"Everyone, listen up," the chief ordered loudly. "Without my permission, no one is to leak any information about the Earth-Shaking Talisman or related intelligence. We'll wait until I've reported everything to headquarters before we do anything else!"
The lead guard painfully clawed at his hair and looked pleadingly at the chief. "Sir, give me one more chance! I can bring back the Earth-Shaking Talisman and prove my innocence!"
"Have you not embarrassed yourself enough? Get to my office and explain yourself properly!" the chief said with a dark expression, then turned and went into his office.
The vice chief said a few words to the four team members beside him, then dismissed them to rest and recover from their injuries. He went outside and caught up with Wang Wen.
He was somewhat puzzled.
"Do you know? That Xiao Chen doesn't have what it takes to reach the two-hundredth floor," Vice Chief Jiang said as he caught up with Wang Wen and walked alongside him. "Why did you lead him into entering the tower himself?"
Wang Wen had been quite happy when he first saw the vice chief following him, but his tone turned cold at the question. "He didn't value my friendship."
"So you did it on purpose?" the vice chief exclaimed. "You wanted him dead?"
Wang Wen stopped, turned his head, and looked at the vice chief in surprise. "Putting aside whether I have the power to make someone die, even if I did, he's been targeting me this whole time. Am I not allowed to fight back?"
"So your way of fighting back was to use valuable intelligence to put him in a position where he couldn't explain himself," the vice chief analyzed. "The best-case scenario for him is that he stole the Earth-Shaking Talisman himself and is putting on this act to keep the stolen goods and his uniform. Otherwise, his good buddy took it, which would ruin their friendship, and he'd still have to face disciplinary action."
"But neither of those possibilities amounts to the kind of retaliation you had in mind." He looked up at Wang Wen and voiced a theory that even frightened him. "Let me make a wild guess: there was never an Earth-Shaking Talisman on the tower run he was in charge of, right?"
"Vice Chief Jiang, if you're here to chat, you're welcome to." Wang Wen stood beside the teleportation gate and said coolly, "But if you're here to uphold justice or play detective, then I'd like to point out that I, an innocent man, was detained in the Guard Department for no reason for eleven days. I'm exhausted and want to go back and rest."
"No, no, no." The vice chief suddenly blocked Wang Wen like a child throwing a tantrum. "Just tell me: did you deliberately lead him into the tower in the end? Otherwise, I'll die of curiosity!"
Wang Wen said, "He's an adult. Whether he enters the tower is his own business. It has nothing to do with me."
"Then there really was no Earth-Shaking Talisman in there when he first sent someone into the tower, right?"
Wang Wen finally lost patience and flung out a hand. "That's right, I planned everything. I wanted to ruin his reputation and preferably get him killed! Happy now? Take me back and shoot me!"
The scene fell silent for a moment.
A good while passed.
The vice chief said solemnly, "Amazing! You've truly opened my eyes!"
Wang Wen frowned. "What do you mean?"
The vice chief smiled and glanced back at the distant Guard Department entrance, now almost out of sight. "I mean, well done!"
As Wang Wen stared at him strangely, the vice chief beamed.
He reached out and patted Wang Wen on the shoulder, grinning. "Don't look at me like that. I hate that bootlicking snob who looks down on people, too. If we weren't colleagues, I might've taught him a lesson even before you did!"
Wang Wen was at a loss for words. His shoulders slumped as he wondered whether he should congratulate him or say something else.
He'd thought the vice chief, who seemed so impartial, had come to solve the case and arrest him as well.
He hadn't expected the man to have such a lively side.
"One last question!" The vice chief raised a finger and asked, full of curiosity, "As far as I know, you haven't left the Guard Department once in these eleven days, and you haven't had any contact with the outside world either. You've practically been directing everything from behind the scenes and winning a thousand miles away! How did you pull it off?"
"You really want to know?" Wang Wen suddenly smiled mysteriously.
The vice chief nodded blankly.
"Buy me a few things and have them delivered to the Academy, and I'll tell you." Wang Wen pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and stuffed it into the vice chief's hand. Then he turned and stepped through the teleportation gate, disappearing.
The vice chief unfolded the paper, and his expression changed as he read.
A wail rang out beside the teleportation gate.
"I could put up with being your errand boy, but you didn't even leave me any money! Am I, a regional vice chief, supposed to be able to afford something like a brain-computer?"
When Wang Wen returned to the Academy, it was already late. Looking at the familiar sights around him, he felt a little dazed.
In this life, given his experience, there was nothing left for the Academy's teachers to teach him.
Yet after facing intrigue and weathering every storm out in the world, he still found himself instinctively returning here.
It was like coming home.
He walked through the night beneath the shadows of the trees, taking in the carefree students passing by and savoring a moment of peace.
He hadn't been able to enjoy it for long.
One of the two people walking toward him, a girl with glasses, called out, "Wang Wen? You're out of prison?"
Wang Wen's eye twitched. He said nothing as he studied her somewhat familiar face.
He remembered her. She was one of the "besties" who was often around Cheng Queyi.
She had accompanied Cheng Queyi to the large classroom to find him last time, too.
As Wang Wen studied her, the man beside the girl with glasses glanced at him discreetly, then excused himself and walked off in another direction.
The girl with glasses adjusted her spectacles and stepped forward, apologetic. "Sorry, I blurted that out because I was in such a hurry. You weren't in prison. Anyway, have you been all right while you were at the Guard Department? Xiao Yi was really worried about you."
"I'm fine. Thank your classmates for their concern." Wang Wen nodded, but his mind was on the man who had just left.
It was perfectly normal that the man didn't recognize him.
No one would recognize him at this point in time.
But Wang Wen thought the man's face looked familiar.
He remembered that the Tiansheng Group had a special department, something like the First Consortium's Intelligence Department, though it had a different name.
Perhaps to distinguish it from the First Consortium's Intelligence Department, Tiansheng had named its department "Mirror."
The name sounded impressive, and so did its members.
It was said that every member had two faces, like the two sides of a mirror.
As it happened,
Wang Wen had seen the two faces of many Mirror members in his previous life.
This man was one of them.
Why was a Mirror agent from the Tiansheng Group with the girl with glasses?
Wang Wen watched her silently.
From head to toe.
From the outside in.
The girl with glasses suddenly felt as if she'd been stripped naked. Frightened, she hurriedly said, "I'm glad you're okay," then turned and ran.
Wang Wen smiled.
He called the skinny boy over, shared a late-night snack with him, then went back to his room to sleep.
Before bed, he even indulged in a shower.
Early the next morning, he went to the athletic field to work out, just as he had before being "locked up." As usual, he saw someone who had arrived earlier than him, running laps and working up a sweat.
They were both taciturn, each doing their own thing without disturbing the other.
Whoever finished first left first.
After Wang Wen and the skinny boy finished breakfast, he was called to the Academy entrance before he could make it to class.
The skinny boy was very unhappy because he felt it had been ages since he and Wang Wen had attended class together.
Someone else in the classroom was just as unhappy.
After hearing that Wang Wen had returned safely, she had waited up all night. Then, just before class, someone had snatched him away, and she was unhappy about that, too.
When Wang Wen reached the Academy entrance, he saw Cheng Queyi and the girl with glasses beside her.
He walked over and asked Cheng Queyi, puzzled:
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