I set you up on a blind date, and you've managed to overcome all the weirdness?

After seeing Chen Feng off, Lin Yan didn't rush home.

Now that he had taken on the task from the special investigation team, he wanted to figure out exactly what this single-bar suspension challenge was all about.

When they arrived at the office, it was deserted, with only Su Qinghan sitting there.

Everyone in the bureau who was still free has been sent out on fieldwork. After all, the trouble caused last night was quite significant, and just appeasing the public is enough to keep them busy.

The reason Lin Yan is able to steal a moment of leisure here is twofold: first, he has joined the special task force, and second, Old Zhao is giving him special treatment.

As for Coach Su, Lin Yan was also very curious as to why she was still here.

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her, just in time to catch a glimpse of an open document sitting on her.

The large red characters above were very eye-catching, exactly the same as those Chen Feng had just given him.

"Miss Su, Commander Chen just assigned me the task, and you've already taken a liking to the case files?"

Lin Yan pointed to the document and asked tentatively.

"Can our branch's analysts just freely access the intelligence gathered by the task force?"

In fact, Lin Yan himself was not sure. He only knew that Su Qinghan and Lao Zhao had a good relationship, but he didn't know the specifics.

However, even if Lao Zhao came, he couldn't possibly look at this file.

Unexpectedly, Su Qinghan took a sip of coffee and said without turning her head:

"Get to the bottom of the cause and effect, Special Envoy Lin."

She continued typing, multitasking seemingly without any burden on her.

"This document wasn't issued by the task force. I intercepted the abnormal signal, organized and archived it, and then directly pushed it to the provincial bureau's main database."

"Then Chen Feng just used it to assign you a task."

Lin Yan was shocked. This works?

Sending intelligence directly to the provincial bureau would bypass Lao Zhao and Shen Qinglan.

Moreover, she addressed Chen Feng, a high-ranking official in the provincial bureau, by his first name, as if he were just a gofer.

Lin Yan took a closer look at the woman beside him.

Is she truly naive, or does she have powerful connections?

Lin Yan silently put her mind at ease and didn't ask any further questions.

In places like the Folklore Bureau, one shouldn't be too curious.

Can't be bothered.

"Alright, alright, you're Boss Su."

Lin Yan moved her chair forward and steered the conversation toward serious matters.

"Since you're the one who discovered it, what's the catch with this horizontal bar challenge? They can't just be doing this for fun, can they?"

Su Qinghan remained silent and opened a video on her computer.

On Jiangcheng Pedestrian Street, a simple iron frame was erected in the middle of the road, with a single bar hanging from it, and a sign standing next to it.

[Challenge yourself to hang for 100 seconds and win a million-dollar cash prize!]

A crowd had already gathered around, and a burly man with a muscular build was hanging on the horizontal bar.

Looking at that size, it could probably last for several minutes, let alone 100 seconds.

A screen stands in the upper right corner of the video, displaying a timer.

When the number jumped to 90, Su Qinghan increased the playback speed to 0.5x.

"Look closely at his face."

Although the burly man's face was flushed red, he was still gritting his teeth and persevering. But the next second, his eyes suddenly bulged out, as if he was in great pain, and his hands slipped off the horizontal bar.

The burly man crashed to the ground.

What's strange is the way he landed.

A burly man weighing nearly 200 pounds collapsed onto the ground the moment he touched it, as if he had entered a state of post-coital meditation.

His hands and feet have completely defied the structure of human joints; if you took him to another world, he could directly join the slime race.

The video ends.

Even though Lin Yan had experienced a lot in the past few days, his stomach was churning.

"Is this a comminuted fracture?"

"It's not a fracture."

Su Qinghan picked up the documents on the table and handed them to Lin Yan.

"The autopsy report said that the skin, flesh, internal organs and blood vessels on the dead body were all fine."

"Then how did he become so weak?"

"His 206 bones vanished into thin air the instant they fell off."

Su Qinghan then pulled up another set of photos.

The photo shows several passersby who also failed the challenge and fell off the horizontal bar.

Some of them rubbed their wrists, some shook their heads and sighed, but none of them seemed to be acting strangely.

"These are the other challengers from yesterday afternoon."

"We checked the on-site surveillance footage and discovered a pattern."

"More than 30 ordinary people participated in the challenge, and most of them fell down after 40 to 60 seconds."

"Aside from muscle soreness, they had no other injuries and didn't feel anything was wrong."

Su Qinghan then retrieved the file of that burly man.

"But the one who died was different. His name was Wang Hu. He wasn't an ordinary person. His name was on the bureau's blacklist."

"Blacklist?" Lin Yan raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, he's a gold digger who specializes in trading low-grade, bizarre fragments on the black market."

"He has been involved with bizarre and grotesque things for many years, and has long been corrupted by the rules. In addition, he has been training for many years, so his mind and body are much stronger than the average person."

Su Qinghan took the document and handed it to Lin Yan.

"By comparing these data, we speculate that the single bar is actually filtering."

"It filters out those who meet the standards both mentally and physically, so it has basically no impact on ordinary people."

"But what if the challenger has extraordinary mental strength, or is tainted by bizarre rules..."

Su Qinghan glanced at Lin Yan indifferently and warned:

"Once such a person participates in its game, its screening mechanism will be activated."

"And the price of losing the game is that it forcibly removes your bones."

Lin Yan didn't speak.

This way of dying is terrifying; it feels like some kind of cult ritual.

"These are all just speculations based on the videos and autopsy reports; we don't know the specific bizarre rules."

Su Qinghan turned around and went back to looking at the computer.

"Special Envoy from Lin Da"

"The forensic department in the bureau can't piece together a boneless corpse right now, so please be careful this time."

……

In the afternoon, some of the people who went out to do fieldwork gradually returned.

Those people who usually go around visiting each other are now walking with a brisk pace, and the phone in the bureau is ringing non-stop.

The impact of last night's ghost-hunting live stream was enormous.

Although Chu Chu cut off the signal at the last minute, Shen Qinglan immediately ordered the blocking of related information across the entire internet.

But the video of the red figures hanging upside down in the sky, and the video of the berserk heavy metal vehicle battling the mermaid phantom, still secretly spread online.

"The sewers and abandoned heavy machinery factory in Nanhu District have been designated as high-risk areas. Notify the Special Operations Squadron to immediately push the cordon outward by another 500 meters!"

"The Information Security Department has added staff! All videos and screen recordings online related to last night's battle between the Water God and the Chariot have been classified as malicious AI-generated content; accounts found spreading these illegally will be immediately banned!"

"The logistics department must immediately activate the emergency plan and evacuate all residents within a three-kilometer radius of the heavy machinery factory and the Nanhu District! Quickly!"