“Mom? Dad? Where are you? Why did you abandon me…”
“Forget that lowly surname. Since you have inherited that ancient bloodline, you shall also inherit its name. From today on you will be called Yamata no Orochi.”
“If you ever want to contact me one day, you can use the Ascendant Home website.”
“I’ll still call you Uenoshi.”
“…Since the path we chose leads to the truth in the end, let the organization be named the Trace Origin Travel Troupe.”
“From today on, I am a member of the Trace Origin Travel Troupe. Please, Troupe Leader, guide me.”
The moment Guan Tong’s locator and life signal vanished, many long-buried memories suddenly surged through Uenoshi’s mind.
Being abandoned by her parents as a child, later selected by Yuzawa Jun and renamed officially as Yamata no Orochi, the first time she saw Guan Tong, and his invitation to join the Trace Origin Travel Troupe he founded… she never expected those memories to rush back like a tide at this moment.
A sharp pain erupted inside her head, striking the area between her brows. Uenoshi’s breathing quickened. She braced a hand on the cabin wall as an indescribable change overtook her, like an intense chemical reaction unfolding.
Everyone else was watching Zhang Minglu at that moment, paying no attention to Uenoshi’s change. Only Adam, who was sitting resting, seemed to sense something and stared at her in surprise.
“The signal is completely lost, how is this possible… what happened? Guan Tong! Guan Tong?!” Zhang Minglu shouted into the communicator, still clinging to a sliver of hope that it might be instrument failure.
But the others did not think so.
“Shadow must be in trouble. We need to get to him right away…” Adam shifted his gaze away from Uenoshi.
He looked a little drained, his voice low, his eyelids heavy. The two-plus minutes of super-high mental computation had completely drained him, he could do almost nothing now.
The other Ascendants didn’t know what to do either. Most of them were Adam’s assistants; in this state what could they possibly accomplish?
“I’ll call for reinforcements immediately!” Zhang Minglu had just finished speaking when a loud bang came from the cabin door.
“Kraa—!”
Everyone turned to look. Uenoshi had forced the cabin door open with both hands, and a gust of wind rushed in.
“Hey—wait!”
Before Zhang Minglu could finish, Uenoshi leapt down from the doorway. Zhang Minglu lunged to grab her but came up empty.
She disappeared like a shadow down the corridor, and he slammed his fist onto the iron deck in frustration. “Damn it!”
“Don’t worry…” Adam said, “She’s going after Shadow. She’s strong, she’ll be fine.”
He had seen Uenoshi fight during the Manchidon battle that repelled the parasitized forms and knew her strength.
And if he hadn’t been mistaken a moment ago, Uenoshi’s aura had shifted—he knew exactly what that change meant. Only those whose Mind Power upper limit exceeded a thousand, those entering the Second Stage of Ascension, would show that kind of change…
“Even so, but—”
Zhang Minglu was getting flustered. Everything had happened too suddenly.
No one expected that a second ago they had been thrilled over successfully preventing the Bright Moon’s ascent and completing the rule challenge. The next instant Guan Tong’s locator lost signal, and at the same moment the real-time monitor for his life signs went silent.
When life signs vanish, the best outcome is that the person dies in an instant, but how could that be possible?
Li Meng understood what could have happened in those one or two seconds. Could the Bright Moon’s core have exploded at the moment of disruption and unleashed a super shockwave that affected Guan Tong? But at that distance, with my capability, how could I not even have reaction time?
“Doctor, the Research Office’s contact is coming through.” The liaison stepped forward.
Zhang Minglu snapped back to his senses and answered.
The screen showed Head Gao Liangwei’s face. Usually stern, a faint smile now played across his features.
“Dr. Zhang, we’ve all received hints from the Fire Thief. Congratulations on your success.”
“Head Gao, I—”
Seeing Zhang Minglu’s pale face, Gao realized something was wrong. “What happened?”
“It’s Guan Tong. After he completed the mission, his signal vanished. Both the locator and the life-sign monitor disappeared together. He might—”
Gao Liangwei’s smile disappeared and was replaced by grave seriousness.
“Do you mean to tell me Guan Tong might have sacrificed himself?”
“No! We can’t be certain, and I refuse to believe he’d die so inexplicably. I’m requesting search reinforcements!”
Without hesitation Gao Liangwei said, “I’ll dispatch a search team immediately. Dr. Zhang, you return to base at once.”
