Chapter 117: The Older Sister Who Chose Family

A few days after the Tantan City incident, the casualty reports from both sides and the deeper reasons behind the event gradually came to light.

Su Yuyao, working as the central operator at headquarters, was swamped.
She constantly received and relayed all kinds of documents.
Of course, Su Xiao Zi later prepared a detailed report to submit only to her big sister—nothing beyond what was meant for her eyes alone.

She had realized this incident involved far too wide a scope, and parts of it touched directly on people close to her. It couldn’t be reported straight to upper management.
That included Su Mu Zhe, Evran, and Sheffield—the human traitor.

Su Yuyao read it under full encryption.
She had already learned the rough outline through prior communications, and tension had inevitably built in her chest.

The revelation that Su Mu Zhe had once been the Chief Exterminator, code-named Phantom,
and that Evran—a Bloodkin—had saved his life and given him the First Embrace to turn him into her kin…
All of it left her stunned for a long while.

[Attached: This is everything I currently know. I hope Big Sis will carefully consider before reporting to headquarters. It concerns our brother’s future situation.]

[Reporter: Su Xiao Zi]

In the dead of night, Su Yuyao was alone in her office.
Only the glow of computer screens illuminated the vast, silent room.
This was her exclusive operations center—no one else even had permission to enter.

Her station was a curved desk with five or six monitors, each displaying different screens, all casting their light.

A cup of coffee sat on the white desktop.
Beneath it, a trash bin overflowed with empty instant-coffee packets.

The only sounds in the room were the rapid clack of keyboard keys, mouse clicks, and the occasional rustle of papers.

The cursor scrolled steadily. Lines of text flew past. Su Yuyao’s expression was grave, her eyes scanning quickly.

Finally, the mouse stopped on the last punctuation mark of the final paragraph.
Her gaze lingered on the screen for a long time before she finally let out a deep breath.

After reading Su Xiao Zi’s detailed report, Su Yuyao couldn’t help but question whether her own sharp instincts as an intelligence operator had grown dull.

Phantom—the SS-rank Exterminator once considered humanity’s strongest asset.
Aloof, solitary, almost never interacting with anyone outside Phantom Squad.

At every major assembly, the very first seat in the front row was always empty.
Phantom had never once formally appeared before the Exterminator forces or the research society.

Yet he carried out every order from command with ruthless precision. No matter how difficult the mission, he crushed the enemy effortlessly and racked up legendary achievements—while seeming utterly indifferent to fame or reward.

To the entire research society, this man—who seemed to exist solely to annihilate Bloodkin—was an enigma. Everyone was desperate for even the smallest scrap of information about his origins. Su Yuyao included.

If anything, she and Phantom had been in the same cohort.
Joined the same year, deployed the same year—even graduated from the same Exterminator Academy class, according to public records.

Yet every attempt she made—through every channel—to uncover Phantom’s identity had ended in nothing.
Even the members of Phantom Squad seemed to share an unspoken pact; none ever breathed a word about their captain.

It only fueled the curiosity. What unspeakable secret lay behind Phantom’s past?
He was like a hero who had appeared out of nowhere—no birth records, no graduation certificate, nothing.
A shadow, black and unfathomably deep.

In Su Yuyao’s memory, Phantom was always just a black-cloaked back beneath a military-green cap, forever on the verge of drawing his blade for the next battle.

Perhaps because his mystery drew too many prying eyes, command eventually issued a warning: all private investigations into the Exterminator code-named Phantom were forbidden.
Su Yuyao had quietly ceased her efforts.

The report now before her was, at this moment, top-secret material.
Not only was Phantom’s identity laid bare, but his current circumstances were detailed with painful clarity.

Su Yuyao stared at the screen for a full ten minutes after finishing.
She let out a long sigh, a wry smile creeping onto her face as she murmured to herself,

“Su Mu Zhe… my idiot little brother… was the legendary Phantom all along?
The answer was right in front of me, and I never noticed.”

“No… I should say Su Mu Zhe hid it far too well.
To this day, no one else has discovered his true identity. No one would ever imagine he was just an ordinary high schooler attending First High in the city center.”

A storm of emotions churned inside Su Yuyao.
Should she feel proud to have such a brother, or pity for everything he had shouldered alone?

And the most absurd part—the brother who had always been stubborn yet gentle with family had now become a little sister.
According to Su Xiao Zi’s report, she looked even younger than Xiao Zi herself.

Su Yuyao decided this was not information to be reported upward.
Between her duty and her family, she chose family—almost instantly.

Just think about it.
The captain of the supposedly annihilated Phantom Squad had become a Bloodkin.
The Exterminator forces and the research society had only one policy toward Bloodkin: total extermination.

Mercy toward the enemy was cruelty toward oneself.
On the battlefield, compassion had no place—that was the creed of everyone who fought.

Su Mu Zhe’s former hatred of Bloodkin had been shaped by that very creed.
Through the Exterminators, he had witnessed countless human tragedies—shattered families, endless suffering—all caused by Bloodkin.

If this report reached upper management, the newly transformed Su Xiaoxiao could face mortal danger.
She would be hunted by both humans and Bloodkin—caught between two fronts. The worst possible position.

As an internal operator, Su Yuyao was absolutely certain of that.

She rested her forehead on her hand, took a sip of coffee, narrowed her eyes, and clicked—permanently deleting every trace of Su Xiao Zi’s report.

There was nothing to deliberate.
None of this information would ever be reported.

Su Yuyao chose to trust Su Xiao Zi and Su Xiaoxiao.
Rumors said most humans injected with Bloodkin blood for genetic modification turned into mindless monsters due to incompatibility.
But according to the report, that hadn’t happened here.

Just as Su Yuyao clutched her head, overwhelmed by the flood of revelations,
her phone suddenly buzzed to life on the desk.

She glanced at the caller ID.

It read—

[Little Zhe]