Forty-nine rules of the end times

Chapter 282 Rescue of Shangyuan Zi

May 12th, evening.

Banzhen City, Sakuragi Official Administration Building.

In the brightly lit office area on the first to third floors, hundreds of office workers were constantly moving around with documents in hand.

These people were all dressed in uniform dark blue suits, and most of them had indifferent expressions on their faces. Everyone was only focused on their own work and rarely even glanced at the people at the next workstation.

In the post-apocalyptic world, relationships between people are already cold, let alone for the Sakuragi people who experienced the tragedy of their homeland's destruction. Although many of them were transferred here by the authorities, they are practically no different from the walking dead, living only by their survival instincts.

Their indifferent attitude made them completely unaware that a complete stranger they had never seen before was walking out of the restroom.

Guan Tong wore the same dark blue suit as the office staff, along with black-rimmed glasses, and her hair was styled like that of an office worker, making her look no different from the rest of the staff present.

He walked casually into the elevator, a tablet in his hand.

Entering the administration building was easy for him, but to get to the third floor and above, he needed to swipe his ID card.

He certainly doesn't have that kind of card.

So his strategy was simple: just wait for some people to come down.

He waited in the stairwell for a few minutes, and the elevator showed that it went up from the 2nd floor to the 6th floor and then went down to the 1st floor.

After the elevator doors opened, a man stepped out and ran into Guan Tong, who was standing at the entrance to the stairwell.

"Get out of the way, you rude jerk." The man seemed to be some kind of leader, treating Guan Tong like a lowly employee, and rudely reached out to push him away.

Guan Tong smiled at him, and the man felt a sudden darkness before his eyes, and the next moment he suddenly lost consciousness.

With a flash of light from the storage ring on her hand, Guan Tong casually picked up the man's ID card, entered the elevator, and pressed the button for the fifth floor.

Upon reaching this floor, the elevator doors open directly into the office area.

There were fewer people here compared to floors 1-3, but there were still several dozen people, and everyone was just as busy.

Guan Tong went to the bathroom immediately, locked the door, and then summoned her shadow to search.

Once his physical body enters the barrier protecting against mental energy, he can use his shadow without being affected by the barrier. However, the risk of being exposed increases dramatically over time.

Furthermore, when someone discovers they can't contact the man, an investigation will likely begin. Once they find the usage records of the identity card, they'll realize that an outsider has entered an area they shouldn't be in.

We have to be quick.

Numerous hair-like shadows spread out, quickly scanning every corner of the fifth floor.

Guan Tong believes that since the device used to log into Orochi Yukari's account is here, there should be clues about her. She said she was under house arrest, not imprisoned, and there's a big difference between the two.

Every workstation and room on the fifth floor was being infiltrated and investigated by surveillance cameras.

Even the rooms with their doors closed are like this.

No matter how tightly a door is closed, can the gap in the door be narrower than a single hair?
Where a hair can go, the shadow lines can go.

Soon, Guan Tong discovered that there was a corridor on the fifth floor that was completely sealed off by electronic doors, with a warning sign at the entrance that read "No unauthorized personnel allowed to enter." There were small rooms on both sides of the corridor.

He manipulated the shadows to slip through the cracks in the doors into these rooms. Each room was similarly constructed, with a bed, table, cabinets, and a single bathroom—standard solitary confinement cells.

Some of these rooms are occupied, while others are empty.

Most of the people inside were sitting quietly or staring blankly at the roof.

They had nothing else to do; they didn't even have a book, let alone internet access.

"Warning! Warning!"

Suddenly, a piercing alarm sounded from inside the building.

Someone outside shouted: "An unidentified person has swiped Deputy Director Uei's ID card! Immediately seal off the administration building and conduct a full floor search!"

They found out so quickly...?

Hearing the noise, Guan Tong, who was hiding in the bathroom, knew that she had been exposed and it was only a matter of time before they found her.

We need to speed things up.

He quickened his search of the locked rooms, and finally found his target in the last one.

Wearing a blue plaid shirt, Yagi Yukari was staring blankly at the wall when she suddenly saw a large amount of black substance pouring in from the crack in the door, which then quickly spread and filled the entire room.

The next moment, a figure appeared silently behind her.

Yagi turned around abruptly and immediately recognized the person dressed in black shadow armor.

"Shadow? You..."

"There's no time to say more, let's get out of here first."

Guan Tong raised a finger, and a large number of shadows surged toward Yagi-no-Muraku, completely enveloping her.

He then took out the "Wordless Book," summoned a shelter, threw her inside, and then retrieved the shelter.

Tatata!
The sound of hurried footsteps came from outside, presumably from insiders checking on the people in confinement.

Guan Tong didn't linger any longer. He took the unlucky man he had knocked unconscious out of his ring and threw him on the ground. Then, he immediately used his teleportation ability to leave.

Half a minute later, someone outside opened the door and was shocked to see the man lying unconscious on the floor.

"Is that Deputy Director Uei? How come he..."

"Oh no, the person under house arrest, Yagi no Yukari, is no longer in her room!"

"Go find it quickly!!"

……

When Yamata no Yukari's vision returned, she found herself in some kind of ruins.

She steadied herself and realized that she had been led out by the shadow.

Although Shadow had previously told her via private message on the website that he would rescue her, she was still quite surprised when it actually happened. "Should I call you Yagi-no-Yuki, or Kamien-no-Yuki?"

