"Lin Yuan."
Su Qingxue spoke two words.
The entire command room was deathly quiet.
"This Lin Yuan, did he reach the Peak Seventh-Tier Stage in the future?"
"Or did he reach the Eighth-Tier Stage that humanity had never attained?"
Nie Dingguo's eyes were filled with anticipation.
If that was true, they could not afford to miss him.
"Neither."
"When Lin Yuan died."
"He was only at the Peak Second-Order Stage."
Su Qingxue shook her head.
As her words fell.
The air in the command room instantly froze.
Several senior staff officers exchanged looks.
Nie Dingguo's brows furrowed deeply.
"Are you joking?"
"The people you just reported all started at the Sixth-Tier Stage, and several were Seventh-Tier War Gods."
"And now, in all seriousness, you want me to find a Peak Second-Order Stage martial artist?"
Nie Dingguo suppressed the displeasure in his heart.
It was like selecting astronauts for a lunar mission, with every previous candidate being a top pilot.
Then, for the final candidate, someone recommended a tractor driver.
Was this not absurd?!
"Commander."
"Please hear me out."
Su Qingxue met Nie Dingguo's gaze without yielding an inch.
"His name is Lin Yuan. He is from Shu Capital."
"His parents are alive, and his family runs a convenience store."
"He has a younger sister, four years his junior, named Lin Xiaoxiao. She is eighteen this year and preparing for her college entrance exams."
"Lin Yuan is twenty-two this year and has just graduated from vocational college."
"His current job... is food delivery rider."
Several coughs rang out in the command room.
A food delivery rider?
A Second-Tier Martial Artist?
This was the person she claimed was more important than a Seventh-Tier War God?
Ignoring everyone else's reactions, Su Qingxue continued.
"In the second year of the Spiritual Energy Revival."
"To improve the survival rate of the general population, the nation publicly released the most basic Breathing Method."
"Lin Yuan did not enlist, nor did he have enough money to buy expensive mutant beast meat to replenish his vital energy and blood."
"Every day after finishing his deliveries, he cultivated the kind of basic Cultivation Technique that was everywhere in his rented room."
At this point.
Su Qingxue's tone gradually turned solemn.
"In the fifth year of the Spiritual Energy Revival."
"Shu Capital suffered an unprecedented massive Beast Tide."
"Millions of mutant Ferocious Beasts broke through the outer defensive lines."
"At that time, the strongest martial artists the military had cultivated by pouring in every resource had only just reached the Peak Second-Order Stage."
"But no one had expected."
"Lin Yuan, a nobody with no background, no resources, and only the Basic Breathing Technique."
"He had also reached the Peak Second-Order Stage."
The moment those words were spoken.
Nie Dingguo, who had still found this absurd, suddenly contracted his pupils.
The staff officers beside him also sucked in sharp breaths.
They were not fools.
The military's elites enjoyed the best Cultivation Techniques, the most ample nutritional rations, and the most professional guidance.
In five years, they had reached the Peak Second-Order Stage.
Yet a poor kid who delivered food all day.
Relying on a common Cultivation Technique and practicing whenever he found the time, had somehow reached the same level?
What kind of terrifying comprehension did that require?
But that was not enough.
Su Qingxue's next words completely detonated the command room.
"On the day the Beast Tide breached the city."
"Official martial artists fought bitterly on the front lines while civilians evacuated urgently from the rear."
"A fatal gap appeared in the defenses on Shudu Second Ring Road."
"Large numbers of Ferocious Beasts flooded into the civilian evacuation route."
"Lin Yuan was there."
Su Qingxue closed her eyes, as though she were once again seeing that tragic scene from her previous life.
"He did not run."
"With a battered combat saber in hand, he stood at the entrance to the evacuation route."
"In that battle."
"Lin Yuan faced hundreds of Second-Tier Ferocious Beasts."
"And... three Third-Tier Ferocious Beasts!"
Nie Dingguo slammed his hand onto the table and shot to his feet.
"Impossible!"
"You personally told me a few days ago."
"Ferocious Beasts of the same tier have bodies far stronger than humans, and it takes three martial artists of the same tier to deal with one Ferocious Beast of that tier."
"Fighting above one's tier is even more absurd!"
