Li Lin was awakened from a deep sleep by the noisy ringtone of his phone, accompanied by a sudden spiritual alert from within his own heart.
As a highly trained officer of the Special Service Bureau, he almost instantly realized that something was happening, and he snapped awake, leaping from the bed in his temporary rental to the floor, then grabbed his phone from the bedside table and rushed towards the window facing the street.
"I'm Li Lin," he answered the phone quickly, while sitting by the window, pointing a device with a complex lens group toward the street below, "What happened?"
Song Cheng's voice immediately came through the receiver, sounding very serious, "Do you observe anything unusual on your end?"
While Li Lin paid attention to the light and shadow refracted in the lens device, he glanced at the laptop that was monitoring data automatically beside him, quickly scrolled through the monitoring log, and spoke rapidly, "The monitoring data is normal, there was just a small-scale energy fluctuation at one in the morning—a normal periodic 'surge' in the Boundary Land..."
"Xu Jiali has already set out earlier; he should be almost there," Song Cheng said solemnly, "Keep monitoring the streets, but even if you observe something, do not go out carelessly, just report immediately—remember, absolutely do not leave the base alone before Xu Jiali arrives!"
"Ah? Oh, okay, got it!" Li Lin was startled for a moment, then hurriedly agreed, soon asking again, "What exactly is happening?"
"The Boundary Land is experiencing unidentified large-scale temporal and spatial displacements and repositions, happening every five to ten minutes."
Song Cheng ignored Li Lin's gasp on the other end and hung up the phone. He took a deep breath and raised his head to look towards the giant screen at the end of the command hall.
Displayed on the screen was a flat map of the whole "Boundary City," with a three-dimensional structure composed of countless curves and identifiers beyond the map, as well as a large amount of furiously refreshing surveillance data and remote monitoring signals.
The spacious command hall was brightly lit, with the staff of the Special Service Bureau wearing black uniforms staring intently at the screens at various terminals. Occasionally, someone would exit through a small side door, conveying the situation from other departments or bringing more bad news.
"We've had a few small temporal displacement phenomena in the past two days, but none as large or as frequent as this," a female staff member of the Special Service Bureau, wearing a black business suit, muttered behind Song Cheng, "The temporal structure of the Boundary Land is special; this kind of thing has happened before, so the warning level reported at that time was not high..."
"Now, it seems like a probing before some large-scale operation," another voice said from the side, "Now 'they' have officially started... Damn it, we've been negligent."
Just then, another report came from a terminal, interrupting the conversation behind Song Cheng: "A Rift has been detected! Directed at Chen-12b, still unable to confirm the exact location... Attempting to trace the origin!"
Song Cheng frowned and said nothing, just silently counting numbers in his mind.
After a dozen seconds, he heard the follow-up report—
"The Rift has closed! Tracing failed! Temporal structure restored!"
Such reports had repeated many times in this hall—occurring every few minutes.
The intervals were not very stable, but generally within ten minutes, each duration was not so precise, but did not exceed thirty seconds. It seemed artificial, but... what was the purpose of doing this? And more importantly... who could do such an outrageous thing?!
"Rift detected! Directed at White Dragon-4c, unable to confirm exact location, attempting to trace the origin..."
"Rift closed! Tracing failed..."
Song Cheng's frown deepened, and just then, a faint buzzing sound suddenly interrupted his thoughts. The next moment, a screen beside him lit up.
A woman, appearing to be under thirty, with a dignified yet cool demeanor appeared on the screen.
She was dressed in a white suit dress, her gray-white long hair tied in a loose single ponytail at the back of her head, her eyes showing an unusual gray-white, her pupils very light, making her whole being seem... almost devoid of color.
The moment he saw this woman, Song Cheng's back visibly tensed a bit, and a slightly stiff, bitter smile appeared on his lips.
"Director," Song Cheng greeted, "We are still tracking..."
"How is the situation now?" the gray-haired, gray-eyed woman, referred to as the Director, interrupted Song Cheng, her voice cold and calm.
"The Rifts are still continuously forming and vanishing, still unable to trace the origin, but we can basically confirm that this phenomenon is harmless to the Boundary Land itself—the temporal structure has not been destroyed."
"Not destroyed?"
