“Maybe someone switched to the wrong signal feed.”
“But our base doesn’t even have surveillance set up in that direction.”
The staff members’ voices were getting closer.
Jiang Nuan instinctively took half a step back, ready to leave the way she had come before they arrived.
But at that moment, the equipment room door opened halfway. A hand reached out from inside and pulled her in.
Jiang Nuan was yanked into the equipment room, her back striking the door as it swung shut.
Before she could cry out, Lin Zhou had already released her and casually locked the door.
The room was lit only by the cold glow of the control console screens.
Lin Zhou turned to look at her without so much as raising an eyebrow.
“Come in.”
“Another few seconds, and you’d have had to explain to them yourself why you were hiding outside the door.”
Jiang Nuan looked at him and realized that he had known she was outside all along.
A knock soon sounded from outside.
“Is anyone in there?”
“No one? I have a key.”
Lin Zhou did not even lift his eyelids.
He raised his right hand, and a nearly transparent layer of energy spread out at once, sealing off the entire room within seconds.
A single thought flashed through Jiang Nuan’s mind.
This is bad.
[Shen Wu?] she called through their mental link, but there was no response.
The connection had been severed completely, without even the faintest echo.
Jiang Nuan looked up, her right hand already reaching for the holster at her hip. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t panic.”
Lin Zhou returned to the control console and even leaned casually against its edge, looking utterly untroubled.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just don’t want anyone interrupting over the next few minutes.”
He tilted his chin toward the screen. “Watch first. The show is about to begin.”
Jiang Nuan did not approach the console. She remained by the door, following his gaze to the display.
Beneath the arched bridge over the frozen lake, Sun Mingrui had opened an enormous case.
From inside, he took out massive energy stones, one after another.
Sun Mingrui set them down one by one, clearly having surveyed the location beforehand.
The final stone was placed at the center of several converging energy lines.
Jiang Nuan frowned. “What is he doing?”
Lin Zhou stared at the screen and said softly, “Just as I thought.”
“These energy stones have been linked in series.” The warmth in his eyes drained away bit by bit. “As soon as the one in the center is activated, the other six will respond simultaneously within two hours. And beneath this frozen lake lies—”
“The anomalous energy source you just sealed!” Before Lin Zhou could finish, Jiang Nuan had grasped the gravity of the situation. “He’s trying to destroy the seal?”
With that many energy stones, was he planning to blow the entire frozen lake apart while breaking the seal?
“That would mean all of Zone A, and then all of Whale Harbor City…” Lin Zhou murmured. “So... everything, including tonight’s footage, has to be seen by you—by everyone!”
As Jiang Nuan watched him mutter to himself, all the things that had seemed off before suddenly clicked into place.
Lin Zhou had given her the access card that let her enter the laboratory building. At the time, she had assumed he was simply being helpful. But the card’s clearance level was not something an ordinary banquet guest should have had.
When they had first entered the base, Lin Zhou had told her the layout of the various venues, including the laboratory building.
They had even piled equipment outside the west gate to block the view, making it easier for her to slip in.
And the first person to invite her to tonight’s banquet had been Lin Zhou.
…Putting all these things together, how could they possibly be coincidences?
“You invited me here so I would see your conversation with Lu Zhaoming in front of the laboratory building—and everything that’s happened tonight!”
A chill ran down Jiang Nuan’s spine. “What are you after?”
It was still Lin Zhou’s face, but as Jiang Nuan looked at him, she felt that something had changed. He no longer seemed like Lu Zhaoming’s warm, cheerful deputy.
“You’re not Lin Zhou?”
Lin Zhou did not deny it. “As expected of Number Zero.”
Jiang Nuan drew the pistol strapped to her thigh and aimed it between his brows. “Who exactly are you?”
“I am Lin Zhou.” His expression was composed. “Just not the Lin Zhou of this time.”
Jiang Nuan’s heart gave a violent jolt. “Are you from outside this restricted zone?”
Lin Zhou did not answer directly. Instead, he gestured toward the screen again.
“Our attention should be on the screen in front of us. Don’t you want to know what happens next?”
Jiang Nuan frowned and shifted her gaze to the screen, though her gun remained trained on Lin Zhou’s forehead.
On the screen, Sun Mingrui placed the last energy stone into position.
The people in the banquet hall had clearly realized what Sun Mingrui intended to do. The room had already erupted into chaos.
“What is this?”
“The man in the footage is Sun Mingrui?”
“Isn’t he the minister of the Federation’s Whale Harbor City?”
Several Federation personnel promptly rose to their feet.
“Please remain calm, everyone.”
“None of Mr. Sun’s actions on this trip were arranged by the Federation. We had no knowledge of them.”
A technical officer from the Investigation Department immediately let out a cold laugh.
“No knowledge?”
“Seven high-purity energy stones—without Federation approval, did he pick them up off the roadside?”
The Federation official’s expression did not change. “Perhaps Mr. Sun discovered a problem with the Ice Lake seal and took emergency measures.”
The Investigation Department officer pointed at the energy stones on the screen. “And those emergency measures require setting up a linked detonation?”
Jiang Nuan stared at the two screens.
The energy stones would explode, simultaneously detonating the anomalous energy.
The two energy sources would become intermingled, making it impossible to distinguish them afterward.
When that happened, who would be held responsible?
And whoever stood behind it all would only need to clap their hands and shift the blame onto the Lighthouse.
The Lighthouse’s seal would fail. Monsters would run rampant. So many people would die.
The chill at Jiang Nuan’s back deepened as she recalled the newspaper she had seen upon first arriving in this restricted zone—a report about a Lighthouse squad’s accident while sealing anomalous energy.
That accident… had most likely been caused in exactly the same way.
The first accident could still be called an accident.
But the second? The third?
One city after another would be destroyed, and the apocalypse would descend.
People would remember only that the Lighthouse’s failed seals had brought about the end of the world.
But what if the initial loss of control had been a fire deliberately lit by human hands?
