Beixing, Pinglu City.
At Shi Jingyi's home, the two sat in the living room. Beneath the orange glow of the night lamp, she silently listened to Guan Tong's action plan, offering neither support nor objection.
"This is a perfect opportunity to eliminate Bruce," Guan Tong said. "The whole world's attention is fixed on Han Qiu, so Suroma's guard against me is bound to slacken."
Shi Jingyi looked at him for a moment, her expression beneath the lamplight utterly serious, then she spoke: "I'm going with you this time."
Guan Tong's face showed surprise upon hearing this: "You're coming with me?"
"Do you think I can't see the danger in it?" Shi Jingyi furrowed her brow. "Even if your strength is top-tier, you're facing an enemy who commands the absolute power of an entire nation."
"I should be fine if I'm careful," Guan Tong said. "Besides, if you come with me and someone recognizes you, what then? After all, you're..."
"After all, I'm what? The academy dean?" Shi Jingyi gently shook her head. "Compared to your safety, Little Tong, what is this identity worth?"
"....."
Guan Tong's heart warmed, deeply moved.
He naturally knew that with Shi Jingyi's strength, having her accompany him would greatly increase the mission's success rate.
It was just that her life was stable right now, perfectly suited for her to continue advancing her cultivation.
What he worried about was that this operation would prevent her from maintaining that life any longer.
Guan Tong wanted to say more, but seeing the stern look in Shi Jingyi's eyes, he knew that further persuasion would only anger her, so he swallowed his words.
"Alright," he said. "Then we'll go together this time. I'll get you an item that can conceal your figure—better not to expose yourself if we can avoid it."
His plan remained unchanged; he would still rely on his special abilities to infiltrate and detonate, and Uenoshi, who was originally responsible for backup, would now have Shi Jingyi added to the roster.
Honestly speaking, Guan Tong could have gone alone and still completed the entire process from infiltration to detonation, and then extraction via Body Swap.
The reason for arranging backup was essentially an extra layer of insurance.
Because he didn't know the internal layout of the Hall of Halls, but he knew that a place like that would definitely have nuclear-blast-proof facilities and tunnels.
Even in peacetime, intelligence operatives had exposed that the venues where national decision-makers gathered were all equipped with the highest-spec wartime command centers.
These command centers were all designed with nuclear-proof, gas-proof, and blast-proof measures, specifically to prevent enemy nations from launching assassination missions.
After entering the Doomsday Rules era, the decision-makers of every nation would certainly have reinforced the defenses of these wartime command centers even further.
This meant Guan Tong had to ensure that when he detonated that tactical nuclear bomb, Bruce would be positioned outside the wartime command center.
If the latter happened to be inside the command center at that moment, a second assassination attempt would be required. That was when Uenoshi and Shi Jingyi, the two backup personnel, would need to hold off reinforcements and buy him time to find his target.
If all went smoothly, the operation could be completed in a single day, without delaying Shi Jingyi's work at the academy. For the sake of secrecy, she didn't request leave either, so as not to invite any speculation.
This was one of the perks of being a dean who didn't have to teach—even if she skipped a day at the academy, no one would question where she'd gone.
The two agreed to head to Bandzhen together the next morning, meet up with Uenoshi, and then the three of them would travel to Suroma together. After that, they turned in early.
Whether it was from excitement or nervousness, Guan Tong couldn't fall asleep after lying down.
In contrast, Pan Xingchan fell asleep very quickly, just like how she could slip into a meditative state within a few breaths of sitting down—she was the most mentally steady person Guan Tong had ever met.
Probably influenced by her, Guan Tong gradually felt drowsiness creep in.
After who knows how long, in the haze between waking and dreaming, he seemed to hear someone calling him.
"Teacher, Teacher Guan Tong!"
Shi Jingyi... no, it was Yelanka's voice?
Guan Tong snapped awake in an instant, sitting up, thinking he must have misheard.
He turned his head—Shi Jingyi was still sleeping peacefully. That voice was...
The Mind Network?
"Teacher, can you hear me!"
Yelanka's voice rang out in his mind again, her tone extremely urgent.
Guan Tong confirmed it now and quickly replied through the Mind Network: "I'm here, Yelanka, what's wrong?"
As he replied, he looked out the window—the sky was a hazy gray, dawn not yet breaking. For Yelanka to contact him at this hour, something urgent must have happened.
His heart began racing involuntarily, a bad premonition flooding his chest.
Yelanka: "Xisiya's nuclear energy department detected a nuclear explosion in Bandzhen eleven minutes ago! Teacher, you didn't know? So you're not in Bandzhen, thank goodness..."
Yelanka's tone was one of relief upon hearing Guan Tong's response, but Guan Tong's heart seemed to skip several beats at her words, his entire body going rigid.
Guan Tong: "Yelanka, y-you, what did you say? A nuclear explosion happened in Bandzhen?!"
Yelanka: "Yes, and it was multiple large-yield nuclear explosions. The seismic network detected it very clearly, and Beixing, being closer, must have detected it too. Right now..."
