Chen Du's Unimaginable Increase in Strength

The technician hurriedly switched camera feeds and slowed the footage, but the sword light on the screen was still too fast to capture.

Finally, the military commander said quietly, "At least sixth tier. No, possibly stronger."

"I need to report this to my superiors!"

The branch director turned and headed out, his steps hurried.

He had just reached the door when someone came charging around the corner of the corridor and nearly ran into him.

It was a young man with bloodstains still on his combat uniform. His face was pale, but his eyes were astonishingly bright.

The branch director recognized him: Meng Mingyuan, a field operative from Section Seven.

A few days earlier, his entire team had lost contact while carrying out a reconnaissance mission in the mutated mountain region west of the city. He was the only survivor and had eventually been picked up by a rescue team.

Afterward, he had submitted a vague observation report that mentioned one person.

His assessment read: "A top-tier third-tier lone evolver, skilled with cold weapons, with a calm and decisive fighting style."

No matter how extravagantly Meng Mingyuan had praised the man, it was ultimately only one person's assessment, and there were no other witnesses to corroborate it.

The bureau hadn't paid it much attention at the time. There were simply too many evolvers above the third tier.

But now, things had changed drastically.

"Director!" Meng Mingyuan's voice trembled uncontrollably. "I know the man up there!"

The branch director stopped and looked back at him.

Meng Mingyuan caught his breath and continued his report earnestly. "He's the one I met in the mountains! The cameras didn't get his face, but his build and that... that rhythm, like he was chopping melons and slicing vegetables—I couldn't mistake him. He's more than a full level stronger than the last time I saw him, but he's definitely the same person."

He had never expected to encounter this person again.

And what shocked him was that... in just a few days, the man's strength had undergone an earth-shaking transformation!

The branch director was silent for two seconds, then picked up an encrypted phone and dialed a number.

"Sir, I've made an astonishing discovery and would like to make a special request..."

The branch director hung up. Clearly, the call was quite important to him.

This time, it wasn't just Meng Mingyuan's word alone. The director of the Magic City Branch was backing him up too!

Then he hurriedly said to Meng Mingyuan, "Go over your original report again. Don't leave out a single detail."

Since the Spiritual Qi Revival, powerful people like this had been appearing one after another.

But someone like him still had to be given special attention.

Meng Mingyuan saluted, turned, and ran out to make a more detailed record.

The last Black-Feathered Bird fell from the clouds and crashed down by the Huangpu River, sending a splash of water several meters into the air.

The sky brightened again. The setting sun shone through the dispersing iron-gray wings, staining the ravaged city a dark gold.

Above the ruins of the financial district, the thick smoke had yet to clear. Alarms rose and fell, while the sirens of ambulances and fire engines came from every direction.

And the figure who had swept back and forth through the flock was gone.

So many phone cameras had been pointed at the sky, so many pairs of eyes fixed on him.

No one had seen how he vanished. Their vision had merely blurred, and when they looked again, only scattered feathers that had yet to fall remained in the sky.

Like a drop of water merging into a river, he had vanished without a trace.

At the same time, things were much the same in the command center.

"Switch to satellite thermal imaging!"

Faced with Chen Du's sudden disappearance, the military commander gave the order.

Satellite footage appeared on the large screen, a thermal imaging layer superimposed over the ravaged city.

But above the largest stretch of ruins, there was nothing.

The figure who had just been sweeping through the flock might never have existed, as far as the thermal image was concerned.

"What about the drones? Keep tracking him!"

At that moment, the branch director also rushed over to the technical console, his eyes fixed on the screen.

Four reconnaissance drones arrived above the financial district from different directions, their onboard high-definition cameras, infrared scanners, and spiritual qi fluctuation detectors switching on at once.

The footage cycled between the four screens... shattered buildings, smoking ruins, heaps of bird carcasses—everything was clearly visible, except for any trace of the man.

"His last known position?"

The branch director issued the order without turning around.

"Approximately 121 degrees 35 minutes east, 31 degrees 12 minutes north, in the heart of the financial district. He was still there sixteen seconds ago, and then..." The technician paused, as though he couldn't believe it himself. "Then he disappeared, as if without any warning."

"Vanished on the spot?"

The branch director repeated the words under his breath.

The command center was deathly silent, save for the hum of the equipment.

They had at their disposal humanity's most advanced monitoring methods in the age of Spiritual Qi Revival: satellites, drones, thermal imaging, and spiritual qi radar.

Every device had been trained on that man at the same time, and then, under the watch of every instrument, he had vanished completely.

"Spiritual qi fluctuations have dropped to zero." The technician's voice sounded as though he were reading an obituary. "The target has completely left the detection range of all our equipment."

The military commander slowly removed his cap and placed it on the console. After a long silence, he said quietly, "Who on earth is he?"

Chen Du hadn't actually gone far.

He had merely used a method to conceal himself from the military and the Spiritual Qi Revival Administration.

He landed inside a half-collapsed office building.

As far as he could sense, the entire financial district had been reduced to a shambles, but Magic City was still standing.

He had lived in this city for several years, and that flock of beasts could have razed all of Magic City to the ground in a single day.

So he had intervened, not for some grand cause, but simply because he couldn't let his home be destroyed.

He regulated his breathing for a moment, then activated the Concealment Technique to suppress the fluctuations around him to their lowest level. After that, he leaped down from the building and slipped through the shadows of the ruins toward the subway station.

After Chen Du returned home, he gave one matter careful thought.

The pressure on him really was considerable, and he had to find a way to deal with it.

So he would make the Martial Canon public.

The Martial Canon was the culmination of his work, forged by combining the martial arts of the Xuanye Realm, the rules of the Heavenly Human Realm, Blue Star's Evolution Factor Path, and his own heaven-defying comprehension.

For him as he was now, adapting it into a cultivation method that those on the factor path could practice wasn't difficult.

Cultivating martial arts and factors together would allow the two to complement each other, making progress far faster than cultivating either path alone.

It was like tossing a ladder to heaven into the entire human camp.

Was he willing to do it?

To be honest, not entirely.

But humanity was too weak right now, so weak that even a flock of fourth-tier birds had to be cleared out by him alone.

Rather than keep his trump card hidden and be worn to death by the beast hordes, he might as well turn it into sparks and scatter them, letting more sixth- and seventh-tier experts grow from among humanity.

What he needed to do was become the first spark to catch fire.

Besides, the five-day cooldown would soon be over, and he would be able to enter a new world and create even stronger chapters.

These chapters would soon fall behind.

With that, he decisively went out and pulled an old phone from his pocket.

He had picked up the phone in the ruins a few days earlier. It had no SIM card and was connected to the public network of a half-abandoned mall several streets away.

After making absolutely certain nothing could go wrong, he compiled the full text of the cultivation methods from the four chapters into an encrypted document.

Using an anonymous account, Chen Du submitted it simultaneously to several of the busiest evolver forums, as well as the wasteland hunters' chat groups and the Spiritual Qi Revival Administration's public mutual-aid platform, and set it to publish at a scheduled time.

The document had no signature or introduction, only a single sentence at the beginning: "The four chapters of the Martial Canon. May humanity have a few more people who can fight."

After uploading it, he pulled out the network card, crushed the phone to powder, and scattered it into the wind blowing through the factory building.

In the darkness, he slung his bag over his back and walked deeper into the night.

At daybreak tomorrow, this material would spread across the entire network like dandelion seeds scattered on the wind.

When that happened, the scales between humanity and evolved beasts might tip a little.

And he could hide a little deeper amid this wind-whipped tide!

He also had to make preparations for his next journey to another world.