This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 372: New Containment

Chapter 372: Chapter 372: New Containment

H.C.P Foundation.

A.M.

The year is unknown.

Xu Jing walked along the pristine white corridor, her feet treading on the self-luminous green coating of the floor.

She was dressed in a red business suit, with three buttons of her black blouse undone at the collar, the lower half comprising black business trousers and black high-heeled shoes in a minimalistic style.

On both sides of the corridor hung dozens of portrait paintings. These men and women had been members of the highest echelon, the Pathfinder Council of the Foundation, most of whom had passed away.

The Foundation maintained a strict hierarchy among its personnel. Different levels of staff had vastly different roles and privileges, with additional rank divisions within certain levels. Access to information was strictly regulated according to one’s rank.

Staff levels were broadly divided into eight tiers. Besides general clerical administrators and routine workers such as maintenance and cleaning staff, the other six categories formed the core components enabling the normal functions of the Foundation.

E-Level (Expendable), expendable personnel, used for testing the effects of various contained artifacts and Holy Relics, comprised death row inmates and paid volunteers from various places. Sometimes, it also included mentally disturbed special agents of the Foundation.

F-Level (Field personnel), ordinary field agents, constituted the baseline personnel responsible for investigating various anomalies around the world and rapidly deploying to maintain order and contain mutated artifacts.

G-Level (Guardian), the Guardian mobile force, a squad tasked with the elimination of out-of-control contained artifacts and defected personnel within the Foundation, serving as the Foundation’s private military power, equipped with cutting-edge gear and clad in MK92 Iron Man armors.

I-Level (Intervention), reality intervention agents of the Foundation, employing special means to intervene in various subjective realities, ensuring that dangerous events in the histories and futures of subjective realities could be stopped and foreknown.

O-Level (Omniscient and omnipotent), the "All-knowing" research team of the Foundation, the cornerstone upon which the Foundation’s existence was based, harnessing non-human knowledge with human technology and maximizing the use of mutated artifacts.

P-Level (Pathfinder), the Pathfinder Council of the Foundation, the leadership echelon of the Foundation, with five fixed positions, also known as P5, symbolizing the will and vision of the Foundation.

Xu Jing was a Level I agent of the Foundation. She was responsible for investigating dangerous individuals in various subjective realities, assessing the harm posed by multiple subjective realities to the objective reality where the Foundation resided, and coordinating with Level O personnel to eliminate any threats posed by those individuals and realities.

There weren’t many who could perform inter-bead jumps; it was a highly dangerous and critical task. All the Level I agents of the Foundation were selected from the Level G mobile forces, totaling no more than 20 in number.

A black wooden double door lay ajar before her. Xu Jing symbolically knocked thrice before pushing it open and entering.

The spacious office contained only one desk, with gray walls on all sides, no windows, no lights, no decor, no carpet—it felt like entering a prison cell.

However, the room was evenly lit with a white halo; as one walked in, it was as if illuminated by an overhead light, even the shadows faded considerably.

An old-fashioned typewriter sat on the desk, the executive chair automatically rolled back a bit, and Xu Jing closed the door before taking a seat.

At that moment, the typewriter began to "clack clack clack" on its own, typing out a line on a blank white sheet of paper: "HCP0001 in 2009?"

Xu Jing rested her hands on the round keys of the typewriter, pondered for a moment, then started a new line, typing: "The entry for HCP0001 has been edited."

The paper slid to the far left by the carriage return, the ink still wet and glossy under the natural white light.

The typewriter typed automatically: "It is a friend."

Xu Jing replied with a line: "It is now usable, upgraded to Zhang Heng Level."

The typewriter fell silent.

The Foundation had three containment assessment levels to succinctly describe the nature and dangerousness of the contained artifacts.

First and foremost, there is no such thing as a "safe" level, because anything that needs to be contained is unsafe, even if it produces benign outcomes—improper use can lead to tragedy.

These three levels were:

Newton Level, named after the historical physicist Newton, designating contained artifacts that posed only physical dangers.

Jung Level, named after the historical psychologist Jung, designating contained artifacts that posed both physical and cognitive or memetic dangers.

Zhang Heng Level, named after the historical astronomer Zhang Heng, designating contained artifacts capable of causing global catastrophes or collapses of cognitive reality.

The Foundation named its artifact containment levels after historical figures out of a humanitarian consideration.

Because the Foundation’s staff interacted with these things frequently, they preferred their level designations to avoid words like "apocalyptic," "dangerous," or "lethal," which could trigger negative emotions.

HCP0001 was originally just a stone, previously ranked at Jung Level. Details about it were only documented in the Foundation’s ancient archives, as it had been lost from the start.

But at least the Foundation had critical information about it; it spread memes, selectively luring those it chose to approach and tempting them to make contact, which resulted in having their hearts hollowed out.

However, in another Jung Level document of the Foundation—mutated artifact archives—a special written report explicitly stated it was a deity with the power to kill other gods and members of the Clan.

That document on mutated artifacts had been sealed away, because reading it would manifest the described entities.

Moreover, the document did not seem thick, yet it was mysteriously unending, which explained why the Foundation’s contained artifacts varied in the thousands.

"What will he look like in the future?" the typewriter rattled out a line of text.

Xu Jing knew this referred to the current holder of HCP0001. She had attempted to observe but was unable to locate the person.

"The holder has the ability for inter-bead jumps," Xu Jing typed.

"HCP0001-1," after a pause, the typewriter typed back that line.

Xu Jing took a deep breath, brought her hands together in front of her, and rested her chin on them. She understood what that meant...

The Pathfinder Council now considered the holder as a contained artifact as well, a part of HCP0001.

This signified a new containment project. After Chen Ke helped Xu Jing to deal with another Chen Ke, he would be brought here to face lifelong imprisonment.

"Understood," Xu Jing typed out Understand and hit the enter key.

The typewriter whirred into action, the paper slowly scrolled upwards, each line disappearing from the page, as if physically moving off the sheet, but the paper itself was not consumed.

In a matter of seconds, what had been a partly used sheet of paper with freshly-typed ink turned back into a pristine blank sheet in front of Xu Jing, as if nothing had ever happened.