Chapter Seventy: The Sins and Punishments of the Fathers

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Three hundred seconds. Like the final glimmer reflected on the Reaper’s scythe.

The four black-clad figures of the “Sword” squad, like arrows loosed from taut bows, raced against time in a desperate sprint across the death zone sealed off by the drone swarm—a land riddled with mortal peril.

They were dancing a ballet, an offering to Death itself.

And at the very last second before the countdown on Lin Feng’s tablet hit zero, all four reached the main entrance of the “Aurora Oceanic Research Institute,” a steel giant looming cold and silent.

“Vermilion Bird! Set the electromagnetic pulse!” Xiao Ran barked a crisp order.

“Understood!”

The information specialist, “Vermilion Bird,” immediately pulled a hummingbird-class non-lethal electromagnetic pulse bomb—about the size of an ice hockey puck—from her pack and placed it with perfect precision on the electronic access system beside the alloy doors.

“Three-second countdown! Prepare to breach!” Xiao Ran signaled tactically.

Three!

Two!

One!

“Detonate!”

A faint, almost inaudible energy hum resonated.

The so-called unbreakable A-class access system, built with the most advanced technology of the “Phantom” organization, was instantly plunged into a ten-second absolute paralysis.

“Black Tortoise! Breach the door!”

A guttural roar erupted from “Black Tortoise,” the heavy assault specialist. His massive frame, as imposing as a brown bear, slammed into the half-ton alloy gate like a human tank.

With a thunderous boom, the doors burst open.

The “Sword” squad, four shadows cloaked in black, slipped like lightning into the silent, white fortress hidden at the edge of the world.

…

Inside the institute was nothing like the “dragon’s lair” they’d anticipated.

No armed guards. No murderous foes. Only a chilling, high-tech silence.

The minimalist corridors, gleaming white with metallic luster, were bright as day but utterly deserted. Only maintenance droids rolled along, lighting up red and emitting warning beeps as they detected the intruders—until Vermilion Bird, with her electromagnetic interference gun, disabled them one by one.

Guided by Lin Feng’s real-time, hacked 3D map of the building’s AI system, the team maneuvered past a maze of deadly traps made of infrared beams and high-precision pressure sensors without incident.

They had but one goal—

The core laboratory, buried in the deepest underground level of the institute, accessible only with top-level S-class clearance.

“This is it.”

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Lin Feng eyed the blinking red dot on his tablet, his voice grave.

Black Tortoise and Xiao Ran immediately raised their weapons, positioning themselves on either side of the massive round memory-alloy valve door in a textbook “red-blue” assault formation.

Lin Feng took a deep breath and entered the final string of code.

With a soft click, the door unlocked inwardly, soundless.

“Clear!” Xiao Ran shouted. Together with Black Tortoise, they darted inside like two leopards poised to spring.

But what awaited them in the lab brought these veteran warriors to a stunned halt.

There was no fierce resistance. No guns. No enemies. Not even the slightest trace of murderous intent.

There was only a solitary figure—emaciated, hair ashen, entwined with tubes from various intricate life-support systems—sitting alone in a battered rocking chair. Before him, a massive holographic screen cascaded data like a waterfall as he poured the last of his life into some unfathomably complex “reverse resonance frequency” calculation.

An old man, at the twilight of his years.

Hearing the faint sound of air stirring behind him, the old man seemed unsurprised. Slowly, painfully, he turned his head.

When his clouded eyes caught sight of the small, yet unmistakable, five-starred red flag badge on Xiao Ran and Black Tortoise’s chests, there was no terror of a traitor, nor the fury of a mastermind.

Instead, his gaze softened, as if after thirty years of waiting in endless, icy darkness, he finally glimpsed a sliver of sunlight from his homeland.

Relief.

“…Cough… cough…” His coughing was harsh, voice rasping like two frostbitten leaves scraping together.

“…You…”

“…You have finally come.”

…

Half an hour later, after the old man who called himself “Zhao Zhenhua” finished recounting, in a feeble and trembling voice, a bloodstained, tear-soaked history buried by the dust of time—

The entire core laboratory was steeped in silence.

Xiao Ran, Lin Feng, Black Tortoise, and Vermilion Bird were all struck dumb by the weight of the truth.

In a series of sorrowful, grainy black-and-white flashbacks, the camera revealed the brutal reality of thirty years past.

Berlin, 1993.

Zhao Zhenhua, then a vigorous and brilliant physicist on the international stage, was kidnapped after an academic conference by agents of the “Ouroboros” organization disguised as “Federal Intelligence Bureau” officers.

A windowless, underground cell.

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There, he saw his wife, also abducted and now pale with terror, and his beloved seven-year-old daughter… Zhao Siyuan.

A frigid, subterranean laboratory.

With his daughter’s temple pressed by the cold barrel of a gun, this steadfast Chinese scientist—who had never bowed to anyone—let tears stream from his eyes. For the first and only time, he bent his proud back and signed a “lifetime research agreement” as binding as a deal with the devil.

Betrayal and salvation.

That very night, after surrendering the theoretical model for the “Lazarus” weapon—a formula capable of ending the world—two “cleaners” from Ouroboros came to silence him.

One of them was Klaus Schneider, code-named “Believer,” Germany’s top theoretical physicist, who, like Zhao, was coerced by threats to his family.

At the crucial moment, “Believer” turned his gun on his own partner.

At mortal risk, he saved Zhao Zhenhua and, by staging a meticulously planned “river accident,” faked Zhao’s flawless “death.”

…

“From that day on, ‘Zhao Zhenhua’ was dead.”

The old man, Zhao Zhenhua, ended his thirty-year monologue, his eyes brimming with endless regret and pain.

“And I, the wretch who survived, was imprisoned here… forced to perfect ‘Lazarus’—the devil I myself unleashed.”

With great effort, he raised a skeletal hand, pointing to the complex lines of reverse resonance formulas—the very hope of salvation—on the screen before him.

“But for thirty years, they thought I was forging their sharpest spear… while I was forging, for my homeland, the strongest shield.”

From his breast, he drew a physically isolated data chip, prepared long ago, and handed it to Lin Feng with all the strength he had left.

“This contains the sum of my final years—a program, the ‘Terminus,’ which can collapse and destroy all ‘Lazarus’ devices at the root protocol level…”

“This is my last atonement for my homeland.”

Lin Feng and Xiao Ran held the heavy chip, laden with the scientist’s life of remorse and integrity, their hearts awash with emotion.

Just then, Zhao Zhenhua suddenly gripped Xiao Ran’s arm with all his remaining strength.

In his clouded, dying eyes, a desperate, father’s plea flared—tears streaming down his face.

“…But I have a condition! A single… request!”

“My daughter… my Siyuan… she is still alive!”

“‘Believer’—Klaus—he is now one of the three archbishops of ‘Phantom’! He has used his power to secretly protect my daughter!”

“But now… Siyuan has become the final hostage, used by ‘Phantom’s’ highest echelon to force ‘Believer’s’ complete obedience! She’s being held under house arrest… in the ‘Castle’ of ‘Phantom’s’ Berlin headquarters!”

With the last ounce of his strength, his voice broke like a cuckoo’s blood-tinged cry.

“—I beg you…”

“…Save her!”