Seated once more upon the obsidian throne, The Great Beast God raised Her fair paw, silencing the rising turbulence among the Divine Beasts and gesturing for them to look into the water mirrors.
While the rest of the Blue Planet engaged in manic revelry, the Special Level-4 Underground Base in the northern region of the Long Nation was silent save for the scratching of text logs and the meticulously held breath of the personnel. No one dared breathe heavily, fearing a single vibration might disrupt the micro-manipulations of the high-precision instruments.
This was a specialized research facility buried two hundred meters beneath the earth, its reinforced concrete shell lined with half-meter-thick lead screening and anti-radiation steel plating. The air was thick with the chemical bite of liquid nitrogen and medical disinfectant. Under the cold glare of shadowless surgical lamps, every scientist clad in a hazmat suit resembled a bloodless, phantom silhouette.
Chief Scientist Andy gripped the stainless steel safety railing, his knuckles turned a sickly, transparent white from the sheer intensity of his grip. Three layers of bulletproof tempered glass stood between him and an automated mechanical arm executing pre-programmed code.
A titanium-alloy extraction needle dipped into a cryogenic capsule labeled "Loong Liquid-003," slowly drawing out 3 milligrams of a shimmering, pale gold fluid—the final concentrate salvaged from the initial dilution of the Loong Saliva.
Upon a specialized culture dish lay a dynamic tissue sample of advanced, metastasized malignant carcinoma recently excised from a death-row convict. Under the electronic microscope, the deep purple-black malignant tumor cells resembled a swarm of frantically writhing parasites, devouring the surrounding healthy tissue with terrifying cellular velocity. This was the raw, destructive logic governing mortal flesh.
Beep.
The exact millisecond the golden fluid dropped.
There was no physical explosion, nor any spectacular optical flare.
0.4 seconds.
The cancer cells, which had been multiplying like wild weeds, froze instantly. Immediately following this cessation, their internal molecular architecture underwent a structural execution undocumented in any textbook of oncology—all cellular nuclei were violently reset within a ten-thousandth of a second, and their cell walls turned a hard, vibrant green.
They were not dead. But they were no longer cancer cells; they were no longer even animal cells. They had been forcefully rewritten into plant chloroplasts. Before the stunned eyes of the scientists, the malignant mass transformed into a pure, living clump of moss, continuously producing oxygen and organic matter.
"This is not medicine," Andy's voice was as raspy as if it had been ground against coarse sandpaper. He turned his head toward the silent military representatives behind him, his eyes completely void of the ecstasy of medical triumph, holding only a marrow-deep dread. "This is not healing a disease. This is a forced executive command code overriding material reality. It is as if a deletion sequence was entered into a computer terminal; it simply erased the very concept of cancer from this organic form."
Biology, medicine, and evolutionary theory were rendered as useless as scrap paper before this 3-milligram vial.
"But it is highly unstable," Andy pulled open a lab drawer, retrieving a blood-stained ledger containing raw, unvarnished data. "Yesterday, we administered 1 milligram of the undiluted primary Loong Saliva to an experimental baboon. The exact millisecond the substance made contact, the creature's skeletal density multiplied four hundredfold. However, its cardiopulmonary system could not withstand such high-dimensional physical rewriting. Within a thousandth of a second, its heart reverted into a solid block of dense muscle tissue. The baboon did not bleed; it became a living, biological statue."
The Golden Loong had spoken the absolute truth. The saliva of the sacred loong, if consumed by a mortal frame, was nothing less than an unexploded ordnance.
"Continue the dilution," the lead military representative replied, his face colder than the lead-shielded walls as his hand rested flat on the grip of his electromagnetic sidearm. "The directive from the High Command is absolute: even if we must dilute it to one-billionth of its potency, the first stable batch of stabilizing agent must be synthesized before next week. The other nations are already mobilizing. We have no time left."
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Across the ocean, New York City, Bald Eagle Nation (B.E.N.).
The subterranean vaults of JPMorgan Chase had been retrofitted into a secret, blood-scented processing hub driven by capital and raw greed. William, a third-generation scion of the Rockefeller syndicate, sloshed the remaining drops of champagne in his glass, several stubborn smudges of grease staining his bespoke suit.