Whatever she said after that, Guan Tong no longer registered. His mind only cycled through those four words: "Bandzhen nuclear explosion."
"Little Tong, what's wrong? What happened?"
Guan Tong only snapped back to reality upon hearing Shi Jingyi's voice. She had woken up as well and was looking at him with a worried expression.
Uenoshi, Moon Key, and the others were all still in Bandzhen!
The moment he realized this, Guan Tong felt cold sweat soaking through his entire body.
In his haste, he couldn't spare time for explanations. He only said to Shi Jingyi: "Something's happened in Bandzhen, I have to go right now!" Then he immediately used Body Swap.
Shi Jingyi froze for a moment, then picked up her phone from the nightstand. Because of sleep mode, she hadn't received any calls.
But there were already multiple messages on it, all from Silver Fox, all sent within the last two or three minutes.
Silver Fox: "Dean Shi, emergency! Official detection has confirmed a large-scale nuclear explosion in Bandzhen! Can you contact Guan Tong?"
Silver Fox: "If you can reach him, please notify us—we need to know if he's safe!"
Silver Fox: "The Countermeasures Research Office base has urgently dispatched a mobile team to Bandzhen."
Shi Jingyi set down her phone, her face turning pale.
"Little Tong..."
No wonder he had panicked like that just now. She knew Guan Tong had comrades from the Troupe in Bandzhen—if a nuclear explosion had occurred there in the middle of the night...
......
The instant the Body Swap completed, Guan Tong, fully clad in his Shadow Armor, could still feel the residual heat waves in the air.
The place he had swapped to was originally the Serpent Hair Society's headquarters, but now it was nothing but ruins, radioactive silver ash continuously falling from the sky.
"Uenoshi, can you hear me?"
"Uenoshi!"
Guan Tong reached out to Uenoshi through the Mind Network, but received no response at all.
He gritted his teeth and tried to sense the Mental Stability Anchor totem left on Uenoshi—still nothing.
Whoosh!
Three pairs of black shadow wings spread from his back as Guan Tong shot into the sky in an instant. What he saw from above struck his vision like a scene straight out of hell.
The entire city of Bandzhen as far as the eye could see had been leveled by the explosions. Charred corpses of Sakura Prayer citizens lay everywhere, covered in a layer of radioactive dust.
His pupils darted wildly as he released countless shadow lines to search for survivors. Finally, behind a crumbling steel-and-concrete building, he found a few living people.
He flew down immediately and landed. Those people were all Ascendants of the Serpent Hair Society, and they were in terrible condition—skin red and swollen, clothing and flesh stuck together, screaming in agony without pause.
"Where is your chairman?!" Guan Tong asked as he landed and pulled out emergency medical supplies. "Do you know anything about Uenoshi's situation?!"
Several of the survivors were in such pain that they scrambled to snatch the medicine Guan Tong produced the moment they saw him.
Only one man, who was less severely injured, managed to answer: "The chairman, she—she seems to still be alive. We saw her heading toward the southeast!"
"Southeast? Why would she go southeast?"
"The enemies came from that direction!" The man trembled all over, tears streaming down his face, in both pain and terror. "Those mechs as tall as buildings, and countless machine soldiers—it's Suroma's military!"
"That's impossible!"
Guan Tong couldn't believe it. Suroma was so far from Bandzhen—how could they have secretly transported war mechs all the way here?
A teleportation gate? Could they have built a teleportation gate using coordinate-stabilizing anchors?
But to accommodate war mechs passing through, the gate would have to be enormous. When did Suroma manage to construct something like that in Sakura Prayer...!
"Wait, you're saying those mechs appeared from the southeast?"
"Yes, the southeast, that's right..."
Guan Tong's heart jolted.
Southeast—Antu City, no, the rainforest adjacent to Antu!
That rainforest itself was massive, densely packed with vegetation. During the period when the Green Hell rule was active, many of the plants in the rainforest had grown into towering trees taller than buildings under the rule's influence.
If Bruce had secretly sent people to construct a giant teleportation gate capable of accommodating war mechs within that rainforest, using those towering trees as cover, it would indeed be possible to do it completely unnoticed—even spy satellites wouldn't be able to capture it...
The content of Moon Key's prophecy painting flashed through Guan Tong's mind once more.
That image of war mechs lining up to enter the teleportation gate... Guan Tong had always assumed Bruce would build the other gate in Beixing, planning to launch a surprise assault on Beixing with his war mechs. He never imagined the other gate would be in Antu.
The target of this surprise attack was never Beixing—it was Sakura Prayer. Or more precisely, it was Guan Tong.
Bruce had spared no expense in using multiple large-yield nuclear weapons to completely annihilate Bandzhen, killing hundreds of thousands of people—and his target had always been Guan Tong alone.
"Hmph... hmph hmph..."
The Serpent Hair Society man heard Guan Tong making laughing sounds and froze for a moment, baffled as to why he could possibly be laughing at a time like this. Had he gone mad?
But he never got the chance to ask. The next moment, Guan Tong's shadow wings swept, his figure rose, and he transformed into a black meteor streaking at extreme speed toward the southeast!