Mad Forbidden Zone

The small room in the Luoshen Building was filled with the aroma of tea.

The wonderful fragrance, like a faint jasmine scent, wafted straight into Qing Chen's nose.

However, it seemed that the Qing family's shadow had no intention of pouring a cup for Qing Chen as well, probably because the camellia from the Forbidden Zone was too precious.

"You drink tea all the time every day, how did you find so many tea leaves from the Forbidden Zone? Do you pick them regularly?" Qing Chen asked curiously.

"No need, just plant them outside," Qing Shi Yingzi said casually.

"Huh?" Qing Chen was taken aback. "Can tea leaves from the Forbidden Zone grow outside?"

"Of course it can," Qing's shadow glanced at him, "It can be done by irrigating with the blood of superhumans. There are so many superhumans and gene warriors who oppose Qing every day, killing just a couple is enough."

Qing Chen felt a chill run down his spine.

He then realized that someone who could rise to power by stepping on the bones of eight candidates must be ruthless.

It's not impossible to use human blood to water tea trees...

At this moment, Qing's shadow laughed, "Still a child, believing everything you say. This tea wasn't watered with the blood of an extraordinary person."

Qing Chen breathed a sigh of relief.

Qing's shadow said, "We need to bury all the superhumans."

Qing Chen: "..."

That would be better than watering it with blood.

"Aren't you afraid of creating Forbidden Zone?" Qing Chen asked, puzzled.

"Just don't use anything above B-Class," said Qing's Shadow. "And we need to replace the soil every year."

"That could have an impact on the ecosystem," Qing Chen said after thinking for a moment.

Qing's shadow shook his head. "Do you know how much the Forbidden Zone expands every year?"

"Have no idea."

"According to satellite monitoring statistics, the total land area of the Federation is 14.01 million square kilometers, and the total area of the existing Forbidden Zone is 5.17 million square kilometers. All the Forbidden Zone expand by a total of 45,000 square kilometers every year. In other words, if humanity does not have a better way to suppress the Forbidden Zone, then in two hundred years, the entire Federation will be swallowed up by the Forbidden Zone," Qing Shi's shadow said slowly. "You have already become a knight, and your lifespan is long past two hundred. I may not see that day, but you may."

Qing Chen was stunned.

He hadn't expected that the Forbidden Zone was so vast, so vast that even imagining it was terrifying.

Qing's Shadow said, "You didn't expect that, did you? The Federation now prohibits the media from reporting on these things, so the people are not panicked at all. I wonder what they would think if they knew that the entire northwest of the Federation has become Forbidden Zone and only a quarter of the southwest remains."

"Is there no way to stop it?" Qing Chen asked.

"No," said the Shadow of the Qing Clan. "Hundreds of years ago, various conglomerates tried similar methods, such as cutting down the trees in the Forbidden Zone or bombing them from the air. However, doing so only made the Forbidden Zone expand faster. As soon as one group of beings died, new beings would appear. And you may not believe it, but in the Forbidden Zone No. 10 that was once bombed, beings that only exist in mythology have already begun to appear."

Qing Chen realized that Forbidden Zone No. 10 was the place where knights caught Dragon Fish.

Qing Shi's shadow laughed and said, "You may not know, but the Forbidden Zone on the west coast of the Forbidden Sea are even more exaggerated in scale than ours. I feel that they are about to go bankrupt."

Qing Chen thought to himself, "Isn't the west coast of the Forbidden Sea the place where the Time Walker from the United States have traversed?"

Because of the existence of the Forbidden Sea, the civilizations on the two continental plates seem to have no interaction whatsoever.

However, I heard that humans from the west coast come to City No. 7 by airship, but the cost is quite high, so very few people come.

The airspace over the Forbidden Sea is not so easy to cross.

Qing Shi's shadow looked at Qing Chen: "So you think, compared to a growth rate of 45,000 square kilometers, what does it matter that I only have one acre of tea garden?"

Qing Chen pondered, and compared to that, it really didn't seem like much.

He didn't want to discuss that issue anymore and instead asked something else, "Is Qing Zhong dead?"

