The strongest intermediary in all realms

Zhou Ming was woken up by his phone vibrating at nine o'clock in the evening.

He groggily sat up in the chair and realized that he had actually fallen asleep. Gulu was dozing on his chest, its crystal belly rising and falling. Startled by his movement, it squeaked and rolled onto the floor.

He picked up his phone, and the caller ID on the screen showed an unfamiliar number with the location listed as Yuecheng District.

"Feed?"

"Mr. Zhou?" A young man's voice came from the other end, tinged with obvious anxiety and probing. "I am... I am Ma Laosan, the number Xu Ling gave me."

Zhou Ming instantly snapped back to reality. Ma Laosan, the martial arts expert who had worked as a security guard at Sihaitong for a month.

"Brother Ma, what are you saying?"

"I just passed by the west side of the city and took a look at Sihaitong's place," Ma Laosan said in a low voice, with the sounds of wind and traffic in the background, indicating he was standing outside. "Tonight is particularly unusual. All the lights in their warehouse are on, there are four cars parked in the yard, and there are three times more people than when I used to work the night shift, and—" He took a deep breath.

"I just saw someone carrying something out of the warehouse on a stretcher, covered with a white sheet."

Zhou Ming gripped his phone tightly: "How many people carried it?"

"Four. The thing on the stretcher isn't big, it looks...like a person's size."

Zhou Ming's heart skipped a beat. He quickly glanced at the time: 9:15 PM, about twenty hours had passed since he stole the crystal ball and forged the log to insert into the array system last night.

If a liquidator is injured or even killed while repairing the array, it means that his falsified logs were not only read—but also executed.

What are the consequences of forging logs? He originally thought the other party would only "read" an incorrect record and then manually check it.

However, the other party clearly took the log as real diagnostic information and followed the log's instructions to perform a certain repair procedure, which led to the accident.

"Brother Ma, leave this scene immediately and don't look at it a second time," Zhou Ming said sternly. "Don't go out tonight after you get home."

Ma Laosan seemed to sense the seriousness in his tone, and simply replied "Okay," then hung up the phone. Zhou Ming stood by the window, holding his phone.

The window faces the street, and from here you can see the sky to the northwest of Yuecheng District—the direction of the Chengxi Warehouse District. Lights are faintly reflected on the low-hanging clouds, and they are brighter than usual.

"The falsified logs were used as a maintenance guide." Xiao Qi woke up and hovered on his shoulder. "This means that the liquidators' technical lead on Blue Star is either unprofessional or overly reliant on automated processes, lacking human verification."

"They're injured," Zhou Ming said, "or worse, on stretchers with white sheets, at least seriously injured. The entire warehouse area is on high alert tonight. They're short-handed and tense, which is exactly what I want—when they're in disarray, I have room to maneuver."

But then a thought sent chills down his spine: what if the liquidators blamed tonight's incident on "external intrusion"? Ma Laosan said there were four cars parked in the yard, and three times as many people as usual.

Were these people called in to provide backup, or were they called in to conduct a search?

"I need to confirm something." Zhou Ming turned around, opened his computer, and connected to Xiao Qi's remote scanning module. "The energy fluctuation status of the Sihaitong warehouse. Is the formation still operational?"

Xiaoqi's scanning beam pierced the night sky and extended westward into the city. A blurry energy heat map appeared on the screen in the office, showing a cluster of irregularly pulsating lights in the western warehouse district, its color gradually fading from deep red to orange-yellow.

"The array is in a low-power state and the teleportation sequence has not been activated," Xiao Qi analyzed. "However, the energy fluctuations are abnormally unstable, which means someone is forcibly repairing or restarting the system. If the system restart process is not handled properly, it could indeed cause an energy backlash, injuring the operator."

Zhou Ming stared at the orange-yellow spot of light for several seconds. The other side was repairing it; although they had suffered an accident, they didn't intend to abandon this supply line.

As the man in black robes had said, "There is only one chance to teleport left," this supply line is extremely important to them, and they cannot allow it to be completely abandoned because of one accident.

He had to find a way to completely disable the system before they finished repairing it.

The crystal spheres are just the energy core; without them, they can use other alternative energy sources—though less efficient, they are not entirely unfeasible.

To truly render a teleportation array completely useless, its "coordinate anchoring structure" needs to be destroyed.

"Xiao Qi, where is the coordinate anchoring structure of the 12th plane teleportation array?"

