The Crouching Dragon and Hidden Tiger Second Brigade

Li Lin was jolted awake from the depths of his sleep by a noisy mobile phone ringtone. Along with the ringtone, a spiritual warning from deep within his own heart suddenly appeared.

As a Special Operations Bureau operative with excellent training performance, he instantly realized something was happening. He snapped awake, springing from the bed in his rented room to the floor like a catapult. He then grabbed his phone from the bedside table while rushing toward the street-facing window beside him.

"This is Li Lin," he said quickly into the phone as he sat by the window, pointing a device with a complex lens assembly at the street below. "What's going on?"

Song Cheng's voice immediately came through the receiver, sounding unusually serious. "Have you observed anything on your end?"

While focusing on the light and shadow refracted in the lens device, Li Lin spared a glance at the laptop beside him that was automatically monitoring data. He quickly pulled up the monitoring log and spoke rapidly, "All monitoring data is normal. There was only a very small energy fluctuation at 1 AM—a normal periodic 'surge' from The Crossroads..."

"...Xu Jiali has already departed ahead of schedule. He should be arriving near you soon," Song Cheng said in a deep voice. "Maintain your surveillance of the block, but do not go out casually even if you observe anything. Report it immediately—remember, do not leave the outpost alone until Xu Jiali arrives!"

"Huh? Ah, okay, got it!" Li Lin paused, then quickly agreed, before asking, "What exactly is happening?"

"...The Crossroads is experiencing large-scale temporal displacement and reset for unknown reasons, occurring once every five to ten minutes."

Song Cheng ignored Li Lin's exclamation and hung up the phone. He took a deep breath and looked up at the massive screen at the end of the command hall.

The screen displayed a flat map of the entire "Boundary City." Beyond the map, there was a three-dimensional structure constructed from countless curves and identifiers, along with a large amount of monitoring data and remote monitoring signals that were refreshing frantically.

The vast command hall was brightly lit. Special Operations Bureau employees in black uniforms stared intently at the screens in front of their terminals. Occasionally, people would enter and exit the hall through side doors, relaying information from other departments or delivering more bad news.

"There have been a few minor temporal displacement phenomena in the past couple of days, but none on this scale or occurring this frequently," a female Special Operations Bureau employee in a black business suit muttered softly behind Song Cheng. "The temporal structure of The Crossroads is special, so this sort of thing has happened before, which is why the initial alert level wasn't high..."

"Looking at it now, this seems like a probing action before some large-scale operation," another voice chimed in from nearby. "Now 'they' have officially started... Damn it, we were careless."

Just then, a report from a terminal interrupted the conversation behind Song Cheng. "Rift generation detected! Targeting Chawen-12b, precise location still unconfirmed... Attempting traceback!"

Song Cheng's brow furrowed. He said nothing, merely counting silently in his mind.

A dozen seconds later, he heard the follow-up report—

"Rift closed! Traceback failed! Temporal structure restored!"

Such reports had been repeated many times in this hall—occurring every few minutes.

The intervals weren't very stable, but they were generally within ten minutes. Each occurrence wasn't precisely timed, but it never exceeded thirty seconds. It felt artificial, but... what was the point of doing this? And more importantly... who could accomplish something so outrageous?!

"Rift generation detected! Targeting White Dragon-4c, precise location unconfirmed, attempting traceback..."

"Rift closed! Traceback failed..."

Song Cheng's brow furrowed tighter. At that moment, a faint humming sound suddenly interrupted his thoughts, and the next second, a screen beside him lit up.

A woman who looked less than thirty years old, with a dignified appearance but a cool temperament, appeared on the screen.

She was wearing a white suit, her gray-white long hair tied in a loose ponytail at the back of her head. Her eyes were a peculiar gray-white, with extremely pale pupils, giving her an overall impression of... a lack of color.

The moment Song Cheng saw this woman, his back visibly straightened a little, and a somewhat stiff, wry smile appeared on his lips.

"Director," Song Cheng greeted, "we are still tracking..."

"What's the situation now?" the gray-haired, gray-eyed woman, addressed as Director, interrupted Song Cheng, her voice cool and calm.

"Rifts are continuously generating and disappearing, still untraceable, but it's basically confirmed that this phenomenon is harmless to The Crossroads itself—the temporal structure has not been damaged."

"Not damaged?"

