Odd Containment Specialist.

Chapter 941 The Prophet (4K)

The containment chamber returned to normal, leaving only him and the other person inside.

"minister."

"Ok?"

"Xiao Gao said he didn't ask you to come to me for treatment."

Shangguan Yan glanced at Xia Shou with a smile on his lips: "It's not that Xiao Gao, it's the Xiao Gao who left ten years later. In the documents he left on the wall, he mentioned an anomaly that appeared many years later, Idrisu, who you met at the sanatorium and who you and Wang Long mentioned in your report."

Hearing this, Xia Shou had a vague feeling that something was wrong; he felt as if the other party was targeting him.

Why did the abnormality, which had already been addressed once at the sanatorium, reappear later?
Xiao Gao didn't specify, but I can roughly guess the reason: it was because of your death ten years later that Idrissu was able to escape.

Shangguan Yan said, "I know, it's Merlin's House, right?"

It's not that I didn't mention it, it's that I didn't know.

I know perfectly well what you've done with Merlin's House.

Xia Shou stared at the other person in shock.

Just moments ago, Shangguan Yan had his eyes closed and was cooperating with him, seemingly completely unaware of the existence of Merlin's House.

Now, she's actually saying she knew all along!

"The person in the notes is probably someone I know, right? I can guess who it is now," Shangguan Yan said with a slight smile.

She walked up to Xia Shou from the side and whispered in his ear, "Work hard. Since you're working for me, you don't need to worry about your secrets."

Like the whispers of a demon, it was more of a threat than a comfort.

The feeling of helplessness that I had finally managed to shake off returned. It felt like the collar, which I had taken off halfway, was now back on my neck.

Xia Shou looked at Shangguan Yan, not even knowing what kind of expression he had. Perhaps it was a pitiful expression?

Judging from the minister's eyes, he seemed quite satisfied with his current reaction.

"Don't worry, I can handle all your troubles." Shangguan Yan blinked.

For a brief moment, Xia Shou even had the illusion that the minister was somewhat kind to him.

After regaining my senses and thinking it over carefully, I realized how terrifying the other person's words had been.

This statement is more like a reminder to him: "If you don't behave, you might be able to handle those troubles, but I'll make sure you can't."

The desire to overthrow his superiors had never been stronger than it was at this moment, but at the same time, he had never felt so desperate, with such a slim hope of escaping their control.

Shangguan Yan left without looking back.

Xia Shou walked out of the containment room alone.

He truly brought this upon himself.

If he hadn't been so curious and hadn't brought it up, the minister wouldn't have mentioned Merlin's House, and he wouldn't be so anxious now.

The minister must have known about Merlin's House for a long time, but she never mentioned it before he asked, nor did she use this secret to pressure him.

This means the minister doesn't believe he can escape control at all, which is why she hasn't even bothered to give him a warning. In the minister's eyes, he probably has the crooked idea of ​​going solo, which she could easily handle.

Knowing this, Xia Shou actually felt that the minister was a bit gentle.

The minister clearly holds an absolute dominant position, yet he allows his subordinates to act recklessly within certain limits without resorting to threats or suppression. What else could this be but gentleness?
Perhaps... unconditionally obeying the minister would actually make things happier and easier.

In reality, apart from the high intensity of overtime work and the dangers of missions outside, his current life is pretty good. If one day he could become a manager like the minister, no longer have to work overtime or perform front-line tasks, and just work under the minister, that would be nice too.

After a period of wild thoughts, Xia Shou finally came to his senses and began the next step of his original plan.

There aren't many options for becoming as strong as possible in such a short time before Sprite sets off.

Now that the scorpion spine has been perfectly transplanted, there is even less room for optimization.

Perhaps a further upgrade to the shadow would bring about new changes.

Besides, how about trying to use the umbilical cord and ribs of the Invincible Beast?

These two items have been kept in the Control Bureau because they cannot be incorporated into the Shadow.

Ire has already proven how powerful these two mythical relics are. His own ability is merely to commit crimes without leaving a trace, but after the transplant of ribs and umbilical cord, his combat power has directly increased to the level of a named human host.

Anyone who transplants them will experience a significant boost in combat effectiveness.

It can be said that the only concern is the impact of these two relics on the mental state of the person involved... especially the umbilical cord.

