Chapter Thirty-Four: The Whisper of the "Phantom"

The "earthquake" at Skydome Network swept across the entire Chinese internet at a pace beyond anyone's imagination.

CEO Li Jianguo and his core executives were all caught in a sweeping operation by National Security. The trusted bodyguards he sent to "handle" those who knew too much didn't even have time to act before special agents descended from the sky, pinning them mercilessly to the ground.

In the command center of the "Dark Bureau," a long-suppressed sense of victory bloomed, fleeting and exhilarating.

They had successfully severed the most crucial domestic tentacle that Anderson had extended before the final battle erupted.

Yet amidst the jubilation, only Lin Feng did not smile.

His holographic projection frowned, eyes fixed intently on the virtual console before him.

On the screen was the sector-level physical data structure map of Wang Zhe's "pledge" USB drive.

"What's wrong? Still problems?" Xiao Ran approached his projection, coffee in hand. After last night's flawless "borrowed knife" operation, her communication with Lin Feng had grown more natural and instinctive.

"Something's off," Lin Feng shook his head, his eyes—always burning with fire—now brimming with confusion and doubt. "This USB drive... is too clean."

"What do you mean?"

"Wang Zhe is a top-notch programmer, not a master spy." Lin Feng pointed at the screen, at the sectors marked as "deleted." "See here, here, and here. He deleted a lot, but his method was amateurish—just basic formatting. For me, that's no better than dropping files in the recycle bin."

"But..." His finger tapped another area, rendered in deep black, completely unreadable.

"...this region's data was wiped and overwritten at least a hundred times with a military-grade 'data shredding' algorithm—even I find it daunting! Wang Zhe could never pull that off!"

Xiao Ran's expression grew grave.

"It's like..." Lin Feng narrowed his eyes, choosing an apt metaphor, "...at a crime scene, the killer cleans every trace of blood spotless, yet deliberately leaves a knife on the table, smeared with fingerprints."

"Someone is covering something up."

"Or rather, someone 'helped' him clean the scene, deliberately leaving behind precisely what they wanted us to see."

...

Over the next few hours, Lin Feng embarked on a true forensic-level "digital archaeology."

In that data graveyard sealed beneath "concrete," he would converse with ghosts long buried.

Every technician in the command center held their breath, watching Lin Feng's near-magical operations unfold on the main screen.

This was no longer programming.

It was wizardry!

On the screen, countless fragments—deleted, overwritten, and torn apart—began to gather like stars after the cosmic big bang.

Lin Feng, a traveler through time, rewound the USB drive's history to its state before the "cleanup."

Finally!

After hours of painstaking reconstruction of hundreds of millions of data fragments—

He succeeded!

From beneath the military-grade, hundred-times-wiped "concrete floor," he unearthed—

A deliberately hidden, thirty-second, noise-ridden—

Encrypted phone recording!

...

After Lin Feng processed the recording for noise reduction and decryption, two voices—cold as if from the abyss—echoed in the dead-silent command center.

One was Anderson, whose voice they knew all too well.

The other...

The other was a voice shaped by top-tier, multi-layered modulation, devoid of age, gender, or even tone—a perfectly neutral, AI-like—

The "Ghost."

Ghost (cold voice): "Anderson, I warn you again. Your 'Zero Hour' plan is too aggressive, too conspicuous, fraught with unnecessary risk. It violates our original agreement."

Anderson (undisguised contempt): "Risk? I see only efficiency. Times have changed, old man. To deal with a dragon about to awaken, you must fire the loudest cannon, and smash it completely before it opens its eyes."

Ghost: "Foolish. Your arrogance will destroy you. Remember, if your plan fails, the 'Committee' will immediately activate... 'Plan B.'"

Anderson (for the first time, a hint of gravity): "..."

Ghost: "At that point, you and your 'Ouroboros' will become... erased from our ledger..."

"...'bad debt.'"

The recording ended.

The command center plunged into a silence more terrifying and suffocating than ever before.

Every face was etched with indescribable—

Shock!

Anderson—

The one they regarded as the invincible final boss, a figure akin to a demon—

Was merely... a pawn?

Above him, there was an even more mysterious, even more vast, organization called the "Committee"?

And that "Ghost" was evidently its... spokesperson!

This revelation shattered their understanding of the war to its core.

Xiao Ran stood frozen.

She felt as if her brain lacked oxygen.

She and Lin Feng had risked everything, even their lives, just to glimpse the tip of the iceberg.

But beneath the surface lay an even larger, darker—

Continent.

Lin Feng slowly removed his VR headset.

The face that always carried a hint of mischief and madness now showed, for the first time, something close to—

Bewilderment.

He gazed at Anderson's photo on the screen, murmuring dryly, as if in a dream:

"We... might have been mistaken."

"Anderson..."

"He's not the demon king."

"He's only..."

"The clever vanguard, always at the forefront, ready to be sacrificed..."

"The devil's herald."

Xiao Ran slowly recovered from the shock.

She walked to the enormous operations whiteboard.

In the center, Anderson's photo remained, his elegant smile frozen.

She picked up a red marker.

And in the blank space above Anderson's image,

She drew a huge, ominous—

Question mark.

Beside it, she wrote the codename that sent chills through everyone—

[Ghost]