Chongshan City CBD, 27th floor of Hengxin Building.
Files were scattered across the floor. Several desks had been shoved over, crookedly blocking the fire exit. Dark red scratches and a few dark green scales still clung to them.
Wang Lei huddled beneath a workstation by the window, his fingers trembling as he typed and deleted messages on his phone.
He had lost count of how many times he'd tried to send a distress signal.
WeChat was crowded with red notification dots. The last message in the "A Loving Family" group was from his mother, sent four hours ago: "Son, hide and don't come out, no matter what."
The howls outside came and went. Each time, they made his heart stop.
"There's no point... The police aren't coming... Neither is the military..."
His friend Zhang Tong's bitter voice came from the neighboring workstation. He hugged his knees, staring blankly at a pool of blood that had already turned black on the floor.
A colleague who had tried to rush out and find his family had been lying there.
Of course, by now, he was sleeping in the storage room with the others.
"We have to try... Just in case..."
Wang Lei trailed off halfway through.
What could they possibly hope for? They'd scavenged this enormous office floor, and there was enough food and drink to last the two of them for months. But what difference did that make?
They'd only die a little later.
And perhaps more painfully.
Just then, a notification popped up with an incredibly eye-catching headline.
[Doomsday Survival Tutorial: Learn This and Kill Until the Monsters Won't Dare Approach!—Source Energy Tutorial from the Front Lines at Hongfu Tower, Helu City]
The message came from a friend in another city. There were only two words in the note: "Watch this!"
The moment he saw the gaming platform logo on the video thumbnail, Wang Lei instinctively wanted to swipe it away.
Who had time to share gaming videos at a time like this?
But the words "survival" and "front lines" hooked him.
He hesitated, then tapped it open.
After a brief loading screen, the video showed a chaotic hotel, hideous dark green monsters, a staff swinging through the air, and the dull crack of breaking bones... As the monster disintegrated into ash, a figure in battered armor, drenched in blood, picked up a glowing crystal under the wary gazes of even more monsters, then walked away steadily, dragging a bloodied staff behind him...
Wang Lei abruptly sat up, banging his head against the underside of the desk with a thud without even noticing. His eyes were fixed on the screen.
"Source energy... Guidance Technique... Crystal..." he murmured, repeating the key terms from the video. Then he jolted and grabbed Zhang Tong's arm. "Old Zhang! Old Zhang! Look at this! You have to see this!"
Zhang Tong jumped and turned around impatiently. "What now?"
"Just look!"
Wang Lei practically shoved the phone into his face.
"If we can figure out how to kill a monster, does that mean we can survive?"
A few minutes later, the two men huddled over the tiny phone screen, their chests heaving, their eyes blazing with a fervor like dying embers suddenly reignited.
"There's no need to figure out a way... He... that Guidance Technique he mentioned..." Zhang Tong suddenly looked up, his voice breaking with excitement. "It's in my head too!"
"What?!" Wang Lei gaped.
"This morning, a monster came charging from the other side. I got it stuck in the doorway, and... I swung a dumbbell and smashed its head!"
Zhang Tong spoke incoherently, pointing at a bloodstained exercise dumbbell in the corner. "Then it turned to ash and dropped a crystal. I wanted to see if it was a real crystal, so I picked it up and squeezed it. Then all this jumbled information appeared in my head. It was called the Basic Source Energy Guidance Technique! But the stuff was so complicated, and we were all just waiting to die. How could I find the time to study it carefully? So I didn't think much of it."
The two men looked at each other, seeing the joy of a last-minute reprieve in one another's eyes.
Su Province, the athletes' lounge beneath the bleachers of the foreign language school gymnasium.
Several changing-room lockers had been used to barricade the iron door from the inside. Faint chewing sounds came from outside.
James Wilson, a tall American English teacher, leaned against a cold metal locker, panting.
His expensive suit was covered in dust and dark green slime. A deep claw mark on his arm exposed bone, and he had only managed to bandage it with a strip torn from a flag. Blood was still seeping through.
The situation was worse for Liu Wei, the physical education teacher beside him. He sat slumped on a bench, pale-faced.
An axe lay on the floor, beside a pool of blood and a small pile of ash.
Abyssal Wolf had been lying there.
Its skull had been nearly split open by the fire axe.
The two of them had worked together. James had drawn its attention from the front, and Liu Wei had taken the opportunity to strike hard from behind.
Of course, Liu Wei had paid a price. Abyssal Wolf had lashed him with its bone tail, and he might have a broken rib.
"God bless us..." James murmured, trying to dispel their fear with humor. "Mr. Liu, you're very good at fighting."
Liu Wei managed a bitter smile but said nothing.
James pulled out his phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked.
The signal bars flickered weakly as he frantically sent messages to his wife and friends back in Deke State, letting them know he was safe and asking how they were, though most of the messages failed to send.
