Inside the experimental control room, an old man's face twitched. However, to maintain his amiable persona, he did not show anger. He turned to look at the scientific personnel beside him. The young female scientist shook her head at the old man. "The psychological anesthetic drug has taken effect, with no signs of resistance. The patient is disoriented, their brainwaves show no fluctuations, and their brain is not participating in thought. The possibility of lying is 0."
"So, there's really nothing inside..." The old man looked down at the vast laboratory through the glass. The empty laboratory was about twenty meters high and at least four hundred square meters in area, with an irregular fan shape. Inside, besides dozens of complex mechanical arms and neatly arranged various medicines, a state-of-the-art bio-containment pod was placed in the very center. Wáng Yīchén was lying inside. Everything within the massive laboratory was clear, with all sorts of data displayed on the monitors in the control room. Dozens of eyes were watching, making any fakery impossible. And according to Wáng Yīchén's description, weren't the things he claimed to have seen in the Dark World precisely the things in the laboratory? Could it be that the Dark World truly holds nothing? Are all beings that enter it in a state of stasis?
The old man was unwilling. He had finally found such important material, only to be given the answer he least desired. How could he accept this? Or perhaps, this person did not enter the world behind the Black Curtain? After all, there was no evidence to suggest the Black Curtain had ever appeared in Sector σ-28. What Wáng Yīchén saw at the time might have just been the gaping maw of some creature.
But how could the state of stasis when the target was discovered be explained? The old man's mind was a mess; he needed to calm down. Suddenly, he thought of another crucial piece of information. "Contact the Fourth Legion and mobilize all forces to search for the Wild Coyotes and find the black sphere."
"Understood."
-\*-*-*-*-
When Wáng Yīchén woke up, the first thing he saw was a clean, tidy, pure white room. The ceiling, walls, tables, chairs, and bed were all white. It was as if the room had been meticulously bleached not long ago. However, none of this surprised or confused him, as it was already the third day he had woken up here. He had not lost his memory, nor had he become foolish. He remembered everything that had happened during his patrol mission and his subsequent encounters with perfect clarity. He even clearly recalled waking up in the laboratory's bio-containment pod after being rescued and the series of questions he was asked. Of course, he wasn't particularly puzzled by his own unreserved confession, as he had already intended to report everything that had happened to the United District Government, so that they could prevent any dangers. Wáng Yīchén was also surprised that he was still alive, as he distinctly remembered entering the Black Curtain. Legend had it that whether organic or inorganic, anything that entered the Black Curtain vanished without a trace, giving rise to the legend of another world hidden behind it. But why did he return?
Could it be that the world he entered at the time was not the Black Curtain? Had he hallucinated while on the brink of death? Thinking back now, it wasn't an impossible scenario. The existence of the Black Curtain was absolute, but there was no official authoritative statement on its location. The most common rumor was that the Black Curtain existed in the far north. Sector σ-28 was still a long way from the north. If the Black Curtain appeared here, wouldn't that mean the northern regions had been swallowed by the Dark World? This was clearly impossible. He had asked the laboratory staff the day before and received a negative answer; the cities in the north were still intact and had not seen any Black Curtain.
So what exactly did he see at the time? The location where he encountered the Black Curtain was definitely no more than four hundred meters from where the black sphere was found. If he had seen the Black Curtain, then theoretically, the Wild Coyotes and their group shouldn't have missed it.
Wáng Yīchén couldn't figure it out and didn't dwell on it. As soon as he thought about the fact that he was still alive, excitement and joy would well up in his heart. He was alive, and that was what mattered most to him. For the two days he had been awake, he had followed a routine of eating, sleeping, and undergoing various tests. The scientists in the laboratory had conducted extremely detailed tests on his vision, hearing, language, spatial perception, motor skills, and so on, and had questioned him about everything that had happened in the past two days, with the inquiries on timelines precise down to the second. He didn't know the results of the tests, but from the faces of the research staff, he saw disappointment. Wáng Yīchén knew his gene level was ordinary, and his physique and intellect were also ordinary. Even after this near-death experience and his special encounter, he remained ordinary. Disappointed? Not at all, because he knew this was still himself, the same self as before, not turned into a monster or another species. Being an ordinary person was fine, as long as he wasn't assigned dangerous missions anymore. He rubbed his stomach and realized he was starving, apparently woken by hunger. Right, why hadn't anyone come to wake him up today?
"Hey, it's time to eat. Did you forget about me?" Wáng Yīchén stood on his bed and shouted at the camera in the corner of the ceiling, waving his arms. He didn't know if anyone was on duty in the monitoring room or if they had seen his request.
...
The laboratory staff numbly watched Wáng Yīchén waving his arms on the screen, their spirits exhausted. Most of them hadn't slept for three days and two nights. While they weren't on the verge of death, everyone was deflated. Initially, everyone had thrown themselves into the work with great enthusiasm for such a significant discovery. However, what was the result? From cells, genes, and molecular composition, to neural transmission, cognitive dimensions, and rational perception, everything was normal. There was no discovery; he was just an ordinary human, unremarkable, with no abnormalities whatsoever. After being asked so many times by the research staff, even Wáng Yīchén himself was unsure if the place he saw and entered was actually the Black Curtain, leaving the researchers speechless and wishing they could slap him a couple of times to make him think carefully before speaking. The research had stagnated, and everyone was listless. If Wáng Yīchén's motionless suspension in the air hadn't been clearly shown on their screens, and if many of them hadn't witnessed it firsthand, they would have suspected this guy was some kind of con artist. Wáng Yīchén had indeed been in a state of stasis in the wild environment at the time. But when the laboratory's transport ship attempted to draw him into the containment pod, exerting a suction force on the target, he instantly broke free from the state of stasis, becoming subject to the physical laws of the continent like any other object. Just as they were helpless regarding the world behind the Black Curtain, the scientists in the laboratory were equally clueless about Wáng Yīchén. Had he truly entered the Black Curtain? This was the question running through most of the scientists' minds.