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"Is Mr. Huai Shi here?"
A staff member holding a file bag asked softly.
"What did you say?"
In an instant, seven or eight operators around the table turned their heads in unison, their cold gazes turning the female clerk's face pale, especially one wearing a bizarre helmet, his face not even visible.
Even without feeling his gaze, the female clerk could still sense a deep resentment like a thorn in her back, nearly causing her to lose her footing.
"Excuse me, is Mr. Huai Shi here?" she mustered her courage and asked shakily, "The higher-ups said a Mr. Huai Shi was supposed to come in for registration today. I've asked everywhere else, this is the only place left..."
Suddenly, everyone looked at each other in confusion.
"Huai Shi?"
Amidst the silence, an angry slam on the table suddenly rang out.
Bang!
Huai Shi looked up with a solemn voice, "We don't have that kind of scum here!"
"Well said!" Luo Ming chimed in, "Don't worry, he won't be coming today. If he does, I'll definitely kill him."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Only Chen Yan looked at Huai Shi with confusion, seemingly puzzled.
Soon, the frightened female clerk turned and fled with a pack of tears, and Huai Shi felt increasingly guilty, yet also relieved to have survived the ordeal.
I'm sorry, miss.
I'll definitely apologize to you later.
He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling cold sweat seeping down his back. Before he could steady his heart, he heard Old Xiao's hearty laughter.
"Hey, Huai Shi, why are you still here?"
He walked in from the door, heading straight for Huai Shi, asking curiously, "Why did I just see the clerk who came to register you running away crying?"
With that, he slapped Huai Shi's shoulder hard.
Slap!
Like cutting the rope on a guillotine.
"..."
In the momentary silence, amidst everyone's astonished gazes, Huai Shi swallowed hard and whispered, "Sorry, you've got the wrong person."
"Hahaha, you're joking!"
Old Xiao grinned, pointing proudly at Huai Shi's helmet, "If Ai Inspector hadn't told me what you look like now, I would have been fooled by you."
In that instant, amidst many curious stares, Huai Shi desperately raised his hand to cover his face mask.
Welcoming social death.
"I have something to do... I'll be leaving first."
As the operators watched in stunned silence, he slowly got up, carefully took two steps back, then turned and dashed out of the rest area.
The moment he ran out the door, he heard angry roars from behind: "Don't run, you brat!"
"Thinking you can leave after offending the Astronomical Society?!"
"The one with the helmet is Huai Shi, kill him!"
Huai Shi took a deep breath and sped up, running for his life.
Thus, the biggest, most egregious, worst-received, and most destructive brawl among the operators in the history of the Astronomical Society's Jinling branch began amidst Huai Shi's cries.
***
On the seventeenth floor, in the internal affairs office.
"A prison break?"
Ai Qing furrowed her brows.
"Yes."
The plump woman across the table stood up, peeked outside the door, then turned and closed it, "The higher-ups have issued a confidentiality order, you know, at least for appearances."
"Ah, I understand." Ai Qing nodded, "But I've never seen anyone eat so lavishly during work hours. Don't you feel a bit guilty for stealing a salary?"
As Ai Qing spoke, the owner of the office had already taken out a bucket of fresh, hot fried chicken and various condiments from the drawers and cabinets and placed them on the table.
Chaifei calmly tied a napkin around her neck, put on disposable gloves, and picked up the bucket of chicken, glancing at Ai Qing:
"Could you turn off the recorder next time before you try to embarrass me?"
"Tsk."
Ai Qing shook her head unhappily, pulling out a recording pen from her pocket and tossing it on the table.
"The other one, turn it off too." Chaifei remained vigilant.
"That's all." Ai Qing sighed, "I was in a hurry leaving, didn't have time."
"Wow, you're really rotten!" Chaifei glared at her disdainfully, "I kindly leak information to you, and you try to blackmail me?"
"Heh, says the woman who uses her photo to scam others into microtransactions for her in online games?"
Ai Qing returned the cold look.
The two stared each other down, then slowly withdrew their gazes.
As fellow trainees at the headquarters, Ai Qing and Chaifei were known as the oddities of their class—one scheming to grab all the authority she could, the other slacking off, wishing to push all her work onto others.
Two oddities.
Strangely, these two always found some common ground on certain peculiar matters, and after a few interactions, they formed an unspoken alliance without needing words.
As the top two in the final assessment scores, both declined the invitation to stay at the headquarters—Ai Qing to gain more power starting locally, and this woman... to find a cushy, undemanding job with thirteen months' salary a year for slacking off.
In a way, both achieved their goals.
This time, Ai Qing came back early to catch a bit of the wind from her.
The long-standing rivalry ended with Chaifei's concession, shaking her head with a sigh, "Alright, I can't argue with you. Where were we?"
"Prison break."
