There's definitely something wrong with this murder mystery game

Early in the morning, as he looked outside at the sky, Xu Shuo always felt the illusion that it was still night.

No wonder everyone here is so crazily in love with bright colors. After all, with the sky perennially shrouded in fog, never revealing the blue sky and the sun, anyone living here for a long time would feel oppressed.

Academy Island had a virtual sky system, which was really considerate of the students' psychological health.

Xu Shuo prepared the materials he needed for his class, then headed to the teaching building with a somewhat nervous heart, earnestly reviewing his lesson plan all the way, even more diligently than the students who were studying for exams.

However, being too absorbed in the electronic screen made him forget that after using his power, he still had the negative BUFF of being directionally challenged.

It wasn't until the pleasant sound of the school bell echoed throughout the campus that he realized he hadn't reached the classroom yet.

Xu Shuo: "..."

He pushed up the plain glasses on his face and resignedly opened the campus map, slowly making his way by following it.

And naturally, he was late.

But perhaps because his lessons over the past few days had been really bad, the number of students this class compared to the initially full attendance was considerably less.

Xu Shuo didn't mind; after all, even if no one listened, he could keep teaching!

At eight o'clock in the morning, class began.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, class ended.

The pleasant sound of the bell rang out again, and the satisfied students left the classroom sparsely, leaving Xu Shuo standing at the lectern lost in thought.

The Character Card still hadn't triggered.

Xu Shuo silently sighed, sitting on the lectern staring blankly at the lesson plan in his hand, his face expressionless.

He had just been thinking, should he directly reveal his identity as the director of New An Bureau to his buddies?

But, putting shame aside, it was indeed strange for such an important character role to be assigned to a rookie by the system, and he still wasn't sure whether he had messed up his role again.

He could give Hong Rao a bit of trust, but he couldn't trust the group of people he had just teamed up with.

Forget it, there was no need to be so obsessed with Professor Li's Character Card.

Being too concerned about gains and losses was not good.

However, without fully receiving Professor Li's abilities, with his own power, he feared it would be impossible to kill Luo Kun without resorting to Qiuzi's Character Card.

After all, Doctor Chu's One-Click Kill didn't work, so the next highest lethality left was Qiuzi...

With that thought, he suddenly felt motivated again to search for Professor Li's Character Card!

Xu Shuo shook his head, intending to pack up the lesson plan, but because he had been blankly staring at a scene for so long, when he came back to his senses, he felt that the scene was oddly familiar.

This lesson talked about events more than a thousand years ago, before the empire was established, when the world was a Wasteland.

The scene that appeared most often in the text was the Wasteland; the survivor strongholds established amidst desolation, the grotesque monsters crawling forward, the crumbling civilization.

This wasteland was even more tragic than last night's official bombing of the slums.

Xu Shuo looked at it for a while longer, yet he really couldn't think of anything more, so he decisively packed up the lesson plan and stopped dwelling on it.

Just as others said, let it be.

...

In the following days, Paradise Bird indeed did not continue to stir up trouble.
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Instead, it was Deng Corporation that, riding on the incident at Jiangpu Port, wanted compensation from New An Bureau but was directly rebuffed by the agency, who told them to seek out Paradise Bird themselves.

Did they really think New An Bureau was a pushover?

Officially, there wasn't a word to say; after all, the issue with Silverglow Tower had been resolved by Paradise Bird.

As for Deng Corporation, what did it have to do with New An Bureau?!

Forget it!

It was also because of this that Pianning managed to investigate who exactly leaked the information; it was related to Deng Corporation, but it wasn't entirely on their side.

After all, Deng Corporation still very much wanted to gain some benefits from New An Bureau and would not intentionally sabotage their negotiations.

It was Paradise Bird and one of the seven financial conglomerates, Walter Group, that had underground dealings. The objects of the trade were New Humans whose danger level was not that high, and some eccentric nobles enjoyed such playthings, with Walter Group acting as the middleman.

Walter Group was an old ruthless capitalist.

Trading New Humans was just one of their newly developed projects, and before this, people living at the very bottom had always been their products.

This incident, however, was caused by someone in the management layer of Deng Corporation who let slip the secret after taking money, and then Walter Group sold out the movements of New An Bureau to Paradise Bird in exchange for merchandise.

Paradise Bird indeed had an interest in preventing the alliance between New An Bureau and the officials, so they accepted the terms without hesitation.

The outcome was not beyond Paradise Bird's expectations when New An Bureau made its move.

But their city district base being exposed was the true surprise!

If their city district base hadn't been discovered, Paradise Bird would have suffered no loss in this trade; instead, they were now cornered with only a dozen members left, and the Inspection Team was still on their heels!

So Epsilon might be a bit dangerous lately.

It wasn't hard to guess that Paradise Bird would seek revenge.

...

So during his free time, Xu Shuo made a trip to Epsilon's safehouse.

"Clean this place up, I'm taking you to the base to lay low."

As he said this, Xu Shuo took out a medical syringe, expertly fixed a large needle on it, and then disinfected the nearby arm.

Then, under the terrified gaze of a young man, he drew about a thousand or more milliliters of blood, draining the person to the point of faintness.

