The system is four years ahead of schedule, but Weird is still a cub.

The immense temptation overwhelmed Chen Su's reason like a tsunami. His breathing became heavy, and images involuntarily flashed through his mind: his triumphant return to Dajing with Zhang Hong, the astonished Deng Yuqi and others, and the approving glances from the headquarters' high-ranking officials...

However, just as greed was about to overwhelm his reason, a chill from the depths of his bones suddenly jolted him awake!

Trying to get something from a tiger!

He was facing "crows"!
He is the leader of the Twelve Branches who orchestrated numerous horrific and inhumane disasters around the world, manipulated people's hearts like puppets, and was the head of an extreme terrorist organization who regarded human life as worthless and treated humans as experimental subjects!
What happened to those people from Panshi Security who "unintentionally harmed members of the Special Operations Department"? And what about the innocent people in the city center who were torn apart by the fused monsters?
The promise of the twelve branches is more fragile than a piece of waste paper.

Agreeing to cooperate is tantamount to selling one's soul to the devil. Utilizing the power of the twelve zodiac signs is like walking a tightrope over an abyss.

The slightest mistake could not only result in his own annihilation, but also bring shame upon the entire Dajing headquarters and potentially trigger an unimaginable chain of disasters.

This is a hundred or a thousand times more serious than the Shadow Snake's incriminating evidence falling into Deng Yuqi's hands. That was merely a stain on her political career, but this is... the mark of a traitor, an irredeemable disaster!

Moreover... Shen Ge is in charge in Rong City, and it's almost certain that Shen Ge didn't carry out any secret mission at all; he was merely "avoiding" the task force.

This man, who exists like a ghost, is unpredictable; no one knows when he will suddenly appear. The fate of the Shadow Serpent is enough to illustrate this point.

Crow's plan seemed perfect, but could it really be flawless in front of Shen Ge? Once his collusion with the Twelve Branches was discovered... Chen Su dared not imagine the consequences.

"Impossible!" Chen Su suddenly raised his head. Although there was still a trace of shock and wavering in his eyes, there was more of a resolute determination stemming from a soldier's instinct and last line of defense after being forced into a desperate situation.

His voice trembled slightly with excitement, yet remained exceptionally clear: "Stop with your seductive tricks, Crow! I, Chen Su, am a cadre of the Da Jing Special Operations Department, an anti-terrorist agent! My duty is to eliminate monsters like you, not to collude with you! You want me to betray humanity, to betray my identity? Dream on!"

His entire body of supernatural energy equipment surged again, and the suppressor at his waist emitted a high-frequency hum, pointing at the figure on the sofa, even though he knew it might be futile: "Now, leave immediately! Otherwise, I would rather detonate the supernatural energy suppression field of this floor and perish together with you than let your evil scheme succeed."

The room fell into a deathly silence, the cold, eerie energy solidifying as if it were a tangible substance.

The crow on the sofa silently watched Chen Su. Beneath the mask, the red lips seemed to deepen the half-smile, then vanish completely. Her gaze, through the mask, was as cold as ice, yet also carried a hint of… expected mockery.

“What a… regrettable choice, Director Chen.” Her voice was still languid, but with an added, almost imperceptible sigh that seemed to come from the abyss. “It seems you still have a laughable loyalty to your identity as a human.”

She showed no anger, not even a trace of energy fluctuation. She simply stood up slowly, her dark red and gold-patterned cheongsam shimmering with an eerie luster in the dim light.

“But it’s alright.” She gently straightened non-existent folds in her clothes, her posture as elegant as if she were preparing for a banquet. “The game has only just begun. I hope that when we meet again, your ‘bottom line’ will still be just as firm.”

The moment she finished speaking, her figure, like the reflection of a stone thrown into the ground, began to blur and distort, as if it had merged into the surrounding space.

The cold, viscous, eerie energy dissipated rapidly like the receding tide, leaving only a faint ripple in the air, like the flapping of a crow's wings.

Chen Su maintained his defensive stance, cold sweat soaking his back. Only when the aura completely disappeared, leaving only his heavy breathing and the low hum of the energy suppressor in the room, did he stagger as if all his strength had been drained, and lean heavily against the cold bar.

He refused.

But he knew that an even bigger storm was probably on its way.

The woman named "Raven," her icy gaze, and her last words were etched into his mind like a curse.

His hands trembled as he reached for the bottle, only to find his fingers shaking so badly he couldn't even hold the cork.

