Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Wu Qinglin suddenly felt as though he couldn't breathe. It had begun the moment the young man standing before him raised his hand. And what was wrong with his own hand? He'd tried pulling the trigger without hesitation, but for some inexplicable reason, his hand—his fingers—refused to move.

"Y-you···."

Just then, Choi Hyeong-su entered and stepped forward to question him. He had dragged three bodies into the room and now intended to translate Wu Qinglin's answers. It would be convenient if the bastard spoke English, but there was no guarantee of that.

"You're Wu Qinglin, aren't you?"

"······."

At Choi Hyeong-su's question, Wu Qinglin merely stared with his mouth hanging open. What had happened to him had already driven him halfway out of his mind.

"That's enough. I'll handle him. You prepare for our withdrawal."

Yi-hyeon stepped forward and held out his hand.

"Give me your gun."

"······."

Wu Qinglin was now completely consumed by terror.

Just look! His gun hand was obeying Yi-hyeon's command against his will. It moved forward and obediently deposited the pistol in Yi-hyeon's palm.

"Huh, huh."

Wu Qinglin couldn't even open his mouth to speak. He could only stare blankly at Yi-hyeon's face. Looking directly into his eyes, Yi-hyeon reached out and took Wu Qinglin's head between both hands.

Choi Hyeong-su, who had been watching, quickly turned away and began attending to his own duties. There was no point in continuing to watch something he couldn't possibly understand. Besides, he was starting to feel strangely afraid.

Less than five minutes later, Yi-hyeon emerged from the bedroom. Choi Hyeong-su had been scattering documents, banners, and other items around the sitting room. He looked up when Yi-hyeon appeared.

"Are you finished, sir?"

"Yeah. Everything ready?"

He was asking whether Choi Hyeong-su had properly distributed the materials intended to implicate the 'Xinjiang Uyghur Liberation Front.'

"Yes, sir."

"Then let's go. Go into the bedroom and put a bullet in Wu Qinglin. And these bastards, too."

"···Yes, sir."

Choi Hyeong-su quickly understood what Yi-hyeon meant. Including Wu Qinglin, there were four bodies in the suite, excluding the woman. Apart from the guard Choi had shot in the emergency stairwell, the others had all been beaten to death(?) by Yi-hyeon.

It would look suspicious to anyone examining the scene, so he was being ordered to leave evidence that they'd been shot.

"I've already put the woman to sleep, so there's no need to shoot her. She won't remember anything afterward, either."

"Understood."

Entering the bedroom, Choi Hyeong-su looked at Wu Qinglin and swallowed hard.

The small man, wearing nothing but his underwear, was still sitting upright on the bed just as he'd been when Choi first saw him. His eyes had rolled back until only the whites showed. The surrounding room remained immaculate, as though he hadn't been capable of the slightest resistance.

Thud!

No longer wanting to look at that horrifying face, Choi Hyeong-su fired a single shot between Wu Qinglin's eyebrows and turned away. He returned to the sitting room and fired one round into each of the other bodies that hadn't already been shot.

"Let's go."

Yi-hyeon spoke casually and pushed open the suite door. Choi Hyeong-su followed, keeping watch on their surroundings. Yi-hyeon glanced at him and said calmly,

"There's nobody left in the corridor. Take the emergency stairs down. I'll go up to the eighteenth floor and use the elevator."

He would leave by the same route he'd used to enter, once again avoiding the men stationed in the lobby.

Choi Hyeong-su reported to Lee Seung-uk, and at Seung-uk's instructions, the operatives began dispersing in perfect coordination. They would leave Beijing in groups of two or three, each following a separate escape route.

Some would take a train to Tian'an before boarding a flight. Others would ride the high-speed train all the way south to Shenzhen, beside Hong Kong, and return to Korea through Hong Kong. Yi-hyeon and Lee Seung-uk intended to take the latter route.

By the time Yi-hyeon boarded the early-morning high-speed train bound for Shenzhen, Beijing had erupted into chaos. Every police unit in the city had been placed on emergency alert and mobilized, while the MSS convened an emergency meeting of its senior officers.

