186: Chapter 186 Mysterious Female Boss Shocks the Entire Audience

Unless the Senate personally issued a command to terminate the fleet recall,

Or a holder of higher authority directly overwrote the entire summoning sequence at the data level.

Zhang Long and Joshua almost simultaneously shifted their gaze from the dome to each other, and saw the same answer in each other's eyes.

The composure they had maintained in their cold standoff since their appearance largely receded from both their faces at the same instant.

Just then, at the location where the two spatial rifts had just closed,

A larger spatial rift suddenly tore open silently.

Unlike the blade-like precise linear rifts when Zhang Long and Joshua each summoned their fleets,

The way this rift expanded was more like a giant door being pushed open from the inside out.

The edges of the rift glowed with a faint golden aura, casting the entire night sky into a solemn and tranquil amber.

A massive floating gate slowly emerged from the depths of the rift, suspended in the night sky.

The two gates silently slid open to the left and right.

A golden stairway, composed of pure golden light, gradually descended and unfurled from beneath the suspended archway.

Each step of light emitted an extremely faint hum as it formed. The golden light spread at a steady pace, precise and solemn.

A middle-aged woman walked out from behind the floating gate, stepping onto the golden stairway and descending one step at a time.

She wore rimless glasses, had short dark brown hair, and was dressed in a neatly tailored gray robe with a silver badge pinned to her collar.

Her pace was unhurried. With each step, a minute golden ripple would emanate from where her boot met the light-step, spreading outwards before silently dissipating into the air.

As she descended the golden stairway, there was no lightning, no electric arcs, none of the usual phenomena Deep State officials employed to assert their authority.

Only that serene and resolute majesty, forged repeatedly by time and absolute power, which required no additional means to prove itself.

Zhang Long and Joshua simultaneously lowered their heads almost the instant they saw the middle-aged woman's face.

Zhang Long slowly moved his Blue Glove from his side to behind his back, lowering his eyelids and tilting his shoulders slightly forward.

Joshua crossed his Black Glove and Blue Glove in front of him, his head bowed, his posture respectfully stiff.

The two men, who had been defiant towards each other in the banquet hall just moments ago, now stood before this middle-aged woman as obedient as elementary school students called into the principal's office.

Diana was still clutching Biden's sleeve, frozen on the fire door threshold.

Biden stood beside her, following her gaze to the giant gate suspended in the night sky, and the gray-robed woman descending the golden stairway step by step.

Although he didn't know who she was, every step the middle-aged woman took diffused a silent, absolute order.

That feeling was entirely different from when he faced Zhang Long in the sub-space floating city.

Zhang Long evoked fear and awe in him.

But this woman gave him a deeper, almost primal calm, as if facing a living ancient law.

Prant and Musk stood outside the side door of the banquet hall, both forgetting to retreat.

Musk looked up at the floating gate fully unfurling from the spatial rift, his lips slightly parted.

Prant stood beside him, silent for several seconds, then murmured something he himself didn't understand, and then closed his mouth again.

However, Edward Warren's reaction was completely different from everyone else's.

He stood by the fireplace, looking up at the short-haired, gray-robed middle-aged woman descending the golden stairway step by step. His pupils contracted sharply in that instant, and his face turned visibly pale.

He had seen her before.

Not in reality, but in the surveillance footage of the second basement parking lot of City Hall in Las Vegas, which he had spent countless hours reviewing frame by frame.

In the footage,

His son, Link Warren, witnessed two Men in Black grabbing Grey Alien who had slid out of the ventilation duct.

Then, this woman calmly walked into the frame from the parking lot entrance, bent down to check the contents of the bag, gestured upwards to turn off all the dark red lights,

Then walked directly to Link's Porsche Cayenne, opened the door, sat in the passenger seat, flipped over a work ID printed with 'Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department', and warned Link not to speak about what he had seen.

Edward had always thought she was an ordinary field agent in the Deep State's direct action team.

At most, she was one level higher than the two Men in Black, perhaps middle management, responsible for cleanup and aftermath, likely in the bottom two or three tiers of the organizational chart.

But now, Zhang Long and Joshua, two Deep State officials who could summon 200,000 fleets in seconds and whose Blue Glove arcs could scorch the entire dome of the banquet hall into distorted heat patterns, were both bowing their heads, their voices, which had just been roaring at each other, now subdued.

Before this middle-aged woman, they were utterly respectful and silent.

He had been a senator all his life and understood power better than anyone.

Power isn't about how loud you are, or how many fleets you can mobilize.

Power is about how quiet others are around you.

And at this moment, the silence maintained by everyone in this banquet hall towards that gray-robed middle-aged woman was something he had never seen or felt in his life, in any political setting, before any head of state, any royal family member, or any financial oligarch.

The middle-aged woman stepped off the last golden stairway, her boots landing on the stone floor of the banquet hall.

The stairway silently dissipated behind her, layer by layer.

She stood before Zhang Long and Joshua, her hands naturally hanging at her sides in her gray robe, her gaze sweeping from Zhang Long to Joshua, then back from Joshua to Zhang Long.

"If I hadn't shown up today, were you planning to tear the entire Earth apart before you stopped?"

Zhang Long put his Blue Glove behind his back and lowered his head.

"Administrator, the Longevity Faction did not intend this. We merely saw the Tech Faction straying further down the wrong path and wished to pull them back from the brink."

Joshua crossed his Black Glove in front of him, also bowing his head, his tone extremely low, but every word was a counter-attack.

"Lady Cecilia, all of the Tech Faction's propositions are for the future of humanity, for humanity's hope."

"It is the Longevity Faction that is destroying humanity's future; we are merely upholding justice."

Cecilia, Deep State, Fifth Administrator.

She was originally a field agent in the Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department's Direct Action Team, responsible for capturing any unknown alien life that infiltrated Blue Star.

Before her, the entire Deep State's Administrator sequence only had four members, all directly appointed by the Senate from the most core ancient bloodline families.

But the Senate saw a certain value in her that these families could not provide.

She was exceptionally promoted into the Administrator sequence after the cleanup mission in the Las Vegas underground garage, becoming the first Administrator in the entire history of the Deep State to be directly promoted from the grassroots combat ranks.

And that cleanup mission, which directly promoted her from an ordinary field agent to the Fifth Administrator, was precisely the one Link Warren witnessed that day in the underground garage.