Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 94 Central System (Bonus Chapter)
At the end of the passage, the metal door slowly opened.

The sound of mechanical gears rubbing together echoed in the narrow passageway, like peeling away the skin of the air.

Cold air was blowing out from the crack in the door.

That wasn't ordinary cold; it was a formatted temperature—precisely constant at three degrees Celsius—used to suppress psionic fluctuations.

Behind the door lies the most secluded meeting area in the center: the Iron Coffin Zone.

Lights fell vertically from the dome, the beams forming a cone that landed precisely in the center of the ground.
Outside the illuminated area, everything was dark gray.

There are no shadows, no echoes—even the concept of "existence" has been stripped away.

The surrounding walls are made of anti-psychic alloy, with fine magnetic patterns flowing across their surface.

That's part of the Anti-Soul Pressure System, which can detect any fluctuations that exceed the normal human frequency.

Xu Yan paused in his steps.

He could feel the drill arm's body being "peeled layer by layer":
Skin temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate rhythm, pupil constriction, and emotional current.

All physiological curves are extracted in real time and projected onto the invisible panel.

Any deviation from the established model will instantly lock down the entire iron coffin area.

It felt like entering the body of a neural machine.

And he is a "virus" disguised as a nerve signal.

[Identity verification area activated.]

The electronic sound was like an ice needle piercing the eardrum.

"Drill arm, confirm identity."

He stood up straight, his voice cold and hard, with a metallic quality.

“The leader of the third echelon of the action group, a silver-level contractor, number 2471, drill arm, has been confirmed to be present.”

[Identification successful.]

The air pressure changed suddenly.

A curtain of light descended, like a blade slicing through the night.

Xu Yan slowly stepped in, his consciousness quietly "reading".

He forcibly deciphered the structure of this system from the residual memory stream in the drill arm.

—Central system.

Five white, ten yellow, one hundred silver, one thousand copper.

The fragmented memories of the drill arm flashed through his mind: the massive psionic tower, the densely numbered bronze-level guards, the faceless masks of the Silver Mobilization Team…

Layer upon layer, they were stacked upwards until they reached those five ever-burning white lights.

The so-called "Five Whites" refers to the Platinum-level contractors who possess the highest decision-making authority, symbolizing the "Heavenly Law" itself;
The Ten Yellows are the execution layer, each in charge of one of the ten domains, responsible for the energy balance at the city level;
Baiyin, the action team leader and main combatant, is the "executor";
The Thousand Coppers are the basic operations and spiritual pressure maintenance, forming the underlying network of the city's spiritual energy order.

The existence of this system means that ghosts are no longer considered "supernatural disasters".
It becomes a unit of energy that can be allocated, recycled, and utilized.

They maintained the balance under the guise of "purge".
Using "balance" as a cover, a closed-loop cycle of psionic economy is carried out.

—The “order” between humans and the dead
In reality, it is a precisely calculated project involving the allocation of soul resources.

Xu Yan sneered inwardly.

His father was once at the top of this system, until one night he was completely erased from the archives.

And now, he walks inside that machine that devours his father's name.

[Identification complete. Access level: Silver Level 2.]

The metal fence retracted silently, and the light curtain opened like a veil.

Xu Yan stepped into the conference room, where the lights rendered every inch of the cold white space perfectly cold and unforgiving.

The three men over there were already in position—Ghost-Faced Judge, Lantern Shadow, and Iron-Faced Woman.

The judge looked straight up, and in that instant, Xu Yan saw his eyes clearly: not ordinary gray, but a deep gold, like two vertical electric shock marks.

An electric arc flowed silently in his pupils, carrying a calm and precise rhythm, as if measuring every breath in the room with irresistible laws.

Xu Yan's palms suddenly started sweating.

Inside the drill arm's outer shell, he heard his heartbeat amplified, like a metallic resonance.

A signature page silently flashed through my mind—the corner of a document from the nursing home, with a signature that was calm and hard: Jiang Yu.

That was the judge's name; those were the words printed on the final approval for that operation.

He also recognized the Iron-Faced Woman, his opponent whom he had eliminated in the first stage; she was the Shadow Arm under the Judge's command.

Her silence was no longer merely isolation, but a kind of obedience calibrated by commands. At this moment, the room seemed to be occupied by an invisible equation: commands, resources, risks, costs, all variables were arranged with the cold precision of a judge's gaze.

Xu Yan realized that what was in front of him was not simply a law enforcer, but a system of controlled, procedural power that was calm, deadly, and beyond negotiation.

The judge raised his hand, and the screen lit up.

What is reflected is the remains of the Sector-07 cold storage facility.

The image appears to have been corroded by acid, with flickering noise at the edges.

"Report."

Xu Yan reported in the same tone as when drilling an arm:
"At 00:38, the soul storage medium collapsed. The energy flow reversed. It is speculated to be an early-stage abyss transformation reaction. No main source was found at the scene."

Judge: "Surveillance?"

"All of them are invalid. The last image only shows a 'shadow' shape."

Xu Yan paused for a moment.
Intentionally add a sentence at the end of the report:
"In addition, Zhou Wenbin, the manager of Sector-07, has also disappeared without a trace."

According to the external inspection records, he was the last manager to enter the cold storage facility.

When saying this,

Xu Yan held her breath in her heart.

That was a test.

— Zhou Wenbin, Director of the Center.

He is the only person qualified to access the core of the ghost storage.

Xu Yan wanted to know if this name would cause any disturbance in the judge's system.

However, no.

The judge didn't even lift his eyes.

Those golden pupils remained fixed on the churning energy flow on the screen.
His expression was so calm it was almost mechanical.

“He doesn’t have the ability to steal from someone he’s guarding.” His tone was emotionless. “He’s no longer of any value; whether he’s alive or not is no longer within our scope of investigation.”

Xu Yan's heart sank.

He realized that he wouldn't get anything out of Zhou Wenbin's disappearance.

The judge never considered "human life" to be anything meaningful.

The judge tapped the table lightly with his fingertips.

The cold light slid down from the lens and refracted into a sharp line.

"continue."

That extremely soft sound seemed to have triggered some kind of invisible rhythm.

The air vibrated.

The magnetic patterns on the surrounding walls rose up, and light spread along the alloy lines, forming thin golden lines, as if the whole room was resonating with his heartbeat.

Each tap,
Those patterns become a little brighter.
Until the entire iron coffin area was enveloped by a low-frequency hum, which was not a sound wave, but a rhythmic echo, like invisible static electricity floating in the air.

The cold light slid down from his lenses, refracting into a sharp line.

He raised his head.

Those eyes focused instantly, arcs of electricity flashing deep within the golden pupils, lightning subtly tracing the outer edge of the iris, as if calculating the deviation of every single particle.

At that moment, Xu Yan almost had a hallucination:

The judge's gaze is rewriting the density of space.

"Drill arm".

His voice was very low, yet it echoed through the layers of metal walls.
Each echo is like a series of superimposed echoes, carrying a mechanical regularity and the indifference of the gods.

The sound emanated simultaneously from the air, from the metal, and from every magnetic stripe.

It sounded more like some kind of "system" was speaking.

"This is the third 'no-result' case you've been in charge of."

The moment the words landed,
The air in the iron coffin area seemed to be pressed down by an invisible hand.

The lights flickered briefly, and the energy sensing system automatically lowered the spiritual pressure.
All psionic fluctuations naturally extinguished outside the radius of his aura.

This is the "pressure" of a Gold-level superhuman.

(End of this chapter)