"Team Leader, the call is connected!"

The sudden voice in the office almost made Fu Tianli jump out of his chair. After intense overtime work before, he had been in a semi-conscious state these past few days. Fortunately, the rumors of spiritual energy awakening had been gradually dispelled due to the debunking science program’s efforts and the lack of subsequent developments, giving him a chance to sleep with pay.

Forcing himself to get alert, Fu Tianli glanced at Lin Wenxue, who had rushed in, and frowned, asking,

"What call?"

"Little Chen! Little Chen’s call, it’s connected!"

"Little Chen!" Hearing Lin Wenxue’s words, Fu Tianli bounced up directly from his seat, grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, and draped it over himself, saying,

"What’s the situation now?"

"It just got through, specific details are unknown yet. But the IP address of the call is in Columbia, though we couldn’t find any related registration info..." Lin Wenxue spoke at a quick pace, and Fu Tianli immediately strode towards the monitoring room.

While walking, he asked,

"Why did it suddenly get through? Is today some special day?"

"I don’t know, because the Kaidan source had been confirmed, we didn’t plan to contact code name ’Instructor’ recently. Today’s the weekend, and Chen Xiyao came over for training as usual and casually dialed a number during a break, and it connected."

"Could it be that to get through you must not have a special purpose, just a pure intention to call? Or is it necessary to follow one’s own thoughts to dial the phone and cannot be dictated by others?"

As the team leader of the Investigation Team, Fu Tianli quickly thought of several rules. But the monitoring room was right ahead, so he pushed the door open immediately, only to see that many of the key personnel from the communication group, archive group, and other sub-teams were already there. Meanwhile, from the recording equipment, he could hear the aimless conversation between Chen Xiyao and Feng Xue.

"What’s the situation now?" Fu Tianli found a place to sit down. Xiao Zhang, who was on rotation today, immediately came over quietly and said,

"Pretty much code name Instructor didn’t have a signal last month when they returned home, so the call couldn’t be connected."

"So what’s this now... flirting?" Fu Tianli listened to the phone conversation between Chen Xiyao and Feng Xue, chatting with no point, and slightly frowned, asking, 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"Can’t Little Chen ask some valuable questions?"

"Isn’t this nice?" Wang Lao, sitting idly at the table with a motherly smile, waved his hand leisurely, saying,

"Relationships need to be maintained. If you act like you’re investigating every ancestor each time you call, even the best impression will be ruined. Talking about family like this is good, and after all, it’s not that we didn’t get any information."

"Ah, yes, you’re right." Seeing the authority speak, Fu Tianli could only nod, then as if just realizing something, he asked,

"I just got here; was there any intelligence leaked?"

"December." Wang Lao succinctly uttered three words, and Fu Tianli’s expression immediately became somewhat subtle.

When the average person heard such an inconclusive statement, they would surely be baffled. However, as the team leader of the Investigation Team, he knew very well that this likely referred to the worldwide phenomenon where the number of high-level Kaidan narratives would sharply decline every December.

Even the "Home of Kaidan," Eastern Country, would enter a window period during this time, and many countries’ Kaidan organizations would organize research teams to go to Eastern Country at this time. Moreover, Eastern Country’s few resistance agencies mostly carried out activities in winter.

The mainstream international view held that the power of Kaidan was subject to time cycles, being strongest in summer and weakest in winter. As evidence, Eastern Country held large-scale Kaidan festivals every June - the Hundred Tales.

But now it seemed that there might be another explanation?

"Team Leader, according to the casual chat between code name Instructor and Chen Xiyao, December is a very special day for high-level Kaidan. It feels like our Spring Festival travel rush when in this month, high-level Kaidan return to Infinite City. As for the reason, the other side didn’t say."

Listening the whole time, Xiao Zhang quietly explained a few words to Fu Tianli, but it only made him feel more restless.

Because the cycle was not just about being strong in June and weak in December. How to explain the shrinking of Kaidan in both spring and autumn seasons?

Indeed, the real samples of high-level Kaidan were far more rare than the non-existent low-level ones. Globally, the legends classified as high-level Kaidan did not exceed ten thousand, and at least one-third were in Eastern Country.

So the research on Kaidan by countermeasure departments in various countries was fundamentally based on the situation in Eastern Country, then applied globally.

For instance, Eastern Country’s Kaidan would enter a window period in December, so when everyone checked their own country and found that, indeed, Kaidan also decreased, this rule became universal until a more convincing piece of evidence broke it.

Although such experiential summary of rules felt unreliable, any technology in its initial stage was based on experience accumulation. Without understanding the principle of friction causing fire, one could still make fire by friction; without understanding the essence of biological genes, one could still breed crops artificially.

The accumulation of technology had always been this way, but it didn’t mean these researchers didn’t want to know the truth.

While Fu Tianli was struggling between "maintaining relationships" and "inquiring for information", a staff member next to him suddenly spoke,

"Wang Lao, Leader Fu, Leader Qian, the background noise has been processed!"

Saying this, a member of the technical team handed a few rather professional headphones to them. Fu Tianli put on the headphones and a very faint and slightly distorted sound echoed in his ears.

The sound was faint and noisy, making people instinctively feel annoyed, but if you listened carefully, you could find some special details.

"Is this the sound of the environment where code name [Instructor] is located?" Fu Tianli took off the headphones and looked at the technical team member, who nodded and said,

"Little Chen’s phone was modified by us using laboratory methods, enhancing the sound quality capture function to ensure the best possible quality of the call. However, the phone used by code name [Instructor] is of average quality, so there was still unavoidable noise and static. Fortunately, his phone’s noise-canceling feature is not particularly advanced, so we were able to extract some background sound from the conversation."

As he spoke, Wang Lao, Qian Hongxiu, and several other leaders also removed their headphones, each showing a degree of perplexity.

After all, this kind of noise-polluted sound was not easy to distinguish.

For people with exceptional hearing, listening to this noise was even more torturous.

The technical team members seemed to realize this and immediately picked up a tablet, which displayed a somewhat complex interface that resembled audio production software. He isolated each track, saying,

"Through waveform analysis, we distinguished many segments from the noise, then compared them with the audio library to analyze several findings."

"We don’t understand these technical things; just tell us the conclusion." Wang Lao rubbed his ears and said, "I only heard water sounds, what are the other types?"

"You’re correct, the biggest noise in this audio should come from a relatively turbulent river flow, but since we don’t know the distance, the water volume cannot be determined." The technician first confirmed Wang Lao’s guess and then continued,

"Besides the sound of water, we discovered the crackling of a campfire, mixed with the sound of wood burning and a few droplets of grease falling into the fire. Along with the wind blowing through leaves, this is likely a campfire barbecue in the wild. Considering it’s by the water, they’re probably grilling fish."

"The timing fits too, but do Kaidan need to eat?" Wang Lao showed a contemplative expression, and the technician nodded and continued,

"Yes, now on to the most important part."

As he spoke, the technician swiped a few times on the terminal, isolating and selecting a section from a bunch of audio tracks, then played it.

It wasn’t an uncommon sound, but rather one everyone was extremely familiar with... breathing.

Besides Feng Xue, on the call, there was another breath nearby!

"Someone?!"