Lin Qi was now a captive; although he could draw Teleportation Arrays, the ones at the Paradise Bird headquarters were probably already destroyed, so drawing them was useless.

Even though he knew where the Paradise Bird headquarters was, those people were likely already almost evacuated.

In short, if not recruited by New An Bureau, he was basically useless.

Epsilon watched on the side, somewhat puzzled: "So, Director, what do you need this for? Does he need it?"

Xu Shuo pocketed the vial carefully, stood up, and came a little closer to him, lowering his voice and chuckling, "I don't know, but... shh."

He made a gesture for silence, smiling slightly.

Anyway, just don't tell anyone else.

Although full of questions, Epsilon had a rather frivolous personality, sometimes he really knew his limits—at least he indeed hadn't leaked any information about the operation that day.

This guy, he might still be wondering if Omega had turned traitor.

Even, he had used his own abilities to investigate, only to conclude that there was no conclusion!

It was such a simple question, yet intuition couldn't figure out whether Omega had betrayed them or not!

Hiss... now that's a serious problem!

Round up, that means she's likely to have a tendency to betray!

Epsilon was very reliable. When the Director of the New An Bureau contacted him again, he shared his predictions, but he was met with vague responses.

Epsilon: "???"

The current situation was quite mystical, coupled with the day when Paradise Bird was surrounded and the New Humans were struck, but the New An Bureau turned a blind eye, Epsilon even had reason to suspect the Bureau Chief had defected...

By the time he arrived at the City in the Sky, he felt something was off everywhere.

...

Actually, because of the Paradise Bird tragedy, the atmosphere at the New An Bureau was indeed not so good.

Birds of a feather flock together, with such rampant official misconduct, it was hard for others not to overthink.

Oddly enough, it was bad enough that the Director of the New An Bureau was acting abnormal, but Prophet Aurora had no reaction to this situation either.

This made Pianning worry if they were perhaps brewing some major scheme.

"I must have damaged the interests of the New An Bureau by now, right? I feel like I definitely have," Pianning said doubtfully.

"Didn't you go ask that Prophet?" Yin Banqian curiously asked.

"The Prophet didn't come to me either!"

"..."

"Forget the New An Bureau, even for the New Humans as a whole, this situation seems bad. It's really worrying how they just don't care, why?"

Yin Banqian: "emmm... I think you may have been under too much pressure recently, try to relax."

Cheng Can, who was nearby, yawned and said, "She's just overthinking because she has nothing else to do."

During this period with no missions, Yin Banqian and Cheng Can both stayed in the City in the Sky. The reason was that the safehouse Cheng Can had used to escape capture was discovered again.

Although the upper-level safehouse showed no signs of exploration, this change was already telling.

Someone indeed had the ability to track their movements.

Unless they stayed in the safehouse forever and never left, they might be tracked down the moment they were discovered outside, and in that case, it would be safer to stay at the headquarters of the New An Bureau.

The day after tomorrow was the Long Group conference.

Pianning might have been a bit anxious. In the past two days, she had sent people to quietly investigate around the real headquarters of Paradise Bird, yet there were no anomalies there.

Selling the information to the officials also yielded nothing.

The enemy had hidden themselves well this time; however, Wei Ya had not yet finished restoring that document.

Pianning frowned and pondered for a while, then suddenly stood up, intending to go to the Prophet's room.

But before she could move, an electronic screen appeared in front of her. And soon, Wei Ya's excited face filled the entire screen.

"I've finally cracked this damn thing!"

The secret information from Paradise Bird was damaged, protected by firewalls, infected with viruses, and the files were self-destructing. Even though Wei Ya could navigate the seas of data freely, it had taken her a long time to repair and decrypt it.

Pianning immediately sat back down, looking forward to what she had to say.

"Aside from information the New An Bureau already had, I've picked out the key data for you, and I've finally figured out how Can and the others were discovered!"

Perhaps solving a tough problem made Wei Ya very happy, now she seemed especially excited as she tossed out the compressed files while speaking.

The compressed files were of course sent in the chatroom. The New An Bureau's systems fully supported direct data transmission, so several light screens unfolded in front of Pianning instantly.

Yin Banqian and Cheng Can both leaned in to take a look.

"Xiu Bargas?"

Looking at this file, Pianning squinted slightly.

The data indicated that this was the third-generation leader of the Paradise Bird Organization, but the file was incomplete, seemingly intentionally erased—the experiences and specific abilities were entirely unknown.

However, the history of Paradise Bird's development was very short.

Therefore, considering the average lifespan of humans today, this position was indeed too high-risk to have reached a third generation by now.

Pianning flipped through the file, asking, "Was there any information on the previous leader?"

"There is."

As soon as her words dropped, another file was pushed to her by Wei Ya.

The second-generation leader of Paradise Bird, was killed by Xiu Bargas decades ago—the reason being he wanted to be the leader.

Ah, this...

"What about the first-generation leader?" Pianning then asked.

"No records," replied Wei Ya with a helpless tone.

"If leaders of both organizations have no records, wouldn't it be scary if the New An Bureau Chief also doubled as the chief of Paradise Bird?" Cheng Can suddenly commented.

"..."

"..."

That's... not something to be said lightly.