Inside the Long Nation Underground Joint Command Center, the lead-grey blast-proof alloy walls hung cold and heavy, thoroughly isolating all fatal tremors and storms from the outside world.
In the central seat, the Chief's fingers slowly tightened over the mahogany desk, his terrifying grip crushing a deep indentation directly into the hardened wood.
There was not a shred of pointless, dramatic sentimentality on his face.
Upon that granite-hard countenance, carved by countless historical conflicts, sat nothing but the absolute calm and lethal gravity of an iron-blooded general.
Snap.
The Chief slammed his pen onto the desk. Amidst the sharp crack, the pure titanium alloy cap split wide open. He lifted his sharp, hawk-like eyes, sweeping them across the grim faces of the high-ranking generals around him. His tone was blunt and completely devoid of warmth:
"Those B.E.N. capitalists are still dreaming. They think this is still the old era. They think they can still use their filthy black-market liquidations and illegal live-specimen experiments to play games with Long Nation. Their audacity to come and plunder the so-called 'Patient Zero Gene' is an attempt to dig up Long Nation's providence. They are trying to sever our roots."
The elder Chief stood up abruptly, his voice dropping like rolling thunder: "Pass down my absolute order: activate the Loong Shadow Sequence. From this moment on, a five-kilometer radius around the First Hospital is designated an Absolute Dead Zone. Any aircraft, drone, mechanical unit, or biological mutant carrying a foreign registry that steps a single fraction past the red line—no warning, no survivors, execute a saturated and total obliteration on the spot!"
"Yes, Sir!"
Dozens of high-ranking military officers inside the headquarters snapped into a salute in unison. Combat boots slammed heavily against the alloy floor, sending a uniform, iron roar echoing through the hall.
The order of the old world had shattered completely the moment the Goddess withdrew. Yet, at this precise instant, the massive state machine of Long Nation welded shut the most unyielding worldly defense for Fengxi in the simplest, most violent manner possible.
Meanwhile, on the top floor of the First Hospital building, in the dark corners of the shadows.
The elite B.E.N. operative leader, codenamed "Black Panther", was currently frozen solid on the spot like a cracked plaster sculpture.
Atop the lenses of his high-precision infrared binoculars, a layer of white frost had gathered due to the sudden drop in air temperature.
Yet, the images burned into his emerald-green pupils acted like branding irons, searing directly through his central nervous system.
There was no thunder of divine punishment. Not a single drop of blood managed to splatter onto the black-vested young girl, who looked as pure and pristine as a porcelain doll.
"Leviathan" had clearly deployed their absolute best non-electronic hydraulic heavy crossbows for this operation, and the suicide squad wore specialized composite metal exoskeletons built to withstand heavy machine-gun fire at point-blank range.
Yet, in front of that completely illogical, centripetal vacuum wind-blade, the five-centimeter-thick alloy armor proved as fragile as soaked tissue paper, torn to shreds across the entire perimeter in an instant.
Splat!
The massive internal-external pressure differential caused by the absolute vacuum forced the eyes and lungs of those elite operatives to rupture and vaporize outward in a ten-thousandth of a second.
No screams escaped the building; there was only the dull, muffled sound of flesh, blood, and engine oil being violently minced and vaporized within the vacuum.
"This is absolutely not a biological mutation... this is Divine Power! This is a miracle!" Black Panther's teeth chattered violently, letting out a clicking noise.
In near despair, he attempted to hurl the orange chemical signal flare in his hand.
Yet, within the domain of absolute vacuum, not a single oxygen molecule existed to provide the friction required for ignition.
The streak of orange fluorescence, representing his final distress signal, caught a faint spark under the firing pin, but without an atmospheric medium to allow for refraction and combustion, it instantly died into a ball of pitch-black fire in mid-air.
Following that, the wreckage slumped into the muddy water, ground into nothingness by the raging wind-blades.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Blue Planet.
Inside the B.E.N. Underground Level 7 Strategic Command Center, the air circulation system emitted a dull, low drone.
Floating above the military master control hall were three high-precision holographic projections radiating a faint blue light—the conglomerate directors who controlled 70% of B.E.N.'s military-industrial complex.
They were currently ten thousand miles away in their private island manors, swirling iced champagne, real-time monitoring the tactical data from the First Hospital via an ultra-secret frequency.
Several conglomerate executives dressed in custom suits, their chests adorned with medals, swirled crystal glasses filled to the brim with top-tier champagne.
The massive, circular master control screen had, until a second ago, been transmitting tactical data from the perimeter of the First Hospital in real-time.
"The 'Leviathan' task force is the sharpest tooth B.E.N. possesses. As long as we secure that 'Sato' Patient Zero genetic asset, our conglomerate will dictate the high-dimensional evolution sequence. When that time comes, whatever Beast God or Karma they talk about will just be raw materials waiting to be sliced up in our laboratories."
