Chapter 569: The Origin of the Road Battle

Ten minutes later.

The red carpet outside Deer River Manor was still laid on the ground.

At the end of the red carpet, the iron door was half-open.

The door hinge was cut by shadow, leaning askew to the side.

Jiang Yuan was the first to step inside.

Behind him, six Night Watcher team members followed with guns lowered, their Suppress Spook Bullets all chambered.

Nobody spoke.

It wasn't due to good training discipline.

It was the scene inside the door that made even profanity catch in their throats.

More than ten security guards lay fallen inside the third gate, still gripping their guns.

Someone's finger was still on the trigger.

Their faces all held the same smile.

Too neat.

Too clean.

More unsettling than death itself.

A young team member stepped forward two paces, his throat moving.

"Captain, these people...... did they commit suicide?"

Jiang Yuan did not answer.

Shadow spread from under his feet, hugging the ground as it probed toward the banquet hall.

Just as it neared that sealed alloy building, the edge of the shadow began to turn pale, and faint laughter came from inside.

The laughter did not come from human throats.

In the walls, in the screen fragments, in the communicators—it was everywhere.

Jiang Yuan's hand, gripping the dark-colored playing cards, halted midair.

The edge of the card stuck to his fingertip.

It was steady.

Yet his fingertip still twitched slightly.

"Everyone, lower your heads."

The team members simultaneously withdrew their gazes.

"Close the external display on the tactical visors, switch to infrared outline. Shift the comms channel to one-way text."

"Received."

"Received."

The alloy door of the banquet hall was pried open by shadow from the gap.

When the door gap revealed just half a palm's width, the laughter inside squeezed out.

One team member's shoulder twitched.

The person beside him pressed down on his nape, forcing his head downward.

"Don't look."

Jiang Yuan walked inside.

People were everywhere in the hall.

Some lay under the tables, some slumped on the carpet, some sat leaning against the walls.

Everyone was laughing.

The living laughed too.

The dead laughed too.

The central large screen had shattered into dozens of pieces, each fragment still retaining the same white-background smiling face.

Jiang Yuan did not approach.

A legion of shadow rose from beneath his feet, forming a row of low crouching dark shapes that enveloped every screen fragment.

Upon contact with the fragments, the shadow's surface was eroded by white traces.

They were laughing.

His soldiers were laughing.

Jiang Yuan raised his hand; five playing cards flew out, cleanly severing the contaminated shadow soldiers on the spot.

Before the shadow dispersed, it still trembled on the ground, leaving several crooked lines of laughing marks.

The young team member muttered a curse.

"Captain, can shadow also be infected?"

Jiang Yuan stared at those white laughing lines, his breath pressed low.

"This is no ordinary Weird Domain descent."

He lifted his gaze toward the banquet hall's far end, where the shattered screen was sealed off by shadow.

"This is a plague from the Dongdao isolation zone."

No team member responded.

The two words 'Dongdao' in the Investigation Bureau's internal files denote a Forbidden Zone.

To see, to hear, to spread.

Three paths—any one of them can kill.

But this time, it crossed the thirty-meter isolation wall, crossed the unmanned watchtower, crossed the global blockade.

It even chose the moment when the Suppress Spook Bullet had just pressed the Spook Controllers back into order.

This is not a random event.

This is someone slapping faces.

Jiang Yuan walked to the main table.

He Yunting knelt on the ground, his neck held by a bodyguard, his face still maintaining a smile.

His eyeballs could still move.

When he saw Jiang Yuan, broken words squeezed out of his throat.

"Save...... me......"

The next second, his communicator lit up.

On the screen, a standard smiley face floated up.

Below, four more characters appeared.

Happiness spread.

Jiang Yuan wrapped the entire communicator together with He Yunting's palm in shadow.

"Seal the entire scene."

"Send the living to the contamination medical bay."

"Number all the dead, forbid family from touching the corpses, forbid media from approaching."

The young crew member looked up at him.

"Captain, if we do this, the internet will again scold us for being inhumane."

Jiang Yuan remained silent for two seconds.

"Then let them scold."

He turned and walked out of the banquet hall.

Outside the door, the surveillance camera was still lit.

Jiang Yuan reached out and removed the storage module.

On the module's surface, a white smiley face floated.

"Connect to Lord Wei."

The text communication quickly replied.

