"...Get lost."
Ling Ye's cold, impatient final word was like an invisible sledgehammer. It not only hammered into the hearts of the guards outside the door, but also slammed hard into Su Wanqing's nerves.
The wooden ice cream spoon, deeply embedded in the door, was still trembling ever so slightly at the handle, like a cold, unquestionable warning signal. The traces of vanilla ice cream left on the spoon looked especially absurd and glaring in the grim atmosphere.
Outside the door, there was deathly silence.
Through the peephole, Su Wanqing could see the expressions on the guards' faces change from uncertainty and suspicion to utter horror and bewilderment. They stared fixedly at the spoon buried in the door, then looked at one another, as if confirming whether they were suffering from a collective hallucination. A spoon used as a weapon? And it had shot through such a thick solid-wood door?! This was beyond their understanding!
The captain stood there with his mouth agape, making "huh-huh" sounds in his throat without being able to utter a word. In the end, he struggled to swallow, then faced the door—or rather, the spoon—with a terrified smile uglier than crying. He nodded repeatedly before frantically gesturing to his men as if he had seen a ghost.
Retreat!
Retreat immediately!
The men scrambled away, practically fleeing on all fours. They did not even bother picking up the tools they had dropped, disappearing from Su Wanqing's sight in an instant.
Su Wanqing leaned against the icy door, her legs going weak as she slowly slid down onto the carpet. She panted heavily, cold sweat already soaking through her back. Just now, she had genuinely thought the entire door would explode the next second, turning everyone outside into scattered ashes.
Thank goodness... It had only been a spoon's warning.
Still shaken, she turned her head toward the spoon nailed into the door. Almost the entire wooden spoon had sunk into the hard oak, leaving behind only a shallow depression and the handle. How terrifyingly much strength and control had that required?! She could not imagine it.
In the living room, Ling Ye seemed completely unconcerned with the result outside. Having dealt with the source of the noise, his attention returned to the box of "special-supply" ice cream. He continued scooping it up and eating at an unhurried pace, as if the spoon capable of frightening an ordinary person half to death had not been thrown by him.
However, before Su Wanqing had fully relaxed—
Her ears twitched ever so slightly.
Those ears, strengthened by Chaos Origin Qi, caught an extremely faint sound—not from outside the door, but from somewhere along a corner of the villa's outer wall... an almost imperceptible mechanical rotation?!
And... a feeling of being watched?!
Although it was incredibly faint, nearly blending into the wind and ambient noise, she was still able to detect it keenly with her nerves stretched taut.
Someone else was watching them?! Not the guards in the open, but someone more concealed!
Her heart instantly rose into her throat. She subconsciously looked toward Ling Ye.
Ling Ye's movements as he ate the ice cream did not pause in the slightest. He did not even raise his eyelids.
But his empty left hand, resting on the armrest, casually... flicked a finger.
There was no light, no sound, not even the slightest energy fluctuation.
It was as if he had flicked away an invisible speck of dust.
Yet, in an extremely concealed gap in a drainage pipe somewhere along the villa's outer wall, a high-precision miniature camera no larger than a fingernail, camouflaged in the color of concrete, instantly overloaded. Its delicate photosensitive components and circuit board melted within 0.01 seconds, turning into a small pile of charred scrap. The equally concealed miniature transmitter beside it, which had been used to transmit data, silently failed as well.
In the distance, inside a disguised reconnaissance vehicle hidden among the trees, a screen suddenly went black and began emitting faint wisps of smoke. The operator jumped and cursed under his breath as he inspected the equipment. "Damn it! Why did the No. 3 periscope probe suddenly burn out?! The signal's gone too!"
Almost simultaneously.
Under the shadow of a solar panel on the villa's roof, another miniature sensor array responsible for thermal imaging and monitoring vital signs also shut down without warning. Its internal structure was completely shattered into powder by some invisible force.
Inside another command vehicle, the corresponding surveillance screens instantly filled with static.
"Report! The rooftop 'Thermal Eye' array has failed! Cause unknown! It looks like... it looks like the internal structure was shattered by resonance?!"
"The underground sonic sensor network is offline! All nodes lost their signals simultaneously!"
"The laser microphone array... burned out?! We haven't even started aiming at the windows!"
In just a few seconds, the most concealed and advanced surveillance and detection equipment deployed around the villa was as if marked by an invisible god of death. One after another, they failed completely without warning!
There had been no sign of an attack, no energy eruption. They had simply... broken! Broken beyond repair!
Inside the main command vehicle three kilometers from Yunqi Mountain, the atmosphere could no longer be described as merely oppressive. It was... despairing silence.
Thunderstorm stared at the large number of surveillance windows that had suddenly gone black on the main screen. As the technicians delivered their reports in voices tinged with tears, his face turned dark as the bottom of a pot.
Destroying equipment from a distance...?!
And with such extreme precision, without the slightest warning, leaving no way to defend against it?!
This was no longer a difference in technology. This was... crushing them on the level of rules! The other side could not even be bothered to explain, casually "cleaning up" the annoying "dust" in the way!
"All units!" Thunderstorm's voice was hoarse, filled with deep helplessness. "Withdraw all remaining surveillance probes! Immediately! Right now! Maintain only the bare minimum of long-distance optical observation! I repeat: electronic, sonic, and energy detection of any kind is strictly forbidden! Anyone who disobeys will be dealt with under military law!"
He had no doubt that if they tried to spy again, the thing that broke next might not be the equipment, but the people operating it.
Inside the villa.
