Novel Full Chapter 299: The First Network Strike
Chapter 299: Chapter 299: The First Network Strike
The first target was not the largest.
That was deliberate.
Lin Xian’er recommended starting with the courier shrine.
"It is a relay, not a headquarters," she said through secure projection. "But it connects multiple brokers. If we hit it cleanly, we capture routes without alerting the deeper market too soon."
Qin Mo agreed.
"Destroying relay nodes first. Like Floor 131."
Qin Yuheng nodded.
The parallel was obvious.
Blood Sun’s child-path exploitation network operated like the thunder beast siege:
Brokers as beasts.
Handlers as elite beasts.
Courier shrines as command nodes.
False charity foundations as resource nodes.
Market buyers as siege beasts.
Hidden strategists as Siege King.
They would not rush the Siege King.
They would cut nodes.
The operation was officially led by regional authorities with Heavenly Gate Academy support. Qin family involvement remained layered. Qin Yuheng served as strike commander under temporary emergency authorization, using the framework developed after the Thirteenth Gate.
Participants:
Qin Yuheng’s team.
Lin Xian’er’s market intelligence agents.
Yu Qingmei’s trusted academy enforcement squad.
Military scouts.
Local province legal witnesses.
Silent Heaven hidden containment.
The target was called Benevolent Courier Shrine.
Publicly, it delivered letters, medicine, and educational materials to rural villages.
Privately, it moved dream-script markers, false scholarship invitations, voice lure tokens, and child talent observation dust.
The shrine stood on a hill road surrounded by prayer flags.
It looked harmless.
Qin Yuheng distrusted harmless facades more than monsters.
Before the strike, Lin Xian’er reviewed legal evidence.
"We have enough for search and seizure. Not enough for full network exposure."
Qin Yuheng nodded.
"Then priority is records, living witnesses, and preventing destruction."
Qin Mo placed the Sovereign Network Command Suppression Crystal inside a portable formation case.
"This should suppress relay destruction signals for a short time. Short."
"How short?"
"Long enough if everyone stops asking."
The operation began at dusk.
Local officials approached publicly with inspection orders.
Shrine staff smiled politely.
Then one tried to activate a destruction talisman beneath the altar.
Qin Mo triggered the suppression crystal.
A silent pulse spread.
The talisman failed.
Qin Lian moved.
Three hidden couriers were subdued before they reached the rear gate.
Qin Yuchen led enforcement squads into the storage hall.
They found medicine crates, letter bundles, and hidden compartments filled with dream-script tokens.
Then the shrine changed.
Prayer flags turned red-black.
A concealed formation activated under the hill, not destroyed by the suppression crystal because it was local defense, not network relay.
[Hostile Formation Detected:
False Charity Defense Array]
Shrine guardians emerged.
They were not Blood Sun core agents. They were hired martial guards marked by false blessing seals.
Qin Yuheng did not kill immediately.
"Disable. Preserve witnesses."
The battle was tight.
Unlike Tower beasts, these were real people, some guilty, some perhaps ignorant. Qin Yuchen subdued guards with controlled strikes. Qin Lian cut escape routes. Academy enforcement sealed storage chambers.
Then the true shrine handler appeared.
A thin man in gray robes, holding a child-registration ledger.
His eyes glowed red-black.
[Blood Sun Relay Handler]
Combat Equivalent:
Approx. Level 55
Specialty:
Record destruction, witness collapse, courier oath seals.
He smiled at Qin Yuheng.
"You arrived faster than expected."
Qin Yuheng said nothing.
The handler opened the ledger.
Several distant witnesses began choking through oath links.
Qin Mo shouted, "Ledger-linked collapse!"
Qin Yuheng moved.
He used Future Obligation Severing Blade and True Debt and False Debt Scale together, cutting the oath links before the handler completed the collapse.
Lin Xian’er’s agents secured the witness names.
The handler frowned.
"You have too many tools."
Qin Yuheng finally spoke.
"And you have too many victims."
The handler tried to crush his own memory.
The Network Command Suppression Crystal pulsed again.
Memory collapse delayed.
Qin Lian pierced his shadow.
Qin Yuchen broke his wrist.
Qin Yuheng placed the Self That Cannot Be Owned Core resonance seal over his forehead, blocking ownership-triggered self-destruction.
The handler screamed.
But lived.
Captured alive.
For the first time, they had a living Blood Sun-linked relay handler with recoverable memory.
Not full memory.
But enough.
The shrine records were secured.
Dream-script tokens confiscated.
False charity seals burned.
Child route maps recovered.
The operation succeeded.
But not perfectly.
One courier escaped through a pre-existing underground animal tunnel that had not been on any map. Silent Heaven pursued but lost him at a river crossing.
A partial failure.
Qin Yuheng accepted it.
No operation was perfect.
The captured handler revealed under sealed interrogation that the Clear Reed attack had been authorized through something called:
[Red Nursery Chain]
A decentralized child-path exploitation network spanning several provinces.
Mo Cangyan was not its only controller.
He had used it.
But did not create all of it.
This was important.
Blood Sun was not a single line.
It was a web.
The first network strike cut one node.
The web trembled.
And somewhere far away, Mo Cangyan received the news.
The courier shrine had fallen.
The handler lived.
For the first time, his expression turned genuinely cold.
Qin Yuheng was no longer only defending.
He was learning to dismantle.