Self-Portrait (Part 2)

Assistant Yan did not immediately respond to Lieutenant Colonel Lu's greeting. His gaze first swept over Zhang Yingying beside him and lingered for a moment, meeting her eyes.

Assistant Yan looked to be a little over thirty, of medium height—perhaps not even as tall as Zhang Yingying in heels—but his build was vigorous and powerful, and his features quite handsome. Yet the habitual downward set of his lips gave him a stern, cold expression that made him seem difficult to approach.

What left the deepest impression, however, was his eyes. His pupils carried a faint dark-red tint, and a similar color seemed to seep from around his eye sockets, especially at the corners of his eyes, where it intertwined with the prominent blood vessels near his temples. It was distinctly unpleasant to look at.

Lieutenant Colonel Lu saw that the two were sizing each other up, but pretended not to notice and made no move to introduce them. Instead, he spoke again, drawing the focus back to himself:

"Assistant Yan, is there anything you need my help with?"

"Following the Command Department's instructions, a batch of testing equipment has been transferred from my company to identify the suspects being temporarily detained aboard the ship."

Expressionless, Assistant Yan operated his wristband directly, gestured to Lieutenant Colonel Lu, and quickly passed authorization verification.

"Testing equipment?" Lieutenant Colonel Lu asked in surprise. "Has the search below ended?"

"Not yet. But the equipment requires a high degree of precision, and installation and calibration will take some time."

"Understood, understood."

Lieutenant Colonel Lu felt somewhat regretful. Since it was an equipment handover, he had to be present as the person in charge. His pleasant conversation with the young lawyer could only end here.

He motioned for Assistant Yan to wait, then turned to Zhang Yingying with a smile. "Miss Zhang, shall we leave it here for now? It's still early. I'll arrange a cabin for you to rest in first. As for the materials you requested to retain, I'll have someone send them over shortly."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel."

Zhang Yingying knew it was no longer suitable for her to remain alone in the monitoring center, so she took the initiative to extend her hand, shook Lieutenant Colonel Lu's, and excused herself first.

As she passed Assistant Yan, Zhang Yingying gave him a friendly smile. Behind her slightly narrowed eyelids, however, she activated her contact lenses' automatic recording function, capturing and archiving his face.

Assistant Yan's lips twitched, though it was hard to say whether that counted as a response. His gaze never fell on Zhang Yingying. Judging by its angle, he was looking at the surveillance feeds in the room.

At the instant she left, Zhang Yingying glanced back. Lieutenant Colonel Lu was fairly cautious and did not wish to give anyone leverage against him. He had already instructed his subordinates to switch away from Ronan's close-up. At that moment, Ronan's figure was buried among more than a dozen similar feeds, no longer particularly conspicuous.

Yet Zhang Yingying had a powerful feeling:

Assistant Yan's gaze was focused on Ronan, and it had remained there for quite some time without moving.

Walking through the corridors inside the warship, Zhang Yingying uploaded the image she had just taken into the Database and set the search criteria:

"Judging by the uniform, he's from Tianqing Security, a professional security company under Quantum Corporation. Since he can communicate directly with the military, his position should count as senior management. And those eyes..."

A few seconds later, a warning tone sounded. "Information classified as secret. Your clearance is insufficient."

Zhang Yingying was not especially surprised. She merely curled her lips and switched to another information channel. Before long, she dug up a simple personal file.

It was called "simple" because a considerable portion of it was still blocked. Even so, the available information was enough to confirm some of her guesses.

The electronic photograph in the file showed Assistant Yan, though he looked seven or eight years younger and wore a spirited, confident smile.

Yan Yongbo, former lecturer at Zhi Xing Institute. Voluntarily resigned in 2090.

Father: Yan Hong, former professor at Zhi Xing Institute.

"Fine, what a small world... But did he recognize me or not?"

Zhang Yingying also recalled the conversation she had had with Xie Junping before boarding the ship. Here, she had to revise her assessment. "Quantum Corporation's giant ship may not care about little ants, but the spiders on it might not feel the same way."

It seemed like a very troublesome choice... Should she give up?

The thought had only just arisen when the wondrous scene taking shape beneath Ronan's pen began to flow through her mind again.

"It really is cool..."

The "cool" Ronan was still drawing, brush in hand. Even though he had entered the Meditative State, locked onto the source of interference, and confirmed the ghost's true nature, he had no intention of stopping.

The feeling of his pen tip and his mind becoming one was truly marvelous.

The Burning Demon Shadow was an inconceivable existence. Ronan did not know how to classify or define it. Even after entering the Meditative State, he had little idea how to deal with it.

Yet when he held the fluorescent pen and let lines flow from its tip, none of those questions remained questions.

Matter and spirit, reality and illusion, the present and the future—multiple dimensions intertwined, depicting the same target from multiple angles at once. No matter what, inspiration never ran dry.

The sketch of that twisted Prison Building, brimming with symbolic meaning, was revealing ever clearer threads of concept.

Ronan's lips moved faintly without his noticing, silently reciting a mantra he knew by heart, choosing only its first four words:

My Heart is a Prison!

The recitation was soundless, but the intent running through it had never been so solid. It broke through the boundary between reality and illusion, striking into the level of contemplation as though it had become an iron hammer, smashing heavily against the Contemplation Graphic.

Like the ringing of a bell, like the strike of a chime, amid fine, dense vibrations, countless silver threads peeled away from the graphic and split apart, randomly assembling countless flickering structures. They clearly corresponded closely to the "Prison Building" in his notebook.

Some were clear and orderly, while others were twisted and blurry, their forms vastly different.

There were densely woven bars, sealed Iron Cages, leaping arcs of electricity, savage light guns... In short, each and every one symbolized violence and coercive force, details incorporated into the prison sketch.

Because his thoughts leaped and his strokes were casual, most of those structures were merely superficial, utterly failing to conform to structural principles, and existed only briefly.

But whenever the tangled, collapsing silver-thread structures swept past, the Burning Demon Shadow that had already seeped into the inner layer of the Contemplation Graphic reacted as though Facing a Formidable Enemy, constantly swimming about in resistance and cutting a rather sorry figure.

The Burning Demon Shadow also tried to interfere and wreak havoc. The problem was that the process unfolding simultaneously across multiple dimensions had already completely exceeded its control.

Ronan did not know what had gone wrong with the Burning Demon Shadow that had once howled at the sky, towered over a hundred zhang high, and seemed utterly invincible, reducing it to such a state. But he had no intention of stopping.

The recitation continued, the contemplation continued, the pen continued!

Gradually, Ronan stopped pouring detailed inspiration into the sketch. Instead, he began subtracting, strengthening the increasingly clear conceptual thread at its core.

Within the Contemplation Graphic, the silver threads that leaped and combined seemed to sense the intense, pure intent in his heart. Hundreds upon thousands of flashy but impractical constructions came crashing down, revealing once more the simple, pure structure of a Regular Tetrahedron.

At the center of the graphic, where the center of the Inscribed Sphere lay, came a rustling sound, as though someone were gripping a heart and shaking it.

Faced with this change, the Burning Demon Shadow actually lost the courage to linger any longer. In the darkness, the flames curled inward, broke away from the Contemplation Graphic, and transformed into a streak of red light that shot through the void.

This was the level of contemplation. Where could it possibly go?

Before the thought had fully formed, this void world shook once more. The red light seemed to pierce through an invisible membrane. After a slight pause, it accelerated again and tore through the air.

At the instant the "membrane" was pierced, Ronan's consciousness suddenly reeled. In his field of vision appeared a cold metal wall, the knee supporting his notebook, and... himself, drawing with his pen.