In that brief, fleeting instant, Ai Qing checked the signal response more than once, but every time, she got the same result.
This was not her own hallucination. It was something real.
Perhaps real.
Because even the Space Administration Bureau's observation probes and vast servers could not confirm the other party's existence—they could only corroborate it indirectly through the movements and waves of the Silver Sea.
It was like a black hole hidden After the Stars.
Darkness was its finest shelter. All light was swallowed by that abnormal pull; one could not determine whether it existed through sight alone, only infer it from the abnormal distortions and dimming of the surrounding Stars' Light.
Only now, when large numbers of agents gathered together, interfering with and coordinating one another to form a vague alliance, could they discover that an invisible source of gravity was hidden among them.
Inside this very city hall!
Yet when Ai Qing's gaze swept across the long table in the Command Center, one person at a time, she found nothing.
Other than Solomon and the Technical Department's agent, all twenty-four investigators with Pioneer Society clearance were here. In other words, every participant in the Regeneration Plan aside from Solomon and the Technical Department was present.
Which meant... he was not in the Command Center?
No, it was also possible that he had a dual identity.
But no matter what, it was a phenomenon that could not be explained by the rules. In other words, someone had cheated—or rather... maliciously exploited some kind of bug?
The Office of the Director, the Financial Weaving Bureau, the Judicial Bureau, the Tax Department, the Depth Management Department, the Inspection Bureau...
As Ai Qing thought, the résumés and intelligence corresponding to each face surfaced in her mind, colliding and overlapping, vaguely forming