Extraterrestrial demons invaded; I laid the groundwork eight years in advance.

Late at night, the Operations Division of the Extraordinary Management Bureau.

"Name."

"Zhou Zheng"

"gender."

"male."

"age."

"Forty-two years old."

"Profession."

"Clerk of the Archives Management Section, Administrative Affairs Division, Extraordinary Administration Bureau"

Zhou Zheng sat calmly in the interrogation room, answering the interrogator's questions.

The cold light from the overhead incandescent bulb made his face appear deathly pale. The table in front of him was covered with a layer of gray fireproof board, its edges worn smooth and shiny.

He placed his hands on the table, and his wrists were also wearing specially made alloy handcuffs.

Two interrogators from the Bureau were sitting opposite me.

The one questioning Zhou Zheng was the middle-aged man sitting on the left. He had deep-set eyes and spoke in a low but steady tone that carried a sense of pressure.

Next to him was a young recorder, his fingers resting on the keyboard, recording all the contents of the interrogation.

The middle-aged man looked up from the form and fixed his gaze on Zhou Zheng's face: "When did you start contacting foreign forces?"

Zhou Zheng paused for a moment, as if confirming the time.

"About six months ago, I went to the hospital to get medicine for my son. After I left the hospital, they found me and promised to provide my son with the best medical resources and a sum of cash."

"What did they ask you to do?"

  

"When importing or exporting goods are being approved by customs, they let me turn a blind eye during the inspection process."

Do you know what those goods are?

"They didn't tell me, and I didn't ask, but I could roughly guess from some details that it wasn't ordinary goods."

He paused for a moment and then said, "It could be intelligence, or it could be contraband."

"What does the person you're contacting look like?"

"I don't know. I've only met him once. He was wearing a mask at the time, and all I know is that he was a man in his thirties. After that, we kept in touch online."

The middle-aged man didn't press further. He made a mark on the paper, then changed the subject: "How do you usually contact the other party?"

"I downloaded a game online as he asked," Zhou Zheng said.

"I open the app once a day without performing any actions, just to confirm safety. If they want to contact me, a notification will pop up in the game interface. The content of the notification is encoded and interpreted in a different way. When I contact them, I do the same thing."

The recorder tapped a few times on the keyboard.

Do you know Zhao Desheng?

"I've never met him in person, but his trading company has a customs approval record, and I've seen his photo in the approval documents."

"How did you obtain the first-tier cultivation method?"

"After I was transferred to the Extraordinary Management Bureau, they gave me a decryption program," Zhou Zheng said.

"By using my internal management account in the archives department, I can use that program to temporarily increase my account privileges and then access internal documents about cultivation methods. Afterward, the decryption program will automatically delete the relevant browsing history."

"Have you backed up your cultivation method?"

"Yes, I exported a copy and put it on a USB drive."

Where is the USB drive now?

"In the hallway of my building, on the third floor corner, there is a motion-activated light. I put the USB drive in the junction box behind the light socket and stuck it in place with tape."

The middle-aged man nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

The printer next to him hummed as it spit out pages, and the recorder handed the printed interrogation transcript to the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man checked the paper, turned to the last page, made a few marks on it, then took a pen and inkpad and walked to Zhou Zheng's side, placing the interrogation record in front of Zhou Zheng.

The above lists all the dialogue from this interrogation.

"Take a look, and if there are no problems, sign each page, put your fingerprint on it, and wait for the next steps."

Zhou Zheng looked down and examined it carefully.

After a long while, he put down the document and nodded.

The middle-aged man handed over the pen, opened the inkpad, and placed it on the table.

Zhou Zheng picked up the pen and, without further hesitation, wrote his name on each page and pressed his fingerprint on it.

After signing, he leaned back in his chair, not looking at the document or the interrogator again, but staring blankly at the incandescent light above him.

The door was pushed open, and two bureau staff members came in, helped him up from the chair, and then led him out of the room.

The interrogation room, on the other side of the one-way glass.

Li Yang stood in front of the glass, watching Zhou Zheng's back as he disappeared around the corner of the corridor.

The head of the operations department stood next to him and patted Li Yang on the shoulder: "Xiao Li, you've worked hard. You did a great job this time."

"Thank you, Director."

Li Yang's voice was not loud, and there was no happy expression on his face. His gaze was still fixed on the closed door.

The section chief followed his gaze to the empty room behind the glass, paused for a moment, and then said, "Li Yang, when we put on this uniform, it no longer represents us as individuals, but a responsibility, a belief."

He paused for a moment, then said, "We are preventing crime every day, but while preventing crime, we must also be vigilant about ourselves."

"No one wanted to see what happened to Zhou Zheng, and I don't want any comrade to go down that path. Everyone has their own insurmountable obstacles, but some lines, once crossed, can never be turned back."

"A thousand-mile dike can be breached by an ant hole; any crack can cause the dam to collapse, and our responsibility is to guard this dam."

Li Yang withdrew his gaze and nodded.

"I understand that one wrong step has led to today's consequences, and I have no one to blame but myself. I just couldn't help but feel a bit emotional when I thought about Ping An's situation."

The section chief nodded: "We have already contacted the welfare home about Zhou Zheng's son. He will be sent there first thing tomorrow morning. The welfare home will take good care of him."

"It's getting late, go back and rest." He patted Li Yang on the shoulder, turned around and walked out.

Li Yang stood there, glanced once more at the empty interrogation room behind the glass, and then turned and left.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor, fading into the distance.

Meanwhile, in the corner of the interrogation room, the red light of the surveillance camera flickered silently, quietly recording everything.

Shen Bai sat in his study, turned off the screen in front of him, and brought up another page—it displayed hundreds of names, each with a photo, job title, and a status note marked "under control".

Xiao Cheng's voice echoed from the depths of my consciousness: "Master, this massive purge has uprooted the entire domestic spy network, and all those involved have been arrested and brought to justice. However, some key personnel are overseas, and the Administration Bureau has no law enforcement authority over them."

Shen Bai stared at the large screen on the wall, remained silent for a moment, and then said, "Compile a list of personnel and send it to Lilith. She knows what to do."

Xiao Cheng paused for a moment: "Received, sent."

Shen Bai turned off the large screen and walked out of the study.

The eastern sky began to lighten, and the morning sun was approaching.