“Director Zhou, please come in.”
The male secretary stopped at the doorway and made an inviting gesture. “The Chief is waiting for you inside.”
Zhou Jianmin nodded in acknowledgment. “Secretary Li, thank you for the trouble.”
With that, he straightened his collar, stepped forward, and knocked twice on the door.
Soon, a voice from inside—somewhat aged but still full of vigor—said, “Come in.”
Zhou Jianmin took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
The office was not large, furnished simply and solemnly. Several bookshelves surrounded a spacious Chinese-style desk, on which lay several stacks of documents and a red telephone. Behind the desk sat a kindly-looking old man.
Hearing the knock, the old man slowly raised his head. Seeing Zhou Jianmin enter, he raised a hand to gesture toward the chair opposite: “Comrade Zhou Jianmin is here. Please have a seat.”
Zhou Jianmin quickly walked to the desk and sat upright on the chair with his back straight.
“Chief.”
“Ai, no need to be so formal, Comrade Zhou Jianmin,” said the old man once the secretary who had served the tea had left through the door. He smiled and waved a hand, gesturing for Zhou not to be nervous. “This time we’re not discussing political content. Just treat me as an audience and relax.”
Zhou Jianmin’s tense back relaxed a little.
“Chief,” Zhou said. Then he took a file folder from his briefcase and handed it to the old man. “This is the Situation Awareness Center’s report on this special contact. The Think Tank’s archival codename for it is ‘Ruo Jiao.’”
“Ruo Jiao?”
The old man had loved books all his life and was a consummate scholar in literature, so he immediately understood what Zhou Jianmin meant: “Actually, ‘its fruit is like luan, its wood is like ruo jiao’—that is indeed a good name.”
Ruo Jiao comes from The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Southern Classic of the Regions Within the Seas. The original passage reads: “There is a tree whose shape is like an ox; when pulled, its skin comes away like tasseled cords, yellow snakes. Its leaves are like luo, its fruit like luan, its wood like ruo jiao; it is called Jianmu.”
That is right. Ruo Jiao is an alias for Jianmu—that is, in ancient myth, the bridge that could connect heaven, earth, humans, and gods.
Nowadays, the home world and the Tianling Realm intersect across worlds with Lin Yi as the link; to some extent, this is indeed similar to Jianmu.
Next, the old man unsealed the file, took out a stack of documents, and began reading them in front of him.
The first thing he saw was the relevant information about Lin Yi and his family.
Lin Yi, male, native of Lindu. Twenty-four years old, graduate student in the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Lindu University. His father Lin Guangdao and mother Hou Jing are both employees at Lindu Third Hospital…
The information Zhou Jianmin provided was detailed, covering all of Lin Yi’s relatives within five degrees of kinship, but honestly, there was nothing special about it.
So the old man turned to the next page.
“Li Zhiwei….”
After a moment, he looked up again and said to Zhou Jianmin, “Jianmin, this young lady is the first local person to have contact with Comrade Lin Yi?”
“That’s right,” Zhou Jianmin nodded and introduced. “Li Zhiwei, twenty-three years old, graduated from the Civil Engineering Department of Jinling University, and was assigned to a clerical post after placing second in the auxiliary police examination.
“She began call-handling training four months ago, officially joined the Chongli Command Center on the sixth of last month, and at 3:17 a.m. today received Comrade Lin Yi’s call for the first time.
“Li Zhiwei’s parents are both locals of Chongli and have long been in the catering business, running a mid-sized seafood restaurant.
“The only intersection between her and Lin Yi—or between the Lin and Li families—was on July 28 five years ago: her paternal uncle Li Weiran, who worked in freight, was passing through Lindu and bought a pack of Yuxi cigarettes and a bottle of Dongpeng Special Drink at the convenience store run by Chen Qiaoling, the daughter-in-law of Lin Yi’s great-granduncle.”
Tap, tap, tap—
The old man’s index finger tapped the desktop a few times. “In other words, her receiving Lin Yi’s cross-world communication was just a sheer coincidence?”
“Well, probably so,” Zhou Jianmin nodded. “At least from the concept of ‘cause and effect,’ there is no connection between the two.”
Zhou Jianmin slightly emphasized the words “cause and effect.”
Although it felt a bit incongruous, now that the two worlds had intersected, and the Tianling Realm was a standard cultivation world, certain concepts beyond the scientific system had to be gradually valued and even introduced. This was the consensus of the entire Think Tank from top to bottom.
Of course. This introduction was still selectively analyzed and dialectically examined, definitely not a blanket acceptance. Certain pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo created to swindle people or fool the masses could never make a comeback, even in the face of another world.
The old man nodded slightly and asked again, “So where is Li Zhiwei now?”
“She and Li Hao, the duty shift leader at the time, have both been transferred to Changge Base in Anyang,” Zhou Jianmin named a place the old man knew well. “Freedom within the base is high; the only requirement is that no one may leave the base grounds.
“Besides that, going online or making phone calls is no problem—of course, communication will certainly be monitored; for example, when playing games they might find all four teammates are world champions, and so on.
“The public explanation is that they were selected for full-time training, and the relevant documents have already been issued to the command center.”
The arrangement Zhou Jianmin described was genuinely voluntary, without certain coercive overtones. After all, everyone was an adult within the system, not children who had never entered society. If transmigration were just a joke, it wouldn’t matter. But once it became real, everyone knew what it represented. Moreover, this kind of confidential transfer counts as official duty, and the state would certainly provide corresponding compensation—either straightforward official duty allowances, or rewards related to administrative staffing, or simply… the chance to experience certain achievements in the field of cultivation!
So anyone with a bit of foresight knew how to cooperate.
Next, Zhou Jianmin paused and continued, “As for the Chongli Command Center, it is currently under strict surveillance.
“The security department has completed its deployment, and various information detection devices are in place, but the site is not sealed off, and the operators are working as usual. Considering the current communication situation, the Think Tank’s suggestion for the alarm-receiving center was to prioritize stability and focus first on researching the transmigration point.
“Apart from some anti-interference signal measures for secondary communications, the Chongli Command Center as a whole will temporarily remain in a wait-and-see state.”
The old man considered briefly and soon gave his view: “I agree; let’s follow the Think Tank comrades’ suggestion.”
As mentioned earlier, as of now, there are two lines of intersection between the Tianling Realm and the home world. First, the transmigration point that can transmit items (excluding living things). Second is the unknown signal source of the Chongli Command Center, namely the channel through which Lin Yi contacts the home world.
The main significance of this channel is real-time communication between the two worlds; besides that, it can only exchange some fragmentary parameter-type information. Its research value is certainly not low, but given the current situation, maintaining stable communication is enough.
Immediately after, the old man shifted his focus to the first line and asked Zhou Jianmin, “Jianmin, how is the situation with the transmigration point now?”
…
Chapter 18