“All right…”
After the call ended, Zhang Minglu still felt dazed.
He looked to Adam, hesitating. “What do you think…”
“You want to ask whether Shadow could be dead?” Adam’s gaze was complex, but his tone stayed calm. “He won’t die. From the first day I met him I knew, if only a few can make it to the end, he would definitely be one of them.”
…
Whoosh… whoosh…
Waves pounded against the shore in a relentless rhythm.
After the Bright Moon stopped ascending, it quietly disintegrated.
Once its core shattered, the gravitational field vanished. Captured seawater and debris rained back down like meteor showers, trying to return to their former state.
But some damage, once done, does not fade simply because the surface wounds close.
People are like that, and so is the ocean.
The abyssal trenches beneath Lanyang had been utterly disrupted by the Bright Moon’s gravity, and marine ecosystems had been devastated.
Chaotic currents and hidden trenches made the area extremely dangerous for a long time, rendering normal navigation nearly impossible.
After some time, Ascendants from Beixing appeared in the area.
They used various items to conduct search operations from noon until night, but found nothing.
Even in peacetime, if someone fell overboard it’s very difficult for a ship’s crew to rescue them; most times they presume the person dead.
Now, with Lanyang’s currents thrown into chaos by the Bright Moon, with trenches and undercurrents everywhere, the already hellish difficulty of finding someone became impossible.
As night fell the search teams had to withdraw. The sea at night was pitch black. If the Bright Moon remained it might have provided light, but it had broken into countless fragments and lost all luminescence after plunging into the sea.
That evening the Countermeasures Research Office convened an emergency meeting with all top officials present.
Once the meeting began, the search-and-rescue team leader reported the mission’s failure.
“We deployed several thousand Ascendants for the search, nearly a hundred with reconnaissance abilities, and used over a thousand items. Still, we could not find the target… we did everything we could.”
When the words fell, the attendees’ expressions varied.
Zhang Minglu and Li Meng looked particularly grim, speechless for a long moment.
“So… Shadow really—”
“He was such a powerful Ascendant, could he really die to this rule?”
“No matter how powerful, an Ascendant can die within a rule. Even Shadow wouldn’t be an exception, I suppose…”
At that point the head of administration said, “Isn’t this ironic? So many dangerous rules passed him by before, yet this rule that rarely kills people is the one that takes down our strongest Ascendant.”
“There’s nothing ironic about it!” Zhang Minglu snapped angrily. “Putting aside that we don’t even know if he’s alive, the odds he’s alive are still high. Even if he did die, he’s a hero who made a huge contribution—remember that!”
“Dr. Zhang, I know you and Shadow are close and in frequent contact, which makes this hard for you,” the other replied, “but don’t take it out on me. I wasn’t disparaging Shadow, only lamenting life’s unpredictability. The stronger someone is, the more easily they can fall in a gutter.”
The tension between them grew thick. Li Meng pushed up his glasses and said, “I met him over two years ago. I remember he was only eighteen or nineteen then, and he dared to go into a gang’s den to save a friend.”
He paused, implying something: “Now, more than two years later, he has power unimaginable to ordinary people, yet he still retains his former kindness and willingness to sacrifice for others. That’s rare and not something anyone can match.”
“What are you saying, Li Meng? You think I don’t want to sacrifice for others? I’ll tell you, if the Research Office ever has a mission that needs someone to die, I’ll be the first to volunteer, you believe that?!”
“Enough shouting.”
When Gao Liangwei spoke, the room fell silent.
“Look at this. This was fifteen minutes ago, Suroma’s official statement.”
Gao pressed the remote and the conference room’s large screen played a video.
The footage showed King Bruce of Suroma speaking.
This was rare; Bruce seldom appeared in public.
Since the Doomsday Rules era, he’d been a behind-the-scenes decision-maker. Public addresses were usually delivered by spokespeople or the Senate.
In the video Bruce’s face was solemn as he read a prepared statement.
“…The sacrifice and dedication of those three thousand selfless people allowed us to complete the challenge presented by this rule. We will record these heroes’ names and deeds in history, remembering them forever, and let their bravery guide the rest of us forward. Salute.”
When he finished the applause thundered. Senators and their deputies rose and applauded for a long time.
Bang!
