S.P.E.A.R., Ring Fortress.
In the director's office, Zheng Xian walked to the bookshelf and pulled different books in a specific sequence. The bookshelf slid apart, revealing a metal door.
The camera on the metal door lit up and scanned Zheng Xian's iris. Only then did a metal panel pop out, bearing a recessed handprint.
Zheng Xian placed his right hand on it and felt a slight sting as the metal panel collected a drop of his blood.
A moment later, after confirming it matched the bloodline factors in the database, the metal door opened.
Behind the door was a spiraling staircase leading downward, roughly fifty or sixty feet deep. Along the way, the stairs monitored Zheng Xian's weight and walking rhythm. If the results did not match, the passage would seal completely, and dense lasers would fire from within the walls.
After descending the stairs, Zheng Xian arrived before two towering vault doors. Standing on either side were two nearly seven-meter-tall giants with long, slender legs, rugged bodies, and bear-ear hats on their heads.
They were "Pacifistas" replicated by Lin Hao using Vegapunk's technology—pure machines, without a trace of emotion.
Not only were they astonishingly powerful in close combat, but they could also fire lasers.
The importance of a place guarded by two Pacifistas was obvious.
Hearing his footsteps, the Pacifistas at the door raised their heads and scanned Zheng Xian once more. After confirming his identity, they turned and pushed open the metal doors, each weighing ten tons.
Beyond the doors stood a warehouse entirely encased in metal, equipped with its own drive system and independent power supply. If necessary, it could detach from the Ring Fortress as a whole and preserve the items inside.
Only after passing all those tests did Zheng Xian reach his destination. Rows of metal racks filled the vast storage room, holding the identity files of S.P.E.A.R.'s 150,000 agents.
Besides the paper files, each agent's dossier was accompanied by a square glass container. The containers were divided into two layers: the lower layer held nails and hair, while a sheet of white paper floated conspicuously in the upper layer. Quite a few of those papers were constantly turning.
The endless sheets of paper varied in appearance. Some were immaculate white, while others bore signs of being scorched by flames. The more severely damaged ones had burned away by more than half, leaving the glass containers filled with ashes.
If an outsider saw this scene, they would certainly be astonished.
No matter how one looked at it, the amount of oxygen inside those sealed glass containers should not have been enough to sustain such prolonged burning.
Most miraculous of all, some portions of the papers that had clearly burned away were slowly recovering.
Without slowing down, Zheng Xian made his way familiarly to one of the metal racks.
Looking at the sheet of paper in the glass container, now completely reduced to ash, Zheng Xian took out an ash-gray snail and voice-dialed, "12138, Great Demon Lord."
The Den Den Mushi emitted its distinctive bioelectric waves, rapidly piercing through the Ring Fortress and crossing the ocean until they reached an estate by the sea in San Francisco.
Lin Hao had an ash-gray snail of his own at hand. Sensing the waves of its kind, it immediately raised its head and shot two beams of light from its eyes, projecting an image onto the wall.
"Cheng Yi's Vivre Card has burned up completely, with no signs of recovery." Zheng Xian, on the video feed, aimed the snail in his hand at the glass container to capture the image before turning it toward himself.
"If there's nothing wrong with your technology, then he should have died in the line of duty."
"Unless this universe's goddess of death personally intervened to conceal it, or he went to another parallel space-time, my technology cannot be cracked." That was the confidence of someone who had inherited Vegapunk's memories and the abilities of the Brain-Brain Fruit.
Both Vivre Card and Den Den Mushi technology came from the One Piece World. In this Marvel world, no one but Lin Hao had even heard of them, much less knew how to crack them.
Because agents needed to communicate with one another, quite a few people throughout the S.P.E.A.R. system knew about the secret of the Den Den Mushi.
The person in charge of every overseas branch possessed a Den Den Mushi disguised as an ordinary snail, and some special undercover operatives had them as well.
