I Was Praising You
The game panel had already opened, allowing players to contact one another. As Xu Huo didn't answer her question and Ding Xiang was about to get in touch with Yilan, two players appeared on another nearby stretch of reef.
The moment Ding Xiang saw their grim expressions, the light in her eyes quickly faded. Before she could speak, one of them said, "Your mission failed."
"How could that be..." Ding Xiang blurted out. In her view, although Xu Huo had forced his way out, the Super Dimensional Instrument had never been activated. That meant the island's AI hadn't judged the situation serious enough to trigger the self-destruct sequence, so the information stored in the terminal should have been safe.
But she worked for the Inspection Department. It wasn't as if she knew nothing at all. When she saw the expressions of her two superiors, she suddenly understood: the Inspection Department's investigation of Challenge Island might not have been about destroying the place at all. They may have considered the research data far more valuable than anything else. Somehow, the information about the devolution research had been released to the terminals issued to them by Challenge Island. Now every player who had set foot on the island knew what was going on, and Challenge Island could no longer remain.
At the thought, her expression turned cold as well. "Has Yilan made it out?"
The two men remained stern-faced. "Your mission is over. Don't get involved in what happens next. Just return and report in."
"It's a shame about those who came before you," Xu Huo said. "After all these years, they're still preserved on the island, frozen forever in the positions they died in."
"I wonder if, as they died, they were thinking of the Inspection Department—or