At the closing stage of the surprise attack plan, the captains on the moon were facing a choice between life and death. At the same time, something abnormal had appeared in DQ City...
At headquarters, Liu Xiaoyu hugged a thick stack of documents as she hurried toward the conference room. Yang Jian was on the moon and could not be contacted, so she had been temporarily transferred to another post.
Along the way, she saw many staff members carefully supporting a thin thread wrapped in gold. The thread was exceptionally long; Liu Xiaoyu had already run past at least three corridors, yet still had not seen its end.
“Xiaoyu! Be careful! This thing is extremely dangerous!”
A middle-aged man in work clothes stopped her.
“Ah, Uncle Li, I have a very urgent situation to report to Professor Wang, but all communications at headquarters have been shut down. I can only run over.”
“Professor Wang ordered headquarters communications shut down for half an hour precisely because of this.”
Uncle Li pointed at the thin thread wrapped in gold on the floor and continued in a low voice, “Grade-C supernatural item: the Ghost Telephone. They say the ghost from the Ghost Call came out of this.”
Liu Xiaoyu was startled after hearing this and instinctively took a step back. She had seen that telephone during the out-of-control incident before, but she had never imagined that such a long, thin thread trailed behind it.
She had always been very afraid of supernatural phenomena that spread through sound. The incident with Tong Qian had killed more than a dozen operators, and it was still vivid in her mind.
“Let’s go. Time is tight. I’ll take you there.”
Uncle Li took the documents from Liu Xiaoyu’s hands and led her quickly through the dense crowd.
After turning a corner, a large conference room appeared ahead. From the look of it, Wang Xiaoming had already converted it into a temporary combat command center.
Cao Yanhua stood in the center, directing a group of staff members.
“Be careful! Don’t be so rough!”
“Install the gold base first!”
“You, come here! Help him support it!”
They were carefully placing an old-fashioned hand-cranked telephone inside a transparent golden box. Wang Xiaoming was currently sitting in front of a computer in the corner, his brows tightly furrowed, as though he had run into some difficult problem.
With no time to think further, Liu Xiaoyu immediately took the documents back from Uncle Li and ran up to Wang Xiaoming.
“Professor Wang! The snow in DQ City suddenly went out of control! Cao Yang and Liu San have both lost contact. Because of the intermittent signal interference from the Ghost Ship, the satellite system has no way to locate either of them.”
“What did you say?!”
Cao Yanhua’s expression changed after hearing this. He had just raised his hand, intending to slam the table, but after glancing at that old hand-cranked telephone, he lowered it again and said in a deep voice,
“At such a critical moment, DQ City actually went out of control?! Could it have been caused by people from the King Organization?”
“No,” Wang Xiaoming said.
“With Cao Yang’s abilities, even if he couldn’t win, he should still be able to escape. Yet he hasn’t returned to headquarters. It seems they’ve encountered a predicament. Originally, I planned to arrange for a captain to handle the abnormality in DQ City after the surprise attack plan ended, but from the looks of it, we won’t make it in time. Liu Xiaoyu, check which persons in charge can still move right now.”
Liu Xiaoyu nodded heavily.
“Understood!”
She opened the thick files in her hands and, pointing to the names of each person in charge, read them aloud.
“Lin Bei... suspected to have been attacked by a consciousness-type fierce ghost. Currently on the bus suppressing his own state of revival... unable to move.”
“Zhou Deng... busy handling the ghosts that escaped from Ghost Lake after the hurricane went out of control in the coastal region. No time.”
“Wen Zhong... according to last week’s report records, he went to a village and still hasn’t come out. Unable to contact.”
“Captain Jiang Shangbai returned to the Friends Circle after failing to be selected for the captain plan. He is currently in Dajing City handling the fierce ghosts that went out of control earlier.”
“Ai Li... after killing a core member of the King Organization, he has been staying in their tribe to recover from his injuries. Unable to move.”
“Sun Rui... guarding Dahan City while investigating a letter. He refused headquarters’ request for assistance...”
“Zhang Lei... Gao Ming, Chen Yi, Zhong Shan...”
Liu Xiaoyu flipped through the files for a full five minutes, but there actually was not a single person in charge who could spare himself. There had simply been too many supernatural incidents recently. Starting from the loss of control of the three major S-rank fierce ghosts in Dajing City, supernatural incidents had been increasing almost exponentially. Cities were falling one after another, and headquarters could no longer take care of everything.
“Professor Wang, we... we have no manpower left...”
Wang Xiaoming thought for a moment, then said, “No. There’s still one team.”
“Still one?”
Liu Xiaoyu froze for a moment, then quickly reacted and said in delight, “Professor Wang, you mean those ghost controllers from Yang Jian’s team?!”
She knew Yang Jian very well. Day and night, while eating and sleeping, Liu Xiaoyu could practically hear about him, and she was also very familiar with those teammates of his.
“That’s right.” Wang Xiaoming nodded.
“After the Starving Ghost incident, Dachang City’s safety factor is now very high. Our security department has made calculations. Even without a person in charge, Dachang City will have at least twelve hours of safety.”
“But...”
Liu Xiaoyu’s expression sank again.
“The people on that team will only obey Yang Jian’s orders. Especially that Zhang Han. Last time, he directly hung up on headquarters’ call and even said something like, if we had a problem, we should go find his captain.”
Wang Xiaoming took out a phone.
“I’ll arrange for someone to negotiate with them. At a time like this, they don’t have the right to refuse. Even if Yang Jian were here, he would send them out to act.”
Cao Yanhua walked over at this moment and patted Liu Xiaoyu on the shoulder.
“Xiaoyu, go get busy first. It will be very dangerous here from now on.”
“O-okay.”
After saying this, Liu Xiaoyu withdrew. Before leaving, she looked back. She did not know what would happen next, but there was no fear in the eyes of the people in the conference room.
No longer lingering, Liu Xiaoyu once again trotted toward the next location. Right now, she still had a huge pile of matters waiting for her to handle. With headquarters communications cut off, many things still had to be communicated through the most primitive method of sending messages.
DQ City.
“Zhang Han, what do you think love is...?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then do you think the captain will fall in love with me?”
“No.”
“Hey! Can’t you say something nice? With my figure, no matter where I go, there’d be a pile of men chasing after me.”
“Um... Huang Ziya, I also think he won’t.”
“Feng Quan, shut up! Go sit up front! Before the next mission, can you please take a proper bath first?!”
“I don’t want to sit with you either. You’re all artificial enhancements from head to toe. Tong Qian, move aside. I’ll scoot over.”
“Hey, don’t squeeze me. You’re getting mud all over my hair.”
“Feng Quan! All the dirt on your body is flying into Daddy Bear’s mouth!”
“Stop arguing. Everyone quiet down. We’re almost there.”
Cold wind poured into the car through the cracks in the window, making several of them shiver.
“Ptooey, ptooey. Feng Quan, how many days has it been since you last bathed?”
“I haven’t washed since I took control of this ghost. What about it?”
“Roll the window up! I said roll the window up!”