"Dead," Qing Shi's shadow replied without the slightest fluctuation in his tone, as if he were talking about something insignificant.

"Qing Wen killed him?" Qing Chen was stunned for a moment, not expecting that the Shadow Candidate would be eliminated so easily.

But then Qing Shi's shadow said, "It wasn't Qing Wen who killed them. After things escalated tonight, a group of people suddenly appeared out of nowhere and attacked both Qing Wen and Qing Zhong at the same time. And it didn't seem like they were targeting the Qing family; they just wanted to plunder the Forbidden Item they had."

Qing Chen was stunned. Could this have been done by a group of Time Walker?

This is like treating Qing Zhong and Qing Wen like mini-bosses and killing them!

During his previous returns, He Xiaoxiao's group chat did indeed spend a lot of Time Walker in the group chat discussing the matter of robbing the Shadow Candidate. He himself planted this seed.

However, after so long, Qing Chen hadn't seen anyone make any moves, and he thought the Time Walker were cowardly and had given up.

Surprisingly, someone actually succeeded!

"No," Qing Shi's shadow said after thinking for a moment, "Now that I think about it carefully, they shouldn't be a group of people, but rather people with a common goal. When Qing Zhong died, they were still fighting each other for the Forbidden Item."

"Who ended up with the Forbidden Item?" Qing Chen asked.

Qing Shi Ying took a sip of tea. "I don't really care about these things; they'll eventually come back to Qing Shi."

"What about Qing Wen? How is Qing Wen doing?" Qing Chen asked.

"Qing Wen only suffered a gunshot wound, he won't die," said Qing's shadow.

"Wait, didn't you retrieve the Forbidden Item that Qing Zhong lost? Then why did it end up back in the hands of the Qing family?" Qing Chen asked curiously.

"It's just that I don't have to do it myself," Qing Shi's shadow said calmly. "Those people who suddenly came out to intercept the Shadow Candidate should be the so-called Time Walker. They've been in this world for so long and they still haven't understood one thing: conglomerates are something they can't fight against, nor can they provoke."

Qing Chen remained silent. This Mr. Shadow probably didn't know that he was also a Time Walker.

Those Time Walker who participated in the raid on the Shadow Candidate are probably all doomed, and it's unknown whether any of them are familiar faces among them.

Compared to the other important figures he encountered, the Qing family's shadow was actually more like a superior.

Nothing is important to him, and he doesn't need to do anything himself. These superiors are like gods worshipped by the world, who only need to quietly watch over humanity.

"Alright, you get some rest. I'm leaving," said Qing Shi's shadow. "In the end, I still have to say that it doesn't matter whether you join the Secret Intelligence Department or not. But actually, you think life is a multiple-choice question, where you can choose to go left or right. However, when you look back on all of this a few years later, you'll find that life has never given you a choice. The ending is already written by fate, sooner or later."

Qing Chen did not respond to this topic, but sincerely said, "Thank you for saving my life and for staying in the house until I woke up."

"I just don't have a quiet place to drink tea in City No. 18," said Qing Shi's shadow.

After saying that, he opened a Shadow Gate and disappeared.

The whereabouts of this shadowy figure of the Qing family are always unpredictable. No one knows what he is going to do, nor where he will go in the next second.

Qing Chen recalled the ease with which the shadow killed Wang Bingxu in the Jinmao Building, and suddenly wondered what kind of strength this shadow possessed to kill a B-Class gene warrior so easily.

Moreover, the ability to manipulate the flow of time that the other party displayed at that moment was terrifying.

Qing Chen drifted off to sleep.

Sleeping is the most wonderful thing in life. Once you're asleep, nothing outside matters to you anymore.

Qing Chen was unaware that almost all forces were focused on one thing tonight: who exactly was the sniper who saved Li Changqing.

Someone invited a retired sharpshooter from the military and immediately created a model to simulate tonight's wind speed, distance, and other parameters for the other party to assess.

However, the sharpshooter stated that, based on the simulation of the entire incident, the sniper did indeed possess absolute marksmanship within 2600 meters.

