No Referent (Part 1)

After bidding farewell to Bai Xinyan and the others, Yuchuan Yingjie did not join the massive inspection team. Instead, he went straight to a temporarily designated private room on the upper floor of the Cultural Center.

There, he activated the projection system and silently reviewed footage gathered from various channels. The recording angles, clarity, and durations varied, but without exception, they all focused on the same thing: the dazzling flight trail across Xia City's sky.

The benefit of compiling information was that it revealed far more than any single source. This collection of footage documented the entire journey, from Ronan leaving North Shore Gear, shaking off Zong Qiu, and mounting the Flying Devil Fish, to entering the waters off Xia City. The group's intelligence analysts had also listed, one by one, the details revealed by the footage:

"Target flight distance: 134 kilometers.

"Target flight speed: average 2.5 Mach, maximum 4 Mach.

"The Devil Fish's body displayed an unnatural state. It is highly likely that it merely served as a vessel for energy circulation.

"Flight altitude, temperature, and surrounding atmospheric conditions did not meet the requirements for the appearance of a flight trail. There were likely preexisting factors involving a large accumulation of water vapor..."

The parsed data was as detailed as possible. It looked as though Ronan had been thoroughly dissected inside and out, and countermeasures could be devised at any moment.

Yet reality was far from that simple.

Yuchuan Yingjie merely skimmed through the video analysis. His mind was not on any of it, but on what came after the footage...

"After leaving Xia City, he plunged straight into the seabed and vanished without a trace."

That was the conclusion reached after integrating the massive volume of intelligence.

Yuchuan Yingjie pinched his brow, his expression dark as still water.