Chapter 1 Time Rewinds

Time rewinds to ten minutes before the Mirage Dragon left the Mist Domain.

Earlier, the audio of the ritual priest recorded by Ashes' drone had already been transmitted to the Special Affairs Bureau.

Combined with the ancient texts just deciphered by the Extraordinary Society, they finally understood what was happening inside the Mist Domain.

And organized a team composed of elite players, ready to enter the depths of the Mist Domain at all costs.

However, due to the lack of palace lanterns or back door passages left by the ancient Extraordinary Society, this elite team, like the teams sent in before, could only forcibly break through the Demon Imprisonment Cave layer by layer.

Moreover, due to the lack of a map, this elite team was actually wandering around in the shallowest Mist Domain—that is, the version of Yin City that Li Yi and Wei Linglan had seen before—fighting the demons and monsters in the shallowest Demon Imprisonment Cave, and never found a passage to the next level.

This is the fault of the Extraordinary Society.

Originally, according to the settings of the ancient Extraordinary Society, the Demon Imprisonment Cave should have been a prison for imprisoning demons, a laboratory for detaining high-risk experimental products.

In order to prevent accidents in the Demon Imprisonment Cave in the future, the ancient Extraordinary Society cultivators deliberately left many back door switches in the Demon Imprisonment Cave, and recorded the various methods for opening and closing the back doors in bamboo slips and classics, leaving them to future generations—for example, that Extraordinary Society young man named Zhu Xuemin.

However, due to the interruption of inheritance, most of the bamboo slips were improperly preserved, becoming incomplete or directly lost.

Only a small portion remained—for example, the Mirage Cloud Gathering Array used by Zhu Xuemin to bring the Special Affairs Bureau's stronghold out of the shallowest Mist Domain—which were all painstakingly salvaged and restored by the modern Special Affairs Bureau.

Moreover, the process of deciphering and restoring was basically equivalent to brute-force trial and error. Even the modern Extraordinary Society itself did not know what the spells on the bamboo slips could do, and could only try again and again, groping for the effect.

This led to the fact that the modern Extraordinary Society clearly knew that a certain scroll of bamboo slips in the library contained the background program for controlling the Demon Imprisonment Cave, but they just didn't know where to start.

They had no choice but to send people to bite the bullet and decipher it as quickly as possible, while sending people into the Mist Domain with the elite team to see if they could rely on their existing superficial knowledge to try to crack the secrets of the Demon Imprisonment Cave.

While the elite team and the Extraordinary Society were extremely busy, the Special Affairs Bureau and other parties guarding Qianhua Road were not idle either.

According to the information sent back by Ashes, the Demon Imprisonment Cave was likely to be lost, and the "demons" inside were likely to be released at that time.

In any case, they could not allow the disaster to happen before their eyes.

Therefore, the defense line of Qianhua Road and the surrounding areas was strengthened, the highest-level warning signal was issued, and the citizens of Yin City located in the subway station parking lot were also preparing to evacuate to the suburbs of Yin City under the command of other official departments.

The worst-case scenario was to completely abandon Yin City.

The actions of the Extraordinary Society could not be concealed from other secret organizations.

As a world-class metropolis, Yin City has established strongholds for various large and small secret organizations.

Although they were not clear about the specific situation on Qianhua Road, this did not prevent them from reaching out their tentacles, trying to collect intelligence, or muddy the waters and take some benefits.

According to the secret organizations' understanding of the Killing Game, disasters involving transcendence also meant opportunities involving transcendence.

Among these organizations was one of the players in this deathmatch mission, John Joyce.

This American buddy, a former CIA agent, former civil servant of the US Embassy's foreign affairs office, and current member of the Prometheus Laboratory Company's Yin City branch strategy team, was really unlucky.

When Li Yi, the Wraith Demon, the ritual priest, and other players clashed in the abandoned subway station, he was driven by the constantly shrinking barrier, and was forced to abandon his tramp attire, and ran in fear towards the next barrier shrinkage range.

His heart was about to jump out along the way, for fear that two hostile players in the deathmatch mission would jump out from somewhere and easily kill him.

Unexpectedly, he didn't wait for hostile players, but was instead discovered by the flustered Special Affairs Bureau agents, who directly launched a chase against him.

What was worse was that since all the other players in the deathmatch mission had gathered in one place,

No player could "pair" with John Joyce to help open the spherical barrier to avoid the Special Affairs Bureau's pursuit.

As a result, after a brief resistance, John Joyce was very shamefully captured by the Special Affairs Bureau agents, handcuffed and collared, and taken to a temporary stronghold of the Special Affairs Bureau as a "sneaky foreign player" for interrogation.

This John Joyce was quite thoughtful. He knew that if he was taken away by the Special Affairs Bureau, he might not have a good outcome.

Before being arrested, he activated a certain remote control device located at the other end of Yin City, and sent all the specific content of this mission to the senior leaders of the Prometheus Laboratory Company.

Hoping that they could bail him out—although this idea was unlikely, there was still a slight possibility of it being realized.

After receiving the information sent by John Joyce, the senior leaders of the Prometheus Laboratory Company, combined with other intelligence they had collected, keenly guessed that the mission John Joyce was carrying out was likely related to the Yin City Incident.

Prometheus Company immediately took action, explaining to the Special Affairs Bureau that John Joyce was their employee, and requesting his release—John Joyce had not yet explained the situation of this mission to the Special Affairs Bureau,

At the same time, they used some drone equipment and ordinary human intelligence spies to collect more intelligence.

While Prometheus was in action, other secret organizations were not idle either.

The Syndicate, the Tribunal, the Royal National Church Knights, the Japanese Island Abnormal Affairs Investigation Bureau, the CIA's Special Accident Office, and various secret organizations funded by multinational commercial groups were all foraging like piranhas that had smelled blood.

There was even an unknown foreign player who disguised himself as a bounty hunter who volunteered to help the Special Affairs Bureau, and sneaked into the reception hall of the Yin City Special Affairs Bureau headquarters, trying to take advantage of the Special Affairs Bureau's weak forces to forcibly break into the Extraordinary Society's database and steal information.

Under the resistance of the Special Affairs Bureau personnel, this powerful player did not succeed, but the seriously injured him actually escaped under the encirclement and suppression of various trap magic circles and Special Affairs Bureau agents.

Fortunately, among a group of secret organizations with ulterior motives, there was also a clear stream that chose to help the Special Affairs Bureau without hesitation.

That is the Whale Song organization.

They volunteered to help the Special Affairs Bureau repel the prying eyes of many other organizations or individual players, and used computer technology to block some organizations' attacks on the Special Affairs Bureau's information library.

They were simply international friends.

Wan Jia Xiong Meng

Wan Jia Xiong Meng