The Chain Reaction Caused by the Video

Chongshan City CBD, 27th floor of the Hengxin Building.

Files were scattered across the floor, and several desks had been pushed over, blocking the fire exit in a haphazard pile. Dark red claw marks and a few dark green scales still clung to the surfaces.

Wang Lei huddled under his workstation by the window, his fingers trembling as he typed and deleted messages on his phone screen.

He had lost count of how many times he had tried to send a distress signal.

His WeChat was covered in dense red notification dots, and the last message in his family group chat remained a line from his mother sent four hours ago: "Son, hide well, don't you dare come out."

The howling outside drifted closer and further away, each sound making his heart stop.

"It's useless. The police won't come, and the military..."

His friend Zhang Tong's bitter voice came from the adjacent workstation. He was hugging his knees, staring with hollow eyes at a patch of blackened blood on the floor.

A colleague who had tried to rush out to find his family had once lain there.

Of course, by now, he was sleeping in the utility room along with the others.

"We have to try. What if..."

Wang Lei stopped halfway, unable to continue.

What "what if" could there even be? Although scavenging this massive office floor provided enough food and water for the two of them to survive for a few months, what would that change?

It would only mean dying a little later.

Perhaps even more painfully.

Just then, a message with an incredibly eye-catching headline popped up.

[Doomsday Survival Tutorial: Learn this, and kill monsters until they dare not approach! — Source Energy teaching from the front lines of Hongfu Restaurant in Helu City].

The message was from a friend in another city, with the postscript: "Watch this quickly!"

Seeing the gaming section icon on the video thumbnail, Wang Lei instinctively wanted to swipe it away.

Who had the heart to post gaming videos at a time like this?

But the words "survival" and "front lines" hooked him.

He hesitated, then tapped it.

After a brief load, the screen showed a chaotic hotel, hideous dark green monsters, whistling staff strikes, and the dull thud of bones shattering as monsters turned into fly ash. A figure in damaged armor, drenched in blood, picked up a glowing crystal under the wary gazes of more monsters, then dragged a dripping staff away with steady steps.

Wang Lei sat bolt upright, oblivious to the "thud" his head made against the desk as he stared fixedly at the screen.

"Source Energy. Guidance Technique. Crystal," he muttered the keywords from the video. With a jolt, he grabbed Zhang Tong's arm. "Old Zhang! Old Zhang! Look at this, you have to look at this!"

Zhang Tong was startled and turned his head impatiently. "What is it now?"

"Look!"

Wang Lei practically shoved the phone into his face.

"If we find a way to kill a monster, we might be able to survive!"

A few minutes later, the two men huddled in front of the tiny phone screen, their chests heaving, their eyes burning with a rekindled, desperate light.

"No need to find a way... he... the Guidance Technique he mentioned..." Zhang Tong suddenly looked up, his voice distorted by excitement. "I have it in my head too!"

"What?!" Wang Lei was stunned.

"Just this morning, a monster rushed over from the other side. I jammed it in the door crack, and I... I swung a dumbbell and smashed its head in!"

Zhang Tong spoke incoherently, pointing to a blood-stained fitness 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. My head was suddenly filled with all this messy stuff called the Basic Source Energy Guidance Technique! But the problem was, with such complex content and me waiting to die, I didn't have the heart to study it, so I didn't think much of it."

The two men looked at each other, seeing the surprise of a narrow escape in each other's eyes.

Su Province, the athlete's lounge beneath the bleachers of the Foreign Language School gymnasium.

The iron door was wedged shut from the inside with several lockers, and a faint chewing sound could be heard from outside.

James Wilson, a tall American English teacher, leaned his back against the cold metal cabinet, gasping for air.

His expensive suit was covered in dust and dark green slime. A deep, bone-exposed claw mark on his arm was crudely bandaged with a torn flag, and it was still seeping blood.

Nearby, the PE teacher, Liu Wei, was in worse shape, leaning against a bench with a pale face.

A fire axe lay on the floor, next to a pool of blood and a small pile of ash.

That was where the corpse of an Abyss Wolf had once been.

Its skull had been nearly split open by the fire axe.

The two had worked together; James had attracted its attention from the front, while Liu Wei had seized the chance to land a heavy blow from behind.

Of course, Liu Wei had paid the price; he had been struck by the Abyss Wolf's bony tail, and a rib was likely broken.

"God bless us," James muttered, trying to dispel the fear with humor. "Teacher Liu, your kung fu is very impressive."

Liu Wei managed a bitter smile and said nothing.

James pulled out his phone; the screen was shattered, but it still worked.

The signal bars flickered weakly. He frantically sent messages to his wife and friends far away in Deke State, reporting his safety and asking about the situation, even though most of the messages failed to send.

