Once Lin Yuan learned where Commander Zhao was, he headed straight for the command center.
On both sides of the corridor, officers and soldiers hurried past.
Every face was tense and grave.
Some sprinted by carrying thick document folders.
Others shouted into their communicators, checking coordinates.
A moment later, Lin Yuan entered the command room.
A massive holographic display covered an entire wall.
Hundreds of red dots flashed across it.
Each dot marked an emergency.
"Report, Commander!"
"In southern Jincheng, a stray cat grew to the size of an adult leopard. The Third Squad has killed it. No civilian casualties."
"Report!"
"At a farm east of Yuzhou, two water buffalo broke through an iron fence and wrecked a police car. They've been subdued with tranquilizer darts."
"Report, Commander..."
The operators' reports came one after another.
The command room was in an uproar.
Zhao Dingbang stood before the tactical display, both hands braced against its edge.
As he listened to the reports, the exhaustion of a sleepless night gave way to fierce excitement.
So far, at least, every emergency remained under control.
"Commander."
Lin Yuan stepped up to the display and gave a crisp military salute.
Zhao Dingbang looked up sharply.
The instant he recognized Lin Yuan, delight flashed in his eyes.
"Lin Yuan!"
Zhao Dingbang rounded the display in a few quick strides and gripped Lin Yuan's shoulder.
The moment his palm touched it, he snatched his hand back as if he'd been shocked.
Hot!
Far too hot!
It felt as though magma flowed beneath Lin Yuan's skin.
"Your body..."
Shock filled Zhao Dingbang's face, and he kept his voice low.
Lin Yuan gave him an apologetic smile.
He had only just broken through. True Qi was still racing through his body, and he couldn't fully control it yet.
"I didn't let you down."
"I've reached the Peak Second-Order Stage."
As Lin Yuan's words sank in, the air in the command room seemed to freeze for a second.
Zhao Dingbang's pupils contracted.
He knew exactly what those words meant.
At the start of the Ferocious Beasts' outbreak, even the strongest Beast Kings had only been at the Peak Second-Order Stage.
Yet less than two hours after the Spiritual Energy Revival began, Dragon Country already had a top fighter who could match a Beast King.
"Good! Good! Good!"
Zhao Dingbang said it three times, his chest heaving with excitement.
With Lin Yuan as their trump card, the southwest would hold firm!
Just then, the command room door opened again.
Heavy, powerful footsteps followed.
Eight strapping men in black combat uniforms filed in.
Aside from Lin Yuan, they were the eight prodigies who had entered the path of martial arts before the Spiritual Energy Revival.
"Reporting, Commander!"
All eight snapped to attention and saluted in unison.
The energy radiating from them was far less restrained than Lin Yuan's.
A few had muscles so swollen that their combat uniforms looked ready to split.
It was a clear sign of how much their bodies had strengthened after breaking through the Skin Tempering Realm.
"How did it go?"
Zhao Dingbang turned and looked over the eight of them.
"Reporting!"
"I've reached the Peak First-Order Stage!"
The first to speak was the burly captain on the far left.
His name was Wang Lie, and he was the most talented of the eight.
The other seven then reported their progress.
"Late First-Order Stage!"
"Late First-Order Stage!"
Without exception, every one of them had reached the Late First-Order Stage.
Zhao Dingbang could no longer hold back his smile.
At the Late First-Order Stage or the peak, equipped with modern heavy infantry weapons, they could charge in and out of a beast horde at will.
They were a strike team of true superhuman fighters.
"All right."
"Stop standing around."
Zhao Dingbang waved a hand. He was about to assign the eight of them missions.
Bang!
The side door of the command room was shoved open.
An aide rushed in, drenched in sweat and clutching a military tablet.
"Commander!"
"We've got a major problem!"
"We can contain the mutated animals on the ground."
"But public opinion online is completely out of control!"
Without even stopping to catch his breath, the aide connected the tablet to the main screen.
The screen flickered.
The national map vanished, replaced by dozens of windows from different online platforms.
Weibo, Baidu Tieba, Douyin, Kuaishou...
Blazing red headlines rolled across the screen like a blizzard.
