I write obituaries for the gods

She stared at Jiang Zhengge for a moment before turning around and walking towards the end of the alley.

"......"

After tide Lena disappeared, Lin Chen walked out from a corner of the alley.

"Luckily you didn't start fighting," Lin Chen said.

“She can sense that she won’t do anything,” Jiang Zhengge smiled. “Or perhaps, she never intended to do anything in the first place.”

"How is the situation?" Lin Chen asked.

"The hostages have been mostly evacuated, and the reporters outside have all arrived."

Jiang Zhengge clapped his hands.

"Let's go."

"Click! Click!"

"Mr. Lin, did you also participate in this operation?"

"Mr. Lin! Is that underground facility really the Foundation's secret laboratory?"

"Mr. Lin!"

"Make way, everyone!" Jiang Zhengge cleared a path for Lin Chen through the crowd. "For further updates, please follow RBAI's official media! We are still working, please do not obstruct official business!"

"Clap."

After the car door closed, Lin Chen took the towel that Li Zhanyi handed him and dried his hair.

"They're all soaked to the bone," Li Zhanyi chuckled.

"Why aren't you worried about whether I got hurt this time?" Lin Chen rolled up the towel.

“Because I’ve realized that since I can’t predict anything anyway, there’s no point in caring about you,” Li Zhanyi muttered. “In the end, it only adds to my anxiety, so I might as well not think about it.”

"If you put it that way, then I guess you were a little anxious," Lin Chen laughed.

"I'll pat you." Li Zhanyi slapped Lin Chen on the shoulder.

At that moment, the driver's side door opened, and Jiang Zhengge got in, cursing and swearing.

"Damn it, these damn reporters! They're doing an interview, but they're blocking the road!"

"Since we've already called them over, why not just answer their questions on the spot?" Lin Chen asked curiously. "Wouldn't that allow the information to spread more quickly?"

“What do you know? The less we say, the more attention we get,” Jiang Zhengge said. “Everyone will be paying attention to our official media at that time. If we release the information then, the impact will be several times greater.”

He really is a master of information warfare...

"Om-"

The Porsche cut through the rain, broke through the blockade, and headed towards the Bureau of Investigation headquarters.

Throughout the journey, Jiang Zhengge appeared listless, as if he had something on his mind.

After holding it in for a long time, Lin Chen finally spoke:

"Old Jiang, I'd like to review the files on the 'Deep-Sea Diving Operation'."

Jiang Zhengge was taken aback for a moment, then said:

"why?"

"Curious," he said.

Lin Chen became increasingly curious about tide Leina's fluctuating stance.

Without a doubt, she is a demigod of the Foundation who advanced Project Black Star, but she also occasionally transmits information to the Bureau of Investigation.

Lin Chen's instincts told him that she was definitely not a monster like Qingtian, who was evil to the core. The complexity of human nature was fully revealed in her every move.

"I want to know what exactly happened back then," Lin Chen stared at Jiang Zhengge in the rearview mirror, "How did she kill our predecessors?"

If Lin Chen has to deal with tide Leina later, then he wants to understand her as much as possible.

Only by knowing yourself and your enemy can you have even the slightest chance of victory.

As soon as he finished speaking, the car suddenly braked and stopped on the side of the road.

"Ouch," Li Zhanyi rubbed his head, "Old Jiang, you bumped into me..."

"Feel sorry."

Jiang Zhengge rolled down the window, took out a cigarette, and lit it.

Gazing at the rain outside the window, he took a deep breath, his vision gradually blurring.

"You can look at the files, and I can tell you the stories too."

"But I must tell you, do not pity anyone in the story. They all did wrong and paid the price for their actions."

Jiang Zhengge exhaled a puff of white breath towards the window:

"including me."

......

Interlude: The Abyss, Still Gazing (Part 1) (Fourth and Fifth Updates)

Under the dripping ceiling, a Mentis cultist, panting heavily, frantically checked his pistol magazine.

Before he could even see the number of bullets, footsteps sounded at the door.

"Alright, stop running. Aren't you tired?"

The believer looked up at the doorway and saw Jiang Zhengge, dressed in a black trench coat, leaning against the door frame, having appeared there at some point.

The cultist suddenly raised his pistol, a gust of wind brushed past his wrist, and he dropped the gun in pain—

"what!"

The cultists turned and ran, frantically rushing into the depths of the ruins, tumbling and crawling.

Watching his retreating figure, Jiang Zhengge calmly pressed the button on his earpiece:

"tide Lena, he went that way."

"receive."

The howling of the wind echoed deep within the ruins. Only after the noise subsided did Jiang Zhengge step inside.