“Uehara-zumi, right? ‘Yaki’ is a surname that someone else gave me, and I actually hate it.”

Shang Yuanzi turned around, her shadow still shrouded in black armor, seemingly not intending to show her her true face.

"Thank you," she said again.

"No need. Since I said I would rescue you, I won't go back on my word." Guan Tong paused. "Besides, I also need your help with something."

"what's up?"

"...Don't you have any mental power right now?"

Guan Tong looked at Shang Yuanzi's black pupils and asked with some curiosity.

When he first saw her, her eyes had vertical pupils like a snake's. If that was due to mental power, then naturally mental power was needed to maintain it.

“No,” Shang Yuanzi said, raising her right hand to reveal a silver ring on her wrist. “They put this on me because they were afraid I would run away. It can automatically absorb and restore my mental energy.”

Guan Tong manipulated a shadow blade to slash at the silver bracelet, but it had no effect whatsoever.

“It’s useless,” Shangyuan Zi said. “This item is very special. Unless the holder actively deactivates it, otherwise…”

Before she could finish speaking, a tiny black ball, about the size of a marble, appeared in Guan Tong's palm.

The moment the object made contact with the silver bracelet prop on her hand, a section of the bracelet disappeared, immediately losing its power and being destroyed.

Shang Yuanzi was somewhat surprised, and the next moment Guan Tong withdrew the "spatial domain" he had created.

She didn't ask what it was, she just shook her hand.

A few seconds later, her pupils turned into vertical pupils, and her automatically restored mental energy began to take effect.

"What do you want me to do for you?"

Shang Yuanzi is no longer a child; she is a twenty-something office worker who has worked for several years and knows the rules of society.

Moreover, she was well aware of her ordinary appearance and did not think she had any romantic appeal to Shadow.

"You still remember the fragments of Qimo Star, right?" Guan Tong went straight to the point. "Back when I was in Antai Bang, Ying Qi launched a long-range bombardment against me and sent a ground team to retrieve the fragments."

"...I remember. The location where you possess the fragment was provided by me."

Who is the decision-maker?

Shangyuan Zi understood what the shadow meant: "Do you want revenge? Unfortunately, the decision-maker has already committed suicide."

Guan Tong asked in surprise, "Committed suicide?"

"Yes, his name is 'Kikutenjo,' the former instructor of the Chosen Ones... The Chosen Ones are one of the several Ascendant teams officially formed by Sakura Inori. It includes me and two other people."

"Mu Tiancheng always wanted to take advantage of the special era of the apocalypse rules to make Yingqi the strongest country in the world. After experiencing a series of failures, perhaps because his hopes were dashed, he eventually committed seppuku."

"..."

Guan Tong never expected things to turn out this way.

He had originally planned to get information about the decision-maker from Shangyuan Zi, but before he could even lift a finger, she was already gone.

but……

Guan Tong asked, "Does this Mu Tiancheng you mentioned actually have the authority to mobilize special forces and warships?"

Shangyuan Zi said that Mu Tiancheng was the instructor of the "Chosen Ones".

In Guan Tong's view, this identity was similar to that of Zhang Minglu from the Beixing Countermeasures Research Lab.

Even Zhang Minglu, as the person in charge of all the official teams' Ascensioners, wielded more power than Mu Tiancheng.

However, it is absolutely impossible for Zhang Minglu to have the authority to mobilize Beixing's official warships to launch missiles overseas to bombard people.

“He made the suggestion and received permission from above,” Shangyuan Zi said.

"Whose permission?"

"Son of God."

"Son of God..."

Upon hearing this title, Guan Tong's expression, hidden beneath her armor, became somewhat solemn.

The system of the Sakura Kingdom is similar to that of the Soro Empire. Multiple meritorious families protect a royal family, and each generation of the royal family head is called the "God Child".

The Divine Child wields supreme power in Sakuragi, even greater than the King of the Soloma Empire. If the King of Soloma wants to do something but faces collective opposition from the Senate, it is not easy for the matter to proceed.

But if the divine child has an idea, even if it is utterly absurd, it will be absolutely executed.

The reason why no one opposed or even overthrew the regime is related to the fact that the military power of Sakuragi's country was in the hands of the royal family, and any opposition that had appeared in the past had been suppressed and eliminated.

How much do you know about this divine child?

Upon hearing Guan Tong's question, Shang Yuanzi countered with her own: "Do you want to kill him?"

"If he wants to kill me, why can't I retaliate in kind? Just because he's some so-called divine child? I don't believe anyone's life in this world is more precious than anyone else's."

Guan Tong's tone was dismissive, and Shang Yuanzi nodded in agreement: "You're right."

"Tell me what you know about him, and then you can investigate your parents' situation yourself. We agreed that I would rescue you, and I wouldn't get involved in the investigation of your parents."

"I don't know how to investigate, I have no way to do it. Besides, the island has sunk, and I can't even go back to my hometown to ask some people."

“Let’s start with the archives,” Guan Tong suggested. “The official departments of Yingqi should have an archive of citizens’ identities.”

“It would be difficult for me to do something like this,” Shangyuan Zi said frankly. “Can you help me? In return, you can use my power.”

Guan Tong's heart skipped a beat: "What power do you have?"

(End of this chapter)