49 Apocalypse Rules

"Captain, what’s the mission? Why so urgent?"

After Squad One boarded the plane, a team member, Black Shark, was the first to ask.

"See for yourselves."

Dragon Soul handed a tablet to the four of them, displaying the mission details sent by Dr. Zhang.

The four of them started out looking relaxed, but their expressions turned incredibly serious after just a few seconds.

After he finished reading, Black Shark was in utter disbelief. "Two thousand victims? And the base is in the Yongzhou Mountain Range, just over a hundred kilometers from the Capital? Captain, what kind of organization has the gall to do something like this?"

"You’re asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?" Dragon Soul said. "This is something we’ll have to investigate on-site, in addition to the rescue. Night Owl, you’re in charge of collecting intelligence at the scene."

"Yes."

The taciturn Night Owl gave his one-word reply and fell silent. Everyone was used to his personality; Night Owl preferred dealing with electronic devices to people. He had been an expert in the military’s electronic warfare department.

"Black Shark, Flying Eagle, Silver Fox, and I will each lead an armed unit. We need to clear out all hostiles inside the base as quickly as possible."

"Yes, Captain."

The aircraft carrying the Dragon Soul Squad reached the target location at maximum speed.

After landing, they waited for the other armed units to arrive before moving out together.

However, as they closed in on the base, they saw many people in gray uniforms emerging in a scattered-out procession.

Seeing Dragon Soul and his team, their first reaction was shock and fear. Many collapsed to the ground, thinking they were reinforcements for the base.

Dragon Soul hurried forward to help one of them up. "Don’t be afraid. We’re government personnel sent to rescue you. Were you all being held prisoner in the base?"

"Yes, yes..." Hearing that they were from the government, the young man Dragon Soul helped up had tears welling in his eyes. "We’re finally saved... Half a year... I was locked up in here for a full six months..."

’Six months?’

Dragon Soul’s heart sank. It was January 2041. The first of the Apocalypse Rules had appeared in April of the previous year, 2040. In other words, this young man had been captured not long after the Apocalypse Rules began.

"How did you all get out?" he continued. "Did something happen at the base?"

The young man shook his head. "I... I don’t know. I think someone broke in. A lot of people died, all the guards are dead... No one was watching us, so... we all escaped..."

Looking at the young man’s incoherent speech, Dragon Soul knew this wasn’t the right time for questions.

He assigned some of his people to receive and care for the escapees, while he and his squad rushed toward the base.

When they arrived at the entrance to the base built inside the mountain, they were all stunned.

A heavy, blast-proof door several meters high was set into the mountainside. It was now wide open, revealing a long vehicle ramp and parked armored cars inside.

"Captain... how could a civilian organization possibly build a base like this?" Black Shark asked, completely dumbfounded.

Dragon Soul also realized there was a much bigger story behind this base. His expression darkened. "Inside."

The team surged into the base. Far away in the mountain range, Guan Tong, now back in his true form and fully covered in his Shadow Armor, observed the situation.

’It’s the government... Looks like I won’t have to handle the cleanup.’

After eliminating everyone inside the base, Guan Tong’s surveillance shadows, which he had placed outside, detected the arrival of the authorities. He had immediately withdrawn.

However, he hadn’t used his shelter to take Chen Na with him.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; he just felt it would make it difficult for Chen Na to return to a normal life.

The base was full of surveillance cameras, so the official investigation would inevitably lead to Chen Na. If Guan Tong took her, the authorities would surely track her down. It would make it difficult for her to see her mother without being taken in for questioning, and she’d have a hard time explaining things.

That’s why Guan Tong left her in the base. This way, when the authorities found her, all she had to do was tell the truth and explain everything.

Guan Tong was confident that given her abilities and potential—and the fact that she had been unaware of the base’s evil nature, then immediately tried to contact the outside world upon learning the truth—the authorities would certainly treat her well once their investigation was complete.

As for his own identity, Guan Tong wasn’t worried about being exposed.

Although his actions inside the base exposed him as Shadow, he had maintained a different appearance the entire time using the Bystander Transformation Device, so he wasn’t worried about being tracked.

After the official investigation, they would know that Shadow had eliminated the base’s personnel, but they wouldn’t learn much else.

Guan Tong watched for a moment longer, then silently used Body Shifting. In the next instant, he vanished without a trace, leaving only a black shadow that rapidly retracted and disappeared.

...

「Late that night, at three in the morning.」

The preliminary investigation was complete. The relevant personnel returned to the underground base of the Strategy Research Room, bringing the collected data and crucial video evidence with them.

Dragon Soul, the captain of Squad One, was there to represent his team for the debriefing.

When he entered the room, he saw two other people in addition to Gao Liangwei and Dr. Zhang from the research room.

One was a man in his thirties, wearing a crisp uniform and a tie. The other was a scholarly-looking, middle-aged man with glasses.

Gao Liangwei spoke first. "Let me make some introductions. Both of these gentlemen are from the Capital. This is Investigator Wu Zheng. He was sent by the higher-ups to gather information on this incident."

The man in the tie nodded.

"And this is Li Meng, the deputy head of the task force investigating the Ascender kidnapping cases."

The middle-aged man with the glasses offered a slight smile.

Dragon Soul acknowledged each of them with a nod and then sat down.

