Inside the Long Nation's Underground Joint Command Center, the serene blue holographic projections had been completely swallowed by a searing red light. Accompanied by the rapid, heavy throb of alarms, the temperature of the entire space seemed to plummet several degrees.
"Report, Chief! A Class-S energy disturbance has appeared at the coordinates of the Ribi Mountain Range on our southwest border!" The radar operator's voice cut through the silence like a jagged blade.
"Speak," the Chief ordered, standing at the command dais, his silhouette as steady as a mountain.
"Monitoring shows an extreme and abnormal wind speed reaction in the Ribi slope area. Instantaneous wind speeds surged from 0 to 280 kilometres per hour within three seconds, with the wind force penetrating deep into the Earth's core in a bizarre spiral. More strangely..." The operator swallowed hard, his fingers flying across the keys. "An atmospheric vacuum fault has appeared in the area. Satellite imagery shows... the air there is being 'physically sucked dry.' It is becoming a subterranean 'alveolus,' contracting violently!"
The Chief's fingers, which had been tapping the command railing, froze. The sounds of sharp gasps and clicking keyboards rose and fell in symphony.
Beside him, Dean Hao Xue approached quickly, the sound of his leather shoes on the alloy floor sounding exceptionally hurried. He lowered his voice, his tone a mix of complexity and helplessness: "Chief, this disturbance... could it be 'Zhizhi' again? Counting this morning, this is already the second time today. Is he... not tired?"
"I do not know," the Chief spoke slowly, his voice deep as rolling thunder after a moment of thought. "But if it is him, it proves he has been fulfilling that... 'deal' with us."
Dean Hao Xue nodded, his eyes weaving together awe and lament. "True. He reached an agreement with us: we provide the nation's top biological laboratories and premier talents to develop the 'Loong Saliva Diluent' to save his grandmother; in exchange, he acts as a 'fast blade' across our territory."
He paused, his tone turning murderous. "A blade to excise those 'pests' lurking in the deep underground—places where even the sunlight of the law cannot reach. Those bases of betrayal, selling forbidden drugs and conducting inhuman experiments... our people cannot get in, but he... he can turn those places into dead zones. Furthermore—"
The Chief's hand sliced through the air in a cold arc, like an iron gate, cutting off Dean Hao Xue's next words.
"Enough."
The Chief's voice was whisper-light, yet it carried an unquestionable weight. He turned, the faint glow of the holographic map reflecting on his weathered face, his deep-set eyes hiding a decisiveness few could match.
In this room representing the supreme will of the nation, certain deals could only exist at opposite ends of the Karmic Pool. It must never be put to paper, nor leave a single syllable of record in any monitoring device. They provide the "Medicine," and he provides the "Cleaner" services.
Seeing the Dean fall silent, the Chief lowered his eyelids to hide a trace of exhaustion. He switched to an oppressed yet urgent tone: "Go to the Data Analysis Group immediately. I want you to personally check if the 'probability of physical logic collapse' within our borders has decreased further following this Ribi disturbance."
Hao Xue's heart jolted. He nodded solemnly and hurried toward the Supreme Secrecy Room established by the Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, deep within the Ribi Mountain Range.
The midday sun felt powerless in this primitive forest, let alone against the reinforced concrete fortifications buried a hundred meters deep. Inside the corridors of this secret underground base, the solid stone walls were groaning. Leaves, debris, and even dropped bulletproof helmets were surging frantically in a high-speed rotating vortex. Wind, here, was no longer a gift of nature, but a killing blade descended from a deity.
The alarm was rapid—a short, sharp "Woo—Woo—" sound carrying an undeniable sense of urgency that made everyone's scalp tighten.
Ziss—Ziss—!
Inside the long corridor, blinding red emergency lights rotated frantically on the ceiling, painting everything like a pool of blood. The air was filled with a tooth-aching high-frequency howl—the boom of vacuum wind blades exceeding two hundred kilometers per hour, rubbing and cutting through metal in the narrow space.
Fengxi walked expressionlessly in the center of the corridor. With every step he took, the wind pressure behind him strengthened. Those pebbles forcibly sucked into the vortex achieved kinetic energy comparable to a Gauss electromagnetic cannon under the extreme acceleration.
Bang! Bang! Bang!...
They struck the alloy walls of the base, emitting a dense, continuous staccato of penetrative impacts—like the strafing of a heavy machine gun.
"Fire! Fire!"
Dozens of elite death-commandos, encased in high-strength composite metal exoskeletons, burst through the doors. However, the armor they took such pride in was as brittle as sodden paper before those transparent wind blades.
Psh! Crack!
The sound of shearing metal and shattering bone harmonised within the hall. Wherever the wind swept, bodies were blown apart, and the hydraulic lines of the exoskeletons sprayed blinding mists of engine oil and blood.
Eerily, no matter how much blood and flesh flew through the air, every spray of gore was forcibly repelled by a high-speed centrifugal current the moment it drew within three feet of Fengxi. She was like a porcelain doll walking through a crimson hell, remaining impeccably clean, without even a stray hair out of place.
"Help... Help me!"
Lin Xiaotian huddled behind a command capsule made of bulletproof tempered glass, his fingers contorted by terror as he frantically pounded the red emergency escape button. But the power system had long since had all its "energy logic" drained by Fengxi; the button remained unresponsive.
