"Almost capsized? How could a perfectly good ship nearly capsize? Didn't your cruise-ship branch claim to be impregnable? How could it fail to handle even a trifling natural disaster?" the middle-aged man rebuked, somewhat taken aback.

"Superior, this wasn't a natural disaster—it was sabotage by men." Dafeng-ge grimaced, choked on his words for a long while, then forced out: "A monster went on a rampage!"

"What did you say?" Though the middle-aged man's features could not be made out clearly, his tone alone betrayed that his expression was anything but pleasant. Right now his face must surely have been written all over with a single line: Are you kidding me?!

"It's true—a huge worm over ten meters long suddenly burst out of the water and started eating people. It was terrifying. Our entire cruise-ship branch was nearly overturned by it. I've spent no short time at sea, and I've never seen anything so savage and dreadful—it's simply unheard of." Dafeng-ge's face was full of lingering dread.

Seeing that Dafeng-ge's expression did not seem feigned, the middle-aged man's voice softened a little. "Explain clearly. What kind of worm was it?"

"Never seen it, never in my life. But it seemed to be called something like a blood-corpse worm." Dafeng-ge scratched his head.

"Blood-corpse worm?" The middle-aged man paused, then his tone dropped with suspicion. "If you've never seen it, how do you know it's called a blood-corpse worm?"

"Because it was being controlled by someone. That man sat on its head from start to finish, claiming to be from the Primordial Alliance, some fellow from the Bixie Sect or other—anyway, he looked pretty formidable, and he said that once the blood-corpse worm truly matured, he'd be able to rule the world. I figure he might be a bit unhinged." Dafeng-ge recounted it all, point by point. Naturally, Wei Zhao had coached him on every word beforehand. Rather than dump the blame on the Primordial Alliance, better to go with the flow and dump it on Sun Baixu—that was what you'd call seamless, with no way to verify a thing.

"The Primordial Alliance, you say?!" The middle-aged man's tone turned grave at once. From the sound of it, he had heard of the Primordial Alliance's existence—which did not surprise Wei Zhao in the least, given the Center's vast power and intelligence network in the secular world. And with the Primordial Alliance's affairs having caused such a stir this time, it would have been abnormal for the Center's headquarters to have caught not even a whisper.

"That's right. The man even brazenly claimed to be a Heaven-stage expert, but he was a complete fool. Apart from that big worm of his being rather frightening, his own strength was pitifully weak. Any ordinary underling of ours could have finished him off. And to think we were scared stiff by him at first—it's downright humiliating to remember." Dafeng-ge spoke with awkward regret.

"An ordinary underling finished him off?" The middle-aged man was startled. Though the Center's headquarters was not located here, and the only branch force of any real scale in the country was now the Red Conch—plainly lacking in strength, and thus hard-pressed to obtain first-hand intelligence in timely fashion—he still knew the basic facts. The disciples the Primordial Alliance sent out into the secular world for training were indeed all Heaven-stage experts; of that there was no doubt.

If Dafeng-ge was not lying, then whoever had moved against that Primordial Alliance Heaven-stage expert could never have been an ordinary underling. It would have to be an expert of comparable rank. He had already begun to guess who it was.

"That's right—a mute I saved with my own hands half a year ago. He'd served as a special forces soldier overseas before, but he was just an ordinary man. That lad was loyal and fearless. At the time the rest of us were too scared to move, but he charged straight at the thing without a word. He and the man, together with that giant worm, fought to the death in the sea for quite a while, and in the end none of them surfaced. We figure they're all dead. What a pity—a subordinate that loyal is hard to find." Dafeng-ge sighed with regret.

"None of them surfaced? How could that be? You didn't send anyone down to fish them out?" The middle-aged man's voice suddenly grew anxious.

"Superior, we'd kicked up a huge fuss by then, and at first, to save our skins, we fled straight from the high seas to waters not far off the coast. By the time they sank, even the coast guard cutters were on their way, so we could only scram fast—otherwise we'd have been rounded up in one sweep." Dafeng-ge said with a bitter face.

"..." The middle-aged man fell silent, at a loss for words.

"Superior, the day after it happened I sent men back to take a secret look. Nothing was left—they must have been swept away by the tides." Dafeng-ge spoke cautiously.

"You..." The middle-aged man clearly had more to say but held back. Still, from Dafeng-ge's standpoint, handling the matter this way had indeed been no great error; even he, as the man's superior, could not censure him without cause. After all, Dafeng-ge was the head of the Red Conch's domestic branch—if not quite a true feudal lord in the Center's eyes, he was still, more or less, a person of some consequence.

The middle-aged man was silent for a moment, then suddenly said: "Wait there. I'll give you instructions shortly."

"Yes." Dafeng-ge nodded. The next moment he saw the other party cut off the communication, and only then did he finally breathe a sigh of relief. He and Wei Zhao, standing opposite in the blind spot, exchanged a smile. Though they had rehearsed this tale many times, actually saying it had still left him drenched in cold sweat, terrified that some flaw might slip out. Fortunately, judging by the man's reaction, he had most likely believed it.

Wei Zhao breathed a sigh of relief as well. The bait had been successfully cast; whether it could lure out a big fish would depend on the other side's next moves and reactions. Human effort was exhausted—what remained was to leave it to fate.

At the Center's headquarters in the secular world, after cutting off the communication with Dafeng-ge, the middle-aged man hurried to a secret research room. There a woman sat frowning as she observed the human trials underway in the isolation chamber. Had Wang Xinyan been there, she would have been utterly astonished—for this woman was none other than her roommate, Lan Xiaoru.

"Dr. Lan, something terrible has happened." The middle-aged man burst in, his expression panicked.

"What kind of conduct is this, barging in all flustered? Dr. Glasses, you're a veteran here too—during an experiment no one may enter the laboratory at will. Have you forgotten even that most basic rule?" Lan Xiaoru shot the middle-aged man an annoyed glare.

"Uh... yes, I've overstepped." Dr. Glasses could not help but look sheepish.

"Out with it, then. What exactly has you so rattled?" Lan Xiaoru asked.

Dr. Glasses drew a deep breath and said in a heavy voice: "Something has happened to Number One."

"What? Wasn't he sent to investigate Dafeng? How could anything happen to him?" Lan Xiaoru's expression changed at once! (To be continued.)