The countdown beacon on the back of the pocket watch, Ke'er draws his sword to block further investigation

Condensate dripped down the lintel of the heavy lead door and landed on Lynn's epaulets.

The palm-sized brass pocket watch lay in Lynn's bandaged palm, the frost on the metal casing melting from his body heat, seeping out dark water stains.

Ke'er took a step forward, his leather boots shattering the thin ice beneath his feet.

His gaze was fixed on the three letters engraved on the back of the pocket watch.

"Director Lynn, this is an item from TVA."

Ke'er's voice was low and slightly hoarse.

"Two years ago, during the major purge, the Stability Maintenance Office was responsible for clearing out all remnants of foreign influence. Any contraband bearing this label had to be confiscated and sealed on the spot by the Black Crow Guard."

Lynn didn't turn around; he simply ran his thumb along the uneven engravings on the edge of the watch case.

"Something that should have been physically Purification two years ago is now hanging on a dead person's hands."

Lynn turned around and showed the mask to Ke'er.

"The star orbit coordinates above point to the decompression chamber of the condensation circuit at the deepest level, six underground floors."

"That was an absolute blind spot on the blueprints drawn by your Black Crow Guard back then."

Ke'er's Adam's apple bobbed, and the knuckles of his fingers on the hilt of his sword turned white.

"The detailed rules for the large-scale purge were personally signed off by Director Hela. The sealing of some areas was for security reasons and did not require review by the Logistics Department."

"I'm not reviewing the confidentiality rules; I'm taking stock of the evidence of the rebellion."

Lynn put the pocket watch into the tactical pocket inside his trench coat.

"In thirty-six minutes, the star beacon connected to this pocket watch will send out a low-level pulse."

"Once the beacon is activated, the Bloodfang Fleet patrolling the perimeter can lock onto the resonant frequency of the defensive zone's Force Field."

"If a hole is torn in the space-based defense network, will it be blamed on Hela, or on you, Ke'er?"

The two Black Crow Honor Guard behind Ke'er simultaneously looked up, a hint of panic flashing in their eyes.

The Reconnaissance Satellite No. 7 on the perimeter of the defense zone has been Liaison Office monitored by the liaison office. If a physical leak occurs in the Force Field at this critical juncture, the Defense Zone Command and the Joint Conference will immediately shift the blame to the guarding troops.

Ke'er gritted his teeth and took half a step to the side in front of the door.

"Since it involves perimeter defense security, then you absolutely cannot go in alone."

"The Director's Office only has administrative verification authority, not armed raiding authority."

"According to regulations, any forced breach of a classified, high-risk area must be spearheaded by the Black Crow Guard."

Ke'er drew his sword from his waist; the half-foot-long Obsidian blade gleamed eerily in the dim passage.

The technical sergeant standing at the rear was so frightened that he huddled next to the electrical distribution box, barely daring to breathe.

Lynn stared at the sword blade blocking his path, his expression as indifferent as if he were looking at a rusty iron pipe.

"Commander Ke'er, your sword is a Class II standard part."

Lynn pointed to the slot on the hilt of the sword.

"The counterweight is three qian lighter, and there are traces of grinding off the markings on the inside of the cutting edge."

"The batch of Special Alloy sword blanks that were smuggled out of the Seventh Laboratory's scrap warehouse two years ago, batch number K-09."

"The delivery slip for that batch of goods was signed with your adjutant's name."

Ke'er's expression changed instantly.

The tip of the sword in his hand trembled almost imperceptibly.

"The Logistics Department's ledgers not only record canned goods and diesel fuel, but also every piece of iron billet whose whereabouts are unknown."

Lynn strode forward, heading straight towards the blade.

Ke'er instinctively tried to back away, but his boot heel slammed against the raised edge of the doorway with a dull thud.

Lynn stopped five centimeters from the tip of the sword, his gaze calmly piercing through the cold mist and landing on Ke'er's face.

"I need to go in and take down that beacon."

"You can choose to plunge the sword into my throat now, and then go explain to Hela why a sword blank that should have been scrapped two years ago is stuck in the neck of the head of the Director's Office."

"Or, take your men and guard the door, blocking my escape route for the next thirty-five minutes."

The corridor fell into a deathly silence, broken only by the faint hum of the exhaust fan blades cutting through the air.

Ke'er's cheek twitched twice.

He took a deep breath, the icy air making his lungs ache slightly.

