"Consume... nuclear waste?!"
The suffocating silence in the Pangu Hall was shattered by Director Yang's voice, uncharacteristically dry and strained. His hand, holding the red secure phone, froze mid-air. His usually fathomless eyes held a flicker of near-disbelief. Around him, the unflappable decision-makers of the nation wore expressions as if they'd collectively swallowed lead ingots – shock, skepticism, absurdity, and a primal fear of the utterly unknown warring on their faces.
Nuclear waste. The most dangerous fruit of humanity's technological pinnacle. A synonym for death and irrevocable pollution. High-level radioactive material capable of annihilating life in moments, rendering land barren for millennia. And now, this youth just bestowed the title of "Guoshi" (National Guardian), stated so casually that he intended to eat it?
"Advisor Chu," Zhao Qiming managed, his throat tight, voice strained, "This experiment... the risk assessment seems... extreme? The waste at Site 404 is weapons-grade plutonium decay products. The concentrations of Cesium-137 and Strontium-90..." He rattled off numbers, each one representing a level of radiation potent enough to cripple an army instantly.
"Extreme?" Chu Xuan cut him off, his voice chillingly calm, his gaze sweeping over the stunned faces. "Esteemed leaders, think of that Golden List! Think of 'Humanity: Unranked'! Think of the things crawling out of those rifts ten months from now! They will tear through human flesh like paper! Their young will shrug off our conventional weapons! Compared to the genocide they bring, mere nuclear radiation is nothing!"
He stabbed a finger towards the holographic sand table, still shimmering with the residual energy of the Golden List projection. "That was the Heavenly Dao's verdict on our entire species! The countdown to our execution made manifest! If we lack the courage to face the poisons of our own creation, if we dare not try to turn this 'venom' into strength, what right do we have to fight celestial predators who hunt planets, who see civilizations as livestock? What right do we have to grasp that sliver of hope to ascend the List?"
He spread his hands, palms open as if bearing an immense, invisible weight. "The Devouring Heaven Physique is the only path I know, the only way to rapidly accumulate power in this era of barren resources. It craves energy. It craves substances imbued with the 'Dao.' High-level nuclear waste – poison in your eyes – is, from the perspective of Heavenly Law, a crude, 'inferior celestial treasure'! Its violent energy decay accidentally condensed traces of 'Entropy' and 'Fission' Dao fragments! Devouring it is humanity declaring to this cruel cosmos: We are not mere prey! We possess fangs! We can consume, transform, and even master destruction! This is the first step! The most crucial step – baring humanity's fangs for survival!"
His words fell like cold iron hammers, shattering the last vestiges of hesitation. The final flicker of doubt vanished from Director Yang's eyes, replaced by desperate, unyielding resolve. He spoke into the phone, his voice ironclad, brooking no argument. "'Great Wall' Highest Directive: Initiate Site 404 Maximum Alert! All resources requested by 'Pangu' – Priority Alpha! Repeat, Priority Alpha! Operation Codename – 'Gluttony'!"
Site 404, the deep geological repository, lay buried under five hundred meters of granite in the desolate Northwest Gobi. Massive lead-zirconium alloy doors groaned open with the sound of ancient leviathans stirring. A wave of air washed out – stale dust, corroded metal, and an indescribable, soul-scorching aura of dry death.
Inside the brightly lit but oppressively gloomy tunnel, the air itself seemed thick and heavy. Soldiers clad in bulky lead suits, wearing full-face respirators and helmets, stood like statues of living steel along the corridor, wielding specialized anti-radiation pulse rifles. Their movements were precise, mechanical. Their gaze, sharp as hawks behind visors, instinctively avoided the massive, ultimate containment door at the end, emblazoned with the stark black trefoil symbol of radiation.
Beyond that door lay their destination – Core Storage Vault B-7.
