Chapter 16: Two Hundred Meters Underground

Chapter 16: Two Hundred Meters Underground

I’d known the Sweepers might arrest me someday. I just hadn’t expected it so soon.

After all, I’d even become a monk. I hadn’t left a trail on my way to Pingdu City.

Clearly I’d underestimated them.

I’d once looked up what the Sweepers were. They differed from regular police. Their authority was immense, but they didn’t handle ordinary crimes. They focused exclusively on artificial intelligence cases.

I had nothing to do with AI, so I wasn’t especially worried.

Then they brought me inside a Sweeper base, and I realized I’d been far too naive. There was no distance between the Sweepers and demons.

They were far more complex—and far more brutal—than I’d imagined.

Liu Biao took me to a small compound in the forest of Tansong Mountain, on Pingdu City’s western outskirts, very close to Tansong Temple.

The compound looked so modest that I assumed it was only a local outpost. I was wrong. The real facility wasn’t in the compound at all. It was underground.

A five-story building inside held several elevators. They took me into one and sent it down. Deep down. I couldn’t judge the exact depth, but it felt like at least two hundred meters.

Stepping out underground was like entering a maze. Passages ran everywhere, buildings lining both sides. There were even streets, shops, green spaces—an entire underground city.

We took an underground tram to another building.

A sign above the entrance read: CWP Cultural Intelligence Department.

They brought me first into a room full of specialized equipment. Several black-clad men were adjusting machines, preparing to screen me.

I understood. They wanted to verify I hadn’t installed any AI products. I cooperated fully.

I’d been through this routine at Zhu Shaohua’s station. The equipment there had just been more basic. Here every machine was massive, and I had to lie flat while they ran their tests.

After the scans and exams finished, they didn’t interrogate me. Instead they locked me in a sealed room with a bed and a basic washroom, like a crude farmhouse minus any windows.

I lay on the plank bed listening to the ventilation duct’s low hum, wondering why Liu Biao had brought me to such a hidden place for examination. I wasn’t some major criminal. If all they wanted was confirmation I hadn’t installed AI, this seemed wildly excessive—let alone bringing me straight into their core base.

The thought left me deeply uneasy. I suspected they had other plans.

The vent was too narrow to crawl through. Escape was impossible, especially from more than two hundred meters underground.

I’d have to rely on the Sweepers’ own resources if I wanted out.

Liu Biao didn’t interrogate me until roughly four days later. I figured he’d left me alone to wear down my patience.

He’d forgotten one thing, though. I’d taken vows. I was half a monk. The greatest benefit of chanting sutras alongside monks was learning to quiet the mind.

Those days alone passed like smoke from a single stick of incense.

When the interrogation began, Liu Biao cut straight to it. How had Gao Minjun and I escaped?

I’d been preparing for that question the whole time. From the moment I escaped that secret room until I reached Pingdu City, I’d been trying to evade this pursuit. Since I couldn’t avoid it anymore, I could only face it head-on.

I admitted Gao Minjun and I had escaped together. Then I said the fake Gao Minjun was the real culprit. He’d ordered his people to beat Police Chief Zhu Shaohua to death. The real Gao Minjun had been completely framed.

Liu Biao didn’t care about any of that.

The Sweepers weren’t police. His focus stayed locked on one question: how had we contacted Zhu Shaohua?

I blamed the dead for that. Zhu Shaohua and Gao Minjun were both gone. No one could contradict me.

I said Gao Minjun had contacted Zhu Shaohua—or maybe Zhu Shaohua had reached out to Gao Minjun first. I had no idea exactly how they’d gotten in touch.

As for the police officers under Sweeper control who were killed or wounded, I said I didn’t know who’d attacked them. It had been too dark, too chaotic to see. I’d only cared about escaping alive.

Liu Biao’s assistant kept adjusting a lie detector, trying to catch me in a lie.

What he didn’t know was that my sensing power let me monitor their thoughts. I could also use my will to influence the machine’s readings somewhat.

Apparently neither the interrogation nor the equipment caught me lying. Even so, they had no intention of releasing me. They sent me to a residential area behind the Cultural Intelligence Department.

Many people lived there. The room they assigned me alone held six men. A foul smell permeated everything.

I found my bed and sat cross-legged in meditation. In my mind, though, I used my sensing power to observe my surroundings.