Direct transplantation is absolutely impossible. Ire's experience serves as a cautionary tale; transplanting an umbilical cord or rib is almost the same as being possessed. Even if we were to use these two things, we could only do so through the devouring of the shadow.

...After going around in circles, we returned to the shadowy figure.

"As expected, we really need to upgrade."

With a thought, Xia Shou fed the residue stored in the shadow to it all at once, and the evolution progress bar that he had seen once before reappeared.

This time, the progress bar moved extremely slowly, but fortunately, the shadow's evolution was not like devouring a corpse; it did not require the shadow to remain still. He could use the time while the shadow evolved to do other things.

Back in the department, apart from Jiang Wengao and Li Ming who were organizing documents, there was no one else there.

When Xia Shou walked into the office, Jiang Wengao looked up at him, nodded, and didn't have time to greet him at all. He was constantly issuing instructions to someone on the other end through remote communication.

He barely stopped for a moment, seemingly simultaneously engaging in one-on-one meetings with more than a dozen people.

Judging from the content of his commands, they were very detailed.

Xia Shou knew what was going on. He could guess what was going on with Xiao Gao's strange gaming ability from ten years later.

It's similar to predicting the future, but if you tell others about the game's content, you'll have to pay a huge price. So, although Xiao Gao knows how to do everything, he can't tell the other person the situation. He can only give the most direct orders to make the other person follow the path he wants.

The consequence of this restriction is that, as it is now, everything, big or small, requires personal arrangement and command.

“Brother Shou, someone will be coming soon. Can you summon that person from ten years in the future?” Jiang Wengao suddenly said.

"Huh?" Xia Shou was a little confused.

At that moment, Ke Hen walked in from outside and said as soon as he entered, "What about the people ten years from now?"

Jiang Wengao: "They haven't been summoned yet. You'll have to listen to Brother Shou's instructions from now on."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the office door opened again, and an administrator led a shackled prisoner into the office, asking, "The person is here, so what's next?"

Jiang Wengao pointed at Xia Shou, then at the prisoner, constantly giving instructions to the others while doing so. Xia Shou turned to look at the prisoner and frowned: "It's him?"

Jiang Wengao nodded.

Xia Shou felt something was very wrong and wanted to ask more questions, but Ke Hen patted his arm and said, "Just follow his instructions. He should have arranged everything."

Xia Shou turned his head and looked at the unremarkable prisoner in front of him, not understanding why Xiao Gao wanted to summon the person from ten years in the future.

However, trusting Xiao Gao, Xia Shou still brought the prisoner to the interrogation room and used his blind eye to observe the prisoner's condition ten years later.

Through his remaining eye, Xia Shou saw that the cost of summoning this prisoner was only half a meter deep, and from the image, the prisoner's appearance ten years later was almost unchanged from now.

Only then did Xia Shou understand Jiang Wengao's purpose.

Ten years later, Xiao Gao told him that if conditions allowed, he could use the Withered Eye with Ke Hen present, and then have Ke Hen use [Observer] on them.

It seems that Xiao Gao has already started using this technique.

The prisoner in front of us must be one who has been specially arranged to be a prisoner.

Xia Shou guessed that Xiao Gao had already used the authority granted to him by the minister to convey the following instructions to the relevant departments:
1. Maintain the prisoner's physiological state as much as possible.

2. Show the selected incident intelligence data to the prisoner for reading and browsing.

In this way, the prisoner summoned by the missing eye is someone with a lot of information about the future. Kehen only needs to use the [Observer] to read his memories to extract and summarize the important information.

Having figured this out, Xia Shou began to carry out Jiang Wengao's orders.

He summoned the prisoner from ten years in the future to the present at a very low cost, and then gave the next ten minutes to Kehen.

Ten minutes later, Kehen ended his observation as a "bystander".

When she turned her gaze to Xia Shou again, it became very meaningful.

"Senior, you've been keeping this a secret for a long time."

Xia Shou smiled awkwardly, avoiding the other person's gaze: "Everyone in the three departments has their secrets, okay? Don't tell anyone, alright?"

"Don't worry, I'm very tight-lipped."

However, you will most likely lose this time, and you will lose badly.

Sprite has a way of cutting off other people's fighting spirit. Superhumans of lower level than him cannot launch an attack in front of him unless they are within a range of five thousand meters.

