Closed—5

An hour later, the church was full.

Elderly men and women from various towns and villages called each other "fellow believers," chatting happily about their sons and daughters working far away and the eggs they bought yesterday.

There were free melon seeds and fruits being distributed, and everyone received three yellow cakes and a few bottles of mineral water.

Amidst the general hubbub, the curtain on the stage remained drawn.

Behind the scenes, preparations were in full swing. The Gospel Class, preparing for a cultural performance, was finalizing the program, while in a corner, a teenager lay on the ground like a dead dog.

Huai Shi's face was pale, and he felt like he was about to vomit, shivering uncontrollably.

Bone-chilling cold and an invisible weight pressed down on his spine.

For the first time, he felt the terrifying weight of death... He couldn't imagine what kind of death could cause such a heavy premonition.

"Ugh!"

He leaned over a bucket, vomiting out the steamed buns and braised pork he had just stuffed into his stomach, tears and snot almost coming out with it.

He was starting to hate his own strange skill.

Yet, even though he felt like he was dying, Huai Shi surprisingly felt no fear, only waves of nausea, as if he had eaten something bad.

His stomach felt incredibly bloated.

Wiping his tears, he grabbed the old man playing the pipa. "Grandpa, if I die backstage, will it count as a work-related injury?"

The old man jumped back several steps, extremely wary.

"Young man, don't try to swindle me. You were fine before eating... I've seen a lot in my day. If it were years ago, who knows if we might have met near some train engine! If you try anything funny, I swear I'll lie down here and accuse you of assault?"

"That's right, that's right!" another old man playing the suona chimed in. "I'm a witness. I saw it clearly, this young man here attacked without a word..."

Huai Shi was almost convinced.

Where did these old men, skilled in all sorts of wicked ways, come from? They were so practiced at scamming!

"Alright, alright, get ready!" another supervisor called out from the front, pointing at Huai Shi. "Can you still play? If you can't play the instrument, we don't pay! Young people nowadays have no conscience."

"I can play, I can play."

Huai Shi picked up his erhu, tears in his eyes. "Where's the music sheet? Where is it?"

"What music sheet? There's no time. Our play was canceled. Now you'll accompany the Gospel folk duo. Just play along with the tune to make it festive."

The old man waved his hand, muttering, "Giving him forty yuan is a loss. I should have given him twenty."

Huai Shi was speechless.

As soon as he sat down with the old men at the front, he heard an announcer: "Next, please enjoy the Gospel folk dance brought to you by the Old Pond Town Cultural Troupe!"

The audience erupted in warm applause.

Only Huai Shi couldn't help but think: What the hell is that crazy guy Wang Hai up to? Holding a sermon like a comedy show, needing an opening act, why is he so ostentatious? Why doesn't he become a pop idol?

Before he could think further, a line of old women in festive floral clothing walked onto the stage from backstage, gathering around someone and chatting haphazardly about dance moves and techniques for square dancing.

"Sisters, remember, the rhythm here isn't 'dong chia chia,' it's 'dong chia—chia.'" The leader smiled, flirtatiously ran a hand through his hair, and gave a charming backward glance, then froze in place.

Looking at Huai Shi.

Huai Shi was also looking at him.

Stunned.

—Damn it, it's you!

Huai Shi had just been thinking about how to contact this guy, and unexpectedly, before he could even make contact, the Gospel folk duo, led by the gigolo Liu Dongli and with Huai Shi playing the erhu, had already begun their performance.

Welcoming both music and performance with open arms.

As they exchanged a complex glance, Huai Shi's lips moved silently: "Where's my orange tree?"

"Haven't bought it yet."

"Did you eat it?"

"No..."

"I ate it."

Huai Shi patted his stomach. "The steamed buns and braised pork. Jealous?"

Damn it!

Liu Dongli suddenly wanted to curse, but the curtain was already up, so he could only force a beaming smile and start swaying to the old men's cheesy disco moves.

In front of Liu Dongli, the old woman he had first chatted with earlier twisted her silk handkerchief and began to sing: "Entering God's house, sitting by the Lord's side, the sweet taste is better than our own mothers, Hallelujah, to Heaven..."

Pfft.

Huai Shi couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Beep.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. Seizing a moment of leisure, he pulled out his phone. The screen clearly showed Ai Qing's number.

And the contents of the text message.

"—Retreat, immediately! [Closed—5]"

In that instant, a deathly aura far exceeding the norm surged, nearly drowning Huai Shi.

Ten minutes prior, in the temporary command center, Ai Qing's expression was grim.

"Soul radiation record tape recorded, normal."

"Depth index 0.17, normal."

"Border erosion at 0.03%, normal."

"Normal."

"Normal."

"Normal."

All observational data was normal.

But for some reason, her expression grew increasingly troubled, finally turning ashen.

"What's wrong?" the middle-aged man asked.

"Something's not right." Ai Qing's slender fingers tightened on the armrest of her wheelchair, her gaze dark. "Something is definitely not right!"

To everyone's astonishment.

She reached into the side pocket of her wheelchair, pulled out her phone, directly pried off the back cover, and removed the crimson plug that resembled a phone card.

In the silence, the middle-aged man stared, instinctively standing up. "Are you crazy?!"

Every inspector's phone was a special model provided by the Astronomical Society. Beyond the super-strong signal and power, the internal apps and data were to be expected, but the most crucial and vital element was the red highest alert on the back of the phone.

It was a function that only an inspector had the authority to activate when confirming that a situation exceeded their capabilities and would bring about a border hazard of B-class or higher.

