Tang Li sat quietly in his office, leaning back in his executive chair, his eyes half-closed as his thoughts drifted.
The office layout was vastly different from a few days ago, with several newly delivered feng shui ornaments placed around it. He was no longer the director of the Internal Affairs Bureau. He had just taken up his new post as the acting director of the East 725 District High-Energy Affairs Management Center, presiding over its work.
Under the current system, the High-Energy Center ranked half a level or a full level above the Internal Affairs Bureau. This barely counted as a promotion for him, but compared with the "director" position he had previously arranged with Councilor Guo, the extra word "acting" was undoubtedly a punishment.
The High-Energy Affairs Management Center and the Intelligent Machine Service and Supervision Center were Outer Earth's two major vertically managed systems. Nominally, neither ranked above the other. But just as Tang Li had originally sought, before a High-Energy Tide arrived, the Intelligence Management Center, as a regular administrative body, was always more desirable than the High-Energy Center.
Moreover, the High-Energy Center handled trouble, while the Intelligence Management Center, in a sense, created trouble for people. That was another crucial difference.
But none of that mattered now.
The one thinking inside Tang Li's shell was Ronan. After all his maneuvering over the past few days, he had first achieved his initial goal:
He had moved closer to this world's core secrets.
Whether it was the in-depth research into the High-Energy Tide or the Reclamation Corps' tendrils probing into the world, several layers stood between them and the Internal Affairs Bureau, making them difficult to touch. At the High-Energy Center, however, they dealt with such matters practically every day.
Of course, under normal circumstances, an acting