CHAPTER 688: CHAPTER 619: TIME GAP

The night deepened, silence thick like ink that wouldn’t dissolve.

Yan Yueqing’s slender figure merged into the heavy night, returning behind the door that isolated her from the world. The door moved without a breeze, emitting a barely audible "click" after she entered, sealing off external prying.

The iris recognition device at the door lock flashed a string of deep blue, intricate runes for a fleeting moment, quick as an illusion, yet reminiscent of cold, abyssal eyes staring.

Before her unfolded a futuristic library. The ring-shaped floating bookshelves stood like silent sentinels, exuding a cold technological aura. Upon the central floating desk, the pile of old documents resembled scars of history, revealing its true mission.

The dome, finely crafted from aerospace-grade silicon carbide fibers, featured embedded nano light-guiding fibers within the micro-crystal glass, taming daylight to flow silently like liquid silver. The floating bookshelves, carved from a whole piece of super-transparent alumina ceramic, drifted quietly, concealing an intelligent system within.

Yan Yueqing needed only the slightest mental command for the floating "grids" to automatically disassemble and reassemble, precisely delivering the ancient manuscripts she needed to the six-square-meter superconducting ceramic desk at the center.

However, the room’s secret began the moment the book spine touched the table surface.

The smooth, mirror-like desk awoke instantly. A soft beam of light, indistinguishable to the naked eye, silently swept over the pages—no sound, no hum. The quantum-level spectrometer instantly captured and transformed vast amounts of information.

In the same millisecond, a thin blue holographic light screen unfolded silently in the air a foot above the desk. On the screen was the perfect digital projection of the book in hand, every detail intact.

Wherever one’s gaze landed, core information was grasped intuitively. With just a whisper of "delete," everything vanished as though it never happened.

At this moment, Yan Yueqing sat upright at the desk; the dynamic text, like countless golden fireflies, under the core intelligence’s drive, adhered precisely to key phrases, core arguments, logical turns.

They leaped lightly, flickering gently, illuminating the essence of the entire book like a star chart.

Yan Yueqing stared at the high-tech analyzed timeline, a bit silent.

In the previous life, after giving birth, when Jun Lii encountered danger overseas, she went to rescue him and was killed by Jiang Ke’s design.

Tallying the time, her acquaintance with Jun Lii should have been the year before, while Wang Bao and Yan Bao’s arrival followed three years later.

In this life, Su Zihu’s arrival made her and Jun Lii meet earlier, and the babies were born five years prior...

Originally, Jiang Ke would have acted three years later, but Su Zihu’s arrival messed up the timeline, prompting her to design an explosion five years ago instead.

Yan Yueqing’s gaze solidified on the star chart with two nodes highlighted in bloody circles:

The moment of her death in the previous life—three years later;

The explosion incident in this life—five years ago.

An eight-year time gap...

Su Zihu’s appearance, like an invisible giant hand, forcibly shifted her acquaintance with Jun Lii, the children’s birth, even Jiang Ke’s action point, forward by eight whole years!

This is not mere coincidence, but more akin to a precise directional explosion targeted at her destiny’s trajectory.

Jiang Ke dared initiate that fatal explosion attack five years ago...

Yan Yueqing’s fingers unconsciously tapped on the cold ceramic desk, the bone-chilling cold keeping her absolutely clear-headed.

"Acting five years prior... not much impact..."

She repeated this cold judgment distilled from clues in a low voice, her brows furrowed.

The core intelligence captured her whisper, the golden points quickly gathering, transforming, outlining a heart-stopping truth picture before her eyes.

To decisively launch such a deadly assault after the timeline’s drastic change and still be so sure "not much impact"?

This could only mean one thing—Jiang Ke’s vast network, with its core forces, resources, key pieces, was already set up by the time she died in her previous life, or even earlier!

The storm brought by Su Zihu merely forced Jiang Ke to harvest early, yet it didn’t shake her profound foundation whatsoever! This realization brought a chilling suffocation.

Deeper, broader... and more lethal!

A chill rapidly climbed her spine, making her fingertips slightly cold.

Acting eight years ahead and still able to remain so deeply hidden, with even less exposed core information than in the previous life? What does this say? It says her ability to conceal far exceeds my imagination!

Like a venomous spider lurking in the deepest shadows, the unseen web far exceeds the knowledge I had in the previous life in scale and resilience.

In this five-year blank period, she was absolutely not hibernating!

She must be weaving this net tighter in the corners out of my sight—overseas markets, emerging tech fields, deeper secret financial networks—transferring key layouts to harder-to-detect depths!

The threat brought by this knowledge is more heart-palpitating than direct blades and shadows.

"Jiang Ke..." The voice in her heart like a blade tempered with icy chill, "At this moment, where are you lurking in shadowy corners, what kind of secret network have you laid down?"

This question, like a snake coiled in her heart, hissed softly, bringing a biting coldness.

Yan Yueqing clenched her fists, her nails nearly embedded into her palms.

Jiang Ke didn’t care about the "chaotic" time nor acting eight years earlier... This almost arrogant composure revealed a spine-chilling absolute confidence!

As if the entire game board had long been under her control, a few years sooner or later was merely a minor parameter adjustment in a game. Her ultimate objective never changed, and her patience ran deep.

What does this terrifying composure mean? It means she must possess trump cards far beyond our imagination! A card that could overturn everything, control the entire board at the critical moment—one we are completely unaware of!

Realizing this, Yan Yueqing felt a sharp shiver.

"Delete." Yan Yueqing closed her eyes, her voice cold.

The pale blue light screen dissipated in response, leaving only the fluid-like quiet soft light seeped from the dome in the study.

Absolute darkness and silence enveloped her, yet her mind was clearer than ever. The icy memories of death in the previous life surged like tides—the roar of the explosion, the hopeless sense of falling...

But this time, at the depths of her heart, instead of a layer of ice, a fire named "revenge" and "protection" burned vigorously.

Clarity unfolded in absolute silence, illuminated anew by invisible golden points: Information! Only by grasping enough information can one have the right to survive, to win!

"Then... Jiang Ke," she declared quietly in the dark, "this round, it’s my turn to make a move."