Before him, the gargantuan Golden Ingot dropped from the sky during the final karmic transfers loomed like a small mountain. The surface of the gold still leaked a faint, flickering shroud of dark-red light—the protection charm left behind by the Goddess before the divine retreat, and the most irritating security lock in the eyes of these financial barons.
"The President says the deities have left the court. The high-dimensional entities are gone, which means their legacy belongs to the distribution of capital," William sneered, spitting out his cigar butt and gesturing toward the golden monolith. "Cut it open."
A dozen ultra-high-pressure waterjet cutters, rushed overnight from the industrial hubs of the Ruhr Valley, erupted in a synchronized, deafening scream. These waterjets could cleanly slice through a half-meter of aircraft carrier armor. Yet the exact microsecond the high-velocity streams struck the perimeter of the red light, physical laws flipped, and the water currents deflected harmlessly away.
Pshhh!
The deflected waterjets acted like a barrage of grim reaper scythes, clean-slicing two white workers who failed to evade them. Internal organs and blood erupted onto the marble floor, saturating the vault with a sickening, metallic stench.
"Incompetent fools! Switch to the industrial lasers! Bring in the diamond-tipped drills!" William barked, striding coldly over the corpses without blinking. In his logic, as long as this high-dimensional gold could be dismantled and laundered, the casualty count of lower-class labor was merely a disposable line item on a financial ledger.
A 10,000-watt industrial laser was pushed forward, its stark white beam focusing directly onto the perimeter of the gold ingot's base. As the localized temperature skyrocketed, the dark-red protective aura on the ingot finally began to ripple violently like boiling water.
"It's working! It's softening!" the chief scientific consultant screamed in ecstasy.
However, his triumph was short-lived. The exact microsecond the diamond drill forcefully pried a loose piece of gold—less than two centimeters in diameter—from the monolith, the iron law of mass-energy conservation delivered a devastating blow to mortal arrogance.
There was no explosion, nor any radiation. But the moment the fragment was severed, the molecular binding force within its structure suffered an avalanche-level collapse.
BOOM!
A low, muffled vibration echoed. The severed piece did not yield normal gold; it pulverized into a heap of worthless grey dust. Worse still, tracking the destruction of the gold, an invisible annihilation force raced back through the shaft of the drill. Within 0.1 seconds, the multi-million-dollar industrial laser and the four senior engineers operating it turned to dust, their bodies effortlessly erased like pencil marks, leaving behind nothing but piles of calcified bone ash.
"Gravity fluctuation, sir! We are losing mass!" the monitor operator wailed.
The champagne glass in William's hand shattered onto the floor. He watched in horror as the loss of that single gold fragment caused a two-meter-thick steel structural beam in the vault's ceiling to soften like a sponge, raining down massive chunks of concrete.
The assets left behind by the Goddess could be taken, but if conventional physical force was used to violate them, the surrounding system would forcefully retract its spatial stability patches. Slice off a piece of its flesh, and it would claim the life of an entire city block. This was the true face of human science when forced to confront a divine backlash.
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High within the Divine Realm, Fengxi kept her gaze fixed on the Beast God. She heard the deity speak: "Golden Loong."
When the Divine Beasts had initially retreated to the heavens, The Great Beast God had transmitted an oracle into the consciousness of every soul-swapped creature: "Shouldst thou find thyself unable to adapt, thou mayest depart with Me." Although she had hesitated for a long time, she had chosen to accept the transformation.
The Golden Loong flew before the Beast God, its massive face contorted in an intense frown, its claws clutching the air and its tail thrashing with restless irritation. She watched as The Great One stood and placed Her fair paw flat against its snout, soothing its agitation. Once the loong's thoughts stabilized, She issued Her decree: "Take Fengxi and return to the Blue Planet."
Before the loong could respond, Fengxi, who had been resting in a light slumber, snapped her eyes open and cried out in pure disbelief: "The Great Goddess, what has Fengxi done wrong? Why are You casting me out?"
The Goddess turned toward Fengxi. Enveloped in an ethereal radiance, Her true silhouette remained hidden, let alone Her expression, but Her voice flowed smoothly: "Thy kin is about to awaken."
