Jiang Nuan withdrew her gaze and looked at the man taking off his black Governor’s uniform jacket.
He casually draped it over the arm of the sofa. Beneath it, he wore only a black shirt, cleanly outlining his broad shoulders and narrow waist.
He was once again the captain of Team Zero she knew.
“So...”
Jiang Nuan was the first to break the silence.
“I entered the restricted zone only twenty minutes after your reconnaissance team did, but time inside the restricted zone... has already passed for a year?”
“To be precise.”
Lu Shiyan walked to the bar and poured two glasses of water.
“One year and three months.”
More than four hundred days and nights.
All the speculation in the interrogation room about how he had become Governor was suddenly given a suffocating sense of reality by that specific number.
Only twenty minutes had passed in the world beyond the gray mist.
Inside it, he had lived through four hundred days.
“Then how did you become a wealthy businessman’s illegitimate son?”
She was genuinely curious.
“And then go from an illegitimate son to the highest-ranking official in the entire city?”
She could not imagine how an outsider with no legal identity could fabricate a place for himself in a restricted zone with such a tightly controlled social system—and then climb, step by step, to the pinnacle of power.
Lu Shiyan took a sip of water, his Adam’s apple moving faintly.
“Very simple.”
His tone was calm.
“There happened to be a wealthy businessman looking for his illegitimate son who had gone missing.”
“So I became him.”
He took another sip.
“And made the original one disappear forever.”
In this restricted zone, the so-called real illegitimate son was, in essence, merely a monster constructed from anomalous energy.
Kill a monster and take its identity.
For Lu Shiyan, it was indeed the most efficient—and most practical—way to infiltrate.
Cradling her glass, Jiang Nuan could not help sighing inwardly.
Capable people really could succeed at anything.
She remembered a saying she had seen in her previous life: “You could throw this kind of person into primitive society, and they’d unite the tribes within three months.”
At the time, she had thought it was just a joke.
Now she realized that people like that really did exist.
“What about the others?”
Jiang Nuan asked the question that concerned her most.
“Ye Que, Shen Wu, Qinian... Have they been here for a long time too?”
After a brief pause, she added, “With everyone’s abilities, after being here for so long, they still haven’t been able to resolve this restricted zone?”
That was what unsettled her the most.
What level of combat power did Team Zero possess?
They were the Federation’s sharpest blade.
Yet they had spent more than a year here, and the restricted zone still remained completely intact.
“Don’t worry.”
Lu Shiyan set down his glass and activated the terminal on his wrist.
A blue holographic map projected from its surface, hovering between them.
The full layout of Whale Harbor City appeared in the light display, with several specially marked red dots scattered throughout the city.
“When we first entered the restricted zone, we tried a direct physical assault.”
“But it had no effect on the restricted zone world itself.”
Lu Shiyan moved his fingers across the holographic projection.
“Moreover, this world possesses the same heavy weaponry as the outside world. If we resort to widespread destruction, it will provoke a full-scale backlash from the entire world.”
Jiang Nuan frowned. Once again, everything pointed to the fact that this restricted zone had fabricated a complete world.
“Before locating the restricted zone’s core, blindly throwing combat power at it will only put us at an increasing disadvantage.”
Lu Shiyan continued.
“So I had everyone split up and enter different levels of this society, searching for clues about the restricted zone’s core through their respective channels.”
“...So Qinian debuted as a celebrity,” Jiang Nuan said after processing that for two seconds, “in order to build a broader information network?”
She remembered the dazzling top male star she had seen on the electronic billboards in the street.
Number one on the rookie popularity rankings.
She really, really wanted to see Qinian filming a variety show and interacting with fans.
It would probably be absolutely wild.