Already connected.

Jiang Yuan gazed at the empty stretch of road outside the manor.

There was nothing there.

But before the White Umbrella man left, he had looked at the camera.

That was not an escape.

It was handing over a business card.

Federation Headquarters.

Resolution Hall.

At the end of the long table, Lord Wei sat in the seat of honor.

He wore an old-style administrative jacket, with several photos of the manor scene placed beside him.

The corners of the photos were pressed under his teacup.

The tea in the cup had already gone cold.

No one reminded him.

Jiang Yuan stood on the left, his combat uniform still carrying the scene's containment powder.

Su Ming leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, the depths of his eyes very dark.

Qin Zhixia sat on the right, her mechanical prosthetic resting on the tabletop, the metal joints tapping twice in a regular rhythm, then stopping.

Liang Wen stood in the rear, his black windcoat unfastened.

Usually this person loves to strike poses, but today he was unusually well-behaved.

Lord Wei said:

"Casualties."

Jiang Yuan answered: "Lu Chuan Manor confirmed 137 deaths, 22 survivors. The survivors are all heavily contaminated, under cognitive isolation. Three investigators showed slight smile-line reactions, and have voluntarily requested restraint."

Lord Wei lifted his teacup, then set it down again.

"Transmission route."

Su Ming said: "Vision, hearing, electronic screens, communication signals, fragment reflection. Moreover, there's something more troublesome: it doesn't need a complete image. As long as it receives the smiley face structure, the contamination will attempt to complete itself."

Qin Zhixia's mechanical joints stopped on the tabletop.

"What about the Suppress Spook Bullet?"

Jiang Yuan shook his head.

"No chance to fire. Before the Gate Three security was controlled, his hand was already on the trigger."

Everyone in the conference hall had grim expressions.

The order just established by the Suppress Spook Bullet was publicly slapped back by this manor case.

It's not that the weapon isn't strong enough.

It's that the target didn't give anyone the qualification to pull the trigger.

Lord Wei looked toward the main screen.

Lin Linling

The screen lit up.

L's projection appeared in midair.

Short ear-length hair, black-rimmed glasses, holding a laptop.

Her cat sticker was especially out of place in the tense atmosphere.

Liang Wen glanced at it and couldn't help muttering.

"This cat sticker is pretty dedicated, working overtime even during the global crisis."

L had a blank expression.

"Correction. Stickers can't work overtime. They have no employment relationship."

Liang Wen fell silent.

That deadpan humor is very Investigation Bureau.

L tapped the keyboard.

"The fragmented data left at the Dongdao observation station has been 47% restored. The manor's surveillance has completed decontamination processing. The comparison results are as follows."

On the screen, the residual surveillance footage of the original Dongdao Ginza district began to play.

The image was very flamboyant.

A man in white clothing held an umbrella, standing inside the isolation wall.

In the next frame, the surveillance from Gate Three of Deer River Manor appeared.

The same man in white lifted his head, looking toward the camera.

The two video clips were overlaid.

Their facial outlines coincided.

Match rate: 99.6%.

L called up a high-definition restored image.

White clothing, white umbrella, youthful face, eyelids slightly lowered.

Very clean.

Also very distant.

"Target: Lu Dou."

The conference hall grew even quieter.

Wei Gong lifted his eyes.

"Origin."

L switched the data.

An old ID photo appeared on the screen.

In the photo, Lu Dou wore a white shirt, frameless glasses, and his hair was much shorter.

Like someone who would walk to class in a university corridor hugging books.

L began the report.

"Lu Dou, a genius professor of social cognition at the Federation's Eastern University, disappeared at age thirty. His research focused on group decision-making, hive mind, and pain cognition transmission."

"His early record was clean. He earned his doctorate at 26, was promoted to professor out of turn at 29, and his open-course evaluations ranked first for years."

"Student evaluations keywords: gentle, patient, never calls roll, gives decent final grades."

Liang Wen stroked his chin.

"With this résumé today, he could be an internet boyfriend. Add a white shirt and the comments would be shouting 'husband'."

Su Ming glanced at him.

"You still have the mood to meme?"

Liang Wen spread his hands.

"This monarch uses humor to maintain mental stability—do you understand psychological defense mechanisms?"

L continued.