"He was at the Peak Second-Order Stage, facing three Third-Tier Ferocious Beasts and hundreds of Second-Tier ones?"
"This completely defies the martial arts logic you described!"
Everyone thought Su Qingxue was making up a story.
A Second-Tier fighter against Third-Tier opponents?
And one against three?
How could that be possible?!
Su Qingxue opened her eyes, which were already rimmed with red.
"Yes."
"Everyone thought it was impossible."
"But Lin Yuan did it."
Su Qingxue's voice trembled slightly.
"By himself, he held the passageway for a full three hours."
"He personally hacked all three Third-Tier Ferocious Beasts to death beneath his blade!"
"The corpses of hundreds of Second-Tier Ferocious Beasts filled the entire street."
"He covered the safe retreat of more than a hundred thousand civilians."
The entire command room fell silent.
Only heavy breathing echoed through it.
"What happened in the end?"
Nie Dingguo's voice was hoarse as both hands pressed tightly against the tabletop.
"In the end..."
Su Qingxue gave a desolate smile.
"He ran out of strength."
"Eighty percent of the bones in his body were shattered, and he bled dry."
"He was... swallowed by the Beast Tide that surged in afterward."
"Not even a complete corpse was left behind."
Silence.
A deathly silence.
Even though they had not personally experienced that battle and had only heard Su Qingxue's account.
A tragic image still surfaced in the minds of the hardened soldiers present.
A food delivery rider in a yellow vest.
Holding a chipped combat saber.
Fighting without retreat amid torrential rain and an endless Beast Tide, like a War God.
Trading his own life for a path of survival for more than a hundred thousand people.
"The future Federal Martial Arts Research Institute once conducted an extremely detailed sandbox simulation."
"The subject of their simulation was Lin Yuan."
"The experts reached an utterly insane conclusion."
"If Lin Yuan had not died in that Beast Tide."
"If the military had discovered him from the very beginning and he had been given top-tier Cultivation Techniques and unlimited resource rations."
"With his terrifying combat talent and martial arts aptitude that defied all reason."
"He was highly likely to become the first martial artist in human history to break through to the Eighth-Tier Stage."
"As long as he grew strong."
"The world-ending catastrophe eighty years later might be ended by him alone."
"Humanity could completely defeat the Ferocious Beasts."
Su Qingxue steadied her emotions.
She stared straight at Nie Dingguo and spoke each word with deliberate clarity.
Bang!
Nie Dingguo drove his fist into the table.
The impact even splashed water from the teacup.
"Good!"
"What a Lin Yuan!"
An incredibly fierce light burst from Nie Dingguo's eyes.
Those Seventh-Tier War Gods from earlier were certainly formidable.
But all of them had grown step by step within a conventional system.
As for Lin Yuan.
He was a monster who completely shattered every rule of common sense!
Most crucially.
Lin Yuan's character.
At such a life-or-death moment.
An ordinary civilian with no official status had been willing to die on the battlefield to protect evacuees he did not even know.
No background.
An intense love for this land and its people.
Combat talent that could only be called monstrous.
A person like that was precisely the super seed the military dreamed of finding!
This was a true pillar of the nation!
There was no need to cultivate any sense of duty toward nation and family in him; the word protect was already carved into his bones!
"Adjutant!"
Nie Dingguo suddenly turned, his voice ringing like a great bell.
"Present!"
A senior colonel immediately stood at attention.
"Set aside the search for all other candidates for now!"
"Activate the First-Level Combat Readiness Communications Network and immediately contact the Shudu Military Subdistrict."
"Have Shu Capital mobilize every resource and turn the entire city upside down."
"Within three hours."
"You will safely bring this food delivery rider, Lin Yuan, to the military base!"
"Yes!"
"Commander!"
The colonel, drenched in sweat, immediately ran to the encrypted communications station.
The entire command center of the Northwest Military Region erupted because of an delivery rider's name.
Seeing this scene.
Su Qingxue let out a long breath.
Lin Yuan.
In your previous life, you had been as brief and brilliant as a meteor.
In this life.
Dragon Country's military would devote the strength of the entire nation to paving a path to the heavens for you.
Could you change humanity's fate?
Before you continue