"Yes, although those Rifts are temporarily classified as 'temporal displacements', they are only superficially similar. What exactly those things are... is still unclear," Song Cheng said with a wry smile, "It doesn't actually tear the space-time when each is created, but..."
He struggled for a while, but finally recalled the description provided by a technical expert and continued: "The feeling is as if this was the original structure of space-time—the moment the Rift forms, it's as if Boundary Land always had such a stable passage connecting to a distant place, and when the Rift disappears, it's as if it never existed. No impact, no catastrophic collapse, and up to this point, we still haven't received any reports of casualties."
The woman with gray hair listened quietly, remaining silent for a long time.
Song Cheng didn't speak either, just patiently waiting.
"Has there been any change with that 'special location' you had monitored before?"
"No, that area is now the most 'calm' place in Boundary City, calm like a black hole," Song Cheng sighed, "The most abnormal thing is that there are no visible issues— I've already sent the best deep diver from the second team there, and I also arranged two extra monitoring groups to approach that street from different directions..."
"What do you think the purpose of the person doing these things is?" the gray-haired woman suddenly asked.
"…It's hard to say," Song Cheng thought for a moment and cautiously said, "At first I thought it was some kind of attack, but now it seems they are just repeatedly opening and closing one Rift after another. It's been almost a whole night, and no one has intervened…"
"Could it be a new 'Dark Angel' phenomenon?"
"It shouldn't be. When Dark Angels appear, they invariably bring about large-scale Exotic Realm loss of control and widespread damage in the present world, not so 'harmless'," Song Cheng immediately shook his head, "And we haven't received any reports about those Angel believers lately. If a new Dark Angel were emerging, those cultists wouldn't be this quiet."
"If it's not a Dark Angel, that's a relief."
"Yes, as long as it's not a Dark Angel, that's fine," Song Cheng sighed, "But then again, if this is man-made, then… what kind of 'person' is this? They're causing such a commotion, what exactly are they trying to do…"
His latter words were entirely to himself; the woman with gray hair on the other side of the screen pondered for a few seconds before breaking the silence—
"The world is vast, with too many tribes and ancient beings we have yet to encounter," she said softly, her young face inadvertently revealing a kind of ancient weariness, "And our universe is very young, with many 'theorems' and 'laws' yet to be formed... Learn to adapt, Xiao Song, our job has never been about dealing with the 'known'."
"…I understand."
The gray-haired woman nodded, then as if sensing something, suddenly looked up in a certain direction—her almost colorless pale eyes froze for a moment, then she softly broke the silence: "It has calmed down."
Song Cheng looked up towards the hall.
No new reports of Rift formations had come in.
…
A specific frequency of knocking resounded, Li Lin stood at the door, using his Spiritual Intuition to confirm the aura outside, then stepped halfway to the side and opened the door.
A burly man nearly two meters tall ducked his head and squeezed through the doorway of the rental house, dragging a huge black box that very much matched his height and physique behind him.
"This place is really cramped," the burly man looked back at Li Lin who was standing next to the door, "It's even more cramped than the landing pod I sat in two days ago."
Li Lin rolled his eyes: "It's still more spacious than your broken car—if you could drive it all the way here from the bureau, don't complain about my place."
The burly man chuckled twice, pushing his heavy box against the wall and settling down on the living room sofa, immediately letting out a long, satisfied sigh.
"At least it's a place meant for humans—this sofa is way more comfortable than the hard-as-rock chairs and scorching sand of Amein-IX."
Li Lin looked somewhat painfully at the burly man in front of him.
The most outstanding and senior deep diver of the Special Service Bureau Second Action Team—Mr. Xu Jiali.
He was not used to dealing with this burly guy.
The main reason for the discomfort was that on his first day on the team, Li Lin had seen the name "Xu Jiali" on the personnel roster and had asked about him everywhere, then at the welcoming meeting, a man of one hundred ninety-eight centimeters tall came over, patted Li Lin's shoulder, and introduced himself as Xu Jiali—his self-introduction was deafening then, and even now Li Lin would shake a bit seeing him.
But Mr. Xu Jiali himself had no awareness of this. He'd been living with this name for thirty years and had long since gotten used to it...
How does the saying go—Special Service Bureau Second Team, that's a place where hidden dragons lie...