<Shocking! My poodle bit clean through our security door!>
<Magic City here. Red mist fell from the sky, and I feel strong as an ox!>
<Why are live rounds being fired during the official drills? Is this counterterrorism or a bioweapon crisis?>
Lin Yuan looked up, his gaze settling on one of the trending videos.
It had clearly been filmed in secret on a phone. The footage shook violently.
It showed a park in the heart of a city.
A stray dog the size of an adult wild boar was tearing into a park bench.
The steel bench crunched between its jaws like a biscuit.
The next second, more than a dozen heavily armed soldiers rushed into view.
Muzzle flashes flared.
Gunfire poured through the phone's microphone, loud enough to make ears ache.
The giant stray dog was riddled with bullets and collapsed into a pool of blood with a pained howl.
The video cut off there.
But beneath it, comments were appearing at a rate of thousands per second.
"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!"
"That's a dog? You call that a dog?"
"I was there! Its eyes were bloodred. Creepy as hell!"
"Don't go outside! It's got to be some new rabies virus that leaked!"
"Stop making stuff up. I've read enough novels to know this is definitely a Spiritual Energy Revival!"
"Another vote for Spiritual Energy Revival! I just did a Tai Chi routine, and I can feel something swirling in my belly!"
"..."
Speculation, panic, and excitement filled every corner of the internet.
Lin Yuan frowned slightly.
He shifted his gaze to another screen.
Every one of the top ten trending topics was about the strange events that morning.
At number one:
[In-Depth Analysis!]
[The truth behind the nationwide military drills: Are we surrounded by aliens?]
In the post, a user claiming to be a retired analyst was typing furiously.
"Guys, think through what happened today."
"At five this morning, there was this strange fragrance in the air that nobody could explain."
"Then every major influencer went silent, and the streets filled with armored vehicles."
"Know what's scariest?"
"How the authorities are treating the animals!"
"I saw it with my own eyes. Old Mr. Wang next door had a parrot that could do arithmetic. It suddenly grew to more than a meter long, and some people in black took it away!"
"But the mutt at Widow Li's place, the one that was always biting people? They shot it on the spot!"
"What does that tell us?"
"The authorities knew all along what was coming!"
"..."
The post had already passed thirty million likes, and the number was still climbing.
The replies ran the gamut.
"The more you think about it, the scarier it gets!"
"So ordinary people don't even have the right to know?"
"So the message is, obey and work like a beast of burden, or get wiped out?"
"Shut up, keyboard warrior. Can't you see the military is protecting civilians?"
"..."
Panic spread through the internet like a plague.
Plenty of people with overactive imaginations were celebrating online, too.
"Hahaha! A new age is here!"
"I'm going to become an immortal! I'm going to fly on a sword!"
"Anyone have a cultivation technique? I'll pay five hundred thousand for it!"
"Top dollar for a mutated pet! The fiercer, the better. I'm going to be a beast tamer!"
"..."
Those absurd remarks were especially jarring.
"Commander."
"Isn't the cybersecurity department stepping in?"
Lin Yuan turned toward Zhao Dingbang, whose brows were tightly drawn.
Given Dragon Country's usual way of doing things,
claims that could cause massive social unrest would normally be throttled or even banned at once.
But two hours had passed, and the story was only gaining traction.
Zhao Dingbang reached into his pocket and took out a pack of specially supplied cigarettes.
He slipped one between his lips but did not light it.
"We can't control it. We don't intend to, either."
"This upheaval affects the whole world—every person on Blue Star."
"You can silence people online, but can you cover the public's eyes?"
"Who hasn't seen the strange phenomena in the sky? Who hasn't noticed their neighbors' cats and dogs changing?"
"The higher-ups settled on an approach long ago."
"Better to let the truth out than try to hold it back."
"Covering it up would only cause greater panic and destroy public trust in the authorities."
Zhao Dingbang's voice carried both helplessness and resolve.
He flicked the tip of his unlit cigarette, his gaze turning distant.
Lin Yuan thought for a moment, then it dawned on him.
Of course.
The Spiritual Energy Revival was not a localized earthquake. It was a reshaping of the entire ecosystem.
Soon, Ferocious Beasts would roam freely, and all humanity would have to fight.
If they kept trying to hide it now,
their defenses would collapse the moment the Beast Tide truly erupted.
Before you continue