Searching for the Mysterious Warrior

Though this destructive force test had not been publicly broadcast, against the backdrop of global attention—and because it had been conducted in the open—the results quickly leaked out through various channels.

Without question, it would become the internet's biggest trending topic for some time to come.

Yet compared with the researchers beneath the Great Wall, Lin Tuo was clearly far calmer.

"Just as expected... at the civilization level of the Evolution Sandbox, the Isolation Shield it created is something Earth's current civilization simply cannot shake."

Leaning back in his chair, Lin Tuo watched the clamorous livestream with slightly weary eyes, silently pondering.

This result did not surprise him.

Of course, judging by the splash caused by the explosion, external force was not wholly unable to enter the Sandbox. The Isolation Shield had not cut off everything.

If they continued escalating their firepower, perhaps the splashes within the Sandbox could grow larger. But after this incident, the research team would probably become more cautious.

"Whew, I worried for nothing. Time to sleep."

With that thought, Lin Tuo finally set his mind at ease. He yawned, habitually muted his phone, then rose and went into the bedroom next door. Drawing the curtains, he drifted drowsily to sleep.

He needed to catch up on his rest.

Yet just as Lin Tuo fell asleep, the screen of the phone on his desk suddenly lit up. A message had appeared in the group chat.

Naturally, the group was discussing the explosion.

Since the experiment had only just happened and people had not yet learned the outcome, most of them were merely making wild guesses.

But amid the discussion, a usually silent group member suddenly uploaded a link and shouted in the chat:

"Stop talking about that. Hurry up and watch this video! I just came across it."

"What is this now?" someone asked.

"You'll know once you watch it. It's absolutely wild!"

"Wild? Uh... isn't that a little inappropriate? Could the group get banned...?"

"?"

Yang City, inside a residential complex.

Wearing pajamas, Zhou Mo silently exited the livestream called "Live Demolition Coverage," her expression somewhat worried.

"I wonder whether they blew it open or not."

Shaking her head, she cast the thought from her mind, moved her mouse, and opened the country's largest video-uploading website on her computer.

Then, without much hope, she prepared to log into her account.

More than a week ago, while returning to Yang City with her best friend, she had unexpectedly seen someone descend from the sky. Afterward, she had captured a truly unimaginable piece of footage.

On a desolate, steep mountain path in the Taihe Mountain Range, a mysterious man had carried an enormous boulder on his back and climbed in one breath from the foot of the mountain to its summit.

The entire recording lasted around an hour.

That act, so clearly beyond normal human limits, had left her utterly shaken. Afterward, she had simply edited the fifty-eight-minute-and-twenty-one-second video.

She added an explanation, then uploaded it to the video site.

She had originally thought it would quickly go viral, but reality had dumped a basin of cold water over her.

After more than a week online, it had fewer than two hundred views, and the sparse comments had been equally unremarkable.

That was hardly surprising. She was neither a famous uploader nor an internet influencer—just an ordinary account. After posting something, having it sink like a stone into the sea was the normal outcome.

For the first few days, she had repeatedly refreshed the site's backend. Later, though, she merely gave it a habitual glance once a day.

But today, the instant Zhou Mo logged in, she discovered in astonishment that her account's notifications were glowing red with 99+ alerts.

When she opened them, the screen was full of private messages, ranging from over ten minutes ago to only seconds ago.

They were all asking whether the video was real and where exactly it had been filmed.

"This... could it be..." Zhou Mo froze, unable to react.

Several full seconds passed before she suddenly straightened up and opened the backend at lightning speed. Then she stared in shock as the views on the video titled "Taihe Mountain Mysterious Man" had already surpassed three million!

She refreshed it, and it had risen by tens of thousands more!

The number of comments and scrolling bullet messages was also skyrocketing!

Had she not woken up yet?

Was she dreaming?

Zhou Mo stared blankly at the computer, then pinched her thigh. Her face twitched, but her eyes abruptly lit up!

"It really went viral! It went viral!" The young woman in pajamas let out an utterly unladylike cheer. Then, while opening the video, she tapped her best friend's profile picture on her phone and sent a pestering message.

"Shan Shan! Are you awake? Hurry and look at my video! I told you it would definitely go viral!"

Meanwhile, in the non-work group chat of Lin Tuo's former company department.

The group members whose curiosity had been piqued all opened the link, only to find that its contents differed greatly from what they had imagined.

The video's title was simple:

"Candid Footage of a Mysterious Powerhouse in the Taihe Mountain Range! If You Don't Say 'Holy Shit,' I Lose!"

The moment they opened it, the whole screen was filled with bullet comments:

"Holy shit in advance."

"You're definitely going to lose."

"What kind of video is this?"

"Uh, this..."

In the video, the background was a range of mountains. The person filming seemed to be standing beside a road, clearly recording with a phone, and there was an obvious zoom-in.

As it played, the voices of two girls talking could be heard:

"Fine, fine, I believe you... Anyway, I can't make sense of this world anymore. Yesterday..."

"Ah! Found him! Look!"

"Holy crap! There really is a Superman?!"

To ensure the video's authenticity, Zhou Mo had barely cut a single shot. The conversation she and her friend had at the time had been recorded as well, adding several degrees of realism and immediacy.

Then, as the image zoomed in, a desolate and steep little path could be seen hidden amid the vast mountains.

The stone slab road had clearly been abandoned for a long time, yet it resembled a Heavenly Ladder leading toward the mountaintop.