"In the Blue Star terminal array room, there is a 'landmark stone disc' embedded in the ground, which is the fixed reference point for transmitting signals. If the stone disc is destroyed, their coordinate positioning in the twelfth plane will fail, and even if a new energy core is installed, they will still be unable to deliver goods."

Zhou Ming glanced out the window; the lights of the warehouse district in the west of the city shone like a lurking eye in the night.

"Let's go again tonight."

"Are you crazy?" Xiao Qi's eyes widened. "There are four cars over there, many more people, and they're on high alert after the accident. You've used up all your invisibility talismans—"

"So I'm not going in," Zhou Ming said, picking up his coat and putting it on. "I'll only do one thing: make a commotion outside, draw their attention to the front yard, and then, while they're rushing out from the front, throw something in from the back."

He pulled an attack talisman from the drawer—a low-level fire-attribute talisman that, when activated, could produce a small-scale explosion and intense light.

In the world of fantasy, this is just a tool used to ward off low-level monsters, but in the urban environment of Earth, the sudden appearance of fire and explosions is enough to throw an already tense outpost into complete chaos.

"You threw it in and then ran away?" Xiao Qi asked.

"Yes. They all went to the front yard to check on the explosion. The array room in the back yard was left unattended. I don't need to go in and destroy the stone slab. As long as that attack talisman creates enough chaos in the yard, their repair work tonight will be wasted. Once they've stabilized, I've already prepared follow-up measures."

Zhou Ming went out and hailed a motorcycle taxi to a convenience store three streets away from Sihaitong. The night was thick, and he walked close to it, hugging the shadows of the street.

The lights inside the Sihaitong Courtyard were blindingly bright, and people were moving back and forth in the courtyard, much more densely packed than usual.

He went around to the backyard and chose a secluded spot about twenty meters from the wall, where he crouched down. His fingers gripped the fire-attribute attack talisman, his palms already sweating.

"Lead it," he whispered.

Xiao Qi emitted a weak pulse of spiritual energy, triggering the activation patterns on the talisman.

The talisman paper quickly heated up in Zhou Ming's palm, its surface glowing with an orange-red light. He flung it with all his might towards the top of the courtyard wall—the talisman paper traced a low arc and landed at the edge of the open space behind the courtyard.

boom.

A ball of orange-red fire exploded, accompanied by a blinding white light and a muffled bang.

Exclamations and footsteps erupted in the courtyard, and someone shouted, "Back! Something's happened back there!" Lights quickly converged towards the backyard.

As the flames rose, Zhou Ming turned around and retreated in the opposite direction as fast as he could, hugging the wall. The noise behind him grew louder and louder, but he did not look back.

He ran all the way to the convenience store three blocks away before stopping, leaning on his knees and panting heavily.

A night breeze blew by, and the streetlights at the street corner shone brightly.

"It's done." Xiao Qi's voice held suppressed excitement. "The explosion range of the attack talisman wasn't large, but it was loud enough. I remotely scanned their energy heat map and found obvious fluctuations and disturbances after the explosion—the repair work was interrupted, and they now have to focus on putting out the fire and treating the injured."

Zhou Ming straightened up, his forehead covered in sweat. He put his hands in his pockets and walked back, his footsteps sounding particularly clear on the empty night street.

He caused the Cleaners three problems tonight: the first was a technical accident caused by falsifying logs, the second was an energy interruption caused by stealing crystal spheres, and the third was the disruption caused by this attack talisman just now.

With these three factors combined, the other party will be unable to investigate "who is behind this" for at least the next two days.

Their energy was entirely devoted to firefighting, medical care, and system rebooting.

In the next two days, he could further destroy the teleportation array on the twelfth plane—since he had already stolen the crystal ball, he might as well strike while the iron was hot and go back to smash the "boundary marker stone plate" under that watchtower, once and for all.

He walked on the empty streets at midnight, occasionally a motorcycle taxi would pass overhead, its engine sound echoing between the buildings.

Passing by a convenience store that was still lit up, he went in and bought a bottle of iced soda. He unscrewed the cap and took two sips. The cool bubbles went down his throat, washing away most of the tension from the night before.

As I walked out of the convenience store, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Lin Xiaowan sent a message: "That external account didn't log in tonight. I've been watching it all night."

After finishing reading, Zhou Ming put his phone back in his pocket and looked up at the sky. The night sky over Yuecheng District was bathed in a pale orange glow from the city lights, obscuring most of the stars, but occasionally one or two bright ones could still be seen, stubbornly twinkling.

He stepped across the flooded sidewalk and walked towards Wutong Road.

The night is still long.

But at least tonight, he turned the tide at the poker table somewhat.