On the paper was the password Lin Chen copied down. The blue ink of the ballpoint pen shimmered as if it wanted to emit light under the sun.

Wang Chao shivered, took a deep breath, and opened the crude pop-up window again. He slowly entered the characters one by one.

When he reached the end, a rare solemn expression appeared on the teenager’s face. He moved the mouse to the confirm button and asked them again, “Should I confirm?”

Outside the window, the warm sun bathed everything in tranquility.

Xing Conglian looked at the countdown, still 6 minutes remaining.

He nodded and set a countdown on his watch.

With a crisp click, the sound of pressing the mouse button suddenly rang out.

Wang Chao turned the screen towards them, wanting them to watch together. But at that moment, the progress bar instantly reached the bottom, and the page surged out like a waterfall in a frenzy. Wang Chao no longer paid attention to them. He quickly turned back to the screen, his expression becoming tense as his hands quickly tapped the keyboard to process the data.

Thinking of the glimpse of the scene just now, Xing Conglian and Lin Chen exchanged a glance and stood up unconsciously. They walked around the long table from both sides and stood behind Wang Chao.

Looking over the top of the teenager’s head, they finally realized why they had the illusion of seeing a deluge of torrents when they saw the webpage just now.

It was an endless stream of gold coins pouring down like waves, surging and billowing with an incredibly evil and crazed aura, continuously accumulating below the screen.

The sound effect of the coins descending from the sky echoed in the journal reading room, sending shivers down people’s spines.

But to be precise, it was a data stream that was made to look like gold coins, with a pixelated quality similar to those found in the oldest game consoles. Each pixel particle was so large that it instantly made people feel like they were back in the 90s. Moreover, the waterfall of gold coins was made into a three-dimensional appearance, twisting and turning like a Mobius strip or some other weirdly symmetrical figure, making the sturdy screen seem to twist in space.

Xing Conglian finally understood what it meant to be old-school and have special taste.

Suddenly, Wang Chao leaned back in his chair, stopped all his work, and angrily slapped the table. He turned off the computer’s volume abruptly and shook his head at them. “Untraceable.”

5 minutes and 20 seconds remaining.

At this moment, Lin Chen suddenly leaned forward, pointing his finger at the bottom of the screen, and asked, “What’s this?”

Xing Conglian narrowed his eyes, only to see that not all the coins that descended from the sky fell into the abyss. Instead, they transformed into another form, like rain falling into a black ocean on a stormy night, floating and sinking below the screen.

Following Lin Chen’s indication, Wang Chao moved the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen.

Just as the white arrow touched the edge of the ocean, the “ocean” instantly surged backward, sweeping the coins from bottom to top, and spread horizontally like a scroll on the screen.

The technical level of this website was clearly not as crude as its pixelated appearance suggested.

It was a map—a topographic map of the three provinces surrounding Hongjing that they were familiar with.

“What the hell!”

Wang Chao almost wanted to press his face against the screen. He dared not touch the screen with the mouse but used his hand to trace the waves on the map. “What’s this? A gold coin map?”

Xing Conglian didn’t say a word but took out his phone and pulled up a 3D topographic map for comparison next to the laptop screen.

The raised peaks, the sunken rivers, and the urban areas reclaimed due to industrial modernization..

The topographic map of the three provinces on the phone didn’t match the undulating waves on the computer screen but presented a completely opposite trend.

“What’s going on?” Wang Chao murmured. “Are they showing off special effects?”

Lin Chen’s face turned serious. He pointed to several high peaks in the waves and said, “Are these cities?”

Xing Conglian zoomed in and compared the satellite map on his phone before saying, “Yes, Yongchuan, Hongjing, Fengchun, Meicun, Shifang..”

As he mentioned each city’s name, he confirmed it by pointing at the screen with his finger, and his tone grew colder.

All the cities represented not only cold geographical features but also the real people living in those cities.

Wang Chao took a deep breath, unable to help but say, “Damn, are these all the major cities around us? What does this mean?”

“I’m afraid they are putting a price on us,” Lin Chen said.

“They” referred to the lunatics on the dark web, and “us” naturally meant the ordinary people living in the real world. Xing Conglian’s heart trembled, and his first reaction was to look at the countdown on his watch.

4 minutes and 40 seconds remaining.

“A price? I don’t understand.” Wang Chao moved the mouse pointer to a certain high peak in the “gold coin waves” and clicked lightly. Indeed, a small window popped up without any prompt. “Do I need to enter an amount here?” He asked.

Xing Conglian bent down and faced the continuously surging gold coin ocean on the computer screen. He didn’t have time to explain to Wang Chao but asked, “Can you determine where the highest point is?”

Wang Chao looked puzzled, but without hesitation, he copied the scroll on the screen and overlaid it on a geographical satellite image.

The two images on the screen gradually overlapped, and all the wave peaks fit perfectly with the centers of each city, including the highest peak, undoubtedly located in the cosmopolitan city—Yongchuan.