A blurry figure carried a boulder far larger than his own body on his back, climbing step by step along the stone stairs.

He was too far away for the details to be clear even after the camera zoomed in. In particular, the mysterious man seemed to have covered his face with something.

Yet even so, the ease and rhythm in his movements came through the video with perfect clarity.

The same thing could look entirely different depending on who did it.

Being stretched beyond one's limits and lifting heavy weights as lightly as feathers were two utterly different sensations.

In the footage, the mysterious man seemed not to know fatigue at all. Carrying the bluestone on his back, his steps were steady and unhurried, his movements flowing like drifting clouds and running water. There were almost no pauses in between, and watching him was extraordinarily smooth, even beautiful.

Indeed, if one looked carefully, every movement he made faintly carried a trace of an otherworldly, immortal air untouched by mortal dust!

That was right!

Immortal air!

It was as though he truly were a reclusive master who existed only in imagination.

No—if someone's strength could truly reach such a level, then he was not an imagined master, but a real one.

At this sight, the dense curtain of bullet comments suddenly became uniform:

"Holy shit."

"Holy shit."

"Holy shit."

Some were following the crowd, while others were genuinely stunned.

"Front-row reminder: there's a surprise if you look at the progress bar!"

And when people realized the whole video was nearly an hour long, and discovered through fast-forwarding that the mysterious man had not rested once throughout, their astonishment turned into shock.

That mountain path was so steep that ordinary people would struggle merely to climb it, let alone while carrying such a huge piece of bluestone.

Was this really a human being?

It had to be fake, right?

Amid the endless "holy shits," there were also plenty of doubts. Opening the comments section revealed even more people questioning whether the footage was real.

"This is absolutely fake! It is impossible for a human being to achieve what is shown in this footage! It completely violates the level of force the human body's structure can withstand. Still, I have to admit that the video fakery is extremely sophisticated. There's almost no flaw visible to the naked eye..."

Someone declared this with absolute certainty.

"I don't think the footage was necessarily manipulated with technology. Rather, the filming angle may be misleading. The entire video looks crudely and primitively filmed, matching the title's claim of candid footage, but that does not mean it was not carefully planned.

"Just as movies sometimes use shaky camerawork to heighten realism, I personally believe the effect in this video is most likely an issue of camera angle.

"That mountain cannot possibly be that steep—it is merely a visual deception. As for that huge boulder, perhaps it is just a prop that does not weigh much at all."

Someone else spoke with the air of a professional.

"I object to the top-rated comment! Why is it impossible? I suspect this is a mysterious martial artist, and the video shows him tempering his body! Training his physical strength!

"The strength of ancient martial arts masters was beyond modern people's imagination! Historical records say Zhang Sanfeng lived for more than two hundred years. By your logic, that was all fake too?"

Others leaned toward believing it, though this comment thread inevitably erupted into an argument.

As for most people, they held both attitudes.

More believed the video was fabricated, but there were also quite a few who remained skeptical and reserved judgment.

"I reserve judgment. It is not that I really believe ancient martial arts are incredibly powerful—after all, so many martial arts masters have been exposed as frauds these days... The point I'm focused on is this: have you noticed that the time this video was uploaded was exactly the second day after the Takk Black Box appeared...

"The girls' words in the video also corroborate it.

"That means this video appeared after the Takk Black Box... If it had been before, I definitely would not have believed a human could do something to this extent. But now... I'm not so sure.

"Especially since the results of this morning's demolition test on the Great Wall have reportedly come out. In an explosion powerful enough to destroy a small cluster of buildings, the Great Wall was completely unscathed...

"I think the world may truly be on the verge of drastic change. We must break some of our old ways of thinking and accept the new world that may be arriving.

"I wonder whether the uploader can see this comment.

"If it is convenient, could you provide the exact filming location?

"Well, I live not far from the Taihe Mountain Range. If I have time, I would like to go over there and see for myself—to search for this mysterious martial arts master with my own eyes."

Not long after this lengthy comment was posted, it was pinned at the top of the comments section. Zhou Mo even replied beneath it:

"It is understandable for everyone to have doubts. I have no way to prove anything. I can only say that this video is absolutely real. I'll give a unified reply regarding the filming location..."

The comment quickly received more than a hundred likes and was rapidly closing in on a thousand.

The video's popularity shot upward, but compared with the globally watched results of the "demolition test," the public impact it stirred was ultimately limited.

Under normal circumstances, it might have drawn more attention. But with every media outlet scrambling to report the latest news about the Takk Black Box, the attention Zhou Mo's footage attracted was invisibly diminished.

After all, there could not be too many hot topics at once.

By comparison.

Because Zhou Mo had revealed the location, although the video did not provoke much discussion nationwide, it spread madly through Yang City and the areas surrounding the Taihe Mountain Range.

Yang City in particular.

Since it was closest to the filming location, the people there cared even more about it.

As a result, while the video's popularity on the website gradually stabilized, it spread with unexpected speed through countless local group chats in Yang City.

When Lin Tuo finally woke from his sleep.

Having caught up on his rest, he rubbed his messy hair, pushed open the study door, picked up his phone, and opened his messaging app. His whole mind went blank.

Looking at "Searching for the Mysterious Warrior of Taihe Mountain" spreading wildly through the group chat, he sat there in a daze.

"I just slept for one night... So... what the hell happened??"