Chapter 115: The Bait

What is the future like?

This is a question that almost all sentient beings ponder. If one does not gaze toward the future or labor to build it, what difference is there between a sentient being and livestock? Yet, the future rarely unfolds as people wish. Just as many scripts are destined to be tragedies, the moment certain fortunate souls catch a glimpse of the script, an irresistible urge to rewrite the future takes root.

Rewriting a script is like opening a blind box. You never know what consequences each modification will bring.

And every change that appears to be a turn for the better—does it quietly accumulate unpredictable events? It is much like blindly building a dam across a long river; while it may indeed regulate drought and flooding for a time, every time the reservoir fills, countless layers of silt and sand pile up on the riverbed, hidden from direct view. These accumulations may seem insignificant for a moment, but one day, they will trigger a great flood—a cataclysmic deluge capable of destroying the world.

The apocalypse is the result; the accumulation is the process.

Lan Yi, who held intelligence from another channel, was deeply perplexed. He had already unraveled most of the situation within the Artificial God Realm 2055, but one matter remained beyond his grasp.

"A loop?"

After Juno and Lin Cheng rushed to Ma Mei’s residence and heard this unexpected revelation, they fell into deep thought. If a loop truly existed, the situation might be far more troublesome than any of them had estimated.

"So, simply because of a suspicion, you who are supposed to trust one another as comrades had a violent brawl and nearly tore apart an elderly person's living room?" Lin Cheng adjusted his glasses, sighing with feigned admiration at the shattered sofa and the circular crater in the floor.

"Don't spout nonsense. Old Demon Lan and I were only sparring, it was this chuunibyou who couldn't control his power and let it rip," Li Yang immediately deflected the blame.

"How irritating, you mongrel, how dare you—" Wang Aojia attempted to argue back.

"Enough. Both of you, shut up." Lan Yi cut everyone off. "As temporary teammates, I don't expect perfect cooperation, but for heaven's sake, try to act like human beings."

Once Lan Yi spoke, everyone fell silent.

Psionic cultivators respect strength above all else. Do not be fooled by their seemingly abstract or eccentric behavior; that was merely them using gentle methods to test the bottom line of Lan Yi’s sanity. If someone else were acting as team leader and failed to suppress them, they would soon witness their fierce, or even brutal, nature.

"You start. Give us the sequence of events regarding your attack," Lan Yi directed, pointing at Lin Cheng.

Lin Cheng spoke concisely, recounting the encounter he and Juno had experienced. Initially, they had set out to investigate Xu Tianze’s interpersonal relationships. At first, everything seemed normal; whether it was Juno’s interference with thought patterns or Lin Cheng’s memory manipulation, they were able to extract information from the minds of ordinary people with ease. Naturally, they had been brash and heavy-handed in their actions.

This was a common flaw among psychic-type psionic cultivators: playing with minds until they lost their own sense of humanity.

Their rough interference with thought patterns quickly met with resistance. Some people’s memories seemed to deviate from reality; when their memories, contradicting the actual world, were forcibly pulled to the surface, those individuals nearly transformed into ghosts on the spot.

If it had ended there, Juno and Lin Cheng could have handled it easily. But these humans, restrained by some unknown mechanism, did not transform into ghosts due to memory corruption or emotional collapse. Much like Ma Mei, they would experience a brief moment of chaos before losing their memories and returning to normal. Instead, it was Juno and Lin Cheng who, in that instant, glimpsed a future apocalypse, where massive ghosts launched a sudden assault upon them.

Just like that, they were unreasonably dragged into the future.

What followed was simple. Juno and Lin Cheng spent a brief time in the Shanghai of 2085. Before they could conduct a detailed investigation, they were assaulted by an overwhelming swarm of ruins-dwelling ghosts, mixed with attacks from the innate weapons of the Obsessed.

Before they could slaughter many ghosts, Juno and the others were thrown back to the present.

Though their time there was short, through newspapers, reconnaissance of firepower, and terrain scanning, they had obtained significant intelligence. In particular, the information pried from certain minds revealed that before his resignation, Xu Tianze had clearly engaged in conversations with specific individuals and had utilized channels through colleagues and superiors to investigate them.

These people were definitely the breakthrough point. Even if they were not the Obsessed themselves, they were certainly connected to them.

"It seems we have mastered another method for quickly cutting into the future of this Artificial God Realm: forcibly summoning certain memories will draw the attention of ghosts from the future. And now, we have this." Lan Yi gestured to the perfectly still sculpture on the table.

"Our next actions will be much safer."

Reconnaissance, tactical planning, and then striking like thunder to thoroughly crush the enemy. This was the favorite, most simple, and effective workflow for psionic cultivators.

They had already completed eighty percent of the reconnaissance. The remaining twenty percent naturally involved the "Omnipotent Wish-Machines" of the Artificial God Realm 2055. Never underestimate the power unleashed by an Omnipotent Wish-Machine and its mastery of information within this realm—after all, it was the fastest tool for a psionic cultivator to mobilize resources and manpower.

Qian Yaoyao was very wealthy. Through a simple contact, Lan Yi could judge that her background was not merely about being rich. Regardless of the civilization, when a tycoon becomes wealthy to a certain degree, they inevitably become entangled with Omnipotent Wish-Machines.

By handing the atomic clock to Qian Yaoyao, and with Juno’s suggestion, she would surely report the matter to the core figures of her family, attempting to complete the task Lan Yi had set. As long as she acted on this, it would serve as a signal.

A signal transmitted to the upper echelons of the Canglong Federation. If the Federation had any projects related to Lan Yi’s hypothesis, they would certainly reach out to Qian Yaoyao. If they had no such atomic clock monitoring project, they would still be curious about the purpose behind these actions. Lan Yi had cast his bait.

As the psionic cultivators operated recklessly throughout Shanghai, and as Qian Yaoyao dazedly mentioned Lan Yi’s request to her family, the gargantuan entity known as the Canglong Federation of the Artificial God Realm 2055 began to stir with astonishing efficiency.

Within just twenty-four hours, a heavily armed squad acting under the personal warrant of the Federation President stormed into Qian Yaoyao’s home. Simultaneously, from the capital, another unit—a ghost squad with a higher security clearance that did not exist in the official records—boarded a military aircraft, equipped with pulse weapons specifically developed to target spiritual entities.

Lan Yi and his team, having made no attempt to conceal their identities, soon saw their files placed before an official codenamed Dr. Chen.