Long Yutian ultimately adopted Mo Di's suggestion and named the department to be established "Eyes and Ears."
The power of the Ling Corporation had been concentrated in his hands. To better cope with the Mist Crisis and manage Greenlawn City, he decided to tackle the unreasonable parts of the original framework.
Reform was imminent.
After thorough investigations, a large portion of the original high-ranking officials were purged.
Their assets were confiscated, and any family members who were guilty were not spared.
Dare to resist? Even better, direct physical elimination, saving even the subsequent procedures.
This was the approach Mo Di and Long Yutian advocated: in times of chaos, severe measures must be used. If they dared to openly resist today, tomorrow they would become collaborators with the mist monsters.
Why keep such people alive for the New Year?
To complete the directives as quickly as possible, even the Clawtooth Unit had little rest recently.
They were either confiscating homes and killing people, or on their way to confiscate homes and kill people.
The more homes they confiscated, the more evidence of crimes they collected, and the darker Long Yutian's face became, almost rivaling that of Haihu's dark expression.
He had originally thought that the evidence he had collected earlier, if not all, was at least most of it, but to his surprise, the reality was quite the opposite.
These former high-ranking officials were even more depraved than he had imagined.
They had tried everything from Sylvie's upbringing to merman production, and what was most damnable was that they even held some kind of underground auction, the contents of which were chilling.
Additionally, they had a 'Service Zone Construction Plan,' fortunately, it hadn't started construction yet.
Seeing all this, Mo Di even thought he had transmigrated into a dark, inner world.
The Mist Crisis had only lasted for less than a year, and these people had already fallen to such depths. If the two of them hadn't stopped it in time, who knew what it would have developed into.
"Our methods against them are still not ruthless enough," Mo Di said, "I know many ways to torture people, the most terrifying of which is called 'Ultimate Humiliation,' which can make them wish they were dead."
After receiving Long Yutian's approval, he stayed up all night to teach his unique secret techniques to the Clawtooth Unit, so they could deal with these things that didn't deserve to be called human.
Due to the numerous corporate affairs, Long Yutian occasionally felt weary when handling them.
At these times, he would either practice martial arts or visit Mo Di's laboratory.
"Are you feeling lost?" Mo Di was focused on analyzing the shard of the light god, not even lifting his head. "Do you think you've made a mistake?"
Long Yutian subconsciously shook his head, "How could I be wrong?"
"Then that's it. Since you don't think you're wrong, why should you feel lost?"
Mo Di shifted his gaze from the instrument screen and looked intently into his eyes, "The more you kill, the more you save. Without a doubt, you are on the right path."
Killing one bad person is equivalent to saving one person who was persecuted by him; killing ten bad people is equivalent to saving ten people.
As the saying goes: saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda.
By this calculation, the two of them had saved countless people and built countless pagodas.
If there was a merit list in the world, they would sooner or later push the Buddha to third place.
"Indeed," the confusion in Long Yutian's eyes vanished. "My heart and actions are as clear as a mirror, and everything I do is just."
His martial arts heart became incredibly clear at this moment. He subconsciously gathered true qi, broke through his upper Dantian, and instantly advanced to a new realm.
The upper Dantian, the dwelling place of the spirit, also known as Niwan or Zifu, gave birth to a new sense after he opened it.
This was a sixth sense beyond the five senses, a Spiritual Sense.
With this sense, he observed many things that were previously unobservable.
Vibrations, magnetic fields... and natures.
Scales, frost, blood—three distinct characteristics converged on the same person, and that person was his teacher.
"Broken through?" Mo Di showed an interested look. "How did you break through? Can you describe how you felt just now?"
He could feel Long Yutian's externalized spirit, or rather, something similar yet distinct, formed from the spirit.
One should know that even he couldn't externalize his spirit.
Long Yutian didn't hide anything and described in detail his feelings before and after the breakthrough.
'He broke through after a few words from me. As expected of a man whose name is only one character different from Long Aotian. Or perhaps I actually have the talent of a glib-tongued master?'
Long Yutian's breakthrough was unexpected, but it also confirmed one of his conjectures.
The path after the Xiantian Realm was related to spiritual consciousness, which aligned with his "Refining Qi into Spirit" hypothesis.
It was just that Long Yutian's method of breakthrough was too mystical and not suitable for him.
"Thank you for your guidance, Teacher. I understand now. The reason I felt lost was purely because I haven't killed enough."
For every bad person not killed, one more person would suffer persecution, and in Greenlawn City and even on Blue Star, there were more than just one bad person.
Thinking from another perspective, if a small Greenlawn City had so many bad people, wouldn't there be even more across the entire Blue Star?
Every time Long Yutian thought of this fact, he was filled with anguish.
To protect his Greenlawn City and his Blue Star, he decided to raise his butcher's knife, determined to kill two if possible, rather than just one.
The path ahead would certainly face opposition from many enemies, but the more the enemies opposed, the more it proved he was doing the right thing.
