"Get rid of this trash."
Ling Ye's flat, emotionless tone, as though he were ordering a servant to dump kitchen waste, pierced Su Wanqing's numb nerves like an ice pick. She stiffly lowered her head, her gaze falling on the black corpse at her feet, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle and its eyes wide open, filled with the horror of its final moments.
Her stomach churned, and a powerful urge to vomit surged up her throat! She clamped both hands over her mouth, barely managing not to lose control on the spot.
Trash?
A fully equipped living person who had just been trying to rob her family's vault dozens of kilometers away had been pulled here through the air in the blink of an eye, had his neck crushed as easily as a bug, and had then been casually called... trash?!
Fear, nausea, absurdity... and even a trace of the chill of a rabbit mourning a fallen companion swept over her like an icy tide. Her body felt cold and rigid, and she couldn't move even a finger.
Get rid of it? How was she supposed to do that? Drag it outside and bury it? Throw it in a trash can? Call the police? Every possibility sent chills down her spine!
Ling Ye, sitting on the sofa, seemed to have no patience for her stiffness and helplessness. Without even opening his eyes, he added with extreme impatience and heavy disgust, "Hurry up. It reeks."
It reeks?!
The smell of a fresh corpse was indeed unpleasant. But wasn't this something you had personally created, sir?!
Suppressing the urge to vomit and the trembling of her soul, Su Wanqing's mind raced as she thought about how to deal with this hot potato. Calling the police was absolutely impossible; she couldn't explain any of this. Dragging it outside and burying it herself? The target was too conspicuous, and she had no idea how to dispose of a corpse!
Just as she was so frantic that she was about to cry, her gaze inadvertently swept toward the corner of the living room... the Chaos Green Lotus Basin that had been sitting there quietly all along, its edges flowing with a faint chaotic radiance!
An utterly absurd thought, yet one carrying a trace of bizarre reasonableness, struck her mind like lightning!
This basin... had allowed even "foot-washing water" to transform Ancient Orchid, could suppress the earth veins, and could... could it... "dispose of" this?
The thought was so shocking that even she was startled. But when she saw Ling Ye's impatient expression, clearly saying, "Get it out of here already," and recalled the basin's many unbelievable effects, an urge to throw caution to the wind surged up inside her.
What else could she do but try?
Gritting her teeth, Su Wanqing practically crawled and scrambled to the corner, using all her strength to lift the incredibly heavy Chaos Green Lotus Basin. The basin wall was icy cold, its texture strange to the touch.
She dragged the basin beside the corpse, looking at the twisted body, then at the basin that was neither metal nor jade, her heart pounding wildly.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and used every ounce of strength she had to try to lift the corpse and stuff it into the basin.
However, the corpse was dressed in night gear and loaded with equipment. It was unbelievably heavy. After struggling for a long while until she was panting for breath, she had barely managed to move it at all.
"Tsk."
A clear clicking of the tongue came from the sofa, filled with extreme disdain.
Ling Ye seemed to have been thoroughly annoyed by her clumsiness. He couldn't even be bothered to open his eyes. He merely... waved a hand... toward the corpse.
As though shooing away a fly.
An invisible force, gentle yet irresistible, instantly supported the corpse. Then... as smoothly as flowing water, silently and effortlessly... it "stuffed" the entire body into the Chaos Green Lotus Basin, which didn't look particularly large!
The instant the corpse entered the basin, the hazy chaotic mist within seemed to come alive. It churned gently and swallowed the body.
There was no blood, no sound, and not even the slightest mismatch in volume. The corpse vanished in an instant, like a drop of water merging into the sea. The basin still contained only a few remaining beads of golden "essence" liquid, as though nothing had happened.
Along with the corpse, all its equipment, clothing, and even any trackers or poison it might have carried were completely devoured and broken down by the chaotic mist, reduced to their most primordial nothingness.
Su Wanqing stared dumbfounded at the empty carpet and the basin that looked as though nothing had happened. Once again, she was so shaken by this method beyond comprehension that she couldn't speak.
Was this basin... a universal garbage disposal unit?!
Ling Ye seemed fairly satisfied with the result. His brows relaxed slightly as he rolled over, turning his back to her, and muttered, "It's quiet now."
Then his breathing once again became long and steady. Had he... fallen asleep again?
Su Wanqing looked at the basin, then at the mighty figure on the sofa who seemed to have returned to dreamland, and felt that her life had become thoroughly surreal. She cautiously pushed the basin back into the corner and stared at the spotless carpet, as though the terrifying scene from moments ago had never happened.
She collapsed onto the floor, leaning against the cold wall. Her mind and body had both been drained to their limits. Everything that had happened today had repeatedly washed over, crushed, and reshaped her worldview. She needed time to digest it all. She needed... a moment of peace.