"You're telling me you still haven't found those bastards?"

The Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China.

A public security building in Beijing's Dongcheng District.

If the twenty-eight-story building on Changsha Street was the MSS's unofficial headquarters—although there wasn't an intelligence agency in the world that didn't know its true purpose—this building served as its official headquarters.

Superintendent General Xu Huichang asked in a cracked voice.

He was the man responsible for the Ministry of State Security, an organization whose personnel might number in the hundreds of thousands. Curiously, China's MSS was classified as a police organization under the State Council, so its ranks followed the police system. The minister's official rank was therefore Superintendent General, with five deputy superintendents general serving beneath him.

The superintendent general was generally a political appointee, while the five deputies oversaw practical operations.

The MSS was said to be a vast organization consisting of seventeen principal bureaus and more than ten supporting departments. Befitting a country with China's enormous population, it possessed seemingly limitless human resources and extended its reach into every corner of the world—a veritable intelligence empire.

Today, unusually, the superintendent general himself had convened the meeting. Three of his five deputies were present, the other two being overseas on business. Twelve of the seventeen bureau directors, all those currently in Beijing, had also gathered. Virtually everyone responsible for directing the MSS was in attendance.

Xu Huichang wiped the sweat from his forehead. Earlier that year, doctors had discovered cancer in his liver, and he'd undergone major surgery. The chemotherapy that followed had left him extremely weak.

But today, he had no choice but to lead the meeting personally. A director of the MSS had been murdered alongside his subordinates in the heart of Beijing. Worse, evidence had appeared at the scene implicating an organization calling itself the Xinjiang Uyghur Liberation Front—a name that alone was enough to unsettle China's highest authorities.

The MSS, every police unit in Beijing, and the city's inspection agencies had all been mobilized. Major roads were blocked, and intimidating security inspections were underway. The entire city seemed paralyzed by fear.

The man seated immediately to Xu Huichang's right shifted in his chair and spoke.

"Headquarters in the Uyghur region is pursuing those bastards with every resource available. The same applies here in Beijing."

Xu Huichang glanced at the speaker, then directed his next question elsewhere. The man sitting to his right was Shi Chao, the highest-ranking of the five deputy superintendents general.

Shi Chao was eagerly awaiting the death of the ailing Xu Huichang. He believed that only then would he be able to become the next superintendent general.

"Still nothing from the Secret Shadow Unit?"

"No, Superintendent General. Every member of the unit has been deployed."

The man seated to his left answered quietly.

The Secret Shadow Unit.

True to its suspicious name, the organization was so secretive that neither its membership nor the identity of its commander was publicly known. Even within the notoriously secretive MSS, it was an extremely classified special operations unit. And now even they had joined the pursuit of Yi-hyeon's group.

* * *

"We're not careless enough to let them pick up our trail that easily."

Lee Seung-uk grinned from the seat beside Yi-hyeon. The high-speed train from Beijing had passed Jinan long ago and was now heading toward Wuhan, a city situated in the heart of the Chinese mainland. The journey from Beijing to Shenzhen in Guangdong Province supposedly took about eight hours. Assuming, of course, the train didn't break down along the way.

"All this rattling makes me a little nervous."

Yi-hyeon, who had remained silent ever since boarding, smiled as he spoke. Until now, he'd been sharing and discussing the information obtained from Wu Qinglin with Sion.

The previous night, Yi-hyeon had used his newly advanced abilities to suppress Wu Qinglin's consciousness. His control wasn't yet perfect, but with Sion assisting, he'd practically entered the man's mind and explored it···.

Sion explained Wu Qinglin's mental condition.

- Yi-hyeon, this is a form of mental infiltration. Someone interferes with the foundations of a person's consciousness, causing them to follow instructions without even realizing it. There's no doubt this man encountered the Mtray. His mind was placed under their control.

For the first time, they'd encountered a human who had come into contact with the Mtray.

Controlling someone's subconscious mind. If such a technique were used to manipulate important government officials, seizing control of an entire country wouldn't be particularly difficult.

