Wang Lan had a pleasant dream, but Wang Qianfeng and his brothers in the Intelligence Departnt couldn’t sleep at all.
Upon returning to the Tianjian Bureau headquarters, Wang Qianfeng imdiately notified the intelligence analysts, the cryptographers, and the head of the Communications Departnt to rush back to the Tianjian Bureau to work overti.
After finishing this round of calls, Wang Qianfeng finally had a chance to catch his breath and take a sip of water.
Looking at the clock on the wall, it was already two o’clock in the morning. After so hesitation, Wang Qianfeng still picked up the phone and dialed the number.
"Hello!" A clear and authoritative voice answered the phone.
"Director, you haven’t slept yet?"
"Haven’t slept? Don’t you see what ti it is? What’s the matter?"
"There’s a situation that I think is necessary to report to you. We may have... identified the entire spy group, including Chang Yu, totaling thirteen people."
"Wait a minute! What did you say? Not only do you have the latest leads based on the clues left by Chang Yu, but you’ve also identified the other mbers of the spy group?"
"It seems so! We just haven’t decrypted the content of their encrypted ssages yet, so... we can’t be one hundred percent certain, but I’m ninety percent confident."
"Are you at the bureau right now?"
"Yes!"
"I’m coming over right away."
In less than half an hour, Lu Zhao, along with the heads of the Action Departnt, the Law Enforcent Departnt, the Communications Departnt, and other key departnts, had all returned to the Tianjian Bureau.
"Director!" Wang Qianfeng hurried forward. "Here’s what happened..."
"Let’s talk in the eting room," Lu Zhao quickly interjected.
Once the five high-ranking officials from the Suzhou City Tianjian Bureau were in the conference room and the signal jamming device was activated, Lu Zhao nodded to Wang Qianfeng. "Feng, explain."
"The significant breakthrough in the case was discovered by our departnt’s Wang Lan."
"Him again?" Li Weixin interrupted in surprise. "This... this is too lucky, right? It’s only been a few days! The Demon Clan stumbled into his hands again? This ti, if you say he’s not the child of fate, fuck, I wouldn’t believe it. Can anyone be this lucky?"
"Weixin, let Feng finish," Lu Zhao said in a deep voice.
"Director, this ti it wasn’t all luck. Wang Lan noticed a loophole in our surveillance and screening. This is my oversight. Tis have changed, but our way of thinking is still stuck in the last era, and that’s not right.
In the last era, our contacts relied mostly on telephones, and secret contacts were usually made by arranging a eting place. Now, with the internet so developed, there’s no need to et at a specific location.
It could be a completely nonexistent website, or logging into a page that almost nobody else would.
Today, Wang Lan realized that our focus was too much on reality, so he went to the Penguin Corporation branch to extract Chang Yu’s network traffic usage for the past six months. He discovered that Chang Yu visited military forums and political forums to browse information.
This led to the discovery of a strange contact on Chang Yu’s Penguin account."
As he spoke, he held up a photo of a middle-aged man in his fifties or sixties. "This man’s na is Qin Jiaqing, currently a security guard at Yihua Garden. On April first, he added Chang Yu as a friend through a ’people nearby’ search.
Each ti, he added dozens of people and sent them advertisent ssages, but almost everyone blocked him after being harassed just once.
Over the past six months, he sent about a dozen long advertisent ssages, of around a thousand words each, to Chang Yu. Wang Lan thought that any normal person would have blocked him after one such ssage, but Chang Yu didn’t; instead, he acted as if he hadn’t seen them.
This raised Wang Lan’s suspicions. After logging into the back-end of Qin Jiaqing’s Penguin account with the help of technicians from the Penguin Corporation, he found twelve others in situations similar to Chang Yu’s: they had neither blocked him, nor muted him, nor had they responded. The content of the advertisents was similar but not identical. I suspect these advertisents are instructions for them.
These twelve people, all like Chang Yu, suddenly started showing interest in politics and military matters at so point and rarely interacted with others.
Thus, Wang Lan inferred that these twelve people, along with their superior Qin Jiaqing, constitute a spy group."
When Wang Qianfeng had finished explaining, there was only one thought in the minds of everyone present.
Perfect!
ticulous deduction, a solid chain of evidence—there was no doubt about it. This was definitive proof.
And then, in an instant, everyone felt a tremor within.
A complete Demon Clan spy group had been identified without them taking action or exposing themselves?
What was this? A great achievent!
It was a much more substantial accomplishnt than that ti in Red Maple Forest Park.
At Red Maple, if the Tianjian Bureaus in other affiliated cities were to get envious, they could still say it was luck, a re coincidence. But this ti, it couldn’t just be chalked up to luck.
This was a case of legitimately digging them out, particularly a spy group in a state of hiding—an act of monuntal significance.
If they successfully dismantled it, there would be nurous benefits. Speaking of the larger implications, Suzhou City had set a precedent by taking the initiative, successfully preparing in advance and nipping the threat in the bud before the enemy could even bare its fangs.
This would have to be recorded as a significant entry in their list of achievents.
Speaking practically, bonuses, allowances, military funds, and dividend shares would all increase as a result. Jealousy from others would be pointless. Jealous? Then bring out so real battle achievents.
Therefore, the five colonels in black laughed.
"Director, should we grab them?" Li Weixin was eager.
