pjbooks Chapter 306 Metamorphosis!
Chapter 306 Metamorphosis!
"Keep a close eye on Ito."
Zhang Yan's voice turned serious. "Deploy two reconnaissance wolves to guard the outskirts of Yokosuka. Keep them on low power standby and don't expose yourselves."
"clear."
"Also, have the village over there in Ang Tun sealed off and no one is allowed to enter. Wait for my instructions."
"receive."
After hanging up the phone, Zhang Yan stood in the kitchen without moving.
Sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The living room was quiet, and Nie Qingcheng's slippers were still placed on the sofa at her feet.
He glanced down at the system panel.
Countdown: Seven months and twenty-six days.
Completeness of the Heavenly Craftsman's Heart: 87%.
The Azure Dragon is in position.
The Vermilion Bird is in position.
Tyrannosaurus Rex, White Tiger, Xing Tian, and Black Scorpion are all ready to attack.
But the other side wasn't idle either.
The activities of the authorities in northern Myanmar are becoming more frequent, and the area of pollution is expanding.
The disappearance of the entire village was not a test; it was feeding something.
And the land of cherry blossoms—
Zhang Yan recalled the faint energy fluctuations that the system detected when he was diving in the deep sea.
The direction they were heading was Yokosuka.
He picked up his phone and sent a message to Nie Qingcheng.
"Come home early after get off work today, there are some things I need to discuss with you."
A minute passed.
"Okay, get home by 6:30 and make me sweet and sour pork ribs."
Another thirty seconds passed.
"52mm, don't forget."
Zhang Yan looked at the screen and put his phone back in his pocket.
He went to his study, opened the system panel, and brought up the heat map of the Global Energy Monitoring Network.
Within China, there are scattered orange dots around the four cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—these are marked low-level polluters, whose numbers are stable and show no abnormal fluctuations.
In the Southeast Asian region, there is a large area of dark red tinge in northern Myanmar.
It has expanded at least three times compared to two weeks ago.
Further east.
The Cherry Blossom Country Archipelago.
The entire area appears as a calm blue-green on the heat map, without any abnormalities.
It's too clean.
It was unbelievably clean.
Zhang Yan stared at that blue-green color for a long time.
The pollution of the Ruins leaves behind energy residue, and even the lowest level C infected will appear as a faint dot on the system's monitoring network.
But in the entire Sakura archipelago, covering an area of over 40 million square kilometers, there isn't a single spot.
Yao Yaoxu never set foot there.
Either someone is using some means to block monitoring.
Zhang Yan's finger hovered over the panel for three seconds.
He pulled up Takehiko Ito's file and flipped to the last page for information updates.
The date was three days ago.
In the notes section, Qin Xiao's people added a sentence:
"The target's recent physical examination report is abnormal—an unknown protein was detected in the blood, which the military doctor attributed to instrument error."
Zhang Yan turned off the panel.
My phone vibrated.
It was sent by Nie Qingcheng.
"I saw the news during the meeting just now. Japan's Ministry of Defense announced that it will conduct a 'routine military exercise' near the Miyako Strait next week. The scale is twice that of previous years."
The following sentence added: "Should I have someone investigate?"
Zhang Yan replied, "No need, I'll do it."
He glanced at the sky outside the window.
It's still a sunny day.
But something has already begun to stir beneath the surface.
……
Yokosuka Base.
Takehiko Ito sat in the leather chair in the command room, looking at the tactical screen in front of him.
He was the only one in the room.
The door was locked from the inside, and the curtains were drawn tightly.
There were no files on the desktop, only a cup of cold green tea and a phone that was turned off.
He raised his right hand.
Beneath the skin on the back of the hand, the blood vessels appear an abnormal dark red, as if something is swimming in the blood.
He remembered the events of that night very clearly.
The man in black appeared in the office.
The two elite bodyguards vanished into nothingness in 0.3 seconds, leaving not even a bone fragment.
Then came the mark—the instant it was branded onto his forehead, he felt as if his skull had been ripped open and a pot of boiling oil poured over it.
The pain lasted for a full seven hours.
But after the pain subsided, what remained made him forget his fear.
Ito stood up and walked to the tempered glass cabinet in the corner of the command room.
Inside was a training iron punching bag, eight centimeters thick, designed for special forces training.
He held up two fingers.
With his index and middle fingers joined together, he effortlessly inserted them into the iron target.
Like inserting it into tofu.
When it was pulled out, there was no damage to the fingertip.
This kind of power is beyond human capabilities.
He knew he was no longer entirely human.
But he doesn't care.
Over the past two decades, he rose from a regular officer to deputy chief of staff in the Maritime Self-Defense Force through patience, obedience, and a keen sense of timing.
Every promotion is a meticulous operation after weighing the pros and cons, and every concession is for a greater reward.
What the man in black gave him was essentially no different from those promotions.
It's just that the price is higher.
The stakes are now much higher.
"Find Zhang Yan and seize the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship."
This is the complete transaction details.
Ito returned to the table and opened the hidden compartment beneath it.
Inside was an encrypted tablet. The screen displayed the latest analysis report from the intelligence department.
Navigation data of an unidentified underwater mechanical object.
A reconstruction of the sonar recordings of the sinking of three ships in the South China Sea.
A detailed account of the encounter between the East China Sea patrol vessel "Wakasa" and the other vessel.
And—a week ago, the northern patrol fleet detected a faint echo off the coast of Vladivostok.
All the data points in the same direction: China.
More accurately, it's Jinghai.
"Zhang Yan".
When Ito pronounced the name, the mark between his eyebrows felt faintly warm.
That wasn't anger—it was a kind of excitement, like a hunting dog smelling its prey.
The things left behind by the man in black were altering his emotional patterns, giving him an almost instinctive urge to track down his "target."
He knew what this change meant.
He doesn't care.
There was a knock on the door of the command room from the outside.
The rhythm is unique—two short beats followed by one long beat.
Ito locked the tablet in a hidden compartment. "Come in."
The door opened.
Two people came in.
The two, a man and a woman, were both wearing standard JMSDF uniforms, but their ranks and numbers could not be found in any organization chart.
The man looked to be in his early thirties, with a pale complexion and very light gray pupils.
The woman was younger, with long hair tied in a ponytail, a cold expression, and lips that were so pale they were almost transparent.
The two "underlings" left behind by the man in black.
They don't speak, they don't eat, and they don't need to sleep.
Most of the time, they stood behind Ito like two sculptures.
But Ito had seen the man in action before—on the training field, the opponent smashed a three-centimeter-thick steel plate into powder with a single palm strike.
It's not fragments.
It is powder.
"The exercise plan has been approved." Ito sat down and looked at the two of them.
"The Ministry of Defense has approved a joint anti-submarine exercise to be conducted in the Miyako Strait next Wednesday."
"The participating forces include two Kongo-class, one Maya-class, and four Soryu-class submarines."