Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 74 The Ghost-Faced Judge
at the same time.

Jiangcheng, the city's emergency response center.

The drill arm stood in the underground briefing room codenamed "Iron Coffin," where cold white light shone down vertically from above, illuminating the several scorching marks on his arm that looked like frozen ink stains.

The air was filled with the cold smell of disinfectant and metal, a standard feature of most of the deep-seated facilities in the "center"—this official agency, which claims to be responsible for urban public safety and rapid response to abnormal events, actually lies dormant in the public eye, dealing with "non-standard reality" events that, if leaked, would be enough to overturn common sense.

The drill arm's meticulously crafted report, attempting to downplay its hellish ordeal as "technical interference," was projected onto the gleaming metal tabletop.

His superior, "Ghost-Faced Judge," sat behind the desk—his code name in internal communications.

The judge looked to be around forty years old, with a thin face and frameless glasses. When he looked at people through his eyes behind the lenses, he always had a kind of precision and indifference that seemed to be assessing the rate of asset depreciation.

He wore a crisp, unmarked dark gray uniform, but a small, gear-shaped badge around an eye was pinned to his left breast—a mark of the core personnel within the "center."

He was like a sharp blade sheathed, representing the true iron-fisted order hidden beneath the guise of municipal services within the "center".

However, this cold light was quietly being eroded on one side of the room by an ominous, eerie green glow—the halo emanating from the rusted copper lamp embraced by the "lamp shadow."

He was hunched over, his entire body shrouded in a tattered black robe, like a lingering shadow. Only the green flame in his arms, flickering slightly, reflected a strange hue onto the lenses of the judge's frameless glasses.

On the other side of the judge, the light was subtly and unnaturally distorted, as if the air there had condensed into a transparent human figure.

Only with extremely focused observation can one vaguely capture the outline of the invisible one's existence. The Iron-Faced Woman is like a silent ghost, blending into the environment, yet constantly proclaiming her presence.

The drill arm could clearly feel the eerie green gaze from the left and the scrutinizing gaze from the distorted air on the right, like two invisible scrapers, peeling away his last fig leaf.

All three of them were under the Judge's command and were eyeing the few remaining gold-level contractor positions. At this moment, his failure undoubtedly became the sweetest nourishment in the eyes of his opponents.

"Where is the target item?" The judge's voice was steady, like a cold, mechanical reading, which sounded particularly jarring in this room filled with subtle competition.

As the drill arm slid its Adam's apple with difficulty, it felt the muscles beneath those few scorching marks from the yin energy throbbing with a dull ache. But even more piercing than that was the silent pressure coming from both sides.

"The signal was finally locked inside the target building. However, the intensity of the internal psionic disturbances... exceeded the standard operating procedure, and the Soul Iron detector and backup equipment... were overloaded and damaged on the spot."

He tried to keep his tone as steady as possible, attempting to describe the disastrous defeat—far exceeding the scope of dealing with E-level ghosts and seemingly directly confronting D-level ghosts—within the framework expected of a silver-level contractor.

The judge lightly tapped the table with his fingertip, and the report disappeared.

He raised his eyes, his gaze behind his glasses first sweeping over the eerie green flame on the left, then over the distorted light on the right, and finally, like two high-energy laser beams, fixed on the drill arm's face.

"you are lying."

Those four words instantly soaked the drill arm's back in cold sweat.

He could almost picture the grinning mouth beneath the Shadowman's black robe, and feel the chilling mockery emanating from the distorted air around the Invisible One.

He dared not mention key transactions, for that would mean utter destruction.

Extreme fear and humiliation gave rise to a thick, sticky resentment—Xu Yan!
And these two scoundrels are waiting to see him make a fool of himself!
As he lowered his head slightly in fear and anger to avoid that scrutinizing gaze, a barely perceptible blue light flashed briefly on the inside of his left sleeve, on the private encrypted terminal.

As if he were completely unaware, he naturally pressed down on his left wrist with his right hand.

This hidden plot might be his only hope for turning the tables, or even dragging all these troublesome individuals down with him. The air froze.

In the silence, the drill arm could hear the sound of its own blood rushing, and could almost "hear" the silent mockery of its competitors.

He knew all too well that the "Center" would never allow a place that could easily destroy the equipment of a Silver-level squad and was suspected of harboring a D-level or even higher threat to spiral out of control.

Soon, higher-level hunters will be sent there—those gold-level monsters who can easily subdue E-level monsters, confront D-level threats head-on, and even the legendary platinum-level monsters that can resist the source of regional mutations.

He will either be used as cannon fodder in subsequent operations to salvage some value, or he will be dragged down by this failed file and ruthlessly "archived" by the system.

The judge's gaze lingered on him for a moment, then he spoke softly, his words piercing the unspoken pain shared by the three present:
"A gold-level promotion evaluation is just around the corner. A clean and efficient 'cleanup' is more convincing than ten well-written reports. Unfortunately..."

"You better not let me see this report a second time."

He didn't finish his sentence, but the unspoken words lashed at the core of the drill arm like a whip.

Inside the room, the eerie green flames seemed to dance more joyfully, and the distortion of that light appeared to become more stable and profound.

—The cold, white light gradually faded into the distance.

The undercurrent of power struggles and fear still lingered in the air of the Iron Coffin briefing room, but a hundred miles away, in another sleeping old house, the atmosphere was completely different.

The darkness seemed to have just swallowed the flames, leaving only a faint smell of burnt food in the air, like the ashes of burnt charcoal slowly cooling.

This lingering warmth both unsettled and subtly created an eerie tranquility.

The night was thick, and the sound of the wind isolated the city's hustle and bustle, as if the whole world had receded, leaving only this photo studio breathing alone.

In the dim light of the photo studio late at night, the shadows of the two people were cast on the wall, intertwined.

Xu Yan sat at the workbench and turned on the encrypted terminal.

Chen Zhiwei sat on the old sofa beside him, wrapped in a thin blanket. Her face was still pale, but her eyes were clear as she stared intently at him and the unknown abyss of information that was about to unfold before him.

"Are you ready?" she asked softly, her voice still weak but unusually firm.

Xu Yan glanced at her sideways. Her calming presence slightly calmed his heartbeat, which was a little disordered because he was about to touch the truth.

He nodded, his fingers moving with unusually steady speed as he typed the key he had acquired through his combat instincts.

【ZB7749-Delta - Level 2 Permission Confirmation】

[Verification successful]

The cold, impersonal database interface slowly unfolded before him, like the gaping maw of an abyss.

The rows of encrypted folders, with their complex numbering and timestamps accurate to the millisecond, were like invisible fences, sealing off secrets he never knew.

(End of this chapter)