February 18, 2026. 1:15 AM. Northern Thailand, the primeval jungle leading to the Golden Triangle.
Black.
This was the kind of blackness that could suck a man's soul right out of his body. There was zero poetry to a night in the tropical rainforest—only a suffocating, sweltering heat and a stench of decay so thick it felt like it could drip water. Every inch of the air was saturated with the sour rot of dead leaves, animal corpses, and unknown fungi.
"Huff... huff... I can't... Sasa, I really can't take another step..."
Zhengnan (Steven) collapsed heavily at the base of a massive buttress-root tree, like a wild dog with a broken spine. He gasped for air, his lungs wheezing like a ruptured bellows. His hands—hands that were meant for delicately manicuring buds in a greenhouse and picking off pests with tweezers—were now covered in bloody gashes from thorns and razor grass, his fingernails caked with black mud and slimy insect eggs.
He was just an ordinary Malaysian-Chinese guy! A few hours ago, his biggest worries were whether the greenhouse exhaust fan was going to break, if he should brush more honey on the evening BBQ, and what time that Pattaya influencer in the string bikini was going to stream on his phone.
But now? Covered in blood and mud, he was crawling through the deep jungle like a rat in a sewer. The muscles in his thighs had cramped countless times during these five hours of high-intensity, off-road trekking. If his wife, Sasa, hadn't been gripping his belt for dear life the entire way, he would have rolled off a cliff and become a midnight snack for the wild boars.
The glass jar wrapped in black velvet clutched in his arms felt like a red-hot branding iron, pressing heavily against his chest and digging painfully into his ribs.
"Shh! Shut up! Do you want to die?!"
Sasa lunged forward, using a mud-caked hand to violently clamp over Zhengnan's mouth. The sheer, unbreakable resilience of this Thai woman was on full display. She shed no tears; her wild eyes pierced the darkness with the sheer ferocity of a mother beast protecting her cub. "Steven, do you want to draw down those monsters from the sky? Think about how Ah Ming and the others died back at the estate! Get up!"
Hearing Ah Ming's name, Zhengnan shuddered violently, an uncontrollable surge of stomach acid rising in his throat. The horrific image of Ah Ming being injected with that glowing green liquid by the P-Pharma thugs—his body rapidly shrinking and liquefying like sludge—was seared into his cerebral cortex, impossible to erase.
"Get up. Don't lie there like a bitch."
Uncle Fa's voice drifted from the darkness a few meters ahead, maintaining that exact same flat, icy, emotionless tone. This retired old man, who usually wandered the alleys in a white tank top and flip-flops carrying a birdcage, was navigating this man-eating jungle as if he were strolling through a park. He held the AKM assault rifle he had brought from the cellar—its blueing completely worn away—moving with the silent, lethal grace of an aging black panther. Even his breathing hadn't broken rhythm.
"Uncle Fa... five minutes... just give me five fucking minutes..."
Snoop Dogg was leaning against the trunk of another tree. His eyes, usually carrying a hazy, relaxed smile, were now entirely shot through with terrifying, blood-red veins. His tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Thai gold-silk bathrobe had been shredded into rags by poisonous thorns along the way, hanging over his Kevlar vest in a look that was both comical and bleak. Of his four tower-like Black bodyguards, only two remained. One had a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his thigh; the other was gritting his teeth, gripping a submachine gun, and vigilantly scanning the surrounding darkness.
"Under P-Pharma's 'Sky-Eye Grid', stopping means waiting to die."
Uncle Fa didn't turn around. He slowly tilted his head back, staring through the gaps in the dense canopy at a night sky devoid of stars. "Did you really think escaping the Chiang Mai estate made you safe? Too naive. Right now, every low-orbit communications satellite up there is scanning this mountain with military-grade infrared spectroscopy and synthetic-aperture radar. Dr. B isn't just hunting Zhengnan; he's hunting the 'Purebloods' in these mountains. In their eyes, we are all glowing targets."
"Pure... Purebloods?" Zhengnan swallowed hard, his voice shaking violently.
"The poor, the homeless, or the minority tribes hiding deep in the mountains who refused to be injected with the fourth mRNA shot containing Graphene Oxide, who refused to hand over their biometric data."
Snoop gritted his teeth and spat a mouthful of bloody saliva, hitting the dead leaves hard. His eyes burned with a deep loathing and horror. "In L.A., in the wealthy districts of New York, the mainstream media calls these people 'walking plagues' and 'anti-science rioters'. But in the eyes of Dr. B and the cannibal executives on that Epstein List, these people are... the absolute highest-grade, premium blood bags, completely unpolluted by synthetic hormones."
"Blood bags?" Sasa froze, her grip tightening on her small rubber-tapping machete, a chill running down her spine.
