrieving a psychic signal.

"Do you know what those two words mean?"

"It means you don't believe," Lu Yu said, his tone as flat as plain water. "Normal reaction. If I were in your seat, I wouldn't believe either."

"Then how do you intend to make me believe?"

"I don't intend to."

Lu Yu lifted his cup and took another sip; his swallowing was slow—not from weakness, but from laziness.

"I plan to make it impossible for you not to believe."

He set the cup down, his eyelid lifted a half‑inch, his pupil fixed on Chen Shao.

"Your Demon Eye's Symbiosis cost is the sacrifice of Li Renge. Specifically, you fed him to the thing inside the eye, gaining a stable and powerful ability."

Chen Shao's complexion didn't change.

But the knuckles of his hand gripping the folding chair armrest turned white.

The air in the ward grew dense.

Su Ming's gaze bounced back and forth between the two. He noticed Chen Shao's breathing rate jump from fourteen breaths per minute to nineteen.

That data was more honest than any expression of feeling.

"As for this," Chen Shao's voice was pressed low, "I haven't told anyone."

"Of course you haven't," Lu Yu's tone was so bland it bordered on offensive, "but the you from twelve years later told me."

He turned to Su Ming.

"Investigation Bureau headquarters, B‑17 level, Containment Object C‑044, officially registered as 'Eternal Cradle.' Containment conditions are constant temperature minus forty‑two degrees Celsius with continuous playback of a specific frequency white noise. In reality, that thing's true effect is to force the subject into irreversible infantile regression; three D‑level test subjects have already been scrapped, the third died by natural miscarriage‑style death after regressing to the fetal stage, and the autopsy report remains top secret."

Su Ming's hand lifted from the tablet.

C‑044's information encryption level is Director's order plus a biometric lock double authentication; no more than five people in the entire bureau have clearance to retrieve it. He is one of them.

And every detail Lu Yu just mentioned, including the description of 'natural miscarriage‑style death'—

matched the original text in the top‑secret file word for word.

Su Ming closed the tablet.

Not because further verification wasn't needed, but because his hand began to tremble uncontrollably and he needed something to brace against.

Outside the ward, the footsteps of the shift‑changing nurse passed by and faded.

"Twelve years later," Su Ming began, his voice steady—only he knew the price of steadiness was biting his molars, "what exactly happened?"

"Everything that now gives you a headache, magnified a thousandfold."

Lu Yu leaned against the headboard, his gaze passing over the two and landing on the sky outside the ward window. The gray‑white cloud layer hadn't fully dispersed, and a bird flew past from afar, a tiny black speck.

"Weird is no longer an isolated incident. It's the norm. In the air, in the water, in every street you walk. There are eleven S Ji Weird Domains worldwide simultaneously, the largest swallowing the entire Southeast Alliance. Humanity has retreated to less than a third of its former territory, relying on Containment Objects and Anomaly‑taming agents to hold the final line."

His tone had no inflection, like a weather forecast.

"And then the line also collapsed."

Chen Shao's Demon Eye lit up completely. It wasn't a voluntary activation, but a passive response triggered by emotional fluctuation. Crimson light churned deep within his pupil, reflecting off the white ceiling of the ward.

"The cause of the collapse," Lu Yu paused for a beat, "is a person."

"He calls himself 'God'."

"And I returned to kill him before he becomes a god."

When that sentence left his mouth, the ECG monitor still read sixty‑two.

Su Ming and Chen Shao almost simultaneously thought of the same thing.

Zhang Yuanqing.

Zhang Yuanqing's power wasn't his own. It was bestowed. A hidden presence injected it into him precisely, like administering a drug to a lab mouse.

Su Ming's brain completed a full logical deduction in half a second.

"Zhang Yuanqing is not the endpoint."

"Redundant," Lu Yu said bluntly, "you think this kind of character qualifies as the final boss? Too cheap."

He brushed aside the stray hair hanging over his forehead, the motion as casual as fixing one's appearance between classes.

"Zhang Yuanqing was a bait from start to finish. The real 'God' behind the scenes pushed him to the forefront, with only one purpose—when everyone's attention is drawn there, to erase his own trace."

Chen Shao squinted.

"You mean he's still not strong enough now."

"If he were strong enough, he wouldn't need this method," Lu Yu's mouth twitched slightly, a scornful curve. "A god who can crush everyone head‑on wouldn't bother with spy‑movie tricks. The more carefully he hides, the more it shows he's still in a growth phase, still accumulating, not yet at that fearless critical point."

"So that's good news," Su Ming replied quickly.

"And also bad news. Because he knows someone is investigating him."

The ward was quiet for two seconds.

Chen Shao didn't hesitate further.

He rose from the folding chair, his right hand pressing the Encrypted Terminal on the ward wall. The moment the panel lit up, his Demon Eye emitted an ultra‑thin crimson beam, completing the dual iris‑and‑biometric field authentication.

"Spade-01, this is Fang Zhou."

A crackling of electricity came from the terminal, then a lowered male voice connected: "Fang Zhou, received."

