Chapter 57: Midnight Crisis, The AI’s First Warning!

Deep within the subterranean utility tunnels of the "Valley of Hope" campus, five dark figures moved in silent, stealthy pursuit, guided only by the dim, flickering glow of emergency lights. Acting in absolute synchronization and with seamless coordination, their military-grade combat boots stepped onto the metal grating floor with almost no extraneous sound.

The man leading the pack went by the codename "Scorpion." With a sharp gesture of his hand, the squad came to an abrupt halt. He cocked his head to listen. All that reached him was the distant, muffled patter of rain—filtered heavily through thick layers of earth—and the low, heavy echo of rushing water within the pipeline.

All clear.

The four men behind him were hardened veterans meticulously handpicked from the desperate outlaws of the Golden Triangle, each of them with more than one life on their hands. Regarding this mission, Brother Bao had made it abundantly clear: the target was a young man named He Yu, a mere bookworm running a school.

From their perspective, this job was practically as effortless as an armed excursion.

Infiltrating an unsuspecting university campus and abducting a defenseless headmaster—the sole difficulty lay entirely in evading the perimeter's routine surveillance cameras.

By now, they had successfully bypassed all surface-level security and breached the core zone of the buildings.

Scorpion glanced down at the specialized tactical wrist terminal strapped to his arm. It displayed the office building’s floor plan, acquired courtesy of an insider. The target was on the top floor, in the innermost office.

A cruel, predatory grin split his lips as he flashed another hand signal.

The mission continued.

Like five phantoms, they silently scaled upward along the fire escape stairs. Believing themselves to be the most lethal hunters in the dead of night, they remained utterly oblivious to the fact that they had already become inescapable prey in the eyes of another.

……

The top floor of the administrative building.

Beyond the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, a jagged flash of lightning tore through the thick, heavy curtain of night, casting a ghastly white glare across the entire sky. A deafening roll of thunder followed immediately after.

Yet, He Yu’s attention was entirely divorced from the torrential storm raging outside.

He sat absorbed in his computer screen, putting the finishing touches on the supplementary clauses for the "Future Potential" plan. His fingertips danced lightly across the keyboard. Within the quiet expanse of the office, the only sounds were the monotonous clatter of keys intertwined with the majestic fury of the rain outside.

Right at that moment.

The smartphone resting beside his hand lit up soundlessly, devoid of any prior warning.

The illumination was not the gentle, welcoming glow of a routine notification, but rather an aggressive, heart-stopping crimson. The blood-red radiance flooded the entire screen in an instant, resembling a fresh splash of gore.

A complex red alarm popup aggressively overrode every single interface.

At the center of the warning lay a real-time rendered 3D structural model of the administrative building, meticulously detailed down to every individual pipe and wire. This was no ordinary thermal imaging; it was an ultra-sensory model constructed in real-time by an artificial intelligence, fusing multidimensional data encompassing thermal signatures, bioelectric fields, and acoustic localization.

Atop the model, five strikingly conspicuous human-shaped red dots were advancing upward through the first-floor corridors in a thoroughly tactical formation.

beside each red dot trailed a string of cold, unyielding data streams:

[Threat Level: High (Classified as Armed Intrusion)]

[Vitals: Heart rate 85, respiration steady, adrenaline levels moderate (Classified as Highly Trained Individuals)]

[Predicted Trajectory: Fire Escape B -> Top Floor Corridor -> Headmaster's Office]

[Estimated Time to Contact: 2 minutes and 47 seconds]

This was precisely the other facet of the [Distributed Resource Circulation AI]—the absolute guardian deeply rooted within the campus's neural network: its security module. Under its unblinking surveillance, neither visual nor physical blind spots existed. Not the slightest anomaly in energy fluctuation could ever escape its perception.

He Yu’s fingers froze on the keyboard.

Within the office, nothing remained save for the escalating fury of the thunder and rain outside.

His gaze locked relentlessly onto the smartphone screen. The five crimson markers steadily closing in on the blue point representing his own position burned against his retinas like five white-hot branding irons.

The gentleness and profound focus in his eyes vanished completely within a single second, replaced by a profound, almost solidified frost.

He lifted his wrist and checked the time.

Midnight, one-seven.

His brain began to operate at a velocity far exceeding its usual capacity, chilling data points and prospective courses of action flashing through his mind at lightning speed.

Call the police?

The nearest police station was over thirty kilometers away. In weather conditions like this violent storm, response times would be severely crippled. From receiving the call to actual arrival, the most optimistic estimate was forty minutes.

Forty minutes.

Yet the countdown on the screen had already ticked down to "2 minutes and 31 seconds."

By the time police sirens pierced the rainy night, the intruders would have had ample time to erase him from this world ten times over.

That option was instantly discarded.

Call campus security?

To avoid stirring unnecessary panic, the security personnel he hired were of standard configuration, primarily tasked with routine patrols and maintaining order. The most formidable weapons in their possession were rubber batons. Pitting them against five armed desperadoes classified by data models as "highly trained" would not be reinforcement; it would be sending them to their slaughter.

That option, too, was discarded.

Flee? Or hide?

There was only one exit to the office, and the enemy's advancing route pointed precisely toward this location—they had clearly come well-prepared. To bolt out now would be tantamount to walking straight into a pre-laid trap. Hide inside the office? A thin solid-wood door was no different from paper in front of professional breaching tools.

Every conventional, rational, and normal path to survival was systematically blocked off by the insurmountable chasms of time and capability.

This was a dead end.

A meticulously crafted execution ground prepared specifically for him, offering not a single glimmer of a loophole.

He Yu slowly stood up and walked over to the massive floor-to-ceiling glass. The cold surface reflected his expressionless face.

Outside, another silver-serpent flash of lightning ripped across the sky, its instantaneous brilliance outlining his posture into a straight, unyielding silhouette.

He looked down at the storm-ravaged "Valley of Hope" below, gazing upon those newly completed architectural complexes that harbored countless ideals and futures, standing in silent resilience against the darkness.

He knew that this time, he had no towering pillars of the nation like Qian Liqun behind him, no academic giants like Jiang Yi to lean on, and certainly no timely arrival of the police.

In this midnight storm, the only person he could rely on was himself.

And it could only ever be himself.