"Right, the Trench Prison, someone escaped." Chaifei swallowed a piece of boneless chicken, licked the sauce off her gloves, and mumbled, "After investigating, the higher-ups found out the guy escaped through the Jinling entrance."
"Which entrance?"
"The one in this building, the fictional floor P2."
As she spoke, Chaifei glanced up as if trying to peer into the hidden area that didn't exist within the conventional physical structure above.
In the invisible void, countless layers of strict defenses.
From the inside out.
"An inside job?" Ai Qing frowned.
"Definitely, now everyone is trying to figure out who it is." Chaifei nodded, "It's hard to trust members of the headquarters now, so they urgently called in members from the outside."
"Did they catch the person?"
"Who knows, there are no secrets in the Astronomical Society, just a little privacy between departments. Who knows where he's hiding now?"
Chaifei shrugged, "Now Jinling is like a university, loose on the outside but tight on the inside, with so many blockades. All Sublimators are allowed in but not out. But everyone knows this situation can't last long. Especially now, with the Sublimator Rookie Competition in Asia about to start, what if that guy sneaks into the venue and causes trouble?
So we have to step up the search and capture, and then the problem arises..."
"Sovereignty issue, right?"
Ai Qing couldn't help but snicker, "The Social Security Bureau must be reluctant now, huh?"
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"It's tough being the world's police." Chaifei sighed vaguely, sipping her cola, "On this matter, the sovereignty faction and the border faction are already at odds, the Social Security Bureau doesn't want to let us act freely, but the Astronomical Society can't do nothing... Anyway, the real search force is probably the elite dark agents assembled by the headquarters. Calling you guys is just a formality, a force to check for any oversights, just in case."
Just as Ai Qing expected, another mess.
"Don't be so unhappy, think of it as a paid vacation, have you been to the Confucius Temple or Yuhuatai? I'll treat you to a street stall." Chaifei consoled, "Men are just for show, women are vases, stand on the stage, get a medal, then go home and live your life."
"What about the Social Security Bureau? They wouldn't miss this chance to show off their capabilities, right?"
Chaifei looked up at her, sighing helplessly:
"Longbow Wei."
"..."
In silence, neither spoke.
Well, let the gods fight, and the rest of us will enjoy the shade.
By the time the ice in Ai Qing's cola had melted, she had digested the undercurrents that had been stirring in Jinling these days.
Without waiting for Chaifei to pour more tea, she prepared to take her leave.
Before leaving, she asked one last question, "Who exactly escaped from prison?"
"Don't know."
Chaifei shook her head, tossing the empty chicken box into the trash, wiped her mouth, and finally sprayed some air freshener, casually saying, "My clearance only allows me to see the code B in the notification."
Sometimes being the secretary of a key department has its perks; you always get to see some trivial details.
For Ai Qing, this was as good as being told outright.
In Trench Prison, prisoners classified under B are almost all members of Green Day. And the only ones who could escape through so many obstacles are characters of the Ten Disasters level.
Currently, there are only two held by the Astronomical Society beneath the Mariana Trench, Bloodwater Disaster and Locust Disaster...
One half-dead, one already dead.
Neither easy to handle.
Ai Qing nodded, turned to leave, but then heard Chaifei's voice from behind.
"Oh, one more thing." She suddenly said, "You should be careful."
She emphasized the word "you."
The Yin family.
Ai Qing couldn't help but roll her eyes: those guys really are persistent... probably going to pressure me from the inside, right?
This information was too crucial for her, almost confirming the source of her unease.
She sighed, "It's hard to believe you're so well-informed despite slacking off like this..."
Chaifei shrugged nonchalantly, as if mocking, "You know, once you put on a little weight, suddenly you have a lot more 'besties.'"
"Thank you." Ai Qing said with gratitude.
"No problem." Chaifei replied, "With so many 'besties,' aren't you the only one who really treats me as a friend?"
"..."
After a long silence, Ai Qing seemed to sigh in frustration, pulling out another recording pen from her pocket and tossing it on the table, "If you were a bit thinner and sharper, I might find it hard to consider you a friend."
She turned her wheelchair and left.
The door closed again.
This woman...
Chaifei looked down at the second recording pen on the table, raised an eyebrow, and then a sincere expression turned into a smirk of triumph.
"Humph, she was trying to trick me after all."
She picked up the recording pen, smiling with pleasure, "Too bad, this time I'm the more cunning one."
But when she held the pen, it felt light and hollow, like an empty shell.
When Chaifei turned the pen over to look at the back, she saw a crude doodle, resembling a raised middle finger.
Chaifei was stunned for a while, then burst into laughter, casually tossing both recording pens into the trash.
Compared to all those dim-witted 'besties,' she just loved Ai Qing.
Win or lose, it was always a pleasure.
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