"You have no fucking idea what that List actually represents!" Snoop suddenly growled, losing control, his emotions teetering on the edge of a breakdown. "You thought it was just a diary recording who went to a private island to screw little girls? Wrong! That is a 'Life-Extension Menu' for a cult of perverted elites!"
Snoop agonizedly grabbed his own dreadlocks. "Those politicians, tech giants, and financial predators—they live a life of debauchery. Their bodies have long been hollowed out by drugs, excess, and genetic defects. They require the purest, youngest blood, entirely untouched by industrial pollution, to flush their organs. They need Adrenochrome! And the blood of ordinary, vaccinated people is completely useless to them—it's full of graphene nanobots and spike proteins! So, they have no choice but to come to lawless zones like this and hunt 'Purebloods' like game!"
Uncle Fa didn't stop Snoop's venting. He merely pushed aside a massive, icy banana leaf in front of them and pointed down into a bottomless valley.
"Listening to him talk won't do it justice. Zhengnan, crawl over here and look down. Look at what your so-called 'legal, civilized' world really looks like once the mask is ripped off."
Fighting through the tearing agony in his thigh muscles, Zhengnan practically rolled and crawled to the edge of the cliff. Lying flat on the mossy rock, he poked his head out, peering into the bottom of the valley by the pale moonlight and the faint, sweeping glow of distant searchlights.
With just one look, Zhengnan felt his soul being siphoned out of his body.
It was a scene that made his scalp go numb, making him genuinely wonder if he had plummeted straight into the deepest pits of Hell.
The bottom of the valley should have been a secluded, peaceful Karen minority village in Northern Thailand. Those primitive stilt bamboo houses and terraced fields were once the picturesque subjects of travel magazines.
But now, it had been transformed into a massive, high-tech, open-air slaughterhouse.
Four massive, unmarked black tiltrotor aircraft—resembling V-22 Ospreys—hovered silently fifty meters above the village like gigantic scavenging vultures. From their bellies shot down blinding searchlights with an eerie blue halo. Like the eyes of the grim reaper, they locked dead onto the villagers sprinting frantically through the mud and ruins.
This was not a war. This was a one-sided, highly efficient, assembly-line-style legal hunt.
Throughout the entire process, there was barely the sound of gunfire. The soldiers wearing full P-Pharma black biochemical tactical gear—or rather, the "Biological Asset Recovery Agents"—weren't holding lethal weapons at all. They were wielding heavy net guns that shot crackling blue arcs of electricity, alongside high-pressure pneumatic tranquilizer rifles fitted with thick, long needles.
"Mama! Mama! Help!"
Zhengnan watched helplessly as a Karen girl, about seven or eight years old and wearing coarse homespun clothes, tripped at the edge of a muddy terrace. She cried out, her tender voice infinitely magnified in the silent valley, slicing into Zhengnan's heart like a dull knife.
The little girl scrambled backward in sheer terror, staring up at the black shadow in the sky.
A small ornithopter drone, resembling a mechanical hawk, emitted a nerve-grating buzz as it abruptly dive-bombed. The mechanical claws at the bottom of the drone pierced the little girl's the back of her neck with terrifying precision.
*Zzt—*
A faint flash of electricity. The little girl violently convulsed like an electrocuted frog for a split second, then went entirely limp in the mud, motionless save for a faint, unconscious breathing.
Immediately, a biochemical soldier in a full-face gas mask marched over with mechanical steps. Devoid of any pity, he expertly pulled a black electronic collar bearing a barcode from his waist. With a sharp *click*, he clamped it tightly around the little girl's slender neck. A red indicator light blinked to life, beginning a real-time transmission of her vital signs.
Then, lifting her by one arm like a cheap sack of rice, the soldier tossed the little girl into the back of a tracked all-terrain vehicle. Painted starkly in white letters on the side of the transport was the chilling phrase: **"High-Purity Live Extract Sample - Do Not Freeze"**.
"What are they doing?! That's a child! That's a living, breathing kid!"
Zhengnan clamped his hands over his mouth, tears and snot streaming uncontrollably down his face. He might be a coward, he might be terrified of death, but he was a human being with flesh and blood! This spectacle, which violated the most fundamental ethics of humanity, instantly shattered his psychological defenses.
"They are harvesting."
Snoop closed his eyes, unable to watch anymore, his voice as raspy as sandpaper. "The more terrified the children are, under extreme shock, the higher the concentration of Adrenochrome in their blood, and the purer the quality. That little girl won't die right away; that would be a waste. She'll be flown directly to Dr. B's 'Secret Farms' in Geneva or some underground bunker."