Gao Liangwei said, "Go ahead and report your overall findings from the investigation."

"Yes, sir," Dragon Soul said. "When we arrived at the target location, we found a large number of captive Ascenders escaping. The organization’s base had already been cleared out. All armed personnel inside were annihilated. The only survivors were a few members of the organization who were hiding in the underground drainage system and a young woman named Chen Na."

"Based on interrogations and a review of the base’s surveillance footage, we’ve determined that the person who wiped out the organization was the infamous ’Shadow,’ a well-known figure among Ascenders."

As soon as Dragon Soul said this, the expressions of the other four men in the room changed.

Dr. Zhang asked in surprise, "Shadow? Did the surveillance cameras capture Shadow’s face?"

"Yes. According to the surveillance footage, Shadow is a woman in her twenties."

The four men fell silent for a moment. Gao Liangwei spoke up. "Shadow is unlikely to be a woman. Previous intelligence indicated he was a man."

"Correct. But the abilities used by the woman in the footage are all ones that Shadow is known to possess. It could be someone else with similar abilities, or it could be that Shadow used some kind of item to change his appearance. We don’t know for sure yet."

Dragon Soul paused before adding, "However, we did find a cell phone at the scene. It had a recording of Shadow’s words. The message was: ’Shadow has never been just one person. Shadow is a group, and every member of that group is Shadow.’"

’Shadow is a group... Now that’s interesting...’ Dr. Zhang mused.

Li Meng then asked, "Captain Dragon Soul, the Ascenders you rescued at the scene—were they all taken from different cities?"

Li Meng was less concerned with whether Shadow was a man or a woman, an individual or a group, and more focused on the massive serial kidnapping case he had been tracking ever since Yunhua.

"Yes. And many of them were taken during the early days of the Apocalypse Rules," Dragon Soul answered.

"It has to be them!" Li Meng said excitedly. "The massive, multi-city serial kidnapping case our task force has been investigating, the one targeting High Spirit Users—this organization was behind it! We’ve finally found them."

The investigator, Wu Zheng, then asked, "Did your investigation reveal the identity of the person in control of this organization?"

Dragon Soul shook his head. "We only know that a woman named Han Ling was the base manager. According to the autopsy, she wasn’t killed by Shadow. She died by ingesting poison."

"Her communication devices?"

"We checked them. No relevant call logs. They might switch devices after every call, or perhaps they use some other secure method of communication."

"I see." Wu Zheng nodded. "So, we still don’t know who founded this organization."

Dragon Soul said, "We also found the bodies of several well-known entrepreneurs at the scene. They were all in the management offices, which leads us to speculate that the base’s founder may be connected to the business world."

Dr. Zhang sounded puzzled. "Businessmen? Could they be unhappy about the government requisitioning factories and refusing them special privileges, so they banded together to do something like this?"

But Gao Liangwei refuted this. "I doubt it. That base is far beyond what any group of businessmen could put together. Investigator Wu, if you want to find the founder, I suggest you start by investigating the origins of this mountain base and its usage history."

Dr. Zhang and Li Meng exchanged a look, both vaguely sensing that Gao Liangwei seemed somewhat displeased with Wu Zheng, the investigator sent from on high.

Wu Zheng, however, seemed completely oblivious, nodding with an unchanged expression. "That’s already being investigated. We’re currently awaiting the results. Captain Dragon Soul, please transfer a backup of the data to me."

"Well..." Dragon Soul glanced at Gao Liangwei. Only after Gao Liangwei nodded did he agree. "Alright, I’ll send it to you after the meeting."

"Very well. I’ll go and get started on organizing the data," Wu Zheng said before leaving the conference room.

Li Meng then said, "On behalf of the kidnapping investigation task force, I’d like to speak with the victims. That should be permissible, right?"

"Of course," Gao Liangwei’s tone was much warmer toward Li Meng. "I heard you mention that these people specifically targeted individuals whose Psychic Power limit exceeded 80?"

"That’s right."

"A bunch of goddamn bastards!" Dr. Zhang couldn’t help but curse when the subject of Ascenders came up. "Anyone with a Psychic Power cap over 80 in the early days of the Apocalypse Rules was a talent with incredible potential! And these bastards just wasted months of their crucial development period!"

"Indeed. But a delayed development period is the least of their worries right now. The most important thing is to get these victims psychological treatment and help them return to a normal life."

After saying this, Li Meng shook his head with a wry smile. "Then again, with one new Apocalypse Rule after another, what’s ’normal life’ anymore?"

"That’s true..." Dr. Zhang sighed, feeling pity for the victims.

Gao Liangwei then said, "This time, Shadow single-handedly eliminated all the armed personnel in the base. Has he really become that powerful? Do we have anyone who could do the same?"

Dr. Zhang and Dragon Soul exchanged a look, and both shook their heads.

"Highly unlikely. Shadow didn’t just eliminate several hundred armed personnel, but also a number of powerful Ascenders. The terrifying thing about him isn’t just his abilities, but his Psychic Power... If any other Ascender used their powers the way he does, their Psychic Power would have been completely depleted long ago."

"So you’re saying Shadow’s Psychic Power cap must be extremely high."

"Unless his abilities have an extremely low consumption rate, but that’s unlikely. The more powerful the ability, the more Psychic Power it consumes. That’s practically an ironclad law."