Sipping his champagne on the leather sofa, the middle-aged director let out a complacent, cold sneer. Down in the hall, analysts frantically hammered away at their keyboards, coordinating with the hacking teams to launch a fresh wave of penetration into Long Nation's core networks. To them, this was just another routine, cross-border "high-value asset recovery" operation.
However, in the mere ten-thousandth of a second before that director could even set his glass down—
BEEP—!!!
On the master control screen, the dozen-odd green life-monitoring dots representing the "Leviathan" operative squad went completely dark at the exact same instant. They did not fade one by one; they were severed cleanly at the root, as if reaped by an invisible scythe of death. Before the alarms could even squeeze out a single syllable, the global radar map, which had just been flickering with endless high-tech telemetry data, instantly turned into a sheet of deathly silent, stark white.
"What's going on? A signal flicker? Or did Long Nation deploy electromagnetic jamming?" The clamor in the hall died instantly. The director bolted upright, his crystal glass rattling sharply in his violently trembling hand.
"No... Sir. It's not jamming." The chief analyst in charge of monitoring turned as pale as a corpse's skin. He pounded frantically on the console, but the system only fed back a cold, lifeless busy tone. "The 'Leviathan' squad... their physical signals have completely vanished. Their heart rates, core temperatures, and the pressure feedback from their exoskeletons hit zero within a ten-thousandth of a second. It's as if that piece of space over there was forcibly gouged out."
The white foam of the champagne was still sizzling against the carpet, but the control hall had already plunged into a dead silence, cold as an ice cellar.
Outside Long Nation's First Hospital, the torrential rain continued to pelt down, striking the hard asphalt and kicking up a thick, metallic scent of rust. Fengxi remained quietly suspended in the center of the square.
The vacuum vortex, which had been whipping at two hundred kilometers per hour, slowly settled under her control. The air that had been sucked dry began to rush back with a wild, roaring howl, causing her oversized black trench coat to flutter violently. At her feet lay a dozen-odd crushed, deformed chunks of iron—the only remaining traces of the "Leviathan" elites left in this world. Those specialized composite metal exoskeletons, built to withstand heavy machine guns, now resembled stomped aluminum cans, embedded deeply in the mud.
Not a single drop of filthy water, nor a single smear of engine oil, could breach the absolute domain extending three feet around her body. Upon Fengxi's porcelain-doll face, the indifference was terrifyingly absolute.
She slowly lowered her eyelids. In her left eye's golden pupil, the light belonging to the fires of judgment gradually receded, sharpening into a vertical slit. Meanwhile, within the phantom-green abyss of her right eye, there was now reflected a completely different thread of karma—a dark red and gold line pulsing with a blood-like glow, rising from the deepest depths of the earth.
This was the ability newly granted to her by the Golden Loong: the Eye of Origin.
She tilted her head slightly, as if catching a distant wail carried on the wind. The source of that red-gold line did not lie within Long Nation boundaries; it stretched straight across the vast ocean, pinning itself directly to B.E.N.'s Level 7 strategic command center buried deep underground.
"So... the truly fun place is over there."
The corners of Fengxi's mouth curled once more into that incredibly sweet, yet bone-chilling mechanical smile. Sato's memories swirled frantically in her mind—every single ledger of the B.E.N. conglomerates performing inhuman genetic experiments, caging, and even vivisecting sentient animals was laid bare. Those dark archives of the old era had now become her clearest navigating stars.
"Since you want 'Patient Zero' so badly..." she murmured softly, her voice instantly swallowed by the storm. "Then Fengxi will deliver it to you in person."
She did not look back toward the intensive care ward. Through the messages carried by the wind, she knew that from the moment Long Nation activated the Loong Shadow Sequence and cordoned off the five-kilometer absolute dead zone, Mother Tian and Tian Shuangxin had been granted the most unyielding secular shield on this soil. Long Nation had fulfilled its promise of "medicine" and "asylum."
Now, it was time for her—the cleaner's swift blade—to sever the next source of filth.
"Wind, rise."
Fengxi's toes tapped lightly against the empty air.
Without generating a single sonic boom, her body dissolved into a trace of near-invisible gale under the terrified stares of ten thousand mortals, soldiers, and police officers. In an instant, she tore through the ink-black storm clouds, charging straight into the deepest layer of the firmament, racing at absolute speed toward the coordinates on the other side of the ocean.
Meanwhile, on the radar screens of the Long Nation Supreme Joint Command, that faint, azure afterimage representing a "First-Grade Pillar of the State" was crossing the national border at a velocity completely defying modern physical constants, slicing its way toward the West.
The elder Chief sat back down in his chair, tracking that unstoppable azure light. He slowly exhaled a heavy breath of turbid air. "The shuffling of the deck... has begun. Inform the front lines to prepare for the acquisition of global vacuum-period assets once B.E.N. completely paralyzes."