Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Amar looked down and saw two candies with colorful wrappers printed with a fruit pattern she didn't recognize.

“These are for you,” the woman said, “and for your sister as well.”

Before Amar could even say thank you, the woman had already turned and left, the cloth bag dangling in her hand, looking empty.

She pressed the candy deeper into her pocket, steadied the bucket, and continued walking home.

When I got home, my father had already returned.

The father was squatting at the door, putting something into the pot. Amar put down the bucket, and the father looked up at her. When he saw that she had brought back two full buckets of water, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

Amar untied Nakiya from his back. His little sister was already awake, her round eyes wide open, neither crying nor making a fuss, just staring at him.

She took out a candy from her pocket, peeled one, and put it into her younger sister's mouth. Her sister was stunned for a moment, then her face scrunched up, then relaxed, and drool dripped down the corner of her mouth in a small, clear stream.

She handed the second candy to her father, who looked at the candy, then at her, and shook his head.

Behind her, Nakia made babbling sounds.

Amar glanced back and, following the direction Najiya was pointing, saw something floating in the sky again.

This time it wasn't white flowers; it was something bigger and denser.

She reached out and caught one; in her palm lay a small plastic bag containing a flatbread filled with meat filling, still slightly warm.

She tore open the bag, took a bite, and stuffed her mouth full of mutton and noodles. She chewed several times before swallowing, and her throat felt a little blocked when she did.

Amar hasn't eaten mutton in a long time.

Plastic bags were still falling from the sky, wobbling as they landed on the ruins, on the roadside, and on the rooftops of other people's houses.

The neighbor's child climbed onto the roof to pick them up, hugging them one after another until he couldn't hold them all, then using his clothes to hold them.

Someone ran to meet him on the road. He tripped and fell while running, but got up and kept running. His face was covered in dirt and his mouth was wide open.

Amar took another pie and handed it to Nakiya.

Nakiya sat on the ground, breaking the pieces apart one by one and stuffing them into her mouth.

"cake……"

Amar and his father turned around in surprise at the same time.

This was the first word Najiya learned after coming to the human world.

169 Since we're already here

After getting dressed, Zhang Qiliang took out his phone to check the time in Y City; the lunch rush hour was about to begin.

Logically, I should hurry back to place orders at this point.

After glancing in the direction of the UAE, Zhang Qiliang put his phone back in his pocket.

come all come...

UAE

Over the past two months, many people holding long-term visas or semi-permanent residency permits have received emails from the immigration authorities without their knowledge.

The email subject was "Notification Regarding Assistance in Completing Identity Information Verification," and the body was very polite, beginning with "Dear Sir/Madam" and ending with "Thank you for your cooperation and understanding," with a link to an electronic identity verification system in the middle.

Clicking the link first triggers a facial recognition process.

The system requires the person being verified to slowly turn their head, blink, and open their mouth in front of the camera. Only after all three actions are completed can they proceed to the next step.

A Chinese real estate agent living in Dubai Marina tried to turn his head three times while holding up his phone in his living room, but the system indicated that the action was "incomplete" each time. He then stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window and turned his head again in the natural light, and this time it passed.

Later, the real estate agent told his friend that in those two minutes, he went through everything he had done in Dubai over the past five years and couldn't come up with any problems, but his palms were sweating the whole time.

The second step is the document uploading process after facial recognition.

Passport, visa pages, residence permit, and utility bills or bank statements for the most recent three months—you can't be missing any of them.

The system will not display an "upload failed" message; it will simply remain on the upload screen, allowing the uploader to repeatedly check what they have missed.

A housewife living in Abu Dhabi was stuck on this screen for nearly 20 minutes: her electricity bill was paid in her husband's name, and the system did not recognize it.

She called her husband, who guided her through the phone to find the bank statements for the past three months in a shared folder. When she uploaded the fourth month's statements, the system finally redirected.

The signing process is the most time-consuming part.

The system requires the signer to sign directly on the screen using a stylus or finger, and the backend will compare the signature with the signature collected upon entry.

If the comparison fails, the verification will automatically revert to the first step, and the facial recognition will start over.

A fund manager's handwritten signature in English is slightly different from the one he left when he entered the country seven years ago... Seven years have passed, whose signature wouldn't change a little?

The system rejected the request twice, and he adjusted it a third time, slowing down his signing speed to almost copying it before it finally passed.

The above verifications are specifically targeted at holders of Tai Yang passports, with those of Asian descent being the next most targeted.

Such a clearly targeted policy would have been enough to trigger a diplomatic incident in any other situation.

But this time, the online reaction was surprisingly unanimous.

In the comments section of Da Yang's domestic website, there is almost no dissenting voice.

……

At the arrival hall of Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport, the queue stretched around three bends.

The immigration officer in the white robe sat in the glass booth, a Da Yang passport spread out in front of him. He had already flipped through it four times, but he was still comparing the entry and exit stamps on each page with great care.

Standing outside the glass was a young man in his early twenties. The luggage tag on his suitcase was still attached, and it read "Shenzhen-Dubai".

The young man swallowed hard. The immigration officer looked up and asked him in English about his purpose of entry. The young man replied that he was traveling. The immigration officer asked for a hotel address, which the young man gave. The immigration officer looked down at the system, picked up the phone next to him, dialed an internal number, and said a few words in Arabic.

