"Ha... ha..."
Su Wanqing's back was pressed tightly against the cold entryway wall. Beneath the half-peeled sheet mask, her face was as pale as paper, and her lips trembled violently, yet she couldn't utter anything coherent. Her body continued to shudder faintly against her will. Her beautiful eyes held nothing but boundless terror and bewilderment after her perception had been utterly crushed, fixed rigidly on Ling Ye's battered cloth bag as if she had been bewitched.
What... what kind of monster was inside?!
Just one glance—just a wisp of its insignificant aura—had made her feel as though she were facing the ultimate terror of the universe! Her soul was shrieking! That pitch-black rod was so heavy it seemed capable of crushing the eternal river of stars; that small chaos-colored basin looked even more like the entrance to the end where all things returned to silence! These were absolutely not things humans should come into contact with! This man... was he even human, or was he a walking natural disaster?!
Ling Ye seemed completely unaware that Su Wanqing behind him was on the verge of collapse. The faint crease between his brows had not relaxed. His gaze pierced through the dense curtain of rain and the villa's lavish courtyard, as if crossing space itself to lock precisely onto the depths of the city beneath the mountain, its lights hazy beneath the downpour like those of a lurking giant beast.
That fleetingly cold fluctuation just now... carried an intensely unpleasant sense of distortion. It was like the rancid breath rolling in the throat of a dying beast, or the greedy, unconscious instinct of something sniffing the air. Weak, yet exceptionally clear.
At the instant that fluctuation appeared, deep within the nearly vanished cold consciousness of his long-silent Sign-in System, which had lain dormant for billions of years, a redundant fragment of information flickered ever so faintly—so quickly it was almost an illusion.
"...lower-dimensional... abnormal energy... contamination... bzzt... sample... missing... bzzt... preliminary determination: indigenous 'Spiritual Energy Revival'... bzzt... precursor fluctuation... anchoring coordinates..."
The fragmentary noise flashed through the depths of his perception like electricity from a faulty connection.
Spiritual Energy Revival?
Ling Ye's brows drew together even more tightly, tinged with the annoyance of someone whose pleasant sleep had been disturbed. His billions of years of dull sign-in work had made him loathe every form of "fluctuation" and "trouble." At long last, he had retired and returned to the Origin Universe to live as a salted fish, yet he couldn't even get a peaceful night's sleep? The environmental quality in this Origin Universe was really too poor.
He subconsciously rubbed the strap of the battered cloth bag. The aura emitted by the Fragment of Buzhou Mountain and the Chaos Green Lotus Scrap Basin inside seemed to make the cold "sniffing" fluctuation from the city shrink back instantly, like a startled insect, before vanishing without a trace.
Troublesome.
Ling Ye mentally labeled this world, which he had just returned to.
At the same time, in the depths of an inconspicuous old building on the opposite end of the city below the mountain.
Although the ear-piercing alarm in the dim room had been forcibly silenced, the curve representing the energy fluctuation on the screen still retained a terrifying peak that made one's heart tremble, like a savage scar tearing across the background.
A middle-aged man in a white lab coat, his hair disheveled—Professor Chen—stared fixedly at the residual data on the screen with bloodshot eyes. His fingers trembled faintly with excitement. He lunged toward another instrument, where a complex grid map of the city was refreshing rapidly. A red ring shrank swiftly, like ink dropped into water, narrowing down the location.
"Faster! A little faster! The energy source's coordinates!" he rasped. Fine beads of sweat covered his temples. Beside him, the young assistant's hands became a blur over the keyboard, his face equally pale with tension.
"Professor! Peak energy level... unanalyzable! It's beyond the upper limit of every known detector! Its instantaneous annihilation characteristics... are ninety-seven percent similar to the 'Flash Event' in Kunlun Mountain Death Valley three months ago! But the intensity... is more than ten thousand times greater than that incident!" The assistant's voice trembled with disbelief.
"More than ten thousand times?!" Professor Chen sucked in a sharp breath, his pupils contracting. The "Flash Event" in Kunlun Death Valley had directly vaporized a twelve-man special-operations team equipped with advanced gear, leaving behind only a bottomless, vitrified crater. It had been classified as the highest-confidentiality SSS-level incident! And just now... right under their noses, in this megacity of tens of millions, a similar fluctuation with more than ten thousand times the intensity had appeared?!
"Coordinates locked!" the assistant suddenly shouted, his voice rising with tension. "Margin of error... a radius of one hundred meters! The target area is... the Yunqi Mountain halfway-up villa district, specifically located at..."
The assistant called out a precise latitude and longitude. At the same time, the grid map on the screen zoomed in, focusing on a sparse cluster of villa lights on Yunqi Mountain.
"Yunqi Mountain... halfway-up villas..." Professor Chen repeated under his breath. His bloodshot eyes were as sharp as a falcon's, fixed on the coordinates. "The Su family's property? No... that's not right! The peak energy source just now definitely isn't in any recorded 'container'! This isn't the 'source' awakening... There's an 'anomaly'! An unprecedented, terrifying 'anomaly' has descended!"
A chill shot instantly up his spine to the crown of his head, but what followed was an even more fervent, almost frenzied desire to investigate. The unknown represented extreme danger, but it also represented... an opportunity capable of changing everything!
"Immediately! Initiate the 'Hidden Dragon' protocol! Priority: Top Secret—World-Destroying Level!" Professor Chen's voice was decisive, carrying an unquestionable resolve. "Notify the Dragon Tooth Special Operations Group and have them stand by with maximum-level armaments! Block all civilian communications and surveillance networks in the target area! I want every trace in that area—even the path of a bird flying past—to be under our control! Until we assess the exact threat level, no one is to alarm the target! I repeat, no one! Anyone who disobeys... eliminate them on the spot!"
"Yes!" The assistant's expression turned solemn as he immediately began carrying out the orders, his fingers rapidly tapping on the encrypted communicator.
Professor Chen slowly turned around and looked once more at the city outside, where torrential rain poured from the sky. His gaze pierced the curtain of rain, as if it intended to tear through the layers of darkness and lock onto the villa halfway up Yunqi Mountain—a villa that now looked to him like a massive powder keg. His heart pounded heavily in his chest, while blood mixed with fear and excitement raced through his veins.
"I found you..." he muttered. His voice sounded especially sinister in the dim room. "Whatever you are... don't even think you can remain... silent and unnoticed... in this city..."
Meanwhile, in the entryway of the villa halfway up Yunqi Mountain.
Ling Ye finally withdrew his gaze from the city, and the faint crease in his brow eased slightly. That irritating "insect" aura had temporarily vanished. As if only now remembering that someone was behind him, he slowly turned around.
Su Wanqing was still slumped against the wall, her eyes vacant. Her body twitched from time to time, clearly still immersed in the soul-shattering impact brought by those two "everyday items," unable to pull herself free.
Ling Ye glanced at her deathly pale face, then lowered his head to look at his still-dripping hemp robe and battered cloth bag. He looked again at the torrential rain outside, pouring as if the Milky Way had overturned.
He sighed soundlessly.
On the first day of his retired salted-fish life, he had only wanted to find somewhere dry to lie down... Why was that so difficult?
"Hey," Ling Ye said, his voice carrying the lazy drawl of someone who had just woken up. It shattered the deathly silence in the entryway and successfully refocused Su Wanqing's scattered, terrified gaze on him. "Are you still letting me in? Or a towel would work too." His eyes swept over the soft-looking, thick wool carpet in the luxurious foyer behind Su Wanqing. His tone carried the matter-of-fact certainty of someone saying, I'm not asking for much. "My clothes are wet. They're a little... sticky."
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