A request for a meeting. At the highest level.
He closed the document and set it at the corner of the desk.
No response. No rush.
They weren't the ones who needed to worry.
He turned to Chen Siyao's livestream on the screen. In the feed, the girl stood at the edge of the Floating Island, looking up at the dome.
Her eyes were red.
Old Zhao watched Chen Siyao's feed for a few seconds.
"How old is she?" he asked.
"Nineteen. A college freshman," his aide answered.
Deputy Director Zhao said nothing more. He pushed the cold coffee aside, stood up, and rubbed his face.
"Keep watching."
He left the conference room. The corridor was quiet, lit by white fluorescent lights. After a dozen or so steps, he stopped at the window at the end of the corridor.
There was no view outside. The windows in the underground Command Center were fake.
An LED panel embedded in the concrete wall simulated the weather outside... today was overcast.
Old Zhao stood quietly before the fake window for a while.
97.32%. High enough. But not a hundred percent.
The Taiyin Realm.
Chen Siyao had no idea how long she had been standing there.
The spirit stones above the dome had already been dimmed. It was "evening." Day and night in the Taiyin Realm were artificially controlled... bright spirit stones meant day, dim spirit stones meant night.
Her legs were a little numb.
But she didn't move.
Yang Wanqing sat on a rock beside her. She had changed positions seven or eight times... sitting cross-legged, hugging her knees, slumping over her knees, leaning against the stone wall with her head tilted back. Nothing felt comfortable.
It wasn't her body that felt uncomfortable. It was her heart.
She had never been this quiet