However, Chen Su did not notice that when he picked up his wine glass, deep in the carpet fibers in the corner of the sofa, a tiny, blood-red spider, about the size of a grain of rice and almost blending into the dark red carpet, was quietly lying there, its compound eyes gleaming with an extremely faint, almost imperceptible, eerie light.

……

Rong City Special Affairs Department, Shen Ge's dormitory.

"Master, high-priority alert! Target 'Raven' has appeared. Coordinates locked—Chen Su's hotel!" Xiao Qi, who was maintaining real-time monitoring of the Blood Spiders scattered throughout the city, reported to Shen Ge immediately after discovering Chen Su's meeting with Raven.

As they spoke, Xiao Qi conjured a virtual projection in front of Shen Ge, showing the real-time situation of Chen Su's meeting with Ya.

On the virtual projection, Chen Su's terrified face was clearly displayed, but more importantly, there was the woman in red sitting on the sofa, elegant in posture yet exuding a cold and eerie aura.

"Oh? This woman has become a VIP customer of cosmetic surgery after not seeing her for a while? No, wait, even plastic surgery wouldn't be enough for her, right? She's a completely different person." Shen Ge looked at Ya in the picture, and she was completely different from the way she looked and acted when he first met her.

“Master, while the 'raven's' form in the image is realistic, there's a subtle 'distortion' in the energy fluctuations, making it seem more like some kind of sophisticated energy projection. Judging from the energy fluctuations, she couldn't be too far away; her true form is most likely inside the hotel,” Xiao Qi said.

"Let's look for her. Now that she's here, we can't let her leave so easily." Shen Ge recalled the deal he made with Ya. The other party had clearly said that they would send someone to "meet" him in Australia, but he never saw any of the Twelve Branches.

However, several people have entered Shen Ge's "suspicion list." Considering the current situation of "Crow," it is not impossible that the other party has changed his face and identity and secretly infiltrated his side.

"Analyzing the trajectory of the eerie energy fluctuations... The target has been confirmed as 'eerie energy projection equipment.' The energy source is located in the same hotel, in the top-floor luxury suite A section, approximately 100 meters vertically from Chen Su's room and 120 meters horizontally." Xiao Qi's computing power exploded instantly, capturing the residual eerie energy fluctuations through the blood spiders lurking in the hotel and deducing the location.

"Make your move, use the 'spider swarm' to entangle her and find her true form." The opportunity was fleeting, and the cunning crow finally revealed its true colors.

"Activate 'Blood Spider Sub-Armor' mode." Xiao Qi ordered, gathering all the Blood Spiders scattered throughout the hotel and condensing them into a miniature version of the Red Mist Armor.

In the hotel's top-floor luxury suite, floor-to-ceiling windows offer a dazzling view of Fuzhou's vibrant nightscape, with neon lights shimmering everywhere.

Wearing a dark red and gold patterned cheongsam, "Crow" exudes a more serene aura and has a more profound gaze. She stands quietly by the window, having removed the dark gold crow mask from her face, revealing a cold and stunningly beautiful face that is utterly expressionless.

She closed her eyes slightly, as if sensing something.

Suddenly, her eyes, as cold as an icy pool, snapped open, a faint hint of surprise flashing across them. She sensed countless extremely faint, yet intensely hostile, eerie energy signals, surging in like a tidal wave from the cracks in the door, the vents, and even the gaps in the walls.

"Blood Spiders?" Crow was somewhat surprised, but his tone suggested he was unusually familiar with Shen Ge's "little trick," immediately recognizing that so many strange energy fluctuations came from the spider swarm.

“Interesting…” Her red lips parted slightly, her cool voice echoing in the empty suite. But she didn’t panic; she simply raised her hand gently.

At the same time, beneath the heavy solid wood door of the suite, countless tiny, blood-red spiders, like a flood bursting its banks, surged in from the gaps in the door frame, then quickly converged, deformed, and combined.

In the blink of an eye, a humanoid "Red Mist Armor" made up of countless blood spiders appeared at the suite's door.

Its appearance is rough, lacking delicate facial features, and only has two compound eyes that resemble spider eyes.

Without any unnecessary words, Xiaoqi's "secondary armor" immediately unleashed its sharp, thorny arms, formed from blood spiders, tearing through the air with a piercing shriek as it aimed straight for the woman's vitals by the window.

For the first time, a look of seriousness appeared in Raven's eyes, but she did not move. She simply raised her right hand gracefully, spread her five fingers, and gently pressed it against the attacking Blood Spider Armor.

An invisible, viscous, deep-sea-like powerful repulsive force erupted instantly. Xiao Qi was as if she had crashed into an invisible elastic wall, and was violently bounced back, squeezed and deformed, her momentum halted.