He slowly lowered the tip of his sword, then with a backhand motion, sheathed it back into its scabbard at his waist, and stepped aside to make way for him.

"The Black Crow Guard only gave the Director thirty minutes."

Ke'er spoke coldly.

"When the time comes, if the self-destruct mechanism inside is triggered, I will manually blow up the entire shaft from the outside, in accordance with combat readiness regulations."

"That's enough."

Lynn pulled a high-gloss fluorescent stick from the technical sergeant's toolbox, casually snapped off the outer casing, and the pale green fluorescence diffused in the humid air.

He stepped over the skeleton lying in the crack of the door and squeezed sideways into the two-finger-wide gap in the lead door.

The temperature behind the door was suffocatingly low.

The steel grating underfoot was covered with a thick layer of a mixture of old engine oil and frost, making it sticky and slippery to walk on.

The air was filled with a high concentration of Ozone and the pungent smell of some kind of chemical preservative, which brought a burning, dry pain to the lungs when inhaled.

Lynn didn't rush forward.

He leaned against the concrete pillar behind the door, first taking out a simple gas filter from his waist pouch and inserting it into his nose, then pulling the broken Obsidian sword from his leg wraps and slowly slicing it through the air in front of him.

There is no infrared trigger wire, nor microwave reflection induction.

The Watchmaker was extremely confident in this area and didn't waste any of the usual traps and mechanisms at the entrance.

The overhead pipes hung down like withered vines, most of them hardened and cracked from the low temperature.

A metallic ticking sound came from the depths of darkness ahead, its steady rhythm unsettling.

Lynn moved quietly, her boots gliding silently along the blind spot of the wall.

After walking about forty meters, the passage suddenly opened up.

This is an abandoned six-story underground relay pump room, with four huge centrifugal water pumps lying horizontally in the center, their surfaces covered with brown rust patches.

In front of an abandoned experimental table at the innermost part, a faint red light was flashing rhythmically.

A metal instrument, about the size of a suitcase, was set up on the lab table.

The instrument's outer casing was pieced together from heavy lead plates, with rough welds at the joints, clearly indicating that it was a product of manual assembly using locally sourced materials.

A thick, black coaxial cable extends from the back of the instrument and connects directly to a high-voltage power transmission busbar above.

Lynn stopped five steps away.

He glanced down at his watch.

There are 28 minutes left until the end of the timer's count.

A mechanical ticker clock face is inlaid in the center of the suitcase, with red numbers mechanically flipping down one notch every second.

Below the dial, a semi-transparent crystal memory card is clearly visible.

That's not an ordinary military-grade Chip.

A faint yet highly recognizable dark red light flowed across the surface of the crystal, as if the blood of a living being was gently pumping within it.

The physical residual medium of Chaos Magic.

Lynn's pupils froze slightly.

He stepped forward, grasped the broken sword with his right hand (wearing a tactical glove), and gently pried open the ventilation grille on the side of the enclosure.

Using the light from the cold light stick, he could see the internal circuitry.

This is not a simple beacon station that transmits signals outwards at all.

The black coaxial cable wasn't drawing power downwards; instead, it was using the grounding circuit on the sixth underground level to inject high-frequency noise in the reverse direction into the main reactor on the fifth underground level of the Department of Technology.

The root cause of Wanda's three previous reactor shutdowns lies here.

Someone is using this machine to remotely steal the magic overflowing from the reactor, and then using it to physically etch certain data inside the crystal.

Lynn's gaze moved down along the base of the instrument.

In the lower right corner of the metal casing, a line of small characters was soldered on with an extremely fine soldering iron.

That was a transfer order code:

[SEC-L-03-EXT-EXECUTE]

It was the final activation prefix of the batch of fake, scrapped card cores that Gwen Stacy had seized in the first confidential cabinet.

At the end of that line of code was a private electronic signature.

Lynn moved closer, getting a better look at the pattern on the miniature seal.

That wasn't Hela's Black Crow, nor Wanda's Runes, nor Natasha's Code.

It was a hexagonal spiderweb mark made up of three intersecting thin lines.

Lynn's fingers tightened slightly around the broken sword.

Just then, the mechanical gears inside the suitcase suddenly made a crisp snapping sound.

The dial, which had been steadily counting down, suddenly jumped five minutes, dropping directly to the last two minutes.

At the same time, a deafening roar came from deep underground pipes, as if the water had been instantly sucked out.