The mechanical Adam's apple suddenly made a clucking sound like a duck with its neck strangled.

“That’s the old draft.” Propaganda Officer Cui took out a mirror-like biscuit from his trouser pocket. The crisp sound when he bit it in public made everyone swallow their saliva subconsciously. “The new version of the regulations clearly states…” The moment the biscuit crumbs fell to the ground, the word “exile” in the holographic article suddenly turned into “community service”. Several restless reformers stepped back, touching their rumbling stomachs.

When Liang member squeezed out of the crowd holding the synthetic protein block he received, his tactical waist bag suddenly made a buzzing sound.

He stared at the numbers jumping on the supply collection terminal, and the brown nutrient package left deep wrinkles on his palms - today's quota was 12 grams less than yesterday.

"Didn't Lao Cui say that the quota remains unchanged?" He kicked open the explosion-proof door of the warehouse area and ran into Law Enforcer Zou installing a phase sensor on the transport tracks.

The moment those silver-white metal tubes touched the packaging box, they drilled into the corrugated paper interlayer like living things.

Law Enforcer Zou swung out the stun baton without looking back: "Get away from it, this contains..." The sudden burst of electromagnetic pulse made his mechanical prosthesis twitch and smash on the shelf. Thirty boxes of supplies marked "anti-radiation drugs" suddenly oozed asphalt-like liquid.

"Fuck! This is the fucking memory of the sewage pipe in Area B!" Member Liang turned around to run, but found the warehouse manager slumped in front of the scanner. A piece of metal the size of a fingernail protruded from under the skin on the back of his neck, flashing red light with the frequency of his breathing.

When Chen Yao kicked open the security door, Propaganda Officer Cui's legal education handbook was turning pages automatically.

The articles that had been revised seventeen times suddenly emitted a blue-purple fluorescence, projecting the outline of the East Coast flame emblem on the wall.

She slapped the data blocker on the back cover of the manual with her backhand, but ended up grabbing a handful of crystallizing paper scraps.

"Mu Xuan asked you to check it out..." Chen Yao suddenly paused, staring at the quantum lines spreading inside the collar of Propaganda Officer Cui.

Those glowing longitude and latitude lines were climbing up along the Adam's apple to behind the ears, forming a mirror-symmetrical pattern with the marks on Mou Xuan's body.

Suddenly, a dull explosion was heard from the direction of the warehouse, and cracks in the explosion-proof glass grew into a tree-like pattern on the wall.

Liang rushed into the hall, holding a half-broken packaging bag corroded by asphalt in his hand. "Three tons of emergency meat are missing from the freezer in Area C! But the inventory terminal shows... shows..."

His voice was suddenly cut off in his throat, and the legal provisions on the holographic screen began to shake wildly.

The chapter title that should have read "Wartime Rationing" was now growing flesh-and-blood garbled characters on the word "rationing".

When the garbled code exploded for the seventh time, three hundred images of material warehouses in different time and space suddenly appeared on the entire screen - the amount of frozen meat in each image was strangely decreasing.

Mou Xuan's ethereal figure flickered in the data stream, and the bubbles of space and time remaining on his fingertips wrapped around half a piece of frozen meat.

The quantum mark behind his ear had now spread across his entire face, leaving scorch marks on the titanium alloy surface of the conference table like those on a burnt circuit board.