Villain? No, I'll catch up with the protagonist after passing the civil service exam.

Special interrogation chamber at Jinghai City No. 1 Detention Center.

The glaring incandescent light shone coldly on the stainless steel interrogation chair.

Even with cold handcuffs on his wrists, Chen Xu held his head high, as if he were the judge who held the truth.

"Squeak—"

The heavy iron gate was pushed open, and Lu Jingyan strode in.

He slammed a thick copy of the "Compilation of Laws of the People's Republic of China" onto the interrogation table with a "bang".

The dull thud made Chen Xu's eyelids twitch, but he forced himself to remain calm and pushed up his black-rimmed glasses.

"Officer Lu, you don't need to play these psychological games with me." Chen Xu's lips curled into a mocking sneer.

"I have a master's degree from a university of political science and law. Your special investigation team's tricks to scare legal illiterate people have no effect on me."

Lu Jingyan pulled out a chair and sat down, his long legs crossed, a playful glint in his deep black eyes.

"Oh? It seems Master Chen is quite confident in his legal expertise?"

Chen Xu straightened his back, his voice suddenly rising: "Of course! Your forced confiscation of the system is completely illegal!"

He recited the legal provisions with smug satisfaction: "According to the principle of prior possession in the Property Law section of the Civil Code, this 'system,' being something from another world, is absolutely ownerless!"

"I was the one who first discovered it, and it actively bound itself to my brain!"

"From that moment on, it became my private property, protected by the national constitution and property law, and even my personal privacy!"

"If you forcibly remove it without my consent, that's robbery! It's a serious violation of my personal and property rights!"

Zhao Tiezhu stood behind Lu Jingyan, his forehead veins throbbing as he listened.

"Boss, this kid's got a mouth that talks like a tantrum. Can I use my baton to help him remember the consequences of assaulting a police officer?"

"No rush." ​​Lu Jingyan raised his hand slightly to stop the irritable Zhao Tiezhu.

His slender fingers gently stroked the thick law compilation, and the coldness at the corner of his mouth grew stronger.

"Ownerless? Extraterrestrial? Private property?"

Lu Jingyan let out a mocking laugh, which sounded particularly jarring in the empty interrogation room.

"Chen Xu, if your supervisor knew how badly you've learned property law, he'd probably jump off the podium on the spot."

"Come on, let me give you a 'downsizing' lesson on physics, you frog in a well."

"Open your eyes and look carefully at what Article 9 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China and Article 3 of the Mineral Resources Law stipulate!"

"All natural resources, including mineral deposits, watercourses, forests, mountains, grasslands, wastelands, and tidal flats, discovered within the territory, territorial waters, and airspace of the People's Republic of China belong to the State!"

Chen Xu was taken aback for a moment, then retorted dismissively, "The system is a high-tech product, not a mineral! Stop trying to confuse the issue!"

"Don't rush, the law hasn't been finished yet."

"Based on the extended judicial interpretations of the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics and the National Security Law!"

"All unidentified flying objects, extraterrestrial relics, and unknown high-dimensional energy creations that crash within our country's territory belong to the state without dispute!"

Lu Jingyan leaned forward slightly, and the terrifying pressure of the Codex brought by [Absolute Reason] instantly enveloped Chen Xu.

"So, that broken chip that got into your head via a miniature drone."

"From the moment it entered Chinese airspace, it became inviolable state-owned property!"

Chen Xu's smug expression froze instantly, and cold sweat slid down his forehead.

"You...you're talking nonsense! It's clearly linked to my brain! How could it become state-owned property!"

"If it's tied to your brain, that's called illegally concealing state-owned assets."

"Not only did you refuse to hand over the assets, but you also openly incited resistance against the police's seizure efforts online, attempting to seize state-owned assets for your own use."

"In the Criminal Law, this is called the crime of embezzlement and the crime of misappropriation of state-owned assets."

"Since you're a top student, could you please do the calculation?"

"What is the true value of a system that claims to enable people to turn their lives around?"

Chen Xu swallowed hard, his voice trembling so much it was almost inaudible: "...immeasurable..."

"Correct answer." Lu Jingyan snapped his fingers in satisfaction.

"The amount involved in the case is incalculable, constituting an exceptionally large sum, and has caused particularly serious losses to the interests of the country and the people."

"According to Article 383 of the Criminal Law, the maximum penalty is death, and all personal property shall be confiscated."

"Now, are you choosing to voluntarily undergo surgery to remove the microchip in order to seek leniency?"

"Or should we take this state-owned asset to the execution ground and be shot?"

Lu Jingyan glanced at his watch and said coldly, "I'll give you ten seconds to consider."

"ten."

"Nine."

"Stop counting! I'll pay! I'll pay right now!"

He clung to the table leg, weeping bitterly, fearing that if he hesitated even a second longer, he would be dragged out and shot.

"Officer Lu! I need surgery! Please, please have the forensic doctor remove this thing from my head immediately!"

"I will never dare to embezzle state-owned assets again!"

