Handong: Sha Li wants political achievements? I'll shut down the entire province.

"Gurgle."

Ye Qingmei's Adam's apple bobbed slightly as she swallowed the mutated red wine that resembled vein blood.

The faint swallowing sound, enveloped by the frigid air of the extremely cold chamber, carried a raw and vicious quality.

Her fingers, painted with dark red nail polish, tapped lightly on the console keyboard.

That deadly chuckle followed the encrypted frequency band of Cloud AI.

It silently seeped into the night in Handong.

Its daybreak.

The morning fog in Handong Province pressed down on the ground and refused to dissipate.

The air was filled with a damp, foul, muddy smell; when inhaled, it made my trachea feel tight and constricted.

The third floor of the Provincial Party Committee Guesthouse, a top-class suite.

Zhao Gang was like a dying fathead fish, tightly entangled in the quilt that smelled of musty years.

He couldn't sleep soundly at all.

In my dream.

Shen Pojun's blood-dripping military boots were pressing firmly against his chest.

A two-meter-tall iron tower grabbed his neck.

He leaned half his body out of the window on the 33rd floor of the Lingxiao Building.

The feeling of weightlessness instantly pierced the vestibular nerve.

"Yan Qingfeng, you living devil!"

Zhao Gang screamed at the top of his lungs in his dream.

The muscles in his groin suddenly twisted into a tight knot, and a violent cramping sensation shot straight to the top of his head from the nerve endings.

The pain jolted him awake, and he sprang straight up from the bed.

The silk pajamas were completely soaked with cold sweat.

It was wet and sticky, clinging to the back of the spine.

The hot air from the central air conditioning didn't make me feel warm; instead, it gave me goosebumps.

The chill penetrated straight into my bones.

Zhao Gang's upper and lower teeth were uncontrollably clattering together, making a series of small, crisp "clucking" sounds.

His chest heaved violently as he gasped for breath.

He swallowed a mouthful of salty, fishy-tasting saliva and realized that his voice was completely hoarse.

Half an hour later, in the restaurant on the first floor.

This place was originally a venue for receiving important officials from the capital, but now it is as desolate as an abandoned warehouse.

Official funding has long been cut off by conglomerates.

The restaurant was filled with the sour smell of leftover swill.

Zhao Gang, dressed in a new bespoke suit, sat at a wooden table with peeling paint.

In front of him was a bowl of thin, watery porridge that even smelled a bit sour.

His stomach felt empty, and the stomach walls contracted and rubbed against him in waves.

The fright he experienced at Lingxiao Manor last night made him feel nauseous at the mere smell of sourness.

If you don't eat, you won't find a single clean biscuit in this guesthouse.

He bit his chapped and bleeding lower lip, picked up the bowl of sour porridge, and was just about to pour it into his mouth.

"Buzz—"

A low-frequency electromagnetic drive sound came as it silently slid across the ground.

Zhao Gang froze, his eyelids twitching wildly.

A completely silver-white Lingxiao mechanical dog made not a single mechanical noise.

Like a ghost, it remained fixed at the foot of his leather shoes.

On the top of this metal lump's head is an electronic eye that flashes a scarlet light.

The red light swept across Zhao Gang's trousers, exuding a detached, inhuman scrutiny.

This gaze was even more chilling than the smell of blood on Shen Pojun yesterday.

"Click".

A harsh, cracking sound came from the mechanical spring.

The armored hatch on the back of the mechanical dog popped open without warning.

A sheet of A4 paper was ejected by the mechanical roller and landed lightly on Zhao Gang's shoe.

The paper still had the warmth of freshly printed ink.

A pungent smell of printer heat ozone filled the air, hitting Zhao Gang's nostrils directly.

Zhao Gang swallowed the bitter bile that was rising in his throat.

He bent down, his fingers trembling as if electrified, and picked up the paper.

I only glanced at it.

It was as if a hundred pounds of explosives had been stuffed into his brain, and with a "boom," it all exploded into powder.

At the very top of the paper was a precise waveform diagram of sound decibels.

Every sound wave fluctuation was clearly marked by Yunxiao AI.

Below that is a row of bold, decoded text.

"3:14:27 AM".

"Audio of a high-risk target talking in their sleep was detected on the third floor of the Provincial Party Committee Guesthouse."

Audio decryption content: "Yan Qingfeng, you living Yama."

Zhao Gang was struck dumb, frozen on the hard wooden chair.