These people weren’t all suspects. Most were potential recruits who simply hadn’t undergone Wisdom Capsule modification or received professional training yet.

On trips to the cafeteria, I counted eight rooms like mine, all filled with mixed groups. I guessed this was part of the Cultural Intelligence Department’s daily operations: recruitment and screening.

Were the Sweepers trying to recruit me?

I didn’t know. Liu Biao hadn’t mentioned it.

Enough people in one place, and you get your own little world of rivalries and power plays.

Forty-plus men crammed together meant inevitable conflict. The stronger, more hot-tempered ones liked preying on the weak.

One day I sensed two muscular men planning to rough up a mild-mannered scholar sharing my room. His name was Lin Xiaowen. He’d been a university researcher before being arrested on suspicion of trafficking intelligent devices.

I hadn’t planned to interfere. But when I sensed the two men didn’t even know Lin Xiaowen and just wanted someone to take their anger out on, I felt compassion stir.

Management in our block was remarkably lax. Everyone had nothing to do, and private fights were common. Fighting was probably the fastest way to observe someone’s abilities and character. I suspected Liu Biao and the others deliberately allowed it.

The Cultural Intelligence Department was a place that played with people’s minds.

I figured by watching how these prisoners behaved in seemingly natural conditions—how they solved problems—the department could identify talent quickly.

That was also probably why aggression saturated the place.

Sure enough, during lunch the next day in the cafeteria, I noticed the two men closing in on Lin Xiaowen from opposite sides. I sent a warning straight into his mind.

Lin Xiaowen clearly didn’t understand what I’d done. Once he grasped the meaning, though, he looked around in alarm, gripped his bamboo chopsticks tight, and glared at the approaching men. That gave them exactly the pretext they wanted.

“Why’d you jab me?” one shouted.

He flung his hot food at Lin Xiaowen and jabbed his chopsticks forward. The other man swung a hard punch from the other side.

Two chopsticks lodged in Lin Xiaowen’s body. The punch connected solidly. Blood sprayed. Fortunately this was an ordinary brawl—their strikes lacked precision. Nothing was fatal.

The cafeteria erupted in chaos.

I immediately slipped aside and used my mind to disrupt the two attackers, giving Lin Xiaowen a chance to break free.

What I didn’t expect was that instead of seeking help from the guards, Lin Xiaowen vaulted into the kitchen and started hurling lit gas burners at the two men.

Flames and thick smoke swept through the space. The sealed underground area instantly filled with surging crowds, fire, and smoke.

I followed the flow of people out of the cafeteria.

Guards quickly controlled the situation and drove everyone back to their rooms. The cafeteria fire was soon extinguished by automated fire-suppression systems.

Back in our quarters, Lin Xiaowen was the only one missing.

I couldn’t understand why he’d done that. A head-on fight clearly wasn’t the smart move.

Three or four days passed without seeing him again.

I asked a guard, but he refused to answer properly. Fine—he could stay silent. By sensing several guards’ thoughts, I pieced together roughly what had happened.

The Sweepers had been trying to recruit Lin Xiaowen for a long time, but he’d consistently refused. Prolonged imprisonment had pushed him near collapse. That’s why he’d resorted to something so extreme.

Those two men had actually been acting on Sweeper orders, sent specifically to beat Lin Xiaowen into submission.

What an inhuman organization.

About three days later, the young northerner in the bunk next to mine quietly told me Lin Xiaowen had been executed.

Before the execution, the young man had been assigned to help Lin Xiaowen change clothes. As they parted, Lin Xiaowen asked him to pass me a message: under no circumstances was I to join the Sweepers.

What was so horrifying about them that he’d rather die than join?

For now, I had no answer.

After the incident, security tightened and everyone entered a formal study phase.

That’s right—study.

From that day on, we were all assigned courses. Instructors lectured daily on set schedules. Most material covered technical protocols and policy theory.

Only then did I understand Grandma’s intentions.

She’d ignored my formal education all those years because she knew that since the development of artificial intelligence, knowledge and skills alone no longer needed to be learned traditionally.

Knowledge could be poured straight into someone like water.

Grandma had made me read all those eclectic books to train my thinking—my ability to discern, analyze, and see into the heart of things.

Just when I thought the Sweepers were going to force me to join, a competition at the base gave things an unexpected turn.