Infiltration

On the car ride back from the Special Affairs Bureau, Bai Ye received an encrypted communication—a preliminary alert from the General Headquarters Intelligence Analysis Center: "Scattered synchronized anomalies in non-special behavior have been detected across multiple cities. Pattern pending analysis. Marked. Please monitor relevant developments in your area."

Bai Ye stared at the brief message on the screen. Thinking of the taunting sound system from earlier and Qing Wuyan's parents' condition, the outline of an organization far larger and more sinister than a lone infiltrator seemed to be slowly emerging from deep waters.

He glanced at Hua Yin, who sat beside him in silence, looking out the window.

What this boy had gotten involved in was likely far more than the betrayal of a single classmate.

"Psychologist..." Bai Ye silently repeated the codename, his gaze sharp as a blade about to leave its sheath.

It seemed a net had been quietly cast long ago. And Youcheng might have been only one of its nodes.

Soon after.

After Director Liu encrypted and reported the intelligence regarding the suspected appearance of Psychologist, synchronized behavioral anomalies across multiple cities, and the provocations and concealment surrounding Qing Wuyan or whatever stood behind him, the entire Ghost City Branch began operating like a precision war machine, its internal gears meshing and accelerating.

The visible alert level was raised, patrols became more frequent, and defensive forces in key areas were doubled.

Behind the scenes, intelligence screening, secondary verification of personnel backgrounds, and reverse investigations into possible infiltration routes were also underway at full speed.

An invisible tension filled the air. Even the cafeteria auntie serving meals could sense that the special agents passing through today had sharper eyes and more hurried steps than usual.

Yet like most defensive measures, this heightened vigilance was focused mainly outward, guarding against threats from the city's shadows or the unknown beyond.

As for the inside—especially the "resolved" areas already under strict surveillance—attention was inevitably somewhat diverted.

Third underground level of the Special Affairs Bureau, detention area.

The lighting here was always a bleak, cold white. The air circulation system gave off a low hum, mixed with the faint scent of disinfectant.

Heavy alloy doors separated the narrow cells. Spirit-pattern shackles and suppression collars were standard equipment, ensuring that detained Awakened individuals or dangerous persons could not mobilize their spiritual power.

The severely injured Scarface King was held alone in a special observation cell farther inside.

His injuries were grave. Though treatment had saved his life, he was still far from recovering his combat strength.

His limbs and torso were wrapped in bandages and secured to a specially designed medical bed, leaving him capable of only extremely limited movement.

The monitoring equipment beside the bed flashed steadily, displaying his weak but stable vital signs.

His eyes were closed, seemingly asleep, but his brows were tightly furrowed. The muscles in his face twitched from time to time, revealing pain and irritability that gave him no peace even in shallow sleep.

At the edge of the cell's ventilation duct, a thread of milky-white light flashed almost imperceptibly.

Then, a tiny white spider no larger than a fingernail, crystalline as jade, squeezed through an almost microscopic gap in the grate and silently landed on the cold metal wall.

It remained still for a moment, its head turning slightly. Its eight simple eyes seemed to scan the cell: the positions of the surveillance cameras, the frequency of the vital-sign monitor, and Scarface King on the bed.

Then it moved.

It crawled straight down the wall, reached the floor, and slipped along the darkest crack near the base of the wall like a flowing white thread, swiftly approaching the medical bed.

It made no sound as it moved, even avoiding the faint patches of reflected light that might appear on the floor.

If you come across advertisements asking, "Are you a real person?" just ignore and close them. Never scan the code or send a text message!

It climbed onto the foot of the bed, made its way up the metal frame, circled around the wrapped bandages, and finally reached Scarface King's rough hand, exposed beyond the bandages and covered in calluses and scars.

Scarface King noticed nothing and remained in his painful shallow sleep.

The little white spider raised its forelimbs, and a denser glimmer of light flashed around its mouthparts.

Then it aimed at a relatively shallow old scar on the back of Scarface King's hand and gently "pricked" him.

The movement was as slight as the bite of a mosquito.

The muscles on the back of Scarface King's hand twitched instinctively, but he did not wake.

The glimmer from the spider's mouthparts flowed through the "puncture point" into Scarface King's blood vessels and swiftly vanished.

It was neither poison nor destructive energy, but a highly compressed, strange spiritual-energy code carrying specific instructions.

After completing the injection, the little spider did not linger. It swiftly withdrew its mouthparts and crawled down from the bed the way it had come, moving even faster than before.

It did not return to the ventilation duct. Instead, it slipped through the tiny gap beneath the cell door and entered the public corridor of the detention area.

The corridor was silent, with only the faintest hum of electronic equipment drifting from the distant guard post.

The surveillance cameras turned slowly, but the spider's route seemed precisely calculated. It always remained in the cameras' blind spots or at the edges of their rotation, speeding along the corners where the shadows were deepest.

Its destination was clear—not the exit, but another section of the detention area: the ordinary holding cells.

Most of those held there were involved in black-market dealings or disturbances of public order but posed relatively low threats. Among them were... some of Scarface King's subordinates who had been arrested earlier, as well as Li Fu, the rich second-generation brat who had destroyed the detection pylon for Scarface King.

And Chen Xu, who was also being detained.

Like a ghostly messenger, the little spider precisely and silently carried out the "delivery" task it had been assigned within this heavily guarded underground prison.

The "information" it carried was not meant for Scarface King alone.

And in the special observation cell, about a minute later.

On the medical bed, Scarface King—whose brows had been tightly furrowed in restless sleep—suddenly began moving his eyes rapidly beneath his eyelids.

He did not wake, but his expression gradually changed.

The pain and irritability slowly subsided, replaced by an eerie calm. The corner of his mouth even twitched ever so slightly and unnaturally, as if he had unconsciously received and "understood" some command.

A few nearly indistinguishable fluctuations appeared in the vital-sign graphs on the monitoring equipment, but they did not trigger the alarm threshold. They were closer to subtle physiological responses caused by changes in deep brainwave activity than to any worsening of his injuries.

Everything fell silent again.

Only the bleak white light shone coldly upon everything in the cell, leaving no record of the silent "visit" and "injection" that had just taken place.

The shadows underground were moving.

And aboveground, the Youcheng Special Administration Bureau, fully preparing for battle, had yet to realize that a "little spider" from Psychologist had already quietly extended its feelers into what seemed to be the strongest inner core of this fortress.

A crisis had never had only one face.

When all eyes focused on external enemies, the worms within might already have begun gnawing at the foundation.