"All previously gathered Intelligence, including the profile files on the Weird Origin direction, the communication logs reverse‑traced from Zhang Yuanqing's movements, and—" he paused, "the vetting list of medical personnel for the 'Cavity Person' incident. Retrieve everything. Highest Priority Order."

"Understood. Estimated—"

"Now."

The communication cut off.

Chen Shao turned and saw Su Ming also pull out his Encrypted Terminal, querying the Investigation Bureau Data Center's deep index. Their actions were almost synchronized, even the rhythm of their screen taps matched oddly.

Lu Yu leaned against the headboard, watching the scene.

His expression was as bland as a high‑schooler who hadn't fully woken up.

Thirty seconds passed.

One minute.

Su Ming's terminal sounded first.

It wasn't Intelligence feedback. It was an alarm.

A shrill electronic buzz burst from the palm‑held screen, red warning icons filled the entire interface. Su Ming's pupils contracted sharply, his fingers flicked rapidly, pulling up the low‑level logs.

What he saw turned his face from normal complexion to iron‑gray within three seconds.

"What's wrong?" Chen Shao's voice cooled.

Su Ming gave no reply. He flipped the screen toward Chen Shao.

The screen displayed the Investigation Bureau Data Center's access records.

The timestamp of the last normal log stopped at four minutes seventeen seconds ago.

From four minutes seventeen seconds ago, all data entries related to "Weird Origin", "editor", "sub authority", and "Zhang Yuanqing communications" had their status fields uniformly changed to a single word—

"Destroyed."

It wasn't deletion. It wasn't overwriting. It was erased from the underlying logic, leaving no trace of existence. Even the mirrored backups on the backup server vaporized, as if the data had never existed in this world.

Chen Shao's terminal trembled at the same moment.

He answered.

The male voice on the other end was no longer lowered, tinged with obvious panic: "Fang Zhou, something's happened. Our Intelligence repository—Core node was breached by unknown means; all files concerning… concerning the Weird source‑tracing direction are all—"

"All gone," Chen Shao finished for him.

Silence lingered in the channel for a moment.

"Yes."

Chen Shao placed the terminal back on the table. The motion was light, as light as setting down a cup of cold tea.

But the scarlet glow in his eyes brightened threefold.

Su Ming stared at the row of "Destroyed" tags on his screen, his thumb's pad unconsciously rubbing back and forth against the terminal's metal rim.

Two men capable of making the entire Federation tremble, in this white ward, were hit simultaneously.

All their prior investigative results—Eden Garden's suspect list filtered by manpower and resources, the relational models run for hundreds of hours on the Investigation Bureau Data Center, every lead extending from the Zhang Yuanqing case—were reduced to ash within four minutes.

Completely clean.

As if someone took an eraser and wiped each answer off the entire test paper.

"He acted," Su Ming's voice squeezed out between his teeth.

Lu Yu watched the two from the hospital bed.

The bruise at the corner of Su Ming's left eye stood out against his ashen complexion. Chen Shao's Demon Eye glowed hotly, but that light illuminated only his own iris and nothing else.

Two beasts locked in cages realized the prey outside the cage had licked all footprints clean.

"Don't rush."

Lu Yu's voice was soft.

Both gazes shot at them simultaneously.

"He erased the traces, indicating he confirmed we were investigating him. That's bad news. But—"

Lu Yu raised a finger.

"I came back from twelve years later. He can't wipe out this information gap."

Su Ming's breathing steadied for half a beat.

"Do you know who he is?"

"I don't know."

Su Ming's breathing became erratic again.

"He wasn't uncovered from his past life to death," Lu Yu's tone was excessively flat, "but I know the direction. Zhang Yuanqing's power was bestowed, which means before his fall someone actively contacted him. Determining who Zhang Yuanqing met while alive, where he went, even who he chatted with online—the answer lies within."

The words fell silent.

The ward fell quiet again.

This silence lasted longer than any before.

Because everyone thought of the same question.

Zhang Yuanqing is dead. The Black Clinic in the slums where he lived turned to ruins in the battle; phone, computer, paper records—nothing remained.

The source of the clues was physically erased from the world.

Conventional investigation? Investigate what? A pile of ash?

Su Ming fished another crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled out the last one, held it between his lips, unlit.

His thumb and forefinger clasped the lighter, squeezing it for a long time.

"Is there not a single way left?"

When Lu Yu asked the question, the voice was more hoarse than Lu Yu had expected; the lighter, gripped too tightly, let the metal casing emit a faint squeak.

There was no movement on the bed.

Su Ming thought Lu Yu was not going to answer.

Then Su Ming heard the rustling of the sheets.

Lu Yu lifted his eyelids.

The previously flat, indifferent, gray tone that took nothing to heart was ignited at that moment by something. It wasn't hope. It was more dangerous than hope.

It was like a gambler, upon reaching the final card, knowing the chance of winning was less than ten percent, yet still pushing all the chips onto the table—

Frenzy.

"Yes."

Lu Yu said.

The voice was still hoarse, but each syllable was bitten down heavily.

Su Ming and Chen Shao simultaneously tensed their spines.