After obtaining the Needle of Destiny, Senior Baihe could use his special ability to counter this move, but he couldn't take the needle away from that era, so he couldn't support you. You still couldn't launch an attack on Sprite in the Blood Dynasty.

The Night and Fire Scepter is indeed powerful, but it's useless without the will to fight. Although you managed to acquire a new mending ability that allows you to stitch up severed thoughts and reignite your fighting spirit, it's unfortunately too slow.

The speed of the stitching couldn't keep up with Spreadtrum's rapid decline in morale, and ultimately it was unsuccessful.

"Wow, that's amazing!" Xia Shou exclaimed.

The combination of Kehen and the withered, blemish-eyed centipede in the story creates an effect that is practically prophetic!

"Don't look at me like that. I won't use this kind of shortcut much. Forget about trying to step on my own two feet and fly to the sky." Ke Hen waved his hand. "How many times do you think you'll use your blind eye?"

"Since you're seeing the most likely future, of course I..."

Halfway through his speech, Xia Shou suddenly paused, realizing the problem at once.

"It seems you've thought of that too, haven't you? The Remnant Eye sees the most likely future, but using it emits a named aura, which is inherently very risky. So, although you want to know information about the future, you actually dare not use the Remnant Eye recklessly. And the future you dare not use the Remnant Eye is the most likely future. So, my future self has actually not seen the Remnant Eye that many times," Ke Hen said.

"That's a real shame," Xia Shou said with a regretful expression.

Kehen: "Don't regret it. The most likely tactic for the future was for you and the minister to fight together. The minister would be responsible for weakening Sprite's slashes, and you would be responsible for the attack. I have already explained why this tactic failed."

After that, Sprite successfully ascended, which is the reason for the failure as I know it.

"Shouldn't the Bureau of Control have reviewed the situation after that? Didn't they come up with a solution?"

"Yes, there is, but I doubt you would do it."

"You tell me first."

"After you died, Scorpion Ridge crawled onto someone else. A few years later, the Control Bureau recaptured the parasitized person and discovered that as long as the parasite's brain was brought into a semi-dead state, Scorpion Ridge could enter an instinctive fighting mode."

The principle is that Sprite cuts off the fighting thoughts born of reason, but Scorpion Spine can establish complex conditioned reflexes. So after destroying most of the brain's thinking functions, the conditioned reflexes take the lead and become the supreme command.

At that time, the parasitized individuals will only do two things—fight and mate.

So if you destroy a part of your brain, leaving only the brainstem, your body will automatically bite like a snake's head that's been chopped off—of course, it will be much more powerful than a snake's head.

"This...is indeed hard to accept." Xia Shou stroked his chin and shook his head repeatedly, clearly extremely opposed to the plan.

"Oh, right, I should add something else. The information I saw from the prisoner's perspective wasn't like that. The Bureau of Control initially told the prisoner that if they performed brain surgery to destroy a specific area, they would become immune to Sprite's effects."

But this is actually a code word from the control bureau. If you follow this plan, you will become a mindless living dead.

If Xiaoyue hadn't secretly sneaked into this prisoner's cell and told him the truth, I wouldn't have been able to know the truth using the "bystander" ability.

From this perspective, faced with the consequence of world destruction, the Control Bureau ultimately decided to sacrifice you.

“I understand.” Xia Shou nodded calmly.

"Wow, senior, you're so generous," Ke Hen said, raising an eyebrow.

"There's no room for hesitation about this trolley problem; from the perspective of the regulatory authority, there's absolutely no issue."

If killing an innocent person could stop Sprite, I might do it.

If I weren't the one making that choice, and someone else were to kill this innocent person in an attempt to stop Sprite, I would never stop them.

"Perhaps this is human nature?" Xia Shou commented absentmindedly, his mind elsewhere.

Turning him into a living dead and having Scorpion Spine control his body to fight is absolutely impossible.

This was not only unacceptable subjectively, but Xia Shou also didn't think that way could lead to victory.

Scorpion Spine, who fights on instinct, could never reach his normal level; he might not even know how to use the Night and Fire Scepters.

Adopting this plan would at most change the outcome from "defeat without a fight" to "collapse in a single battle."

However, this characteristic of the scorpion's spine is not something that cannot be utilized.

(End of this chapter)