At five o'clock in the morning, the long-awaited sunlight penetrated the windshield of the jeep and hit Himeko's face with closed eyes. As if feeling the sunlight penetrating into the slits of her eyes, the stern red-haired beauty fluttered her eyelashes slightly and gradually opened her eyes at a slow pace.

Her head hurt, and there were bursts of dull pain at the back of her neck, as if someone had mercilessly beaten her. The laptop on her thigh warmed up at the base, and she wondered why she had lost consciousness. As a seasoned fighter, her extensive practical experience and theoretical knowledge immediately helped her regain most of her rationality while she pondered heavily.

Realizing that she had likely been attacked, she widened her eyes and vigilantly reached for her waist, where her pistol was unexpectedly intact. Then, she lowered her head, casually glanced at the pitch-black laptop screen, immediately closed it, and quietly placed the laptop on the soft seat beside her.

After completing these actions, Himeko reached for the car door handle and pulled it—only to find that the car door was locked. Eager to understand the current situation, Himeko raised her leg without hesitation and kicked the closed car door hard, producing a loud sound of twisted and torn metal.

After forcefully opening the car door, Himeko swiftly jumped out, displaying a vigorous and fierce posture. However, upon seeing the tragic scene outside the car, she froze for a moment.

The sentries on both sides of the road leaned weakly against the walls of the buildings, their eyes closed. If it hadn't been for their chests heaving slightly, Himiko would have thought the two soldiers had been killed. She didn't immediately wake up the unconscious soldiers but instead bent her knees slightly, jumped to the second-floor window, and peered inside.

As expected, the standby soldiers in the building had all been "silently killed" without exception. Of course, like the soldiers who had fallen on the road, these attacked soldiers had lost consciousness but were not in mortal danger.

After confirming that the fallen soldiers were still alive, Himeko hurriedly ascended to the top of the temporary sentry tower without stopping. In addition to observing the surrounding area, this temporary sentry tower was also used to establish a sophisticated Houkai energy detection matrix in cooperation with other entrance and exit sentry towers.

As long as the Houkai energy detector in the sentry tower continued to function properly, Himeko could use the records left by the detector to determine whether the assailant had any connection to the "Honkai" phenomenon. However, the fact that everyone, including herself, had been silently rendered unconscious in an instant, before anyone had even noticed, meant that the attacker could have easily killed them all if they so desired.

Himeko arrived at the top of the sentry tower, where the intelligence officers stationed there had naturally lost consciousness. Himeko went straight to the central control panel, intending to retrieve the Houkai energy records for the entire town from the previous night.

Upon seeing a straight line on the icon, Himeko breathed a sigh of relief. Although she had already made a rough judgment on the nature of the enemy after seeing the soldiers who were stunned but had not lost their vital signs, the absence of any fluctuations in Houkai energy in the town, as detected by the Houkai energy detector, still brought her some relief.

The attackers hadn't killed any of them, and there were no Honkai energy fluctuations when they took action. This meant that the other party was neither a Honkai-controlled monster nor someone who held a deep grudge against them.

Being able to bypass such stringent monitoring and silently render them all unconscious in an instant indicated that the enemy possessed a high level of concealment.

With these two points in mind, Himeko began to wake up the unconscious soldiers one by one. As they regained consciousness, almost all the soldiers displayed blank expressions, followed by intense shame and humiliation.

As members of the Fire Moth, they possessed a certain degree of adaptability to Honkai. Each one of them was a powerful fighter surpassing ordinary people. Most of the time, they were proud and had the confidence to match. However, last night, they had all been incapacitated without even catching a glimpse of the enemy's face.

After waking them up, everyone voluntarily gathered in the center of the road, lined up, and lowered their heads slightly, quietly waiting for the captain's reprimand.

"No need to show such expressions," Himeko said, standing in front of the soldier queue with her arms folded, her gaze shifting towards the jeep with the kicked-in car door. "The attacker's methods surpassed the capabilities of all of us. This defeat has nothing to do with you. If we seek to assign blame for this disaster, it should be me, as the captain, who failed to perform well in intelligence work." To be honest, the moment she realized she had lost consciousness, Himeko felt an indescribable chill creeping up from behind.

As the captain of the fifth team, she was well aware of the team members' strengths. If even she, as the captain, was helpless against the attackers, her team members would not fare any better.

Fortunately, it seemed that the attackers were not true "enemies." Upon connecting the laptop to a power source, the browsing records she discovered confirmed Himeko's theory.

"Honkai phenomenon," "Fire Moth," "fifth team." When she saw these search terms, Himiko understood the other party's motive.

The attacker hadn't come with hostile intentions to defeat or kill them. The reason behind the attack was solely the other person's desire to obtain classified information about "Flame Chasing Moth" and "Honkai."

She didn't know about Honkai, but did the attacker possess special abilities beyond those of ordinary humans? Himeko rubbed her chin. Without special abilities, even professionally trained fighters and agents would not have been able to so easily circumvent the roadblocks they had set up.

Could it be... the child she had encountered during the day yesterday?

Although it was a baseless thought, the face of Himeko's young and determined self, who refused to admit defeat, suddenly flashed in her mind.

"You all, keep guarding this intersection," Himiko commanded. "I have something to do. I need to go into town to confirm.",