Lu Zhao lowered his head in thought, and after a while, looked up at Wang Qianfeng. "Feng, what do you think?"
"Let’s keep them on the line for a bit. They’re already in our grasp, so there’s no fear of them escaping. Keep a close watch. There must be more than this one spy team in Suzhou City. Let’s see if we can pull more leads from them.
Plus, the Magical Martial Artist situation is likely their group’s doing. So far, we know nothing about them; we hope to find a breakthrough regarding them through this team.
Of course, we should also learn from Chang Yu’s incident. If they show the slightest unusual move, seize them imdiately."
Everyone present was an experienced special agent with a keen sense of sll. The urge to arrest them imdiately was simply the impulse to claim credit first. If one analyzed rationally, Wang Qianfeng’s suggestion was what would maximize the benefits.
Once they were in their grasp, there was no fear of them getting away. Even if they managed to slip past surveillance, they couldn’t escape the omnipresent monitoring in Suzhou City.
"Then... that’s settled. Feng, surveillance is up to you. Make sure to be careful and cautious. I don’t want to see a second incident like Chang Yu’s."
"Understood!"
"That Wang Lan... really is sothing..." After the eting, Lu Zhao suddenly said with a light laugh, "He hasn’t even started his duty at the Tianjian Bureau yet, and he’s already racked up a series of rits. If we wrap this up smoothly, he won’t be able to escape the lion’s share of the credit. How should we reward him then?"
"That will require so thought from the Director," He Mingxue smiled and stood up, glancing at his watch. "It’s four o’clock sharp. Too late to go back to sleep; might as well work overti."
「That day」
Wang Lan was sowhat tired all day, though it wasn’t too obvious. What puzzled Wang Lan was that during today’s sparring, Jiang Xinyu clearly used much more strength.
Watching from the side, Mingyue Wucheng broke into a sweat. If he knew what Wang Lan really thought about Jiang Xinyu, he would have asked Wang Lan if he misunderstood the term "using strength."
Is this called using strength? Attacking vitals with every move? That’s practically homicidal.
However, with Wang Lan’s current strength, he had completely surpassed Jiang Xinyu in basic combat, so he felt that it was just a little extra strength and nothing to worry about.
That day, nothing special happened. Life as a student was just that monotonous and ordinary. Mornings were spent on exams or reviewing papers, while afternoons were dedicated to combat practice or honing internal skills and techniques.
Strength wasn’t sothing learned, but rather earned through practice.
That day, Jiang Xinyu didn’t speak to Wang Lan.
Jiang Xinyu’s temperant is good, quite fitting the nickna others have given her. Other than this feeling, there’s nothing more, Wang Lan thought.
At five-thirty in the afternoon, Wang Lan walked out of the school gates with his backpack and, from a distance, saw the class monitor Xie Sisi not taking the crowded bus as usual, but leaving in a large rcedes.
It was only then that Wang Lan realized Xie Sisi had suddenly beco what his classmates were calling a great beauty.
Xie Sisi was naturally pretty, tall and elegant, with a beautiful face. If she paid a bit more attention to fashion and makeup, her attractiveness would skyrocket. However, Wang Lan was always slow to notice these things. Or rather, he never cared, so he was slow to notice.
Now, seeing that scene, Wang Lan had a mont of realization. Has sothing changed in Xie Sisi’s life?
What shops are most common around a school gate?
Stationery shops, printing and copying shops, and bookstores.
"Antu has released another prose collection..."
"Fuck, him again. Can’t he pick a better ti to release his books? It’s always in November."
"Last year, his ’Rollercoaster’ was selected for the college entrance exam reading comprehension, and my sister cried after the exam. Nobody, including Antu himself, knows how many layers of aning his prose has. Answering his reading comprehensions is all about sudden inspiration."
"Stop it... With three consecutive prose collections having entries selected for reading comprehension, what do you think are the odds that this new collection will also be chosen?"
"Fuck! Do we even need to guess? The teacher banged the blackboard today. Antu’s latest prose collection is here, and it’s certain that one of the pieces will be on the exam. We’re ordered to get a copy each and practice daily. It’s killing —"
"Let’s crowdsource to take that bastard down, shall we? His prose has no logic, just writing whatever cos to mind."
"How else would it be called prose? Isn’t prose supposed to be ’loose’?"
A faint smile touched the corners of Wang Lan’s mouth. Antu’s prose, indeed, was the only thing he had ever found truly challenging in exams. Wang Lan could practically ensure a perfect score in the sciences and handle most of the language arts with ease, but he always had to account for losing about twenty points to reading comprehension and essay deductions.
Especially when encountering Antu’s prose for reading comprehension, he had to reserve at least six to ten points.
And it just so happened that Antu’s prose was favored by the Jiang Province test paper setters. Worried the paper might be too easy? Simple, just throw in an essay from Antu’s collection. So many testable points, any one of them could be a killer question.
As for the correct answer... What correct answer? Isn’t it all just a guess?
The everyday troubles of a regular high school student were sothing Wang Lan could no longer relate to. For this, Wang Lan admitted to feeling a tiny bit of regret.
He turned to leave but suddenly stopped in his tracks.
A student who had just co out of the bookstore was holding a brand new Antu Prose Collection, and it was... the very sa book that had been on Chang Yu’s dormitory desk.
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