Chu Xuan wore no protective gear. Only simple black fatigues. Against the colossal, brutalist architecture of the vault – all cold metal and thick concrete – he seemed frighteningly fragile. Before him sat a cylindrical container, over three meters wide and five meters tall, deeply embedded in a reinforced concrete pedestal. Layers of lead, tungsten, and boron-polyethylene composite formed its cold, smooth skin, reflecting the sterile white lights. Complex robotic arms and sealing mechanisms crowned its top, connected to thick pipes snaking deeper into geological processing systems. An oppressive silence reigned, broken only by the low hum of ventilation and the unnerving, sporadic click-click of Geiger counters.
The air crackled with an invisible, skin-prickling field – the ionizing aura of high-concentration radioactive particles. Even through multiple shielding layers, it could induce dizziness and nausea in minutes. Chu Xuan could feel it – a miniature, decaying sun imprisoned within the container, its chaotic, violent energy shackled, emitting a soul-chilling perfume of death.
Director Yang, Zhao Qiming, and a few core leaders stood behind thick leaded glass in the observation booth, encased in top-tier sealed suits. Their breath fogged their visors. Their eyes were locked onto Chu Xuan. Massive screens displayed split views: Chu Xuan's vital signs, vault-wide radiation monitoring, and neutron-imaged, blurry outlines of the container's contents – a viscous, tar-like slurry, humanity's nuclear nightmare condensed, churning like hellish magma.
"Radiation levels: Tunnel entrance, 300 millisieverts/hour... B-7 entrance, 5,000 millisieverts... Core Zone... God! Peak exceeding 100,000 millisieverts!" A technician's voice, thick with terror, crackled over the comms. That level meant minutes of exposure would cause irreversible, fatal cellular damage. DNA shredded by a particle storm.
"Advisor Chu, final confirmation! Once container opening sequence initiates, highly radioactive sludge and aerosols will saturate B-7 within three seconds! Are you absolutely certain you require no protection? Not even a basic energy barrier?" Zhao Qiming's voice, amplified, was heavy with gravity.
"Barriers interfere with devouring efficiency," Chu Xuan replied, unnervingly calm, almost expectant. He raised a hand, pressing it against the container's icy surface. "Begin."
"Authorization confirmed! B-7 Core Container – Opening sequence initiated! 10… 9…"
The cold electronic countdown echoed like a death knell in the silent vault. In the observation booth, every heart hammered against ribs. Director Yang's gloved hand clenched his sleeve.
"3… 2… 1… OPEN!"
HISSSSS—!
A sharp blast of pressurized gas cut the silence! The multi-layered mechanical seals atop the container spun, unlocked, and retracted like a complex metal flower! A plume of indescribable, sulfur-and-seared-metal stench erupted – thick, greyish-white vapor! Then, viscous, dark, asphalt-like radioactive sludge, driven by internal pressure, began to ooze, then flow, from the opening. Contact with the cold air instantly boiled off denser, deadlier aerosols!
WHUMP!!!
The air in B-7 seemed to ignite! An invisible radiation storm erupted! Monitors behind the leaded glass screamed as radiation readings rocketed off the charts! 200,000… 500,000… 1,000,000 millisieverts! Warning lights flashed crimson, sirens wailed a deafening shriek! Geiger counters chattered into a continuous, mind-numbing shriek!
Inside the observation booth, even shielded, the leaders felt intense nausea and dizziness. Radiation alarms within their suits blared frantic warnings!
And at the eye of the storm— Chu Xuan, stood less than three meters from the surging radioactive hell.
Billions of high-energy particles, like white-hot needles, pierced the air, slamming into his unprotected body! His skin screamed the moment it touched the high-concentration dust and aerosols— an agony like concentrated acid! Cells shrieked! DNA strands groaned under particle bombardment, threatening to snap!
[WARNING! Detected Ultra-High Intensity Mixed Radiation (α/β/γ/Neutron Flux)!]
[Dose: Equivalent Whole-Body Absorbed Dose > 1000 Gray/sec!]
[Physiological Damage Assessment: Epidermal Cells Mass Necrosis… DNA Double-Strand Break Rate >99%… Mitochondrial Function Collapse… Estimated Total Incapacitation in: 3 SECONDS! Death in: 5 SECONDS!]