"Yes, although those rifts are temporarily classified as 'temporal displacement,' their superficial nature is similar. It's hard to say what that thing actually is," Song Cheng said with a wry smile. "When it generates each time, it doesn't actually tear space-time; instead..."

He struggled for a moment, finally recalling the description given by the technical experts, and continued, "It feels as if that is the original structure of space-time—the moment a rift generates, it's as if The Crossroads has always had a stable passage leading to a distant place, and when the rift disappears, it's as if it never appeared, with no impact, no catastrophic collapse, and not a single casualty report has been received so far."

The gray-haired woman listened quietly and remained silent for a long time.

Song Cheng also said nothing, patiently waiting.

"Have there been any changes at the 'special location' you sent people to monitor previously?"

"No, that place is now the 'calmest' spot in the entire Boundary City, calm as a black hole," Song Cheng sighed. "The most abnormal thing is this. Everyone knows there's definitely a problem there now, but the biggest problem there is that there's no problem to see—I've already sent the best deep divers from the Second Brigade there, and arranged for two additional monitoring teams to approach that street from different directions..."

"What do you think the purpose of the people doing these things is?" the gray-haired woman suddenly asked.

"...It's hard to say," Song Cheng thought for a moment before speaking cautiously. "At first, I thought it was some kind of attack, but now it seems like they are just continuously opening and closing one rift after another. It's been almost a whole night, and they haven't even disturbed anyone..."

"Could it be some new 'Dark Angel' phenomenon?"

"Probably not. The appearance of Dark Angels is always accompanied by large-scale loss of control in the Otherworld and widespread damage in the real world. It wouldn't be this 'harmless'," Song Cheng immediately shook his head. "And we haven't received any reports about those angel cultists recently. If a new Dark Angel were to appear, those cultists wouldn't be this quiet."

"If it's not a Dark Angel, then it's fine."

"Yeah, as long as it's not a Dark Angel," Song Cheng sighed. "But then again, if this is man-made, then... what kind of 'person' would it be? With such a huge commotion, what are they trying to achieve..."

His last sentence was entirely to himself. The gray-haired woman on the screen broke the silence after a few seconds of thought—

"This world is vast, and there are still many races and ancient individuals we haven't encountered," she said softly. Although her face was still young, her words inadvertently revealed a certain weariness. "And our universe is very young; even many 'theorems' and 'laws' have not yet been formed... Learn to adapt, Little Song. Our job has never been to deal with the 'known'."

"...I understand."

The gray-haired woman nodded, then as if sensing something, suddenly looked up in a certain direction—her pale, almost colorless eyes froze for a moment, and then she softly broke the silence, "It has calmed down."

Song Cheng looked up, looking around the hall.

No new rift generation reports came in.

A specific frequency of knocking sounded. Li Lin stood at the door, using his spiritual intuition to confirm the aura outside before stepping half a pace to the side and opening the door.

A burly man, nearly two meters tall, stooped to squeeze into the rented room, dragging a large black case behind him that perfectly matched his height and physique.

"This place is really cramped," the burly man said, glancing back at Li Lin, who was standing by the door. "It's even more cramped than the landing craft I was on the day before yesterday."

Li Lin rolled his eyes. "It's still more spacious than your beat-up vehicle. You could drive it all the way from the Bureau, so don't complain about my place."

The burly man chuckled twice, pushing his heavy, large box to the wall as he sat down on the living room sofa. A contented sigh escaped him.

"Alright, at least it's a place fit for humans. This sofa is much more comfortable than the hard stones and scorching sand of Ameine-IX."

Li Lin looked at the burly man in front of him with a slight headache.

Mr. Xu Jiali, the most outstanding and senior deep diver of the Special Operations Bureau's Second Action Brigade.

He really wasn't used to dealing with this powerhouse.

The main reason for his discomfort was that on Li Lin's first day joining the team, after seeing the name "Xu Jiali" on the personnel roster, he had inquired about the person everywhere. Then, at the welcoming party, a burly man, one meter ninety-eight tall, walked over, clapped Li Lin on the shoulder, and introduced himself as Xu Jiali. The introduction had been deafening, and Li Lin still flinched slightly whenever he saw the man.

But Mr. Xu Jiali himself was completely unaware of this. He had lived with that name for thirty years and was long accustomed to it...

As the saying goes – the Second Brigade of the Special Operations Bureau, that's a place where dragons lie hidden and tigers crouch