Coming to His Door

Xu Chen sat in a conference room, rubbing his hands as he looked at the assembled big shots. The man at their head was in uniform, and the two bars and two stars on his shoulders marked him as an officer of considerable rank.

That morning, he had been called out of class and brought here. As soon as he entered, the two soldiers standing ramrod straight at the door had given him a fright.

Then he looked inside and saw five officers in noticeably different uniforms sitting around the conference table, all watching him with interest. More soldiers stood around them.

Xu Chen was then invited to sit among the big shots.

"Don't be nervous. You're Xu Chen, right? We're only here to ask you a few questions," the big shot at the head of the table said kindly.

"!"

Xu Chen grew even more nervous. Almost everyone in the conference room was looking at him.

Damn it, even with the internship group, where there were soldiers carrying guns, I wasn't this nervous.

He looked around. The only difference was these five big shots. None of them showed any hostility, but for some reason, he found their presence oppressive.

"All right, look how you've scared him," said a bespectacled big shot seated beside Xu Chen, sounding displeased. "Don't mind him, young man. I'm Staff Officer Xu of the 122nd Regiment, and this is Deputy Regiment Commander Feng of the 122nd Regiment."

The man who had spoken first nodded.

Xu Chen relaxed a little. Someone introducing himself was a gesture of goodwill, much more useful than simply saying so.

"That's Team Leader Zhu, head of the Special Operations Group."

Xu Chen looked over. Team Leader Zhu was the youngest of the big shots, and he nodded in greeting. His uniform was military in style, but entirely black; he didn't seem to belong to the military.

"That's... just call him Captain Chu. His exact position is classified, but it also has something to do with you."

Captain Chu sized Xu Chen up, then smiled and nodded. "You probably don't even know how much attention we've been paying you... please cooperate with us."

"That's Mr. Ge. His exact position is classified too. He's here to observe."

Xu Chen looked at Mr. Ge. He too was gentle and refined. Though he didn't look old, his hair was white. He smiled at Xu Chen without saying anything more. Xu Chen noticed that although he wore an officer's uniform, its details differed from Deputy Regiment Commander Feng's and the others', and it had no rank shoulder boards or collar insignia.

"Now you know all of us, and needless to say, we all know you. Do you have any idea what we've come to see you about?"

The question left Xu Chen bewildered. He thought carefully about whether he had done anything criminal lately. Finding nothing, he kept trying to remember if he had ever made some grave mistake that would attract the attention of powerful officials.

Naturally, he hadn't.

Since transmigrating and living a second life, he had been his parents' treasured child, and they had granted his every request. With an adult's soul, he had never cried or made a fuss. His family was harmonious, and he had never done anything out of line.

Recently, the only things he had done were join the internship group and excavate the Taihao Mausoleum. The internship group affair had long since been settled, and the people involved were as dead as could be. That was also the only time he had ever had contact with the military.

Could it be the excavation of the Taihao Mausoleum?

No matter how hard Xu Chen thought, he couldn't see how archaeology could have anything to do with the military. Besides, he had already covered up the implausible parts of that affair; no one would be able to find anything wrong.

"I can't think of anything. The only major thing I've done recently was excavate the Taihao Mausoleum. You can't possibly be here to give me an award, can you?"

Staff Officer Xu was taken aback, then smiled. "That's not impossible. Just to be safe, let me ask: you'll cooperate with us, won't you?"

Xu Chen didn't court death by saying "next time for sure." He nodded instead.

"All right, Captain Chu, Team Leader Zhu, it's your turn. Explain it to the young man."

Captain Chu nodded, took a case from the soldier behind him, and put it on the conference table, where he opened it.

To Xu Chen's surprise, it was a military-grade rugged computer, with the whole case forming its main body. Its interface used a graphical system he had never seen before: crisp and simple, without a single unnecessary embellishment.

Supposedly, this kind of military-grade portable computer was fireproof, waterproof, and shockproof. It could even withstand rocket artillery and resist EMPs, and it cost a fortune.

Its performance, however, was atrocious. It could meet all the military's wartime needs, yet it couldn't even run a normal piece of software.

"About a month ago, an atypical infectious disease broke out at the meteorological station in the coastal city of Fangjiang. Cases were subsequently found at three other coastal meteorological stations. These meteorological stations were very strange; it couldn't be explained by conventional medicine and seemed to be merely a phenomenon resembling the spread of a disease."

Xu Chen listened, still somewhat at a loss.

"That might not mean much to you, but I remember you joined the internship group. Can you guess why we were able to detect this fungal infection in time and stop it from spreading at an early stage?"

Xu Chen's eyes shifted as realization dawned. "You warned officials or hospitals in coastal areas?"

"That's right. I can even tell you it was a last resort. Our warnings to the coastal areas didn't specify the disease, solely to avoid causing panic, because... even now, those patients haven't shown the slightest sign of recovery. If it were underestimated and allowed to spread, the consequences would be unimaginable."

Now Xu Chen was interested again.

"You mean that disease is like the fungal infection? There's no cure?"

"That's right, but the condition isn't very aggressive. At least for now, it's under control."

"You've said all that, but aren't you going to tell me exactly what the condition is?"

"You can see for yourself. All the records are on this terminal."

With that, Captain Chu turned the rugged laptop around and pushed it toward Xu Chen. Xu Chen was fascinated by the case-shaped military laptop and immediately started operating it.

At first, he enthusiastically used the sturdy trackball and ultra-quiet engineering-plastic keyboard to read the text. After only a couple of glances, however, he forgot about playing with it and stared at the records in astonishment.

Xu Chen learned that there had previously been an outbreak of a condition called Taihao, and he had clearly taken an interest in Taihao himself. No wonder they had come looking for him.

Then there were its extremely strange symptoms. It wasn't a biological infection, and there were bizarre mental symptoms, as well as the strange locations of the outbreaks and the sources of transmission. A medical student reading about it would think it was pure fantasy.

But Xu Chen looked at the big shots drinking tea around him and thought they certainly hadn't come to toy with him just because they had nothing better to do. The records were probably real.

The records didn't even make a point of concealing Dean Yang's involvement. Quite a few documents were signed by Yang Tianyou himself, which helped Xu Chen understand a few things, such as where he had gone and what he was doing.

The documents answered some questions, but also raised even more mysteries.

For now, though, his priority was dealing with these big shots from the military district. Although the highest disclosed position was deputy regiment commander, Xu Chen didn't believe the deputy regiment commander had come simply because he had nothing else to do.

Besides, they could easily have assigned people of lesser standing to question him.

There was only one reason they hadn't: they considered it necessary.

Someone higher up must have considered it important enough to use these people as frontline personnel.

But let alone a captain and company commander—even if those above could afford not to take a second lieutenant and platoon leader seriously, Xu Chen couldn't.

Still, their high rank and authority served a purpose. They could obtain firsthand information and make decisions immediately, which showed how seriously they took this.