Ripples Begin, Tidal Wave Rises

Shangri-La's projection instantly radiated across thousands of miles, but from the loftier heavens above, looking down, it was no more than a glimmer that had emerged amid the layered storm-gray darkness of a satellite cloud map.

So tiny.

"Finally..."

Inside Tower City's Garrison Base, Fan Yun stood with his hands behind his back, lifting his eyelids a fraction as he glanced at that wisp of light.

"After stirring the grass to scare the snake, we did manage to flush out something."

He sneered, then turned to leave.

"After all, it's just a dying struggle."

"I think I'm about to die."

Since dusk, the sky had been gray and oppressive, weighing heavily on everyone's hearts. Waves of damp breeze failed to disperse the stifling heat, instead making it hard to breathe. At the frontline base, Liang Mo, a frontline commander of the rapid-response unit, sprawled in a chair, sighing deeply as he poured bottle after bottle of Happy Water down his throat... The Riot Cat beside him seemed to want to say something, its screen displaying a disgusted emoticon. In the end, it picked up another crate and stuffed it into the modified refrigerator in its chest to chill first.

Then, silently, it added another label behind Liang Mo's system certification tags—"Slacker" and "Skiving Maniac": "Carbonated Waste."

Who, exactly, had invented humans?

They were such a hassle to raise.

Crispy, tiny, weak—if you weren't careful, they just died.

If they exploded, they turned into a mess. If they collapsed, they became a strip, and they could even wriggle...

Remembering the human-rearing experience passed on by other cats, the cat grew worried. If it let him lie around like this, wouldn't he really turn into a useless wreck?

At that thought, its enormous Mechanical Body tilted slightly.

Like an old father, it