"The turning point was six years ago. Lu Dou participated in three post-disaster psychological aid projects. First, resettling orphans of a mining disaster. Second, studying family separation in infectious disease quarantine zones. Third, cognitive restoration for survivors of the Eastern child trafficking case."

The screen flipped pages.

Files were listed one by one.

Lu Dou had written memos.

The handwriting was very neat.

The first paragraph was enlarged.

"Human suffering does not come from a single disaster, but from the distribution after the disaster."

"Who gets rescued first."

"Who has a bed."

"Who is seen by the media."

"Who is abandoned."

"Second paragraph."

"Individual freedom brings competition, competition creates disparity, disparity breeds resentment."

"If everyone aims at the same goal and gains equal satisfaction in execution, suffering will lose its breeding ground."

"The third paragraph is shorter."

"Independent will is humanity's license to hurt each other."

Qin Zhixia stared at those words, her mechanical fingers tightening.

The metal joints made a soft sound.

"He isn't a madman."

Su Ming interjected: "A madman wouldn't be this lucid."

Wei Gong looked toward L.

"Family relations."

"His parents died early. No spouse. No children. His only sister, Lu Yao, died in the Dongdao evacuation accident three years ago."

An old news article appeared on the screen.

On the day the Dongdao disaster broke out, the evacuation list was temporarily reduced.

The medical team Lu Yao was with was ordered to stay behind and maintain order.

Two hours later, communication was cut off.

The bodies were not recovered.

Lu Dou subsequently resigned and went missing.

L added: "Before his disappearance, he submitted a final paper to the Academic Committee. Titled 'Ethical Amendments for Shared Happiness and Single-Consciousness Society,' the paper was rejected, with reviewers commenting that it was anti-human, anti-individual, and possessed dangerous agitprop tendencies."

Liang Wen didn't laugh this time.

He looked at the paper's abstract on the screen and spoke softly.

"I've seen many similar movies."

Everyone looked at him.

Liang Wen, unusually, didn't put on airs.

"Humanity is ruled by a single consciousness; bodies go their own way, but minds are merged into a collective. No one argues, no one betrays, no one attacks each other over resources."

He paused.

"It sounds lovely. The problem is, by then, if you want a spicy hot pot while I want a tomato hot pot, that difference counts as social noise."

Su Ming said coldly: "Your example is still pretty down-to-earth."

"Can't help it; in the apocalypse, those who still think about hot pot are more humane."

Qin Zhixia lifted her head.

"Lu Dou's logic is sound. There's too much suffering, so he wants to erase the individual differences that cause suffering. It's not killing for fun, nor profit. He's saving people, in his own way."

Jiang Yuan gazed at the white-clad man in the high-definition image.

"People like this are the hardest to persuade."

"Why?" asked a meeting analyst.

Jiang Yuan replied briefly.

"Because he seeks no reward."

Wei Gong raised his hand, signaling to continue.

Su Ming walked to the screen and pulled up Lu Dou's paper's model.

"His hive-mind research isn't ordinary sociology. He conducted extensive behavioral experiments. Volunteers, under unified command, carried out tasks; their pain scores dropped, conflict rates fell, and even hunger tolerance increased."

"From this he concluded that pain can be diluted by a collective goal."

Su Ming scrolled down the page.

"Later, he began adding a happiness feedback mechanism. Simply put, if you obey the collective goal, your brain rewards you with happiness; if you resist, pain is doubled."

Liang Wen's face twitched.

"Isn't this just a mental version of a work system? Complete tasks, get dopamine; refuse overtime, lose life."

No one laughed.

Liang Wen glanced around.

"Fine, I'm muting myself."

L said: "Based on the manor pollution results, Lu Dou has already transformed the lingering Dongdao madness into a new rule. The old rule was madness, self-destruction, attack. The new rule is uniform expression, uniform emotion, uniform behavior."

Qin Zhixia whispered: "True hive mind."

Many in the conference hall felt tension in their backs.

Wei Gong fell silent for a moment:

"Negotiation value?"

L replied: "Less than three percent."

Su Ming added: "He has no family to leverage, no interests to trade, no position to demand. His sister's death would only strengthen his conviction. He has elevated his personal tragedy into a plan for all humanity; this path is hard to turn back from."

Jiang Yuan said: "He also isn't afraid of death."

Qin Zhixia continued: "Martyrs don't fear death."

"What he fears is that the idea won't spread."