After stating his beliefs, Long Yutian returned to work, leaving Mo Di standing in place with a strange expression.
"Is his martial arts will a bit too extreme? Never mind, this is good. The more extreme a martial artist, the more stubborn, and the harder it is for him to fall."
After all, he was an apprentice he had brought up; to some extent, their philosophies were shared.
"Opening the upper Dantian, forming a Spiritual Sense... Let's temporarily call it 【Spiritual Sense】. Is this considered the second stage of Xiantian or a realm beyond Xiantian?"
Many martial arts inheritances on Blue Star were missing, and the cultivation methods he had on hand did not lead to the second stage of Xiantian.
The path forward, he could only explore himself.
Temporarily setting aside martial arts, he refocused his attention on the research of the shard of the light god.
With the aid of the Ling Family's equipment and the painful lesson from inadvertently detonating the shard of the light god in a game, he finally devised a feasible method to guide the shard's power.
In terms of safety, well, it was highly unlikely to wipe Greenlawn City off the map.
"According to the records of the Eternal Daybreak Court, the shard of the light god only reacts to sufficiently strong light elements, but in fact, light of a specific frequency can also achieve this."
Coincidentally, the Ling Corporation had a knack for laser research. By pooling all the corporation's resources, it might be possible to create a machine that could guide the power of the shard of the light god.
"I don't have much time left in this world, probably about three months. I hope to get this thing working before I leave.
It's a good thing my teacher collected the dwarves' 【Magic Mechanical Dynamics】, otherwise, I'd probably be completely lost right now."
..."Has the source of the plague been identified?"
"It has been identified. The source is Nanfeng City, and it's likely a virus released by the Frost噬 Giant Spider."
A newly established Eyes and Ears department agent reported to Long Yutian.
"Frost噬 Giant Spider? How is it related to it again?" Long Yutian cursed inwardly.
Ever since the Frost噬 Giant Spider appeared, he hadn't had a single day without worry.
No one knew when this thing would stir from its stillness and go wreak havoc on the surrounding cities.
Across the entire Blue Star, it could be considered among the strongest monsters.
Alongside it were the "Sea Demon" that submerged Haiyan City, and the giant plant "Plandera" rooted in Qingping City.
These three were collectively known as the Three Calamities.
"Has that damned spider made any moves recently?" Long Yutian asked again.
"Not yet... Wait, the detection department just sent news, there's an abnormal situation in Nanfeng City."
The Eyes and Ears agent's words made Long Yutian's heart skip a beat. He quickly pressed, "What's the situation?"
His Spiritual Sense conveyed an ominous premonition, which was then confirmed.
"An individual named the Frost噬 Giant Spider is moving south. It's temporarily uncertain whether its target is our city or the neighboring city."
"I—" He took a deep breath, swallowing the curse word that was about to escape his lips. "Contact the neighboring Ziyan City."
Ziyan City's detection capabilities were not as good as Greenlawn City's, and they only discovered the anomaly after his reminder.
The heads of various cities urgently convened a meeting, but very few truly participated in the discussion, most were observing and bickering.
After all, the Frost噬 Giant Spider's target wasn't them, so they could still watch from the sidelines and take the opportunity to figure out the giant spider's abilities and weaknesses.
'A bunch of short-sighted fools, still bickering at this point.'
Long Yutian's face was cold. Just as he was about to speak, an Eyes and Ears agent standing by his side suddenly brought him a message.
After silently digesting the message, he didn't even want to continue the meeting and found an excuse to go offline.
Rather than bickering with these people, it was better to go see his teacher's new contraption.
It was said to be a magical device capable of blowing up the entire Greenlawn City, so he had to go see it, in case his teacher or others carelessly pressed the wrong button.
He didn't want to experience such a humiliating death.
Outside the city, a strange instrument had already been set up on the Altar of Light and Shadow.
A brass-colored framework surrounded the central shard of the light god, and three huge lenses glowing with magical light were fixed in specific positions, in a straight line with the shard of the light god.
Long Yutian surveyed the massive device, thick with an otherworldly aura, and asked curiously, "Teacher, is this the secret weapon you mentioned?"
"It's only part of it, responsible for locking strike coordinates and guiding the light. The true core is actually this."
Mo Di pointed to another instrument placed on the altar.
Compared to the brass-colored structure, this instrument was entirely silver-white, with a more modern aesthetic, and its surface bore a symbol familiar to Long Yutian.
He then realized that this was actually his own corporation's experimental high-energy laser emitter.
One was an otherworldly magical device, and the other was a modern technological instrument; their styles seemed somewhat incongruous.
"As you can see, this is the Ling Family's laser emitter, and also the most important part of the entire device besides the shard of the light god," Mo Di said.
"I understand the principle, but isn't their combination too haphazard?"
"You're completely wrong to think that way. Magic and technology, who says the two can't be combined?"
Mo Di was a pragmatist; he wouldn't refuse to interact with technological items just because he was a mage.
For him, as long as it was useful, who cared about sectarian views.