Whether you called it a signal flare or a life-saving charm, few inspectors ever chose to use it.

Once this function was activated, the signal would directly connect to the Special Situations Response Office of the Unified Bureau, the direct jurisdictional authority of the United Nations Astronomical Society.

To put it dramatically, it was tantamount to reaching the heavens.

If the situation was severe enough, it could even alert the Ten-Man Committee.

If Ai Qing were a formal Prosecutor, she could even mobilize an A-class or higher Holy Relic in a short period or directly command all Ascendant manpower in the entire East China region...

Such extreme measures naturally came with a price.

If she were discovered to be crying wolf, the consequences were self-evident—but what was most important to those present was that once the matter was reported to the Astronomical Society, all the deals and guarantees made to cover it up would naturally be voided.

Upsetting the table just before victory?

What was this woman trying to do?

Had she truly gone mad!

It was merely a minor issue involving border relics, why report it directly to the Unified Bureau?

It was like the leaders of two counties settling a score by directly calling the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection; it was making a mountain out of a molehill, wasn't it?

Moreover, there was no evidence or sign whatsoever, no hint that anything was wrong.

"Ah, perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but compared to an unforeseen situation, I'd rather take a gamble."

Ai Qing spun her phone in her hand. Once the decision was made, her expression returned to calm, devoid of any anxiety.

She was willing to accept being suspected of incompetence by her superiors.

That intense, maddening premonition she had just felt seemed to vanish like an illusion, leaving only the gradually drying cold sweat beneath her clothes to indicate the fierce struggle she had just endured to make this absurd decision.

Examining her phone screen, a mocking sneer touched her lips.

She was mocking herself.

She was only two months away from becoming a full inspector, and now that was uncertain, wasn't it? If she was proven to have made a false report by overreacting, having her inspector status revoked would be considered a light punishment.

After all, with the Special Situations Response Office's increasingly strained manpower, they would absolutely not tolerate such a squandering of Astronomical Society resources.

Within a few seconds, the phone screen lit up.

There was no need to connect; a faint light projected from the screen, weaving into a phantom in the air. A man in a stiffly dressed suit, like an operator, examined the young woman before him with an expression devoid of doubt or panic, completely indifferent.

"Designation T9631, probationary inspector stationed in Xin Hai, East Xia branch under the Unified Bureau."

He spoke, "No depth alert detected, no border erosion traces detected, no signs of high-level Holy Mark activity detected... Please submit your report and application."

"In accordance with the provisions of the Twelve Tables, as a probationary inspector, I request assistance under Border Countermeasure Regulation Article 9, and the physical lockdown of the area within a ten-kilometer radius of Old Pond Town, under Xin Hai City, East Xia Republic, Asia. Please execute immediately."

"Application confirmation in progress—"

A printer next to the man in the suit quickly spat out a long string of documents. After a quick glance, he picked up the seal beside him and stamped it.

"Application approved."

"Satellite orbit adjustment commencing, expected to be in position in three minutes. Lockdown order for Old Pond Town issued, awaiting execution—Loading entries recorded in Border Countermeasure Regulation Article 9."

Having completed all procedures with mechanical rigidity, Designation 0075, the man in the suit, finally nodded.

"Everything for the world."

The communication ended.

Amidst the stunned silence of everyone present, a rumbling like the earth shaking echoed from afar.

And high above in the sky, tens of thousands of miles away, within the pitch-black void of space, a massive satellite matrix suspended in orbit ejected gas, slowly and precisely adjusting its angle to reflect everything insignificant below – clouds, land, cities, and dust.

Old London, Greenwich Observatory, the deep sixth level underground. A colossal differential engine roared, slowly spitting out a punched tin foil tape.

A secretary waiting nearby carefully cut it off, rolled it onto a spindle, backed it up with a video recording during the process, and finally placed it into an empty canister, sending it into the vacuum mail tube beside them.

Drawn by the vacuum, the coded cylinder traveled thousands of meters underground, landing in a corner of a bustling hall.

A man smoking a cigarette sat on a chair, listening to music. He opened the cylinder with one hand, then deftly unrolled the scroll with the other. He tapped his foot on the floor, tossed the cigarette butt aside, and walked towards the center of the hall.

The hall was unimaginably vast and bustling with people, yet the floor was uneven, with water pooling in many places.

However, looking down from above, one could discern its true nature – it was a colossal three-dimensional map, large enough to record every terrain on Earth.

The smoking man pushed through his colleagues at work, followed the code to the indicated location, and took out a row of markers from his pocket, selecting the silver-gray one.

He drew a circle.

"Designation C987778762 sealed circle complete, archiving."

And so, thousands of miles away, across mountains and seas on another continent, chaos erupted.

Under the glow of the setting sun and rising moon, the soil outside Old Pond Town churned as if boiling. Amidst the grinding roar of iron and stone, scorching flames erupted, turning countless clods of earth into molten lava.

But then, from within the lava, an iron gleam emerged.

Proliferation.

As if a tree were growing, steel extended inch by inch along the path of an invisible brushstroke. The rapidly cooling surface revealed the sheen of black iron, and countless sharp iron plates, like scales, unfurled from it.

In ten seconds, the entire Old Pond Town was sealed within hundreds of meters of iron walls.

Then, the color of the sky shifted from a dim, mottled hue to pitch black.

Reality Stripping, commencing.

At that moment, a sigh was heard.

A slender, fair hand reached out from the church.

It grasped heaven and earth.

A violent explosion sounded in the distance.

Come, come, gods fighting! Please recommend and collect~

(On a side note, after being stuck for a week, I happily realized I'm almost out of draft material...)