- There must be limitations, though. This method probably wouldn't work on someone with inherently strong mental fortitude, or someone who has trained as extensively as Yi-hyeon.

'But isn't it still incredible? If the Mtray have been recruiting influential people in different countries this way, we could end up fighting a war against entire nations.'

Sion spoke as though soothing the somewhat agitated Yi-hyeon.

- Controlling minds can't possibly be that simple. The universe's laws of causality aren't so easily circumvented. In Wu Qinglin's case, the Mtray probably worked on him through multiple channels over a long period. If my assessment is correct, they haven't been able to manifest biological bodies on Earth, just as I haven't. If so, there must be severe restrictions on how they can exercise their powers.

'Just like you, Sion?'

Sion answered immediately.

- Exactly. If they could wield their full power, Earth would already have fallen into their hands.

Yi-hyeon agreed. Together, he and Sion had identified one of the people who had issued orders to Wu Qinglin. It was one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, a man they suspected had obtained an OOPArt belonging to the Mtray.

Li Yongkou.

Yi-hyeon felt they were getting close.

- We need to approach this carefully.

'We'll have to be cautious.'

For once, their opinions were in perfect agreement.

After that, they passed the time discussing Sion's recent investment performance, among other things.

'Wow! At this rate, we'll soon be the richest people in the world!'

Yi-hyeon had left the investments of his American corporations entirely in Sion's hands, figuring there was no need to check on them every day. But hearing the approximate results left him openmouthed. Sion's next words, however, promptly dampened his excitement.

- The richest in the world? Don't make me laugh, Yi-hyeon. Throughout history, the people who truly possessed the greatest wealth have never appeared in public. Over the past several centuries, they've amassed fortunes by practically monopolizing Earth's resources. I'm convinced the Mtray have had a hand in this, and I've been tracing their involvement. Now that I can control the CIA's systems as well, investigating them should become much easier.

Yi-hyeon had already worried about that possibility himself. If the Mtray intended to dominate the world, they would hardly overlook money, the means by which humanity was controlled on an enormous scale, any more than they would overlook bringing influential officials under their control as they'd done with Wu Qinglin.

- Perhaps the Mtray even created the concept of 'currency' to make Earth easier to control.

Created 'currency'···.

Having studied economics at university for a year, Yi-hyeon paid particular attention to those words.

The gold standard, which emerged in Britain in the early nineteenth century, had lost its influence through the world wars, although some governments had reintroduced it after suffering severe postwar inflation.

But governments obsessed with the dogma that 'the economy must grow' eventually became unwilling to tolerate a 'shortage of money' that constrained economic expansion. From then on, various systems and instruments that functioned as money were developed, allowing economies to expand exponentially.

Naturally, the gold standard lost its place. Since then, currency, rather than physical gold, had become the instrument governing the global economy.

Some scholars argued that abandoning the gold standard had set humanity on the path to an endlessly expanding bubble economy. According to this view, the abstract economic concept of 'currency' had created a perpetual cycle of limitless production and consumption.

Of course, this wasn't a mainstream economic theory, but who could say? When had the world ever followed mainstream theories alone?

'If they created currency to control the world economy, and if that's really true, do we have any chance against them?'

Yi-hyeon asked, newly discouraged by the sheer magnitude of the enemy.

- Chances are something we create. We can do this, Yi-hyeon. We may have met on Earth much later than they did, but we can overcome the advantage they've gained through time.

Sion's words did little to comfort Yi-hyeon.

'How?'

It was a question born of faint hope, and Sion answered calmly.

- Because we have you, Yi-hyeon.

'······.'

This fellow really knew how to pile on the pressure.

- By the way, something strange is happening outside.

Outside where?

They were currently in Wuhan, geographically regarded as the heart of mainland China.

- Suspicious people have boarded the train.

'I noticed.'

Yi-hyeon answered almost without thinking. But as he reflected on it, he realized that thanks to his newly advanced abilities, he'd already sensed something unusual happening outside.

It seemed unlikely they would reach Shenzhen without further trouble.

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