Zhang Minglu slammed his fist on the table, anger barely concealed. “The Bright Moon was stopped because Adam and several other Beixing Ascendants assisted, and Guan Tong destroyed the core to prevent its ascent! What does this have to do with them?!”
“Is Suroma trying to take credit? Or did they make a mistake?” Li Meng frowned.
Another person speculated, “Could it be that while we carried out our plan, they were carrying out theirs as well? That’s why…”
“It was Guan Tong who destroyed the Bright Moon’s core.” Gao Liangwei cut in and delivered the conclusion.
But his next sentence stunned everyone.
“However, intelligence reports indicate that the three thousand Ascendants who participated in the ‘array action’—excluding the item holders—are all dead.”
At those words Gao’s eyes turned ice-cold. “In other words, after the Bright Moon stopped rising, they still activated the array items and fired that high-energy laser.”
Crack, crack….
In the silent conference room everyone seemed to hear their own heartbeat.
Gao’s implication sent a chill through the room.
Zhang Minglu’s voice trembled. “Head Gao… do you mean that the high-energy laser was aimed not at the Bright Moon… but at…”
Li Meng stood up. “This is war, even crimes against humanity, especially since Guan Tong once led a team to help Suroma and saved a city from being overrun by the Fire Thief Cult. Head Gao, Beixing must take action.”
Although Gao seemed calm outwardly, everyone could sense his anger was no less intense than anyone else’s.
“For now we only have suspicions and lack key evidence,” Gao said. “The highest decision-making level has authorized actions against several key targets.”
He pressed the remote again and the screen displayed multiple photos.
“Primary target: Andrew. He held the array item. The laser firing had to be led by him and the coordinates determined by him.”
“Joiessen. Dean of Suroma’s First Research Institute. He planned and led the ‘array action.’ If coordinates changed, he would certainly know.”
“Several Senators and King Bruce himself. Without orders from that highest level, Joiessen and the others would not have dared to act on their own.”
“And several on-site Suroma observers. The Bright Moon’s core coordinates were obtained by these observers using reconnaissance. If coordinates were changed, they must have been the ones to observe. Some among them must know.”
The photos switched to a final image: a fair-faced Beixing man.
“Han Qiu. You all know him. Former young academician from Beixing Academy, later joined the Countermeasures Research Office, and secretly linked with the former Qingmei Society leader. Before his identity was exposed he used some unknown means to escape the base. That means likely relates to his hidden exclusive ability or an item.”
“He’s on this list because intelligence suggests he joined Suroma’s official ranks. He knows a great deal about our Research Office. If the Suroma high command harbors ill intent toward us, he could be involved in this incident.”
Everyone felt heavy at Gao’s words and fell silent.
Someone tentatively asked, “Head Gao, Suroma has already made their public statement. Should we make a rebuttal and state the truth?”
“That’s inevitable,” Gao replied. “But we needn’t worry about the messaging. The highest decision-makers will let the foreign affairs department speak. They’ll tell the world that Shadow stopped the Bright Moon.”
“But how can we produce evidence? Earlier, when we didn’t send Ascendants to participate in the array action, we were criticized in the international media. Now Suroma has released a statement first. If we rebut, and others see Suroma really lost so many high-end Ascendant combatants, who will believe us?”
“Even if we aren’t believed for now, it’s temporary,” Gao said. “Time and evidence uncovered later will provide the best proof.”
“What you must do next is coordinate across departments to investigate everyone on that list thoroughly and obtain key evidence as quickly as possible.”
After the meeting ended, Gao Liangwei stayed behind with Zhang Minglu and Li Meng.
“Tell me, if Guan Tong is still alive, can we contact him through the Terminal Panel’s friend function?”
Zhang Minglu and Li Meng exchanged a look and both shook their heads.
“Head Gao, frankly, do you have my terminal’s friend?”
“…Then who outside the base does?”
“Maybe Zhang Ming does. You and Guan Tong have known each other a long time and have always had a bad relationship,” Li Meng guessed.
“Go ask Zhang Ming, then.”
“All right…” Li Meng’s face showed resolve. “Guan Tong’s situation hasn’t been made public. Whoever goes to find him should be told first, you worry—”
“Chen Na— I recall that girl isn’t very young anymore,” Gao Liangwei said. “If she’s still in school, she’s probably a middle schooler. Her psychological resilience won’t be too poor.”
…All right, I understand. Zhang Minglu nodded. “I’ll go over there now.”