Chapter Forty-Seven: The Final Piece of the Puzzle

“…spun around by us like a top… the ‘Cicada’.”

When Lin Feng’s words, filled with the intoxicating thrill of intellectual superiority, echoed through the command vehicle, the stormy auction—an unprecedented clash of titans, a maelstrom of competing powers—finally drew to a close. It ended in the most astonishing, darkly humorous way: the fisherman reaping the spoils while the eagles and clams fought.

They had snatched the choicest prize from right under the noses of Anderson and the “Ghosts”—those two formidable adversaries—without so much as a scratch. What’s more, they had managed to shift all the blame onto that mysterious “third party” who’d absconded with a forged painting.

Back at the command center, the team was electrified with the euphoria of victory.

“Well done!”

“Chief Xiao, you’re incredible! Consultant Lin, you’re a genius!”

There were high-fives, embraces, and the kind of jubilant celebration reserved for triumphs that would go down in the annals of national security—a victory as exquisite as a work of art.

Yet amid this ocean of triumph, only two people did not smile.

Xiao Ran and Lin Feng.

“Something’s wrong.”

Lin Feng’s holographic projection gazed at the surveillance feed, brow furrowed as he observed the “Ghost” unit making their swift escape with the fake painting.

“It was all too easy.”

His words fell like a bucket of ice water, instantly extinguishing the team’s exuberance.

Everyone fell silent, confusion in their eyes.

“What do you mean?” Deputy Captain Zhao Yi asked. “Didn’t we win?”

“We did.” Lin Feng nodded, but his gaze was grave. “But Anderson… it seemed as if he never really tried to stop us.”

“He… went easy on us.” Xiao Ran’s heart plummeted.

She had felt it too.

The whole auction drama, for all its apparent danger, had seen Anderson’s defenses seem strangely perfunctory.

He resembled a grandmaster deliberately sacrificing his queen.

What was his real intention?

…

Lin Feng took no part in the celebrations. He returned to his studio.

There, he did something no one could have anticipated.

He placed the entire painting, frame and all, into a massive, military-grade device made of special alloy—

An “Electromagnetic Shield and Signal Analyzer.”

“Lin Feng?” Xiao Ran’s holographic image appeared, bewildered.

“Hush.” Lin Feng made a silencing gesture.

Then, he issued an unusual command to the AI, “Mouse.”

“Mouse, initiate simulation: extreme environment with total GPS signal loss.”

“Copy, boss!”

In an instant, the analyzer became a perfect “signal vacuum.”

…

At first, nothing happened.

On the screen, the green dot representing the “fake chip” signal source lay dormant.

One minute…

Two minutes…

Just as everyone was starting to believe Lin Feng was being overly cautious—

In the third minute after losing GPS signal, the once inert green dot suddenly pulsed, as if a heart had started beating.

Then—

It activated something none of them had ever seen before—a “backup beacon.”

A surge of intensely concealed, high-penetration distress signals erupted from the chip, transmitting furiously toward an ultra-encrypted dark web node, buried deep within the deepest layers of the darknet.

“Alert! Alert! High-frequency gamma-ray energy source detected! Target chip is initiating quantum tunneling communication!”

“Mouse” broke the silence with an alarm of unprecedented shrillness.

In the command center, every face turned deathly pale.

At last, they understood.

They had all been played by that devil.

“We… we’ve all been fooled!” Wang Zhe stared at the screen, watching the backup beacon’s frantic signaling, and let out a cry of despair.

“This wasn’t a deal! Nor was it theft!”

“This was… this was using a borrowed knife to kill!”

“The entire auction was a massive trap laid by Anderson from the very start!”

“He never cared who took the painting. His true aim was to use us—or the ‘Ghosts’—to ferry this primed time bomb out of that fortress-like venue!”

“And this backup beacon was the hook he left behind!”

“He was waiting…”

“Waiting for us, the clever fish, to bite!”

“Then he could follow the line right back to the den of every single one of us!”

…

Boom—

Only now did Anderson’s ultimate scheme reveal its most terrifying and ruthless face.

The command center was paralyzed by a silence more frightful than any before.

But as his team reeled from the devastating reversal, paralyzed by fear, Lin Feng began to laugh.

There was no terror or despair in his laughter.

Only the wild elation of a hunter who had finally found his equal.

“A hook?” he murmured, staring at the dark web node flashing with activity on the screen. “I want to see what kind of monster is lurking at the other end of this line.”

He made a decision—one that was both bolder and more reckless than any before.

He would turn the tables.

He would follow the fishing line back, and hunt the great white shark hiding in the abyss.

“Xiao Ran,” he said, meeting the woman’s equally grave gaze on the screen, “this is our only chance.”

“Follow this line. Dig deeper.”

“Maybe… we’ll find his real lair.”

Xiao Ran met the burning intensity in his eyes.

At last, she nodded, though it was not without difficulty.

…

The ultimate assault in cyberspace had begun.

Lin Feng united his own power and all the computational might of “Singularity Security,” transforming them into a single, razor-edged digital spear.

He would make himself the bait.

And he would drive that spear, mercilessly, into the gaping maw of the dark web node.

…

In Lin Feng’s studio, the download bar for “Full Attack on Anderson’s Core Server” surged forward, its progress—10%… 30%… 70%—so rapid it made one’s heart race.

In New York, inside Anderson’s office, a red dot representing “Zhurong’s” true physical location finally pierced the fog, lighting up in an instant.

…

“Boss!”

“Mouse” screamed the most piercing warning ever.

“Our physical address…”

“…has been exposed!”

…

But Lin Feng seemed not to hear.

His eyes were locked on that progress bar, now racing toward 100%.

His lips, stretched in a manic, tragic grin, leaked a trickle of blood from mental exhaustion.

Still, he laughed.

He laughed with the wildness and heroism of a man who had staked everything.

With his own exposure, he had finally acquired the final piece of the puzzle that would decide the outcome of this war.

“…I know,” he whispered to Mouse.

Then, as the progress bar struck 100%, he pressed the Enter key.

And his body collapsed backward, drained of all strength.