[Passive Defense: Planetary Suppression Field (Damaged) Engaged! Radiation Particle Kinetic Energy Attenuated 90%! Energy Density Diluted 99.9%!]
[WARNING! Suppression Field Cannot Fully Block Dao-Level Entropic Erosion! Damage Ongoing! Origin Energy Shield (Minimal) Activated! Consumption Spiking!]
Agony, a tsunami of it, crashed over Chu Xuan's nerves! His vision whited out in a storm of particles. His skin flushed crimson, swelled visibly, began to crack like parched earth, oozing yellowish fluid! Inside was worse— organs felt gripped, twisted by invisible hands! Pain beyond human endurance!
"Guh—!" A choked cry escaped his clenched teeth. His body convulsed violently, threatening to collapse.
"Chu Xuan!" Zhao Qiming yelled, hand slamming the console, ready to order an emergency shutdown and rescue.
"HOLD!" Director Yang's voice was bedrock, pinning Zhao Qiming's hand. The old man's bloodshot eyes were locked on the monitor, his voice low, rasping. "Trust him! Trust 'Pangu'!"
At the precipice of annihilation, the core of Chu Xuan's shattered system, goaded by the raging death-energy and the edge of oblivion, roared like a cornered beast!
[CORE COMMAND: DEVOUR!]
[TARGET: Mixed Radioactive Waste (Containing Traces of 'Entropy' & 'Fission' Dao Fragments)!]
[MODE: Limit Break! Overload Engaged!]
[WARNING! Forced Operation Accelerates System Damage! Origin Energy Consumption Spikes! Petrification Curse Rebound Risk +300%!]
HUMMMMMMMM!!!
Chu Xuan's pupils vanished, consumed by an absolute, universe-swallowing blackness! The air around him imploded, forming a visible, two-meter-wide vortex of distorted space— a miniature black hole born of the Devouring Heaven Physique pushed to its absolute limit by the system!
Within the vortex, the particle storm met an invisible barrier. The lethal radiation was corralled, tamed, then violently sucked inward, a grey-white river of death-energy pouring into Chu Xuan's body! The oozing sludge itself seemed to dim, its surface "life" visibly weakening as its essence was ripped away!
[DEVOURING…]
[Energy Conversion: High-Energy Particle Flux → Chaotic Primordial Energy (99.99% Impurities)…]
[Dao Fragment Extraction: Detected 'Entropy' (F-Grade) x 3, 'Fission' (F--Grade) x 7… (Impure/Incomplete)…]
[Initial Purification… Energy Infusion…]
Pain— a thousand times, ten thousand times worse! Agony erupted inside him now. The raw, barely converted Chaotic Energy was like billions of red-hot scalpels shredding his meridians, veins, every cell! His body bloated like an overfilled balloon, veins bulging grotesquely under skin turning livid purple-black. He felt moments from exploding!
"Pfft—!" A torrent of dark red blood, flecked with tissue, erupted from his mouth, splattering the cold floor, instantly steaming in the high-radiation environment.
"System! REFINE IT!" Chu Xuan roared in the depths of his soul, his will a lone rock in a tsunami of agony! He poured every shred of his dwindling Origin Energy into the ravenous vortex!
[Origin Energy Injected! Dao Fragment Purification Accelerated!]
[Energy Guidance: Chaotic Energy → Devouring Heaven Origin Qi (Conversion Rate 0.1%)…]
[WARNING! Conversion Rate Critically Low! Energy Congestion! Meridian Damage: 15%… 25%…!]
Convert! He had to convert! Turn this destructive flood into fuel!
The black vortex spun faster, emitting a low, thunderous hum. Chu Xuan's body was the ultimate battleground. Externally, high-energy particles bombarded relentlessly, skin burning, blistering, cracking, healing microscopically only to rupture again in a horrific cycle. Internally, the raging Chaotic Energy warred against the trickle of Origin Qi the system desperately channeled. Meridians tore like paper, were obliterated, only to be crudely, agonizingly patched by the Devouring Heaven Physique's brutal theft of the waste's scant residual life-force.