Snoop paused, seemingly forcing himself to swallow back his own nausea. "They will lock her in a transparent dungeon without a single shred of light. Every day, they'll blast horrific audio to manufacture ultimate terror, keeping her in a perpetual state of near-death panic. Then, they hook up the tubes... draining her blood drop by drop to supply the ancient, undying elites on the List. They will bleed her until her bone marrow is dry, until she is utterly wrung out."
Zhengnan's internal organs churned violently. He felt as if his heart was being crushed in a vice.
"What... what about the adults?" Sasa pointed to the other side, trembling.
Over there, dozens of adult Karen villagers had been trapped under crackling blue electric nets. The biochemical soldiers walked up and roughly plunged syringes filled with glowing green liquid straight into their necks.
After the injection, these villagers didn't liquefy like Ah Ming at the estate. Instead, they fell into a deep coma, their muscles going as slack as noodles. They were then tossed, stacked layer by layer like blocks of wood, into the back of massive refrigerated semi-trucks.
"Those adults have lived deep in the mountains all their lives. They've never eaten the 'synthetic soy protein' laced with suppressive hormones produced by Dr. B's factories, and they've never taken the vaccine. Their muscle tissue and internal organs are the purest."
Uncle Fa's eyes were colder than absolute zero. Gritting his teeth, he enunciated every word: "Those young, healthy organs will be harvested overnight, packed in ice coolers, and sold to the ultra-rich in Europe and America in exchange for astronomical sums of Bitcoin. And the remaining, worthless flesh and bone..."
Uncle Fa turned his head, looking at Zhengnan, a flash of cruel clarity in his eyes. "They will be shipped straight to underground meat-mincing plants in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. After enzymatic digestion, bleaching, and the addition of massive amounts of synthetic flavors and artificial coloring, they will become the cheap, supposedly eco-friendly **'Plant-Based Artificial Meat Burgers'** sitting in your supermarket freezer next week."
"Blergh—"
Zhengnan couldn't hold it back anymore. Even though his stomach was entirely empty, he leaned over the cliff and dry-heaved violently. He felt as if his very soul was vomiting along with him.
He finally understood.
He finally understood why the world was suddenly so fanatically promoting "eco-friendliness" and "zero carbon emissions"; why Dr. B wanted to completely abolish the livestock industry; why the Global Health Agency was forcing everyone to take a fourth vaccine shot that could lock their bank accounts with such brutal tyranny.
This was a long-premeditated Great Purge!
A racial cleansing designed to strip all of humanity of its reproductive capabilities, freedom of thought, and right to survive! Those high-and-mighty elites had used the vaccine to place an invisible electronic dog leash on billions of people, turning them into obedient batteries. And the "Purebloods" who refused the needle, like the Karen people, were biologically downgraded into legally hunted wild animals, blood bags, and cheap protein raw materials!
And that Epstein List, whispered about so fiercely on the dark web, wasn't a scandal at all—it was a VIP roster for an elite cannibal club!
"Seen enough?"
Uncle Fa grabbed Zhengnan by the collar and yanked him forcefully back from the cliff's edge. The old man's grip was terrifyingly strong, slamming Zhengnan squarely against the rough bark of a tree.
"This is reality, you Malaysian farmer!" Uncle Fa roared in a hushed, furious voice, spit flying onto Zhengnan's face. "In this world, if you haven't taken that shot, you are not considered 'Human'. You are merely a **'Wild Biological Asset'**! If you don't want your wife drained of her blood, and you don't want to be ground into burger meat, you better pull yourself together right now!"
Uncle Fa pointed directly at the black velvet bag Zhengnan was clutching for dear life.
"That jar of weed you grew contains special terpenes capable of dissolving their vaccine nanobots. It is the key to unlocking the chains in your brain, and it is the only antidote capable of breaking the game for all of humanity right now. Marcus will deploy an entire army to destroy it if he has to!"
Uncle Fa shoved Zhengnan aside and turned around, racking the bolt of his AKM with a sharp, metallic *clack*.
"Move. We hike over this ridge, cross the border river, and we enter the Golden Triangle. That is a place where not even Dr. B's dogs dare to bark. If we want to survive, we have to find a way to live inside Hell itself."
Zhengnan stared blankly at the jar in his arms.
A few hours ago, this was just a jar of premium cannabis meant to earn him some US dollars to build a house back home.
Now, this plant, smelling of citrus and pine, had become the absolute last spark of rebellion in a castrated, devoured, and desperate world.
Zhengnan wiped the mud and tears from his face. Though his legs were still trembling, he hugged the jar fiercely, gritted his teeth, and followed Uncle Fa's footsteps.
In this hunting ground with no blind spots, a few prey who had narrowly escaped the net were marching, step by step, into an even darker abyss.