Ling Ye finally finished the last bite of ice cream and licked the spoon in satisfaction—not the one embedded in the door. He casually tossed the empty container onto the floor, where it joined the previous ruined box.
He sank comfortably into the sofa and narrowed his eyes, seemingly preparing to continue his fish-out-of-water sprawl and enjoy this hard-won tranquility—the tranquility he had beaten into existence.
However, heaven—or rather, the author—seemed determined not to let him have any peace.
A faint yet unusually sharp and urgent "beep-beep" suddenly came from the phone Su Wanqing had placed on the coffee table!
It was not an ordinary ringtone or message notification. It was the highest-level security alarm triggered by a specific surveillance application!
The sudden alarm made Su Wanqing shudder. She snatched up the phone.
A bright red exclamation mark was flashing wildly on the screen. Beneath it was a glaring warning:
[Warning! An abnormal activation of the third dynamic password lock in the underground vault of Su Mansion has been detected! Unauthorized intrusion attempt! Please take immediate action!]
Su Mansion?!
That was the old residence where her father had lived! It was an hour's drive from here! The underground vault there contained some of the Su family's most important confidential documents, along with... a "family heirloom" whose exact origin even she did not know clearly, but which her father had repeatedly instructed her to protect before his death!
How had it suddenly been triggered?! The third lock?! That was the ultimate security measure, requiring her iris and the specific voiceprint preset by her father to unlock!
Su Wanqing's face instantly turned as pale as paper. Forgetting even to fear Ling Ye, she cried out, "This is bad! Something happened at the old residence! The vault!"
Her voice had turned shrill from extreme panic, making it especially jarring in the villa, which had only just regained its quiet.
On the sofa, Ling Ye's eyes, which had just narrowed, suddenly opened again!
This time, there was no laziness or impatience in his eyes. Instead, a trace of... extremely subtle, truly icy anger, like something had touched his reverse scale, flashed within them!
Again and again!
It never ended!
His sleep had been interrupted, his ice cream had been disturbed, and now someone was even trying to steal this woman's broken box?!
Did these mortals really think he had no temper?!
He abruptly sat upright on the sofa. The laid-back aura around him vanished instantly, replaced by a terrifying pressure that made one's heart tremble, as if a primordial beast had awakened.
He did not look at Su Wanqing or ask any questions.
Instead, he simply extended his right hand, spreading all five fingers toward the empty air in the center of the living room.
Then, with extreme impatience, he reached forward and fiercely grabbed!
"Riiip—!"
A sharp, teeth-grating boom, as if fabric had been forcibly torn apart, exploded in the air before him!
Space... had been torn open by his bare hand!
This was not a metaphor. It was a genuine spatial rift on a physical level!
A pitch-black rift, its edges flickering with chaotic colors and terrifying energy currents, appeared out of nowhere in the center of the villa's living room like a hideous scar. Within it lay bottomless nothingness, radiating a terrifying aura that seemed capable of devouring everything!
Su Wanqing's scream cut off abruptly. She stared at the suddenly appearing spatial rift, dumbfounded, her mind completely frozen.
Ling Ye did not even look at the spatial rift, which would have driven any scientist insane. His gaze seemed to pierce through it, directly locking onto a certain location deep within the underground vault of Su Mansion.
Then the hand that had torn open space casually... reached into the pitch-black, chaotic rift!
It was as natural as reaching into a pitch-black storage bag to look for something!
The next second, his hand suddenly withdrew from the rift!
And in his hand... there was a living man wearing black nightwear and a high-tech helmet, struggling desperately and emitting frightened whimpers from his throat!
The intruder clearly had no idea what had happened. One second, he had still been trying to crack the vault's final voiceprint lock. The next, his vision had gone black, an irresistible hand had clamped around his throat, and he had been forcibly dragged out of the vault... across dozens of kilometers of space?!
Ling Ye held the completely terrified intruder before him as casually as he would hold an unruly chick. His cold gaze swept over a special insignia on the other man's helmet, and his brows lifted almost imperceptibly.
"Phantom?" he repeated softly, seemingly recalling that those "bugs" who had been spying on him earlier carried a similar aura.
"Heh." He gave a cold, humorless chuckle. "You really are... impossible to shake."
Before his words had faded, the fingers gripping the intruder's throat tightened slightly.
"Crack."
The crisp sound of a neck breaking, enough to make one's scalp go numb, rang especially clearly through the silent living room.
The intruder's struggles stopped instantly. His head lolled to one side, and he completely lost his vitality.
Ling Ye tossed the limp corpse onto the carpet like a piece of trash, where it landed with a dull thud.
Then he reached his hand into the still-open spatial rift again and felt around. Only after confirming that there were no other "bugs" in the vault did he slowly withdraw his hand.
As his hand came out, the hideous spatial rift rapidly closed like a healing wound and vanished. The living room returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.
Only the corpse gradually turning cold on the floor remained, along with wisps of terrifying energy aftershocks from the torn spatial rift that made the soul tremble... and Su Wanqing, completely petrified, having even forgotten how to be afraid.
Ling Ye shook his hand as if he had gotten something dirty on it, his face openly displaying his disgust.
He lifted his eyes. His gaze finally landed on Su Wanqing, who stood there in a daze as if her soul had left her body. He frowned with the impatience of someone thinking, Why are you still here? Then he pointed at the corpse on the floor and instructed her in a flat tone:
"Clean up this trash."
Then, as if he had merely dealt with a trivial matter, he curled back up on the sofa, closed his eyes, and yawned.
"I'm tired."
Before you continue