Destruction and Creation. Entropy and Theft. The most primal, brutal laws of existence clashed within his young flesh.
Time lost meaning. Every second stretched into an eternity.
In the observation booth, silence reigned. Breath held. Heartbeats forgotten. Monitors showed Chu Xuan's vitals wild as a storm: heart rate over 200, blood pressure terrifyingly high, temperature soaring past 45°C! Radiation readings remained catastrophic, yet… the radiation field around his body was slowly, steadily diminishing! The sludge surging from the container was visibly losing its "vigor"!
"He… he's absorbing it!" a nuclear physicist gasped, voice trembling with disbelief. "Radiation levels… dropping! Slowly, but… he's eating it!"
"Vitals… still critical… but… not crashing!" The medical officer monitoring stammered, voice thick with awe.
Director Yang stared unblinkingly at the screen, at the figure trembling violently in the energy maelstrom, bleeding from eyes, nose, ears, yet standing like a spear driven into bedrock. His wrinkled hand clenched, knuckles white. He knew the hell Chu Xuan endured. This wasn't just proof of power; it was a trial by fire of will! Life snatched from the jaws of death!
Time crawled.
Ten minutes. The radioactive sludge stopped flowing. Its surface dulled, covered in a lifeless grey crust.
Twenty minutes. The terrifying black vortex around Chu Xuan shrank, dissipated. The horrific burns and cracks on his skin began to knit under a faint, sickly grey-black Qi flow. New skin formed, unnervingly pale and marred by tiny radioactive crystal inclusions, but it was healing.
Thirty minutes. The last wisp of high-energy particle flux vanished into Chu Xuan's body. Inside B-7, only residual radioactive dust and the container's inert grey ash remained. The suffocating radiation storm was gone. Geiger counters clicked sporadically, stabilizing at levels still lethal over time, but no longer instantly apocalyptic.
THUD!
Chu Xuan collapsed, one knee hitting the cold floor hard. He gasped for air, each ragged breath burning his damaged lungs, thick with blood and radioactive grit. Unprecedented weakness washed over him, a hollowed-out shell feeling. His meridians screamed like sandpapered nerves. The petrification curse mark on his left forearm, previously reaching his wrist, had deepened to a more ominous grey, and a worrying numbness crept in— the price of overloading his power.
[Devouring Complete…]
[Yield: Mixed Radioactive Waste (approx. 1.2 tons)…]
[Energy Acquired: Chaotic Primordial Energy (Violent)… Conversion Rate: 0.15%… Obtained Devouring Heaven Qi: Trace Amounts…]
[Dao Fragments Acquired: 'Entropy' (F-Grade) x 3… 'Fission' (F--Grade) x 7… (Impure/Incomplete)…]
[Origin Energy Consumed: 0.002% → 0.0008%…]
[WARNING! Petrification Curse Rebound Deepened! Left Arm Petrification Zone Vitality Reduced, Sensation Diminished! Estimated Full Petrification Time Reduced by 10%!]
[System Integrity Slightly Degraded… Core Rune 'Gluttony' Exhibits Micro-Fractures…]
"Hah… hah…" Chu Xuan forced his head up, bloodshot eyes, pupils still unnaturally dark, finding the observation booth. He tried to smile, a grimace more than anything. It worked. The conversion was pitiful, the cost immense, but he'd done it. He'd turned humanity's technological poison into a sliver of power. He'd proven the Devouring Heaven Physique could work here, now.
Then, the anomaly struck!
HUMMM!
An intangible wave pulsed out from Chu Xuan! Not a physical shock, but a subtle disturbance in the very fabric of reality!
The radioactive dust particles hanging in the air, previously inert, suddenly reacted. As if summoned by an unseen command, they surged towards the spot where Chu Xuan knelt!
Hiss… Crunch…
Tiny, rapid crystallization sounds filled the space! To the utter astonishment of everyone watching, on the cold floor half a meter before Chu Xuan, the deadly, shimmering dust motes – glowing with cold blues, sickly greens, and bone-whites – began to collide, merge, and grow!
