The ground beneath Longhai had always whispered.
Tunnels carved during the war, repurposed by smugglers, buried by time and cement—forgotten by the officials, remembered only by those who trafficked in shadows.
Now, Lin Feng stood at their edge.
A rusted steel hatch hissed open beneath a decaying warehouse near the eastern docks. Su Qingyue flicked her flashlight downward, revealing a stairwell lost to decades.
"You're really going through with it?" she asked.
Lin Feng gave a small nod. "The Silver Circle's built their empire on top of bones. It's time to reclaim the bones."
Inside the Tunnel System
The team moved like ghosts—Lin Feng, Su Qingyue, Qian Juxiao, and two men from Lin Feng's quiet network: Ye San (a former city engineer) and "Mouse" (a cartographer with a memory for maps that no computer could match).
"See this junction?" Mouse whispered, tapping the wall. "Silver Circle's illegal fiber lines run through here. They've been laying underground control grids—part of a surveillance system to watch protests in the old districts."
Lin Feng's jaw tightened. "How soon can we redirect?"
Ye San adjusted his bag. "I can flip it. Give you access without them knowing. But if they catch on…"
"They won't," Lin Feng said. "Not until it's too late."
Aboveground – Luo Zixuan's Private Control Room
A digital map glowed under Luo's hand.
His advisors stared in silence as the southern surveillance grid blinked—then stuttered.
Offline.
Luo's fingers curled slightly.
"This wasn't a failure," he muttered. "This was taken."
Greycoat leaned in. "Lin Feng?"
Luo's eyes narrowed. "He's not fighting in boardrooms anymore. He's digging."
Meanwhile – Crimson Circle Lounge
Xu Shanyue received a message via a burner phone. Just coordinates and a timestamp.
She studied them in silence.
Guo Yuwei glanced up. "He's making his move?"
"No," Xu replied. "He's digging up the city's memory. And if he wins here, the Silver Circle won't just lose property—they'll lose their story."
She stood.
"I'm going to see for myself."
Midnight – Tunnel Junction Zeta
Mouse paused. "We're nearly under Silver Circle HQ now. Just one more connection."
Lin Feng pulled up the schematic. "We splice this line—gain access to every encrypted node they use for district-level manipulation."
Qian Juxiao raised an eyebrow. "And then?"
Lin Feng glanced at the dusty tiles, faintly etched with an old resistance emblem.
"Then we light the fuse."
1:43 a.m. – Across the City
Lights flickered in the Silver Circle's auxiliary servers.
Encrypted files—land deeds, bribery records, displacement memos—began auto-uploading to a dozen anonymous media outlets.
And in the heart of Longhai's forgotten underbelly, Lin Feng closed the last hatch and looked up at the trembling ceiling.
He didn't smile.
He simply said, "Now they'll see what was buried beneath their thrones."
End of Chapter 69 – Beneath the City, Above the Game