That level, unfluctuating cadence shattered Fengxi's resolve to stay. The Beast God saw straight through her heart: "Go. Leave no regrets."
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Inside the Special Intensive Care Ward of the Long Nation's City First Hospital, the atmospheric pressure was low. Only the setting sun cast its sickly, rust-red light across the white bedsheets.
Fengxi stood quietly before the bed, her oversized trench coat hanging loose around her small frame. Within her heterochromatic eyes, twin micro-vortexes pulled and tore violently under the sheer weight of her suppressed emotion. Locked inside her coat pocket was the Horn of Calamity broken from the Nightmare Beast. The shard was bone-chillingly cold, radiating a sharp, camphor-like bitterness. Whenever the foul memories of Sato—the dissections, the gas chambers—attempted to surge forward to consume her mind, this horn would release a freezing current, locking and shattering the visions.
Upon the bed, Tian Shuangxin's mother—the elderly woman who had been comatose from a lifetime of medical suffering—lay with a ruddy, healthy complexion. Her life-support monitor emitted a rhythmic, mechanical beep, beep.
"Hast thou truly decided?"
In the corner of the room, the colossal, ancient silhouette of the Golden Loong emerged slowly from the shadows, its maw breathing out rolling waves of white mist that circled the ward.
Because the Divine Beasts had all retreated into the Divine Realm, the Golden Loong could only condense a singular clone. Its frame appeared somewhat translucent, yet that high-dimensional pressure still forced the glass windows to vibrate in a faint resonance.
The exact microsecond the spiritual space screens high in the vault of heaven turned entirely black, the retracted high-dimensional gravitational constants crashed back down to the ground, plunging the entire world into a deathly stillness amidst the tremors.
Yet inside this very ward, a highly eerie and warm tranquility emerged.
The core metrics on the bedside monitor—which had been emitting a monotonous, mechanical flatline tone—were now jumping madly toward the healthy green zone at a velocity that defied all common biological knowledge.
Upon the bed, Tian Shuangxin's grandmother lay peacefully. Her physical frame, originally shriveled and failing from prolonged suffering, now glowed with a faint, warm flush. This was the Loong Saliva Diluent taking effect. The premier scientists of the Long Nation had flawlessly executed Fengxi's prior directive. That specific batch of the sacred loong's saliva, diluted to the safest ratio, had long since been injected into the elderly woman's veins. It did not explode violently like the substances in the B.E.N. experiments; instead, it acted like a gentle titan, moving with micro-precision through her bones and blood, safely repairing the necrotic cells and parched vessels piece by piece.
More importantly, high in the heavens, at the absolute center of the [Gratitude List] in Qinghong's Live Room E, a persistent shroud of warm orange radiance still remained. Those lights slowly condensed, transforming into a pristine Orange Orb that hovered directly before the mother's face. This was a "Wish" personally stamped by the Goddess. A divine wish, fortified by the loong saliva—the dual buffs seamlessly welded the elderly woman's life force.
Beep—
A crisp notification tone sounded.
The elderly woman's eyelids, which had been tightly shut for several weeks, suddenly opened with absolute ease. There were no painful convulsions, nor any frantic gasps of a drowning soul. Under the synchronized protection of human technology and the Beast God, her gaze was exceptionally clear, and a mortal's healthy focus re-condensed within her once-clouded pupils.
Outside the room, the nurse was screaming in pure terror; the sudden shift in the gravitational constant had caused medicine vials in the corridor to shatter all over the floor. Yet the old woman ignored the external chaos entirely. She simply turned her head slowly but forcefully upon the soft pillow, piercing her gaze straight through the empty window.
Outside, the wind was roaring fiercely; the order of the old world was being consumed by capital and raw greed. But there was no fear in the elderly woman's eyes. Staring into the ink-black night sky, her lips—which had fully regained their healthy color—moved slightly, uttering a name so small, yet etched into her very marrow: "Zhizhi..."
The voice was exceptionally light, yet it carried an absolute intuition that transcended species and crossed all karma. She needed no one to explain the shell before her eyes. She only knew that the little creature who used to wag its tail frantically over a single bite of a strawberry cookie had forcefully snatched her back from the hands of Death.