They didn't pile randomly. Guided by the faint, chaotic echoes of the 'Entropy' and 'Fission' Dao fragments Chu Xuan had forcibly extracted and integrated, they arranged themselves along invisible, profound trajectories, locking together, building upon each other.
In mere seconds!
A crystal, roughly the size of a fingernail, lay on the ground.
It was irregular, multi-faceted, its color a deep, murky grey, like solidified death itself. Within its core, countless hair-thin filaments of different radioactive hues flowed like frozen auroras, tangling, warring, annihilating each other. Its surface wasn't smooth but etched with countless, impossibly intricate patterns – the natural, chaotic signatures of atomic decay, forming a shifting, fragmented, incomplete symbol. This was the raw, unstable imprint of the forcibly merged 'Entropy' and 'Fission' Dao fragments made manifest in the physical world – a Dao Mark Fragment!
An aura of profound "stillness" and "sundering," far more potent than mere radiation, emanated from the tiny crystal. The air around it warped faintly; light seemed dimmer passing near it. Geiger counters gave sharp, alarmed clicks.
[Unique Construct Synthesized!]
[Designation: ??? (Unnamed)]
[Type: Dao Mark Fragment Crystal (Artificial/Natural Hybrid)]
[Properties: High Radioactivity (Decaying) / Contains Traces of 'Entropy' & 'Fission' Dao Marks (F-Grade)]
[Status: Highly Unstable (Internal Dao Conflict) / Requires Origin Energy to Analyze / Potential Special Material or One-Time Dao Attack Vector (High Risk)]
"A Dao Mark Fragment!" The nuclear physicist in the observation booth slammed his hands against the leaded glass, eyes bulging, voice shrill with transcendent shock. "Heavens! He… he didn't just absorb it! He created! He forged the deadly dust… into a substance embodying cosmic law?! This… this defies physics! No! This is new physics!"
"The materialization… of the Dao…" Director Yang murmured, eyes blazing with a light more intense than any before. He understood better than the scientist. This was power. A weapon. A key to higher realms. Chu Xuan's strategic value skyrocketed in that moment.
But Chu Xuan had no time to savor the shock or the potential. Before the implications could settle, the system interface flared crimson in his vision! A new, sharper alarm screamed in his mind!
[WARNING! WARNING! Detected Ultra-Strong Spatial Dao Disturbance!]
[Source Coordinates: 90°00'00.0" S, 0°00'00.0" E (South Pole)!]
[Disturbance Intensity: Planetary! Matches Beijing Spatial Ripple Source! Correlation: 99.999%!]
[Energy Signature Analysis: High Match! Confirmed as 'Spatial Beacon' (Star-Sea Celestial Realm Standard)!]
[WARNING! Beacon Energy Signature 10x Stronger Than Beijing Coordinate! Activity Rising!]
[Projection: Larger, More Complete 'Spatial Beacon' Buried Under Antarctic Ice! Activation Will Cause Larger Spatial Weak Points! Accelerate Temporary Dungeon & Spatial Rift Formation!]
[Critical Alert: Faint 'Frost Prison Clan' Energy Signature Detected at Coordinates! (Predator Race of Mortal Realm, akin to Wolfkin & Lizardmen)! Threat Level: HIGH!]
South Pole! Ten times the intensity! Frost Prison Clan!
Chu Xuan's heart plummeted like a stone! He snapped his head up, looking through the leaded glass at Director Yang and Zhao Qiming, his voice raw with exhaustion and urgency. "Director Yang! The South Pole! Immediate! Highest-level monitoring! Beneath the ice… a bigger 'Anchor'! And… Frost Prison Clan! They might… find a way through sooner than the Wolfkin or Lizardmen!"
Simultaneously, the system's final warning scrolled across his vision, cold and inexorable:
[WARNING! Host Body Overloaded!]
[Petrification Curse Rebound Accelerated! Left Arm Petrification Spread Rate Increased! Current Sensation Loss: 15%!]
[Projected Full Petrification Time: Revised to 8 Months 12 Days!]