How is that possible?

Before he went to sleep, he personally unplugged all the electrical appliances in the house, and even turned off the official secure communication device!

How was this sound intercepted?

Panic instantly tore through his last line of psychological defense.

Another excruciating spasm erupted from the groin.

The bladder deep in the lower abdomen completely surrendered at this moment.

The sphincter could no longer hold back the torrent.

A warm, pale yellow liquid instantly soaked the crotch of the expensive trousers.

The liquid dripped down his trousers and into the Italian handmade custom-made leather shoes on his feet.

The pungent smell of urine exploded in the sour and foul-smelling cafeteria.

The stench made several elderly waiters nearby cover their noses and move away with disgusted expressions.

But Zhao Gang has now lost all sense of shame.

In this cyber prison where even the air is controlled by the system.

There are no blind spots, no privacy, and even the subconscious mind in your head doesn't belong to you.

Zhao Gang finally understood.

In Handong.

Not only can you not resist, you also cannot make any moves to resist.

Even if you're dreaming, as long as you dare to have even the slightest thought of rebelling against Master Yan...

The very next morning, this deadly waveform chart will be right on your dining table! This is a capital offense!

He covered his mouth tightly.

He strained his ten fingers until his knuckles turned white, and his fingernails dug deep into the soft flesh of his cheeks.

"Sizzle."

The oily skin was scratched open, and dark red blood seeped out.

Blood mixed with cold sweat on my face flowed into my mouth, tasting both salty and fishy.

His Adam's apple felt like a rusty piece of iron stuck inside, and he struggled to move it up and down.

He forcefully swallowed that desperate scream, along with the stomach acid, back down into his stomach.

The mechanical dog's scarlet electronic eye remained fixed on him.

Suddenly, a coded recording with a sleazy, lewd tone came from the speaker in the dog's mouth.

"Secretary Zhao, you slept quite a bit last night."

That was the voice of Chief Financial Officer Su Jianxin.

"Master Yan asked me to pass on a message to you."

"In Handong, the official beds are hard, which makes it easy to have nightmares. Next time you sleep, remember to sew your mouth shut."

After the mechanical dog finished speaking, it closed the back compartment with a "click".

The tracks turned silently, and the machine slid out of the cafeteria door.

Zhao Gang slumped in the chair, his legs soaked in his own urine, his body limp and rotten like mud.

He crumpled the printed paper, still smelling of ink, into a tangled mess.

The crevices under my fingernails were full of blood streaks from being pricked by the edges of the paper.

He stared in the direction where the mechanical dog had disappeared, his mind a complete blank.

If Yan Qingfeng can monitor even his dreams, what can he use to act as an informant in the capital?

He might as well just find a rope and hang himself right now and it would be more painless!

"Ring ring—"

The official encrypted mobile phone on the table suddenly rang loudly like a death knell.

Zhao Gang was so frightened that he dropped the bowl of sour porridge he was holding.

The porcelain bowl shattered, and sour-smelling rice grains splattered all over my trouser leg.

His hands trembled as he pressed the answer button.

On the other end of the phone came Secretary Bai's hoarse voice, trembling with tears.

"Secretary Zhao... Secretary Zhao..."

Secretary Bai's voice trembled so much that he couldn't even spell out complete sentences, as if he had been soaking in ice water for three days and three nights.

"Please check the internal network report... Something terrible has happened."

"Paul, the buyer whose blueprints were leaked, was literally thirsted to death by our consortium's legal department in a luxury hotel in Manchester."

Zhao Gang swallowed hard, feeling a chill run down his neck.

"I know about this. Master Yan issued the kill order in front of me yesterday."

"That's not it!"

Secretary Bai was breathing heavily on the other end of the phone, and the sound of her teeth chattering could be clearly heard.

"It happened just now! Ten minutes ago!"

"Beijing has just received an urgent diplomatic note from Europe. The entire power grid in Paris was paralyzed and burned down in the early hours of the morning!"

Zhao Gang's pupils suddenly contracted, and his breathing stopped completely in that instant.

Secretary Bai gagged, filled with fear that shattered her worldview.

"Secretary Zhao, Master Yan... he really ordered the fleet to open fire, physically stripping the old European money naked!"

"The capital is in complete chaos. The higher-ups have ordered us... ordered us to quickly find a way to stabilize Yan Qingfeng and prevent him from turning his guns back on China!"