Suddenly, a video link popped up in a student group chat. The title was in the Xia Kingdom language; although his reading and writing skills in the language were poor, he still understood the keywords: "teaching," "monster," and "source energy."

He clicked it subconsciously.

The footage shook—the combat was intense and brief—featuring a youth clad in armor.

He was so powerful he hardly seemed human!

When the youth began to explain the profound "Source Energy Guidance Technique," especially when he mentioned "sensing the vortex at the glabella" and the "tingling sensation like the warm winter sun," James's eyes widened sharply.

He whipped his head around to look at Liu Wei, his breathing growing rapid.

"Liu! Look! Look at this!"

He excitedly shoved his phone over. "This! This is what's in your head!"

Liu Wei endured the pain and leaned in to look.

A few minutes later, an astonishing brilliance erupted in the eyes of the sturdy physical education teacher, as if he had forgotten the agonizing pain in his body.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly the feeling! I actually understood a little bit of what he said!" Liu Wei's voice trembled with excitement. "How—how did he do it? It's only been how long?"

"Genius," James muttered. Without hesitation, he forwarded the video link to everyone in his contacts he could still reach, including his relatives 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 heavy it felt like it could drip water.

On the massive circular screen, divided into countless sections, were satellite heat maps of major cities across the country, fragmented surveillance footage of key areas, constantly updating casualty briefings, and status reports from military units.

Wherever one looked, large swaths of territory were marked in red, indicating severed communications and lost contact.

Sporadic points of gunfire flickered, but there were far more green friendly-force icons being rapidly extinguished.

"The vanguard of the 71st Group Army encountered giant biological units on the outskirts of Xu City. They suffered heavy losses and have retreated to establish a temporary defensive line!"

"The communications team reports that the damage rate to ground base stations has exceeded sixty percent, and some satellites have already lost contact!"

"The energy team reports that over seventy percent of power plants have completely ceased operation. Backup power is expected to last less than twenty-four hours."

Bad news arrived one after another, and each report made the expressions of those present grow a shade darker.

"What is there to panic about!"

An old man slammed his hand against the console.

"The most important thing right now is to stabilize the existing defensive lines, consolidate our forces as much as possible, and at the same time, figure out the weaknesses of these monsters! What about the Academy of Sciences? How is the analysis coming along?"

A middle-aged man in gold-rimmed glasses standing nearby bowed hurriedly to report: "Chief, the team with the fastest progress is Professor Jiang Weihua's. They have preliminarily confirmed that those crystals contain an unknown energy structure. The internal information flow is extremely complex; it is a brand-new storage method, and the difficulty of cracking it is immense."

"As for the information recorded within the gray crystals, Academician Jiang says the current decryption progress is approximately 10.7 percent. This is mainly basic energy attribute analysis; there has been no breakthrough regarding the core part of the so-called 'Guidance Technique'."

Ten percent.

Li Zhenguo's heart sank.

Time—what they lacked most right now was time!

Just then, a middle-aged officer walked hurriedly through the busy crowd and came straight to Li Zhenguo. His expression was somewhat strange, a mix of excitement and disbelief.

"Report!"

"Speak!"

Li Zhenguo's brows were tightly locked; any report at this time was unlikely to be good news.

"Chief, the Network Supervision Bureau and the Third Bureau of the General Staff have simultaneously detected that a video is spreading virally across the remaining civilian networks and some military backup channels. Its popularity index is extremely high. The content—the content is about how to use the Source Energy Guidance Technique to cultivate using the Source Energy Crystals obtained after killing monsters, and it includes detailed practical demonstrations and instructional explanations!"

The middle-aged officer spoke at a rapid pace, yet his words were perfectly clear.

As soon as he finished, an old man nearby immediately changed color. "Nonsense! What time is it, and people are still making such fake videos to confuse the public! Register it immediately, treat it like those videos spreading rumors and cult ideologies, trace the source, and shut it down!"

"Wait." Li Zhenguo raised a hand sharply to stop him, instead staring at the middle-aged officer and asking in a deep voice: "Since you've come to report this to us, I assume you already have a conclusion?"

"Yes, Chief. The source is a civilian Moyin account in Helu City. The publisher goes by 'A-Yu Loves Playing'."

The middle-aged officer's expression was very solemn. "The technical department has preliminarily analyzed the combat footage. The lighting, sound, and the physical engine simulation of the monster's reactions are of extremely high difficulty; we have already ruled out the possibility of it being synthesized. As for the instructional part, its content has a high degree of consistency with the fragments of information regarding the difficulties of the Guidance Technique that we have obtained through multiple channels. It is even more systematic and intuitive."

He paused and added: "The protagonist of the video claims to be a student who just graduated from high school, named Lin Yi."