“Try entering 1 bitcoin into the pop-up window,” Xing Conglian said.

After hearing this, Lin Chen suddenly stopped him. He quickly understood the meaning of Lin Chen’s gaze, which meant not to act impulsively.

He said, “I just wanted to confirm your speculation, and I’m not foolish enough to let the mastermind profit from it.”

Lin Chen readily let go, and then patted Wang Chao’s shoulder, giving him the go-ahead.

Wang Chao had never done such a thing before and nervously entered the payment like an old lady using electronic payment for the first time.

With four minutes remaining, a tiny gold coin descended from the sky, like an inconspicuous water droplet, falling into the “peak” area he had clicked. Because it was so small, it couldn’t even produce ripples. But this did prove that the entire sea of gold coins was indeed a huge market. On the dark web, countless people were betting money on the “favorite” cities.

Thinking of this, Xing Conglian saw a wave of bets represented by the peak in Meicun surging, and he didn’t know which crazy player was spending a fortune on Meicun, which was next to Yongchuan.

In a short period, the wave rose like a sudden high peak, and the “sea level” centered around Meicun rapidly surpassed Yongchuan after a few seconds.

Lin Chen’s guess was indeed accurate, but Xing Conglian couldn’t feel the slightest joy.

What they saw was just a completely virtual betting image. In fact, it represented billions of real funds being poured into this crazy auction, ready to use money to wash away something.

Wang Chao was unusually biting his thumb joint. “Damn, did I succeed? They actually treat cities as auction items. This is so crazy?!” Wang Chao muttered nervously. “Now Meicun has the highest bid. What will happen in Meicun?”

“They are not treating cities as auction items but rather treating the lives of people in the cities as commodities,” Lin Chen said. “The highest bidder wins, and the city where the lives are most valuable is the one they will harvest.”

“Harvest? What do you mean by harvest?” Wang Chao stared at them with wide eyes and then realized that he had asked an extremely foolish question.

Lunatics, money, the dark web, and that kind of neurotic drug—there could not be a worse combination in the world.

Xing Conglian quickly dialed the number for the detention center. “Strictly guard Shen Lian. No visits allowed, including all levels of police officers!”

After hanging up the call, Xing Conglian immediately dialed the phone number of the Meicun Municipal Police Bureau. He asked Wang Chao to package the dark web address, internet tools, passwords, and other related items and send them over.

As he finished all this, the time ran out.

At the moment of resetting, it was as if someone had applied an ice-cold effect to the tide of gold coins. The surging waves solidified from one corner to another, covered in darkness, bringing an eerie silence.

Of course, the wave representing Meicun’s highest point was an exception.

The entire Meicun, including the surrounding towns and areas, was marked in red. Xing Conglian roughly estimated that it covered an area of exactly 4,126 square kilometers.

No mocking or provocative icons appeared. The sound effect stopped, and the screen displayed only a white banner from the upper left corner to the lower right corner, with the words: TO BE CONTINUED..

The last point of the ellipsis slowly appeared, and the picture came to an abrupt end.

Afterward, for a long time, Wang Chao didn’t even dare touch the keyboard with his hands.

It was only when Lin Chen moved that he finally remembered to breathe again. On the one hand, he felt that the sudden auction was too thrilling, and on the other hand, he expressed strong dissatisfaction with the abrupt ending. “This.. This is it?”

Lin Chen returned to his seat under the sun, but Xing Conglian knew that the sunlight couldn’t warm him up at all.

“No.” Lin Chen uttered a single, concise syllable.

Both of them knew that this couldn’t be the end; this wasn’t even the beginning.

Long before, this game or moral test, or even the doomsday revelry of antisocial individuals, had already begun.

What Lin Chen had experienced; they would also experience together.

The reading room fell silent once again.

Xing Conglian threw his phone on the table. After making the call, the screen hadn’t lit up again. It was evident that Meicun needed a long time to verify, report, and make arrangements. Nobody knew what awaited that city.

“So what do we do now?” Wang Chao was fidgeting. “Wait for something big to happen in Meicun?”

“If I’m going to implement a major plan, there will inevitably be a loading time after the gold backers place their bets. It could be ten minutes or even ten hours, because it’s fun to watch the city police force in a state of panic and helplessness,” Lin Chen said.

“Damn it!”

As soon as Wang Chao finished saying this, his own phone rang frantically. He picked up the call, and it was a Meicun network technician on the other end.

The indifferent expression on the young man’s face disappeared in an instant. He held the phone between his cheek and shoulder and began to work and respond.

The clattering of the keyboard and the technical jargon that Xing Conglian couldn’t understand kept coming. It brought back many fragments of crazy memories; each fragment of the story seemed to be falling apart, yet there seemed to be something that could connect everything.

He asked Lin Chen only one question, “What does he want?”