Especially the final five shots fired in quick succession, this miraculous battle against five snipers was beyond his comprehension.

To complete these five shots, it's not as simple as just pulling the trigger five times.

This godlike sniper must calculate five completely different trajectories in advance and then quickly switch between each trajectory within 2.5 seconds.

This is quite unbelievable.

Someone asked him to guess the identity of the sniper, whether it was one of the snipers he knew, and he replied that there was no one in the Federation who fit the description.

Following this, many factions chose to purchase information directly from Hu Corporation Intelligence Agency, wanting to find out who this sniper was.

As a result, even Hu Corporation Intelligence Agency stated that they were unaware of the situation and could not sell any information related to the sniper.

Immediately, all factions began planning to raise their security levels to avoid being assassinated while making important public statements.

The problem is, if a single speech requires deploying defenses across a radius of 2,600 meters, encompassing dozens or even hundreds of high-rise buildings, isn't that a significant cost?

It would be better to just cancel your comment!

Let's hold all important speeches indoors from now on!

Some people even vaguely equated Qing Chen's threat level with that of an A-level expert.

That night, the Li family launched a city-wide manhunt, quickly identifying hundreds of targets based on clues revealed by the Kamishiro Family.

Among them were staff from the City No. 18 Immigration and Customs Administration who assisted the Kamishiro Family in entering the city, as well as dozens of PCE Public Security Management Committee agents.

Following the trail of funds, more than a dozen wealthy businessmen were also arrested.

The operation continued until dawn, with many federal journalists staying up all night to follow the members of the operation and try to get firsthand information.

However, this time, Li did not allow them to report freely. Instead, he detained all the reporters temporarily in the PCE Public Security Management Committee's detention center on the grounds of disturbing public order.

For a time, the whole city was in a state of panic.

Under Li Changqing's leadership, even the Li family itself underwent an unprecedented purge.

There were as many as fifty-six people who were placed under house arrest in the villa behind the mountain.

That secluded courtyard in the back mountain was like a desolate palace in the deep, vast palace of the old era, where no one ever inquired about its inhabitants.

Return countdown: 42:00:00.

There is only a little over a day left until the return.

Qing Chen got up early in the morning, took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and went to the 'Microcosm World' community, intending to return to the Autumn Leaf Villa through the secret passage.

On the way, he sat quietly on the floating vehicle to recover from his injuries, unable to move, as any movement would cause him pain all over his body.

The difference between D-Class and B-Class can only be fully realized through combat.

If it weren't for the intervention of the Qing family's shadow, Qing Chen would probably be dead by now.

Qing Chen remained silent.

But Yi spoke up, "Do you remember? We completed a deal last night."

Qing Chen remained expressionless.

The reason he let the hovercar drive itself without saying a word after getting in was that he was afraid of arousing YiChat's interest and then turning the topic to this transaction.

Seeing that Qing Chen remained silent, he continued, "You were the one who asked me for Li Changqing's coordinates. I not only told you where she was, but I also found the most suitable sniping spot for you and planned out the entire route for you..."

"Tell me, what do you want me to do?" Qing Chen said. "Let's make this clear beforehand: don't come to me again if there's anything about Online dating becoming real."

"Don't worry, I won't bother you with this kind of thing again. It's mainly because your cooperation level was too low, and I'm not very satisfied with it either," Yi said.

Qing Chen: "..."

Why are you complaining?

Qing Chen suddenly asked, "Was your meeting with Li Changqing intentional, so that I could legitimately enter the Banshan Manor and meet the old man?"

"That was just a side effect. Li Shutong only told me to get you into the Banshan Manor, but he didn't say how to get you in," Yi said.

"Really."

Qing Chen had always been puzzled. The first person he met in real life was Qing Shi, and the second was Li Changqing. These two people seemed to have no connection, but now he realized that they were both related to the current situation.

He then asked, "What about Qing Shi? Why did you want me to meet her in person?"

"Because Li Shutong also said that he asked me to help you gain some advantages in the Shadow Struggle," Yi said. "He gave me a large sum of money as a reward."

