Interrogation

Heat waves continued to scorch the earth.

With his face pressed against the asphalt, Lin Mo felt himself inching closer to "medium well" with every passing second.

"Hey, buddy, could you flip me over? This side's about to burn."

"Shut up!"

The soldier pinning him down barked under his breath, pressing even harder.

Lin Mo grimaced in pain and stopped struggling altogether.

About five or six minutes later, the roar of a diesel engine approached from the distance.

A military chemical-defense vehicle bearing an orange-yellow triangular marking sped out through the military compound's gates and braked to a halt twenty meters from the gemstone.

The doors swung open, and three chemical-defense soldiers in fully sealed protective suits jumped out. Carrying various detection instruments, they strode toward the gemstone.

The lead soldier aimed his Geiger counter at the gemstone first.

Just make do with it; the image I generated didn't turn out very well.

Everyone held their breath.

"Beep... beep..."

The counter emitted slow, regular beeps, indicating normal background radiation.

The lead soldier paused.

He glanced down at the numbers on the instrument's display, then back up at the stone on the ground, which was brazenly radiating a fluorescent glow.

The readings didn't match what his eyes were seeing.

He changed angles, bringing the Geiger counter almost flush against the gemstone's surface.

"Beep... beep..."

Still background radiation. Nothing above normal.

The soldier took out a portable gamma spectrometer to double-check.

The result was the same.

The stone's radioactivity levels were safe for humans.

"Reporting!" The lead soldier turned toward the officer, his voice muffled by the filter in his protective mask.

"Preliminary testing complete. No known type of ionizing radiation exceeds normal levels. Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation are all within the environmental background range."

"It is not a known radioactive substance harmful to humans."

The officer froze for a second.

It wasn't radioactive?

Then how the hell was it glowing on its own?

He instinctively looked at the stone on the ground. Its fluorescent green light remained steady.

"You're certain? Check again!"

"We've already cross-checked with two instruments. The readings are consistent."

The chemical-defense soldier sounded utterly certain.

The officer fell silent for several seconds, his expression shifting from tension to bewilderment.

In his twenty years of military service, he had genuinely never encountered anything that glowed on its own without being radioactive.

In nature, bioluminescence required luciferase, while minerals needed persistent phosphors or ultraviolet excitation to glow.

Yet this thing in front of him kept shining steadily on its own, even after the sun had set.

That defied science.

But that wasn't something a field-grade officer in a local military district needed to worry about.

There was only one thing he could be certain of: this stone of unknown origin needed to be reported up the chain.

"Secure the stone," the officer ordered.

"Put it in a lead container. Even if it isn't radioactive, don't touch it with your bare hands."

"And that man..." He glanced at Lin Mo, still pinned to the ground, his asphalt-scorched face bright red and full of grievance and innocence.

The corner of the officer's mouth twitched.

"Take him inside for now. Put him in an interrogation room."

"Contact the intelligence section. Have them send someone to question him."

"Yes, sir!"

Lin Mo was finally hauled off the ground.

He moved his nearly dislocated shoulders and hissed through a pained grimace.

And just like that, Lin Mo entered the military compound in a way he had never imagined.

"Sir, that stone really isn't anything dangerous... I brought it back from another world."

"Cut the chatter. Behave yourself."

The soldier escorting him gave him no chance to explain.

Lin Mo could only shut his mouth and follow obediently.

At least I'm inside.

No matter how I got in, now that I'm here, I'll have a chance to explain everything.

Once they test that stone, they'll have the truth in black and white. The data will speak for me.

It was considerably cooler inside the military compound.

The air-conditioning system was clearly a high-end military-grade setup, keeping the corridors at around thirty degrees Celsius.

In an apocalypse of global warming, it practically felt like stepping into heaven.

Lin Mo was led into a drab gray interrogation room.

Concrete walls, an iron table, iron chairs.

A fluorescent light overhead buzzed with electric current.

It couldn't have been more standard-issue.

He was seated in an iron chair, and a pair of handcuffs was fastened around his wrists to make his situation clear.

A soldier tossed him a bottle of water, then left.

The iron door clanged shut behind him.

Lin Mo unscrewed the cap and gulped down more than half the bottle.

The room-temperature water flowing down his parched throat felt better than any heavenly nectar.

He caught his breath, leaned back in the chair, and began sorting through his thoughts.

Although events had veered wildly off course since he woke up, the outcome so far wasn't actually bad.

The gemstone was already in military hands. Testing it was only a matter of time.

With Blue Star's current level of technology, they should be able to determine that it wasn't from Blue Star.

They would discover that, even at the elemental level, the stone didn't match any known substance on Blue Star.

At that point, the military would have no choice but to reconsider his claim about "another world."

Provided, of course, that they didn't mistake him for a thief who had stolen a sample from some secret laboratory.

Lin Mo felt a headache coming on.

What he needed most right now was someone who could speak on his behalf.

Or rather, someone willing to listen to him seriously instead of treating him as a lunatic driven mad by the apocalypse.

He waited for about half an hour.

The interrogation room's iron door opened again.

Two people entered.

A man and a woman.

The man was in his early thirties, with a buzz cut, wearing a military service uniform with field-grade rank insignia on his shoulders.

He had a stern face, sharp eyes, and a commanding presence.

The woman was about the same age, with a ponytail and a military uniform. Her rank wasn't low either, and she carried a silver equipment case.

The officer pulled out the iron chair opposite him and sat down, in no hurry to speak.

He opened a tablet, quickly scanned Lin Mo's basic information, then raised his head.

"Lin Mo, twenty-three years old, registered resident of Shenzhen. Both parents deceased. Unemployed."

He read each word distinctly, then fixed his gaze on Lin Mo's face.

"At 16:47 this afternoon, you ignored a sentry's warning, forcibly approached a restricted military area, and displayed a luminous mineral of unknown origin."

"You claimed this mineral came from 'another world.'"

"You claimed to have discovered a new world with elves and magic."

The officer set down the tablet.

"Is all of that accurate?"

"Yes. Every word." Lin Mo nodded, his voice firm.

The officer's expression didn't change.

"We've seen plenty of minerals of unknown origin, and plenty of lunatics claiming to have discovered a new continent."

"What makes you any different?"

The question stumped Lin Mo.

He really was a professional interrogator.

Fancy stories meant nothing to someone like this. They would only undermine my credibility.

He needed the strongest evidence to prove his claim. Fortunately, he had prepared for this, and said:

"The test results."

Lin Mo looked the officer straight in the eyes.

"You must have already run preliminary tests on that stone."

"My guess is that, after ruling out radioactivity, you've already started analyzing its composition."

"I believe you won't find its elemental makeup anywhere in your database."

"Its composition doesn't match any known substance on Blue Star."

"That is what makes me different!"