North America. Nevada.
The third basement level of a classified military base.
The gray-white conference room had no windows. Three screens hung on the front wall.
The largest screen in the middle was frozen on a high-definition screenshot...
A black-haired girl, bare-handed, pinned a fully armed bald man in the mud.
The girl looked less than twenty years old.
The two smaller screens beside it looped different angles of the same video. Fast-forward, slow motion, frame-by-frame analysis.
Lieutenant General Morrison sat at the center of the long table, chewing gum and staring at the screen for a full three minutes.
"These are the soldiers we spent a fortune training?"
Colonel Hayes, seated to his left, pushed a tablet forward.
"These are only the soldiers who succeeded in the initial phase. They were injected with an ultrahigh-concentration Flame Spirit Stone solution. Their muscle density, bone strength, and reaction speed are five to eight times those of ordinary people. They are the closest known combat units to the concept of 'super soldiers.'"
"Closest known." Morrison repeated the words. "And then what? They couldn't even last a minute against a bunch of college girls in their early twenties?"
No one in the conference room answered.
In the corner, Dr. Williams adjusted his glasses and brought up another set of files.
"General, these girls aren't ordinary people. According to our intelligence, they are disciples of an unaffiliated cultivator in Huaxia."
The screen changed.
An edited video began to play—the footage was rough, clearly scraped from a Huaxia social media platform.
A young man stood in an underground river, holding down a massive Flood Dragon with one hand as it churned the waters.
"This video leaked five months ago. At the time, our internal assessment was..."
Williams turned a page of the report.
"A CGI