Within Ring Headquarters, there was also a highly classified communications department dedicated to managing and monitoring the distributed Den Den Mushi, as well as collecting and organizing the intelligence sent back through them.
For better concealment, Lin Hao had deliberately removed the Den Den Mushi's original buttons and receiver, replacing everything with voice control. It could make voice calls, conduct video calls, and even function as a camcorder, directly transmitting recorded footage back to headquarters.
The modified Den Den Mushi was simply an ordinary, somewhat larger snail with all the biological traits of a normal snail. It was ideal for agents to carry, and anyone unaware of its secret would never guess its purpose.
Den Den Mushi transmitted information through unique bioelectric waves. They could not be intercepted or blocked by existing technology and possessed powerful anti-interference capabilities. They could operate normally even in the bizarre natural environments of the One Piece World, let alone on Earth.
This was one of Lin Hao's outstanding contributions to S.P.E.A.R.; Vivre Cards were another of his major contributions.
Unlike the relatively widespread Den Den Mushi, only four people in the entire world knew the secret of the Vivre Cards: Lin Hao, Zheng Xian, Zheng Xian's direct superior, and Zheng Xian's former superior.
None of those four could possibly betray them, because even if they did, they could not gain greater benefits than they already had.
The value of Vivre Cards to an intelligence organization went without saying. Besides indicating an agent's direction, they could accurately reflect an agent's condition of life.
Once a Vivre Card showed signs of burning, it meant the agent was in danger. Once it burned away completely, it meant the agent was dead.
This technology would completely prevent hostile organizations from sending "impostors" to infiltrate them. It could also be used to feed false intelligence to the enemy and deal them a devastating blow.
These two technologies were truly divine tools for agents.
While promoting the Den Den Mushi, Lin Hao demonstrated the function of Vivre Cards to Zheng Xian and proposed a plan to make one for every agent. After Zheng Xian reported it to his direct superior, the plan was approved.
Thus, under the pretense of medical examinations, S.P.E.A.R. collected the nails and hair of every agent, including overseas agents and undercover personnel. Lin Hao personally spent years creating all 150,000 Vivre Cards.
After the Vivre Cards were completed, they were stored in this sealed warehouse beneath Zheng Xian's office. Only those four people knew this warehouse existed.
The agent files stored here were the most complete and accurate. The other archive located in the headquarters fortress was merely a decoy placed in plain sight. Although its information was also genuine, it lacked much important intelligence.
In other words, even Cheng Yi, the former head of the Americas Branch, had not known that headquarters possessed Vivre Card technology. How could he have avoided it?
Several months earlier, Zheng Xian received a video call from Cheng Yi. It had been Cheng Yi's final moments before death. He briefly reported that the Americas Branch had suffered a devastating blow overnight, then destroyed the Den Den Mushi.
Zheng Xian did not see Cheng Yi's death. Only after immediately descending to this warehouse did he personally witness Cheng Yi's Vivre Card burn away in an instant.
After all, the Cheng Yi seen in the video could have been fake, possibly someone in disguise—such as the Skrulls, who had arrived on Earth in the nineties and been recruited by Black Nick Fury. It was also possible that Cheng Yi himself had betrayed his country.
Only after personally seeing Cheng Yi's Vivre Card burn to ash, and after Lin Hao repeatedly assured him that the Vivre Card technology had no loopholes, did Zheng Xian confirm Cheng Yi's death and rule out the possibility that he had betrayed his country.
The S.P.E.A.R. Americas Branch had been devastated overnight, and its leader had died. Such a crushing defeat was exceedingly rare even in Zheng Xian's decades-long career as an agent.
No matter how capable Nick Fury was, he could never have achieved such results without an insider's help.
That was why, after Lin Hao went to America, he did not immediately contact the surviving agents who had narrowly escaped disaster. Instead, he had been busy establishing his own network of connections.
His caution had been necessary, because last night, he had personally seen "Cheng Yi" walk into that bar.
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