However, Xiao Qi's control was precise and swift. The rotten blood body that was repelled did not disintegrate. Instead, it seemed to have a life of its own. Part of it adhered to the invisible force field and frantically gnawed at it, trying to analyze and destroy this invisible wall. The other part, like diverted mercury, spread rapidly along the walls and ceiling, and pounced on the crow again from all directions.

"Tsk." Crow made a very soft, slightly impatient nasal sound.

These massive, strangely structured, fearless, and precisely controlled creations are indeed very troublesome, especially in such a confined space.

She seemed to have lost interest in continuing the argument.

Just as the second wave of attacks from the sub-armor was about to encircle them, Crow's figure drifted backward like a ghost, his back lightly resting against the huge floor-to-ceiling glass window.

"Want to arrest me? Let Shen Ge come himself." Her cool voice carried a hint of mockery.

Before she finished speaking, her body seemed to lose its substance, like ink dissolving in water, or like a flowing shadow, and "seeped" into the solid tempered glass without any hindrance, leaving not even a trace on the glass surface.

In the next instant, a raven with wingspan as black as ink, feathers gleaming with a metallic sheen, and eyes burning with eerie blue flames suddenly materialized from the glass wall.

It let out a piercing, hoarse cry, like the friction of metal against metal, and with a flap of its wings, it stirred up a powerful gust of air, instantly transforming into a black lightning bolt that shot into the neon-lit night sky of Rongcheng.

"Target form change, energy characteristics locked, tracking mode activated." Xiaoqi's logic module for chasing the crow remained completely unchanged.

The "sub-armor" extended its bloody tentacles and stuck them to the tempered glass, then cut a notch in it, squeezing out as a flowing fluid.

After the armored creature flowed out of the window, it condensed in the air and then nimbly flipped over, fully unfolding its blood wings. Adjusting its posture, it instantly locked onto the rapidly receding black raven shadow in the night sky.

Two figures, one in black and one in red, one in front and one behind, like two shooting stars flying in reverse, engaged in a silent but deadly chase above the dazzling and mesmerizing sea of ​​neon lights in Rong City.

The glass curtain walls of skyscrapers reflect their trails across the night sky, like a crack tearing through the facade of prosperity.

……

In the underground command center of the Special Operations Department, a piercing alarm sounded almost at the same time that Crow's whereabouts were exposed, echoing throughout the entire space.

"Minister! Xiao Qi has an urgent report: the target 'Crow' has appeared at Chen Su Hotel. Its true form has been locked. Xiao Qi has already activated the Red Mist Armor to give chase. The target has transformed into a crow and is escaping in the southwest." An informant almost shouted the report.

Deng Yuqi stood up abruptly, her eyes flashing with a sharp, piercing light. After half a month of silence, she had finally caught this big fish.

Fortunately, the Special Operations Department hadn't been idle for the past two weeks. They had already laid a tight net in Fuzhou, waiting for this "crow" to run into it.

"Level 1 alert across the city! All captain-level agents, take note!" Deng Yuqi's voice instantly echoed across the entire Rong City Special Operations Department network via an encrypted channel.

"Team Leader Lin! Take charge of blocking airspace corridors three and seven in the southwest direction. Activate the 'Skynet' anti-energy jamming array and lock down that area of ​​the sky!"

"Seal off the team! Take your men and immediately proceed to the southwest region to evacuate civilians from the core area and establish a ground blockade to prevent the target from landing!"

"Team Leader Tu! Run the cyber energy detection network at full power! Keep a close eye on the cyber energy fluctuations of that raven-like figure and the red mist armor, and share their coordinates in real time!"

"Captain Yang! Mobile support! Be ready to assist Xiao Qi or intercept the target at any time!"

"Master Cheng, immediately coordinate with the police and military, air traffic control, clear the airspace, and initiate the highest level of media control!"

Orders were issued in rapid succession, and the entire Rongshi Special Operations Department was instantly awakened like a sleeping behemoth, baring its fangs at the crow in the night sky.

Throughout the city, piercing sirens ripped through the night sky as anti-spy detection devices were activated, their invisible energy detection waves rapidly enveloping the southwestern night sky like a vast net.

In the night sky, the blood-red "spider swarm" wings tore through the air currents, relentlessly biting into the elegant and swift black phantom ahead.

The real hunt has only just begun!
Meanwhile, in the Special Operations Department dormitory building, Shen Ge's figure had already disappeared from the room, blending into the deep darkness of Rong City.

"Twelve branches, this account needs to be settled properly." (End of Chapter)