Three minutes later, two police officers in dark blue uniforms came over and took the young man to the office next door.

As the office door closed, the young man glanced back, and the immigration officer began flipping through the next passport.

There were already seven or eight people sitting in the office, all of them East Asian.

The interrogation room was small, with a metal table, three chairs, and a silent LCD screen on the wall that played a loop of rights notices written in four languages.

Two people sat across the table: an immigration investigator in a white robe and a Dubai police case officer in a dark blue uniform.

The translator sat to the side, with a notepad open in front of him.

"Name?"

“Gu Zhao,” the young man said.

The investigator placed the passport on the table without immediately flipping through it: "Mr. Sui, have you been to the UAE before?"

"I've been here."

"several times?"

"twice."

When was the most recent time?

Three months ago.

The investigator opened the system, and Gu Zhao's entry and exit records popped up on the screen: he had entered the UAE three times in the past two years.

The first time was the year before last, a seven-day stay, declared as tourism.

The second time was last year, when I stayed for fourteen days, and the stated purpose was a business visit.

The third time was three months ago, during which I stayed for eleven days, and the stated purpose was still a business visit.

He entered the country three times and left on time each time; there were no violations on the records alone.

The problem lies with the base station data.

The UAE’s latest emergency audit cross-referenced mobile phone base station data of all people entering the country with Taiyang passports over the past two years with their entry and exit declaration information.

The system automatically marks records where "the mobile phone signal remains outside the declared location for an extended period of time".

During the eleven days of his most recent entry into the country, Gu Zhao declared his accommodation as Dubai International City, but his mobile phone signal was concentrated in the Sharjah Industrial Zone for nine days.

This deviation value triggered a red warning in the system.

The investigator turned the screen around to show him.

"Mr. Sui, would you mind explaining this?"

Gu Zhao stared at the red marker on the screen, his lips moving slightly: "I...I have a friend over there."

What's your friend's name?

"...Abdullah."

What is Abdullah's last name?

"...It's Abdullah, that's what we all call him."

The investigator didn't press for a name, but changed the subject: "What exactly were you doing in the Sharjah industrial area?"

"It's just...playing...he showed me around."

"It turned around for nine days."

"right……"

The investigators opened another set of data in the system, which was a record from three months ago of several phone numbers that appeared frequently at the same time and under the same base station as Koo Chao's mobile phone number in the Sharjah Industrial Zone.

Three of the numbers have been identified by UAE police as "known contacts of telecom fraud rings," and the owners of two of the numbers were arrested two weeks ago in their villas in Ras Al Khaimah.

“Your friend Abdullah,” the investigator placed the list on the table, “what’s his number?”

Gu Zhao looked down at the few lines of numbers, without pointing at them.

He remained silent for a long time, so long that the translator put down his pen and looked up at him.

"Mr. Gu, are you looking at this?"

"...I want to drink water."

The water has been brought.

Gu Zhao took a sip, placed the paper cup on the table, and held it with both hands.

The investigator put the list away and pulled another page out of the file.

This is a call log.

Three months ago, a call to a number in China lasted for nearly an hour. The caller was "Abdullah," a number saved in Gu Zhao's phone.

The investigator placed the record in front of Gu Zhao and pointed to the number "Abdullah".

"We've retrieved the contents of every call made from this number. Would you like me to play it for you?"

Gu Zhao's hand holding the paper cup stopped moving.

“Your friend told people in China on the phone that he has four traders under him, one of whom is new and not very skilled yet, but very obedient. The entry date of the new trader mentioned on the phone is the same as the date you entered the UAE three months ago.”

"Take him away and transfer him to the detention center for trial, to prepare for charges."

……

Detention center.

This gray-white building complex on the edge of the desert can no longer accommodate any more people.

A row of folding beds was temporarily added to the corridor of the No. 3 prison block, stretching from the left wall to the right wall, with the space between each bed so narrow that one could only pass sideways.

Some of the people lying on the folding beds were covered with blankets and remained motionless, with only a section of their ankles and the electronic monitoring rings on their ankles showing from the edge of the blankets; some sat on the edge of the bed, hugging their knees and staring blankly at the water stains on the opposite wall; some had just been brought in and were still wearing the casual clothes they had worn when they came in.

In the corner, a middle-aged man wearing glasses and with a refined demeanor was negotiating with the guard in English. He said he was a legitimate businessman with multiple entry records within the past three years in his passport, and that his company was registered in the Dubai Free Zone with a physical office.

The guard glanced down at the detention registration form in his hand. The "crime" column on the form read "telecommunications fraud" in Arabic and English. Below, in the remarks column, there was a handwritten supplement: "Responsible for training in sales techniques, specializing in targeting female victims aged 40 to 65."

After the guard finished reading, he turned the registration form face down on the table and left.

The middle-aged man stood there, his lips still moving, but no one was listening anymore.

……

Federal trial court.

The gallery in Courtroom No. 3 was mostly empty, with a dozen or so people in formal attire sitting in the first two rows, some flipping through documents and others jotting something down in notepads.

These people were not journalists. In most cases, filming is not allowed in UAE courts. They were representatives from the Ministry of the Interior, the Immigration Department, and several embassies who were there to observe the proceedings.

About two minutes later, the presiding judge took his seat, and the bailiffs opened the side door, leading the four defendants into the dock one by one.