Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Late at night, at the command center of the National Bureau of Abnormal Affairs.

The cold white LED lights are arranged along the edge of the ceiling, illuminating the huge space in a stark white light.

Three walls were covered by a single LCD screen, with the left screen continuously playing satellite thermal images of Jingyuan Villa;

The middle screen displays a waveform of high-voltage discharge, with sharp peaks and valleys, creating a stark contrast with the waveform of a natural lightning strike;

The right screen displayed Liu Zhen's ID photo. The man was wearing faded work clothes and had a simple, honest smile, completely different from the murderous god whose body was covered in electric arcs.

This is a brand new organization established after the Li Rui incident; no one had heard of its existence before.

Previously, Li Rui detonated the "Wildfire" at Yunxiao Mansion, causing all the core members of the Special Investigation Bureau present to be contaminated by visual memes and experience varying degrees of cognitive dissonance.

The Grand Council of Government convened an emergency meeting overnight and concluded that the local-level Special Investigation Bureaus had too low an authority and too dispersed a force to deal with extraordinary threats at the cognitive level. It was imperative to establish a vertically managed national-level agency to coordinate national resources for handling unusual events.

The "Anomalous Affairs Agency" was thus established, directly under the National Political Affairs Commission, with Han Qiming as its first director, responsible for the monitoring, analysis, and handling of extraordinary events nationwide.

Intelligence analysts drawn from various provinces work in shifts around the clock, and high-energy signal monitoring stations have been deployed nationwide. Once unnatural energy fluctuations are detected, their coordinates can be located immediately.

Han Qiming sat in the main seat, with a thick on-site investigation report spread out in front of him, the cover of which was printed with the two big red characters "Top Secret".

The report pages were wrinkled from being turned so many times, and the margins were covered with annotations.

Intelligence analyst Kobayashi stood in front of the screen, tapped his fingers on the keyboard, and pulled up the latest survey data.

She was a key member transferred from a special department: "Director, the Guangyang City Bureau just sent over the on-site investigation report of Jingyuan Villa. Three points have been confirmed so far."

"First, the main building, the outer sentry posts, and the underground parking garage were all deserted. There were no bodies, no bloodstains, and not even any traces of fibers left from the fight."

"Secondly, seven radial scorch marks were extracted from the ground, the largest being 43 centimeters in diameter and 2 centimeters deep. The physical and chemical test results are consistent with the characteristics of high-voltage discharge, and are completely consistent with the traces at the scene where Zhao Hongtu disappeared at the convention center."

"Third, a small amount of plant sap was extracted from the area around the scorch marks. Gene sequencing comparison showed that it was a common morning glory, but there were no plant remains or root remnants at the scene. We don't know how it appeared out of nowhere."

She paused, then tapped Han Dongcheng's information bar on the screen. "Han Dongcheng himself has completely disappeared. His phone is switched off, and all his vehicles and bank accounts are inactive. His family doesn't know where he is either. The initial assessment is that he is most likely dead."

Han Qiming placed the pen on the table, the metal barrel making a crisp sound as it struck the glass surface. "Can you confirm that Liu Zhen left alive?"

Xiao Lin shook his head, tapped his fingers twice on the keyboard, and brought up the energy records of the monitoring station. "We captured an unnatural discharge with a peak value of over 200 kV at a location three kilometers northeast of Jingyuan Villa, which is higher than the 170 kV at the convention center. The duration was 0.4 seconds, and the waveform characteristics matched Liu Zhen's previous discharge records perfectly."

"The lack of subsequent energy decay signals indicates that he did not collapse from exhaustion, and most likely he left alive. However, his exact whereabouts are unknown. The surrounding surveillance cameras either had their storage chips burned out by the current, or the footage was tampered with, and no useful information was captured."

"It's the same again." Han Qiming sighed, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his throbbing temples. "It was like this when Zhao Hongtu disappeared, and it was like this when Han Dongcheng disappeared. The person is gone, and the scene is so clean that not even a fingerprint can be left."

Xiaolin nodded and pulled up the monitoring data from the Guangyang City Convention and Exhibition Center, overlaying it with the waveform graph of Jingyuan Villa. The peaks and valleys of the two graphs almost completely overlapped.

"After the convention center incident, we identified Liu Zhen." Xiao Lin pulled up Liu Zhen's file photo. "He's a senior engineer at Longteng Power and has a grudge against Zhao Hongtu. Now Han Dongcheng has also gone missing. Both of them are on the same list of personnel related to the same project."

Han Qiming reached out and tapped the words "Longteng Power New Area Project" on the screen: "We have compiled a list of all the relevant personnel for this project, from the construction team and material suppliers to the approval process, totaling 213 people, distributed across the three cities of Guangyang, Zhaoming, and Linshi. Zhao Hongtu and Han Dongcheng were both on the list, but now both of them are gone."

"Everyone on the list could be a target." Kobayashi frowned deeply, his fingertips swiping across the screen, where over two hundred red dots were densely packed on the map. "But we don't know who he'll choose next, and we can't predict it in advance. These people are scattered across three cities, and most of them have private security. Conventional protection simply can't stop an Avenger who can generate electricity."

The door to the command center was suddenly pushed open, and a man in a training uniform walked in, his military boots making a steady sound as they stepped on the floor.

He was nearly 1.9 meters tall, with shoulders as broad as a mountain. His buzz cut stood up in all directions, and there was an old scar on his face that ran from his brow bone to his jawline, a result of shrapnel from an early counter-terrorism operation.

It was Yue Sheng, the captain of the "Sharp Blade" special mission team.

The Sharp Blade Brigade is a combat force directly under the Bureau of Abnormal Affairs. All three hundred members are elite soldiers selected from the special forces of the entire army, and each of them has combat experience. They are stationed in the mountainous area of ​​Lieyang Province, only two hours away from Zhaoming City by car. It is currently the only combat force in the country specifically targeting supernatural events.

Yue Sheng walked to the table, pulled up a chair, and sat down. His gaze swept over the discharge waveform on the screen. "Any new discoveries at the scene? I heard from you guys on the way here that someone else has gone missing?"

Xiao Lin repeated what he had just reported, especially mentioning the plant sap of unknown origin. "There were no signs of a struggle at the scene. Han Dongcheng's two-ton modified bulletproof car was deformed from being strangled, and the tires were covered with marks from vines, but we couldn't find the vines themselves. We speculate that either Liu Zhen's ability is not limited to controlling electricity, or he has an accomplice."

"Accomplices?" Yue Sheng frowned, tapping his fingers lightly on the table. "Were there any similar plant traces at the convention center site?"

"Yes, but at the time I thought it was brought in from the green belt, so I didn't take it seriously." Xiao Lin shook his head. "In all the surveillance footage, there was only Liu Zhen. The second person wasn't even captured on camera. They were very cautious."