However, heaven—or perhaps some unscrupulous author—seemed determined not to give her any chance to catch her breath.
Just as her mind relaxed slightly—
The phone she had casually tossed onto the coffee table rang sharply again! It was no longer an alarm, but the relentless sound of an incoming call! A name flashed on the screen—her personal assistant, Xiao Lin.
Su Wanqing's heart clenched! Why was she calling at a time like this?! Had something happened at the old residence again?! Or was there some problem with the company?!
She instinctively looked toward Ling Ye, afraid that the ringing would wake this demanding ancestor again.
Fortunately, Ling Ye merely frowned slightly and seemed to mutter something, but he didn't wake up.
Su Wanqing sighed in relief and hurriedly snatched up the phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed the answer button and lowered her voice. "Hello? Xiao Lin, what's going on? Tell me!"
On the other end, her assistant Xiao Lin's voice came through, frantic and even edged with sobs. "President Su! This is bad! Something major has happened! The company's network has been hacked! All the data on the core servers is being frantically copied and erased! The firewall is completely useless! The technical department can't stop them at all! They even... even left a warning!"
Su Wanqing's head rang with a loud buzz! The company's network had been hacked?! The core data had been stolen?! This was truly adding insult to injury!
"A warning? What warning?!" Su Wanqing demanded anxiously, her heart sinking to the bottom.
"It's... it's an image..." Xiao Lin's voice was full of fear and disbelief. "The image shows... a... an ice cream spoon... stuck in a door?!"
Su Wanqing felt as though she had been struck by lightning. She froze in place, and the phone nearly slipped from her hand!
An ice cream spoon?!
Stuck in a door?!
That spoon... the one Ling Ye had casually nailed into the door to scare away the guards?! How had its image appeared in the warning message from the company's cyberattack?!
Could it be... could the people attacking the company's network... be the same group as those who had broken into the vault and been crushed to death just now?! This "Phantom" organization had launched attacks not only in the real world, but in cyberspace as well?! Were they taking revenge?! Because they had lost one of their people?!
A tremendous wave of panic and fury instantly overwhelmed Su Wanqing! She could tolerate being in danger herself, but the company was her father's life's work, and the livelihood of thousands of employees!
"Immediately activate the highest-level emergency response! At any cost..." Su Wanqing growled into the phone, her voice trembling with agitation.
However, before she could finish—
Ling Ye, who had seemed to be asleep on the sofa, suddenly sat up without warning!
His eyes remained closed, but his brows were tightly knitted. His face was filled with an extremely impatient, irritable expression, as though he had been thoroughly angered by the ceaseless "noise"!
"Too... damn... loud!"
The three words came out like icy shards forced through his clenched teeth, carrying a chill that froze the soul!
He hadn't listened to the call at all, nor did he care in the slightest what corporate crisis Su Wanqing was talking about. All he knew was that this buzzing "little box"——the phone——had been making a noisy racket, endlessly disturbing his sleep!
Under Su Wanqing's terrified gaze, Ling Ye, eyes still closed, irritably... flicked a finger... at the phone in her hand... through the air!
"Pfft."
A faint sound, like a bubble bursting.
The latest high-end smartphone in Su Wanqing's hand instantly went dark. Every indicator light went out, and the device became cold and lifeless, like a completely ordinary... brick.
It wasn't out of power, nor was it malfunctioning. It had undergone something more fundamental, something on the level of the rules themselves... "failure."
On the other end of the call, Xiao Lin's anxious cries of "President Su? President Su?! Are you still there?" abruptly ceased.
The world had finally... become completely quiet.
The irritable expression on Ling Ye's face slowly faded. Satisfied, he nodded—his eyes still closed—then flopped back down onto the sofa, rubbed himself into a more comfortable position, and resumed his long, steady breathing.
It was as though he had merely silenced an alarm clock with a casual press.
That left Su Wanqing foolishly clutching a cold, completely ruined phone "brick." As she stared at the mighty figure who had instantly fallen asleep again, she felt as though all her strength had been drained away, leaving her completely lost and bewildered.
The company crisis... the warning message... the ice cream spoon...
All the clues and dangers spun wildly through her mind, yet they had been completely severed when the most important means of communication was destroyed! What was she supposed to do?!
Just then, from the corner of her eye, she seemed to catch sight of something. The chaotic mist in the Chaos Green Lotus Basin at the corner, which had swallowed the corpse earlier, seemed to... churn ever so slightly. Then... a faint, strange radiance, resembling electronic signal interference, flickered indistinctly across the bottom of the basin?
But the light vanished in the blink of an eye, so quickly that it seemed like an illusion.
Su Wanqing blinked hard and looked again. The basin still contained only hazy mist and calm silence.
Had she imagined it?
Or could the basin... even swallow and digest the residual electronic signals on an intruder, along with some kind of connection on the network level?
Before you continue