Zhao Tiezhu was trying so hard to suppress his laughter that his stomach hurt.

"Alright, alright, stop wailing like that. It's not like we were tortured into confessing."

Zhao Tiezhu stepped forward, grabbed Chen Xu, and pushed him directly towards the temporary medical point outside the interrogation room.

"Forensic Doctor Qin! There's an emergency here! Sharpen your scalpel, this kid's head is full of state property!"

Watching Chen Xu's disheveled departure, Lu Jingyan closed the thick legal code and let out a long sigh of relief.

"Well done, boss."

"I have already livestreamed that interrogation video online."

"Those troublemakers who were still clamoring on the dark web suddenly shut up when they saw that even a law master's degree holder had fallen victim to the National Security Law."

Su Xiaoxiao brought up the real-time data dashboard, where the red dots representing the uncollected items in the system were decreasing rapidly.

"The rate of people turning themselves in is skyrocketing, and it's impossible to get an appointment for a dissection surgery in any district."

Lu Jingyan walked to the window and looked at the "chosen ones" who were lined up in the courtyard, waiting obediently for physical formatting.

A genuine sense of relief finally surfaced in his deep eyes.

"Tell the brothers to speed up the collection process and try to end this farce before dark."

Lu Jingyan turned around, picked up the coffee on the table that had gone cold, and took a sip.

"Tonight I'm treating everyone to a belated weekend get-together at the hot springs."

Just as the special investigation team was preparing to celebrate this hard-won, complete victory.

The piercing alarm suddenly blared wildly in the first command center without any warning!

The red flashing lights illuminated the entire hall, making it look like a hellish inferno.

Lu Jingyan's coffee cup suddenly stopped, and coffee splashed onto his police uniform.

"What's happened now?" he asked sternly.

Qin Mingyue rushed in with a look of terror on her face, still holding a sealed lead-lined glass jar for radiation protection, without even taking off her white coat.

"Team Leader Lu! There's a huge problem!"

Qin Mingyue's voice trembled violently with shock.

She slammed the glass jar heavily onto the control panel.

The glass jar was filled with discarded nanochips that had been extracted from the brains of various hosts today.

But at this moment, these electronic wastes, which had already been completely de-energized and rendered useless, are now...

It was as if it were alive, wriggling and piecing itself together frantically at the bottom of the jar!

"I was just about to destroy these confiscated state-owned assets with strong acid."

Qin Mingyue stared intently at the glass jar, her eyes revealing the deep trepidation of a scientist encountering the unknown.

"But suddenly they collectively generated a terrifying adaptive magnetic field!"

"They're merging! They're reorganizing themselves in violation of the laws of physics!"

Lu Jingyan strode forward, his perspective of "absolute rationality" instantly activated.

He could see clearly through the thick radiation-proof glass.

Those tiny nanochips have been connected end to end, assembling into a bizarre six-pointed star metal matrix.

At the center of the matrix, an eerie blue light, purer and darker than that of a higher-dimensional rift, was emanating.

"Drip—drip—drip—"

The supercomputer screen in the command center began to flicker and display garbled text.

Su Xiaoxiao's fingers flew across the keyboard, her forehead covered in sweat from her anxiety.

"Boss! The firewall is under attack! Not from outside, but from inside that jar!"

"This metal matrix is ​​transforming into a super signal transmission tower!"

Zhao Tiezhu suddenly raised the Gatling gun, aiming the muzzle firmly at the glass jar.

"Damn it! I knew these weirdos wouldn't die so easily! Boss, let's just blast them to pieces!"

"Don't shoot!"

Lu Jingyan shouted a stern rebuke, his eyes fixed on the constantly flashing blue light in the center of the matrix.

The flashing frequency of the light actually conformed to the rules of Morse code!

"It's sending out coordinates." Lu Jingyan gritted his teeth, translating the optical frequency information word by word.

The alarm system in his mind also issued an unprecedentedly stern warning at this moment.

[WARNING! Extreme danger! An unknown extradimensional life form is locking onto the current dimensional coordinates from the opposite direction!]

[Warning! The target is not an ordinary system creation, but a true... system controller!]

Lu Jingyan's pupils suddenly contracted.

That madman, the doctor, has been arrested.

But the area network he wove with 100,000 chips was not intended to create any Chosen One.

Instead, they used the brainwaves of 100,000 people as offerings and guiding lights.

In the low-dimensional reality, a beacon was forcibly lit to guide the terrifying existence of a higher dimension!

"Xiaoxiao, immediately cut off the civilian power grid throughout the province! Force a physical power outage!"

Lu Jingyan suddenly drew his sidearm from his waist and cocked it with a click.

His voice was unusually solemn, but it also burned with an even more violent fighting spirit.

"Inform Minister Zhou that this is not the end."

"The real storm has only just begun."

Zhao Tiezhu, his face taut with furrowed brows, gripped the gun handle tightly and roared:

"Boss! No matter what kind of monsters or demons come, as long as they dare to set foot in Jinghai City, I'll have plenty of bullets!"