Fengxi walked toward him slowly. She did not run; her footsteps were silent as they touched the floor, yet every stride fell in perfect rhythm with the pounding of Lin Xiaotian's heart.
"Sato's memories tell me that you once stood here and personally dissected the throats of one hundred and sixty-two kittens."
Fengxi stood before the thirty-centimeter-thick tempered glass, the ghostly green light in her right eye suddenly deepening. Those were the foulest, most manic fragments of Sato's mind, now serving as the precise coordinates for her sentencing.
"You recorded every frequency of their vocal waves in their despair. You believed... that was the 'sound of evolution'."
Fengxi extended a slender finger, lightly tapping the glass surface that was capable of withstanding a direct hit from a rocket.
Crack.
A dense web of cracks radiated instantly from her fingertip. Lin Xiaotian discovered with despair that a blood-like, dark-red spiritual light was seeping through those fractures.
"No... do not kill me! I did it for humanity! I did it to ensure the future of the entire race! We were researching genes to combat the gods!" Lin Xiaotian wailed, the stench of urine spreading from beneath his expensive protective suit.
"For humanity?" Fengxi tilted her head, her long hair falling over her shoulder, her expression holding an eerie, childlike innocence. "But The Great One said that when the 'height' of a race needs to be built upon the bones of all living things, that race... needs to be pruned."
She gave a light flick of her finger.
BANG—!
The entire wall of tempered glass pulverized instantly. Pulverized along with it were Lin Xiaotian's sleeves, trouser legs, shoes, and socks. The strong wind precisely stripped him of all cover without harming an inch of his flesh.
Fengxi made a phantom grasping motion with her hand.
On the experimental table, the scalpel Lin Xiaotian used most frequently—the one that had sliced through countless throats—flew up, humming in the wind. The scalpel rotated at high speed within the airflow, becoming a silver ring that precisely locked Lin Xiaotian's finger joints. Should he tremble even slightly, the price would be the physical separation of his limbs.
"AAAAAGH—!" Lin Xiaotian emitted the highest-decibel wail he had ever recorded.
"Do not scream. The wind will help you record every syllable as a... requiem for every wronged soul here."
Fengxi turned away, no longer looking at the old man trembling in the wind. She opened her arms, and every alloy cage in the base shattered at that moment. Those broken, incomplete creatures that had survived the experiments rose slowly into the air, carried by a gentle breeze.
Fengxi led them toward the exit, toward the sun-drenched new world.
"Sato owes you; I shall repay. What you have endured, I shall make them... pay back twofold."
Fengxi's voice was as cold as ice, yet it resonated through the narrow corridors of the base. Ignoring Lin Xiaotian's face, which had turned purple from suffocation, she walked straight to the central control core.
Before completely severing all energy logic, her slender fingers reached into her coat and pulled out a strawberry cookie with slightly crumbled edges. Without hesitation, she popped it into her mouth, the crunching sound echoing. The ordinary flavor spread across her tongue like a thick sweet barrier, temporarily suppressing the bloody, greedy, and disgusting memories of "Sato."
At that moment, the voice she yearned for rang in the depths of her mind.
"Zhizhi, take these cookies with thee... thou must return safely! Mama will... make strawberry cookies every day and wait for thy return."
In that instant, Tian Shuangxin's stifled sobs were forcibly cut off in Fengxi's mind by a sense of sacred mission. Her gaze sharpened, and gold light flared in her eyes.
"The Great One, the first site of filth has been purged."
The underground base, designed to withstand a nuclear strike, didn't explode—it imploded. Under Fengxi's spatial contraction, it was crushed into a solid iron mass barely a tenth of its original size. Every drop of stolen data and every echo of Lin Xiaotian's silenced pleas were buried forever in the depths of the Karmic Pool.
On the summit of the Ribi Mountains, the gale died down into a gentle breeze. Fengxi stood overlooking the horizon, her Golden Pupil tracing the blood-red threads of karma that still pulsed across the world.
Turning to the rescued, broken animals behind her, she offered them a choice through the wind: "If you wish, you can become human. You only need to exchange bodies with them," she said, pointing to the floating, silent human scum she held in her wind-lock.
A maimed Sika deer shivered, its voice a fragile sob: "I don't want to... they are too terrifying. Cold blood flows in those bodies... I don't want to change." It was the ultimate expression of fear toward human "civilization."
Fengxi's gaze softened. "The Great One never forces a choice. Even if you become human, their filthy memories will not remain. It would be a fresh start."
Leaving the animals to decide, she turned to the empty air. "Lord Golden Loong."
The sky grew heavy as the Golden Loong manifested within the mist. "Deliver these... 'raw materials' to Lord Wealth Devourer," she requested. With a sweep of its tail, the dragon opened a void, spiriting the captives away.
"Where is the next site?" Fengxi murmured to herself. Without waiting for an answer, she leapt from the peak, dissolving into a clear breeze that smelled faintly of strawberries.
In the Long Nation's command center, the red dot representing the base flickered once before turning into a permanent gray cross. The Chief stared at the screen, a long trail of cigarette ash falling onto his hand, unnoticed.
"The wind has risen," he whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying realization. "In this world... there is no longer a single veil left to hide the shame of man."