Live footage from the banquet hall.
Lu Zhaoming stared at the image on the giant screen, the warmth draining completely from his face. Even the adjutant beside him, who had been holding his wine, instinctively took half a step back.
He raised a hand.
In the image of the frozen lake, the air beside Sun Mingrui suddenly tore open, revealing a long, narrow rift in space.
Sun Mingrui had barely looked up, his lips just beginning to part, when the rift engulfed him and dragged him into the void.
The man vanished from the image of the frozen lake on the banquet hall’s screen.
At that very moment, the air in the banquet hall split open.
Sun Mingrui tumbled out of it, his knees slamming directly into the floor.
The entire hall fell silent.
With one hand, Lu Zhaoming sealed the spatial rift he had just torn open. He lowered his eyes to the man sprawled on the ground.
“Sun Mingrui, what are you doing?”
Sun Mingrui was clearly just as bewildered. One second, he had been arranging energy stones at the frozen lake; the next, he had been dragged into the banquet hall.
He looked around, the color draining from his face. “Captain Lu? How did I end up here?”
“I was on my way home just now. Someone attacked me and brought me here.”
Lu Zhaoming did not respond. He merely turned to look at the giant screen ahead.
Following his gaze, Sun Mingrui looked at the screen as well. His lips began to tremble.
The screen was replaying the footage from moments earlier.
At the arched bridge over the frozen lake, Sun Mingrui was kneeling beneath it, personally placing the final energy stone into its fixed position.
“Impossible.” Sun Mingrui immediately shook his head in denial as he stared at the screen. “Someone tampered with the footage! Captain Lu, this is a frame-up. Someone deliberately fabricated this to frame the Federation!”
“Fabricated?” A middle-aged man from the Investigation Department slammed his hand on the table and rose to his feet. “There were still hundreds of civilians around the frozen lake waiting to watch the fireworks. Are you going to claim that all of them were hired actors too?”
Sun Mingrui clenched his teeth, as if searching for the last lifeline he could grasp. “I don’t know why there’s footage like this, but I would never blow up the frozen lake.”
“You don’t know?” The man’s face turned livid with rage. “Does anyone here not know what’s sealed beneath the frozen lake?”
“If all seven high-purity energy stones detonate at once, the seal will inevitably collapse. The entire A District could be swallowed by anomalous energy!”
“You people in the Federation fight over power, fine—but now you’re actually willing to use the lives of an entire city as bargaining chips!”
Someone from the Federation’s seats immediately stood up.
“Watch your language!”
“The matter hasn’t been investigated yet. What gives you the right to pin the blame on the entire Federation?”
The man from the Investigation Department sneered.
“What gives me the right?”
“The evidence is already in front of everyone!”
“How many despicable things have you people done for the sake of power?”
“Clean up your mouth! Is the Investigation Department so spotless?”
The two factions erupted at once. Chairs scraped and squealed across the floor as wave after wave of shouting drowned out the previous one. The high-level banquet had turned into a furious court brawl.
Jiang Nuan stared at the chaotic scene on the screen and suddenly felt sick.
No one cared about the seven energy stones beneath the frozen lake, nor did anyone think to send people to inspect the site.
Their first reaction was to distance themselves from the blame and seize the moral high ground. How… painfully ironic.
After all, whoever managed to shove the blame away most cleanly would claim the largest share in the redistribution of power to come.
No one present was a fool. The moment they saw what had happened, they should have realized the consequences.
If this footage had not surfaced tonight, and Sun Mingrui had successfully detonated the energy stones, the anomalous energy would have broken through the seal.
The entire A District would have been plunged into disaster.
And the Lighthouse Squad, which was currently holding a high-profile celebration banquet, would have been the first suspect.
They had just announced that the seal was secure, and then disaster would have erupted near the Lighthouse base.
The speed with which that announcement was proven wrong would have incited massive public outrage and fueled distrust of both the Lighthouse Squad and the Investigation Department.
After that, the Investigation Department would have lost its influence, while the Federation seized the opportunity to rise and gradually devoured the center of power.
It almost perfectly matched the history of the timeline she had come from.
Leaning against the control console, Lin Zhou suddenly let out a low laugh.
His face was filled with the exhilaration of finally getting what he wanted, as if he were watching the fig leaf covering his enemy’s shame being ripped away in full view of everyone.
An idea surfaced in Jiang Nuan’s mind.
This was a world born from the materialization of consciousness, a refuge left behind for those driven to the brink of despair.
Later, someone had taken the Core, forcing time to stop. Then anomalous energy and monsters had been introduced, turning the place into an experimental ground.
For a long time, Jiang Nuan had been unable to understand why the person behind it all had gone to such lengths.
If they merely wanted to destroy this world, there would have been no need for such elaborate preparations.
So what the mastermind wanted was to recreate the world of the past.
Even with other factors interfering.
Young Lu Shiyan would still let Number Zero go.
Lu Zhaoming would still choose to sacrifice the few in order to save the many.
And Sun Mingrui would still move against the seal beneath the frozen lake when placed in a similar situation.
Even though countless things in this world had changed because of outsiders’ interference, the core choices of these people had not.
As long as they were pushed back toward similar crossroads, history might once again follow its original course.
The gun in Jiang Nuan’s hand never lowered. Its muzzle remained steadily aimed at Lin Zhou.
“The anomalous energy in this world was introduced later by someone else.”
Lin Zhou did not deny it.
Jiang Nuan tightened her grip on the gun. “It was you. You created disasters similar to the original ones, forcing the people in this world to repeat the choices they made back then.”
“Because no one saw this scene in the real history.”
“You introduced the anomalous energy so you could clear the Lighthouse Squad’s name?”
Lin Zhou finally smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “I want to clear their name.”
“But that’s only one part of it.”
He turned around and looked once more at the two groups of people on the screen, shouting themselves hoarse.
“Do you know how our world fell apart, Number Zero?”
“Because the people who authorized and tacitly permitted all of this were sitting in the highest seats. They shifted the blame onto someone else, then clung to that rotten-to-the-core system and continued to preserve their own positions of power.”
“The Lighthouse Squad risked their lives to seal away the anomalous energy, yet they were saddled with the blame for causing the disaster.”
“When Lu Zhaoming died, how many people still remembered that he was a hero?”
…
The man before her really did know that she was Number Zero.
Jiang Nuan’s breathing stopped for a moment before she spoke again.
“So you want us, people who came from the world beyond the restricted zone, to witness the true history with our own eyes.”
Lin Zhou slowly nodded. “After you see all of this clearly, do you still think that rotten world is worth saving?”
Jiang Nuan looked at the repulsive scenes before her and found that she could not come up with a suitable answer.
Because she was asking herself the same question.
Was that rotten world worth saving?
Lin Zhou raised a hand and touched the left side of his face.
The contours of his face began to change.
It was still Lin Zhou’s face, but beneath his slightly curling hair, an old burn scar emerged across the left half of his face.
Several fine lines appeared at the corners of his eyes. His originally gentle, refined features grew deeper, and his face took on the weight of the years.
It was Lin Zhou.
And yet, he was not the Lin Zhou Jiang Nuan knew.
The man turned his head to look at her.
“I didn’t lie to you, Number Zero.”
“I am Lin Zhou.”
He paused for a moment, the smile fading completely from his face.
“Or, you can call me…”
“Leader Lin.”