Suddenly, a video link appeared in a student group chat. The title was in Xia Country's language. James wasn't very good at reading or writing it, but he recognized the keywords "tutorial," "monster," and "source energy."
He tapped it without thinking.
The footage shook. The fight was fierce but brief. The boy in armor...
He was simply too powerful to be human!
When the boy began explaining the abstruse "Source Energy Guidance Technique," especially when he mentioned "sensing the vortex between the eyebrows" and "a tingling sensation like warm winter sunshine," James' eyes flew open.
He whipped around to look at Liu Wei, his breathing quickening.
"Liu! Look! Look at this!"
He excitedly passed him the phone. "This! This is what's in your head!"
Liu Wei leaned in to look, enduring the pain.
A few minutes later, an astonishing light flared in the sturdy physical education teacher's eyes, as if he'd forgotten the agony in his body.
"Yes... Yes, that's exactly how it feels! What he said... I actually understood a little of it!" Liu Wei's voice trembled with excitement. "How... how did he do that? It's only been a short time!"
"Genius..." James murmured. Without hesitation, he forwarded the video link to everyone in his contacts he could still reach, including his family across the ocean.
"They need to see this! Everyone needs to see this!"
Imperial Capital, West Mountain, deep underground.
Inside the national Crisis Response Center, codenamed Dragon Abyss, the atmosphere was so tense it felt as if water could drip from it.
The huge circular screen was divided into countless sections, displaying satellite heat maps of major cities across the country, fragmented footage from surveillance cameras in key areas, and continuously updated casualty reports and military unit status reports.
Vast areas on the screen were marked red, indicating that communications had been cut off and contact lost.
Sporadic firefights blinked on the display, but even more green friendly-force markers quickly went dark.
"The 71st Group Army's vanguard encountered a giant biological unit on the outskirts of Xu City. They suffered heavy losses and have withdrawn to establish a temporary defensive line!"
"Communications team report: over sixty percent of ground base stations have been destroyed. Some satellites have already lost contact!"
"Energy team report: over seventy percent of power stations have completely stopped operating. Backup power is expected to last less than twenty-four hours."
One piece of bad news after another arrived, and each report darkened everyone's expression further.
"What are you panicking for?!"
An old man slammed his hand on the control console.
"The most important thing now is to hold our existing defensive lines, gather our forces as much as possible, and figure out these monsters' weaknesses! What's the Academy of Sciences doing? How's the analysis going?"
A bespectacled middle-aged man beside him hurriedly bowed and reported, "Commander, Professor Jiang Weihua's team is making the fastest progress. They've preliminarily confirmed that the crystals contain an unknown energy structure. The Information Flow inside is incredibly complex, and it's a completely new form of storage. It's extremely difficult to decipher."
"As for the information recorded in the Gray Crystals, Academician Jiang says they've currently deciphered about... 10.7 percent. So far, it's mainly been a basic analysis of the energy properties. They haven't made any breakthrough with the core parts of the so-called 'Guidance Technique.'"
Ten percent...
Li Zhenguo's heart sank.
Time was what they lacked most right now!
Just then, a middle-aged officer hurried through the busy crowd and went straight to Li Zhenguo. His expression was odd, a mix of excitement and disbelief.
"Report!"
"Speak!"
Li Zhenguo frowned. At a time like this, any report was unlikely to bring good news.
"Commander, the Network Supervision Bureau and the Third Bureau of the General Staff have both detected a video spreading virally through the remaining civilian networks and some military backup channels. Its popularity index is extremely high. The content... is about how to use the Source Energy Guidance Technique and cultivate with the Source Energy Crystals obtained by killing monsters. It includes detailed combat demonstrations and instructional explanations!"
The middle-aged officer spoke rapidly, but articulated clearly.
As soon as he finished, an old man beside them turned furious. "Outrageous! At a time like this, someone's making fake videos to confuse people! Register it immediately, treat it like those videos spreading rumors and cult ideas, trace its source, and shut it down!"
"Wait." Li Zhenguo suddenly raised a hand to stop him. Instead, he stared at the middle-aged officer and asked gravely, "Since you came to report this to us, I assume you've already reached a conclusion?"
"Yes, Commander. It came from a civilian Moyin account in Helu City. The poster is called 'A Yu Loves Playing.'"
The middle-aged officer's expression was solemn. "The technical team has made an initial analysis of the combat footage. The lighting, shadows, sounds, and monsters' reactions would be extremely difficult to reproduce with a physical engine, so they've largely ruled out the possibility that it's fabricated. As for the instructional section... its explanations closely match fragments of information about the Guidance Technique's challenges that we've obtained from multiple sources. In fact... they're even more systematic and intuitive."
He paused, then added, "The main character in the video says he's a student who just graduated from high school. His name is Lin Yi."
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