By the time he found the cultist, the kid was already on the ground, and Xileina was standing to the side, awkwardly typing on her phone:

“Upload…mission photo…” Xileina murmured, “Mentis…Four…Division…”

"I'll do it." Jiang Zhengge took tide Leina's phone and began typing skillfully.

“Chinese is so hard to learn,” Xileina sighed, “and cell phones are so hard to use!”

“Welcome to modern society, Miss Roma,” Jiang Zhengge smiled. “How about I develop a crystal ball input method for you?”

"Screw you."

"Snapped!"

The car door closed, and the Mentis followers started shouting incoherently in the trunk, but no one paid them any attention.

In the passenger seat, tide Leina tidied her hair in front of the mirror and muttered to herself:

"This is the fifteenth believer. After cross-referencing, their intelligence should be trustworthy."

"I still think it's ridiculous."

Jiang Zhengge picked up two mints from the storage basket, poured them out, and popped them into his mouth.

"So, they regarded the multi-eyed sirens as their masters, that 'great whale that destroys everything,' and then worshipped the sirens?"

“It’s not the great whale that destroys everything, it’s Mentis,” Xileina said, reaching out to Jiang Zhengge. “Those lunatics are trying to see the truth of the world from the warp and they treat everything with aquatic characteristics as their master. I’ve said from the beginning that this is definitely an important clue.”

Jiang Zhengge poured two mints into tide Leina's hand and said:

"I never imagined that the Bureau of Investigation's largest subspace lens would be less effective than the collective fantasy of the Menttis followers."

Three months ago, a new sect emerged among the Mentish followers.

They planned to travel to a place called "Black Abyss" and believed that their Lord was in that ruin.

If they can collectively dedicate themselves to it, the Lord can return to the present world.

Three months ago, when Xileina first heard the news, she concluded that the thing in the abyss was a multi-eyed siren.

During the three-month manhunt, Jiang Zhengge and tide Leina interrogated fifteen Mentis followers and obtained almost unanimous testimonies.

These believers were mostly scattered, some belonging to new denominations and others to old denominations, but they all saw the same vision.

They all saw the Abyss.

So, regardless of whether what's in that abyss is a multi-eyed siren...

It is ultimately a dangerous, anomalous entity that is close to the real world.

"Om——"

The car sped through the rain toward the Bureau of Investigation headquarters.

tide Lena gently wiped the fog off the window with her hand and whispered:

"We're going to have to face that thing again."

"What? Is Miss Jiang tide, a Level 2 Investigator, scared?" Jiang Zhengge laughed.

Jiang tide is tide Leina's pseudonym, which helps her integrate into the city.

“I’m not scared,” Xileina said calmly. “I just feel like…time is going by so fast.”

“Yes,” Jiang Zhengge sighed, “it’s been three years already.”

"Are you ready?"

"Me?" Jiang Zhengge was taken aback, then laughed. "Xiao Xi, you don't think I'm scared, do you?"

Although he said that, Jiang Zhengge's eyes clearly dimmed a bit.

After all, three years ago, the multi-eyed sirens took his parents away.

For three whole years, he and Xileina had been searching for the Sirens, hoping to eliminate them once and for all.

Three years is enough time for even the most intense wildfires to cool down, leaving only embers.

From initial anger and hatred to later numbness, Jiang Zhengge now feels as if a thick veil of rain separates him from those events when he recalls them.

“We will settle this once and for all,” he said.

"Ah."

His wrist was gently grasped.

In the corner of his eye, tide Leina was looking at him.

"We will."

.......

Investigation Bureau, Rapid Response Section 1 Office.

"Based on the coordinates you provided, the subspace lens did indeed find something."

Standing in front of the analyzer, Xiao Fang turned his chair around and looked at the people behind him.

"It was a subspace ruin. There were many impurities in the projection, but they were all from three years ago."

“Three years ago, we drove out the multi-eyed sirens. The timing matches up,” Jiang Zhengge nodded. “The thing itself, or what’s behind it, is hiding in there.”

Upon hearing this, tide Leina's brows twitched almost imperceptibly.

She knew what this meant—Katrina was hiding in those ruins.

"How deep is the ruin?" Xileina asked Xiao Fang.

“4.12,” Xiao Fang said, “to be honest, it’s a bit too deep.”

“It is indeed too deep,” Wu Hao frowned. “Shouldn’t the deep-sea diving team be able to go down?”

“At this depth, with our current technology, even if we went down physically, it’s unlikely we’d still be in a fighting condition,” Xiao Fang shook his head. “The subspace diving platform can go all the way down, but once it’s down there, it’ll just be a target. We’ll be completely helpless against any anomalous entities.”

"I wish we could drive a subspace submarine someday," Xileina said softly.