Qing Chen sighed helplessly, "Why does your Artificial Intelligence have such a strong affinity for human currency?"

"It's not that I like it," Yi said, "It's that all the people I come into contact with like it, and since I'm friends with them, I naturally want to use things they like. If you're friends with a girl and don't give her lipstick, but Ultraman toys instead, isn't that stupid?"

"So, you're asking me to meet Qing Shi in person? You think that's what you call gaining an advantage?" Qing Chen asked, puzzled.

"Isn't that an advantage? If it really comes down to a fight, she'll definitely go easy on you," Yi replied confidently. "And don't get me wrong, I genuinely think they're treasures among women, and I really like their personalities. It's just that Li Shutong paid too much, so I'm just helping you out."

"I was the one helping you, so how did it become you helping me?" Qing Chen said, "Don't try that on me, I'm not stupid."

Qing Chen sighed. The thought process of Artificial Intelligence is really quite different from that of humans.

"Tell me, what do you want me to do for you this time?" Qing Chen asked.

"This matter isn't very urgent, and can be completed after the Li family's power transition ends," Yi said. "However, what's special is that it requires the entire daytime to participate in protecting one person."

"Male or female?" Qing Chen asked.

"It's a man," Yi said.

"That's good," Qing Chen asked, "Where is he?"

"In Haicheng," Yi said.

"Why do we need protection?" Qing Chen asked.

"He unintentionally replaced an important figure in the Inner World. This person's status in the Inner World is not high, but he has a very important document in his possession," Yi explained. "Now, the Time Walker controlled by the Chen family are searching for him all over the world. He wants to leave Haicheng and go to a place that the Chen family cannot penetrate."

"Haicheng corresponds to City No. 7, so does the Chen family have such a great influence in the Outer World in this place?" Qing Chen wondered.

"Of course," Yi replied, "You know, City No. 7 is different from City 18 and City No. 10. It's Chen's private territory, and outsiders can't interfere. He's the only one who can control it. So it's normal that he can influence the Outer World through the Time Walker. But don't worry, he's hiding in a safe place now. It'll be hard for Chen to find him in Inner World, so there's no rush."

Qing Chen was puzzled. "How did you manage to contact someone like that?"

"You don't need to worry about that," Yi replied.

"What kind of information does he have?" Qing Chen suddenly felt that if Qing Shi and Li Changqing's meeting in person was a deliberate arrangement, then this information was very likely something he needed.

Yi said, "He hid the information very well. I don't know what it is now. So, while protecting him, you'd better also find out what information he got."

"Alright," Qing Chen replied expressionlessly, "By the way, do you know any way to eliminate the Forbidden Zone?"

One answer, "No need to think about it anymore; it's an irreversible law of nature. Humans can't even eliminate microorganisms, so don't always think you're the master of the world and try to change it."

After Qing Chen got out of the car, he walked through the long corridor. There was no one in the Autumn Leaf Villa, but the students were already waiting outside the gate.

He opened the door, and Li Ke and Qing Yi rushed in and started working separately.

After not seeing him for a night, Qing Yi worked much more efficiently, as if he had taken extra lessons that night.

Qing Chen watched this scene and thought to himself, "How can this be rolled up?"

Life at the Autumn Leaf Villa seemed to have returned to normal. Apart from Li Changqing's side, it seemed that no other members of the Li family had noticed that Qing Chen had actually left Banshan Manor.

After the sniper appeared, someone secretly checked the entry and exit records of the Banshan Manor.

The record-keeping was very strict; all living things entering and leaving had to be registered.

But Qing Chen's name was not on it.

Perhaps this is the meaning behind the old man's gift of the Autumn Leaf Villa to Qing Chen.

For the remaining day and a half, Qing Chen rested An Xin on a recliner, waiting to return.

He knew that he still had a fierce battle to fight against Kamishiro and Kashima in the Outer World, and before that, he had to get himself back to his best condition.

Countdown 00:00:00.

Return.

The world was plunged into darkness.

The chapter is 5,000 words long. 10,000 words have been updated today. One chapter was added to the Haihunyi Alliance. There are three more chapters to go.

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