Female.
The reinforced concrete building’s door was forcibly blasted and torn open. Zhou Ming slipped in sideways, quickly surveyed his surroundings, and found a path to rush inside.
In the corridor, alarm lights flashed red. Guards in uniforms lay scattered on the ground, unconscious.
Zhou Ming placed his fingers under their noses to check for breath. They were still alive.
“Could these guards have deliberately held back, or did the intruders not want to escalate things?”
Despite his doubts, Zhou Ming tiptoed over the fallen guards, relying on his environmental perception ability to anticipate what lay ahead at the corner.
Though worried, he couldn’t help but gripe internally.
‘Thank goodness this is reality. If this were a novel, the author would definitely be criticized to death!’
‘What kind of story keeps suppressing the protagonist over and over, with him constantly getting the short end of the stick? Shouldn’t there be a few newbie protection periods for me to practice on first, before dragging me into a huge conspiracy?’
‘I’ve only been around for a few days!’
‘Even a workhorse donkey gets rest. Where’s my break time?’
‘Aren’t I tired? Isn’t the reader tired? You’re the only one comfortable, right?’
Holding to the principle that “the reader is God,” Zhou Ming unceremoniously vented his dissatisfaction with his predicament.
Even as his mind churned with complaints, his perception of the environment never slackened. He remained on high alert.
Quick footsteps came from the corner ahead. Zhou Ming quickly lay down, grabbed a fallen guard beside him, and pulled the body over himself, pretending to be one of them.
Haha.
The footsteps grew closer. Zhou Ming’s heart was in his throat. He had no idea if this trick he’d learned from movies would work.
“Keep searching! Look for any leftover information!”
The leading enforcer directed the surrounding Order members to scatter and search for useful intel. They soon passed by Zhou Ming.
Only when the footsteps faded did Zhou Ming let out a sigh of relief. He gently pushed the guard off his body and moved forward cautiously.
He needed to figure out who these people were and what their goal was, as well as plan for what came next.
From the fragments of conversation with Gadelia and An Kang, and the fact that all the Tu Family guards were armed, Zhou Ming believed the Earth Clan would eventually track him down.
To avoid dragging Gadelia and Jiang Jialie into trouble, Zhou Ming had to give them a satisfactory explanation.
He had never craved power so much before.
When the various monsters had come after him, Gadelia had offered solutions. Raising his strength wasn’t necessary—it was just an optional path if he wanted to personally take down the beasts.
Gadelia could also handle the aftermath for him.
But the Earth Clan—the local power that ruled both sides of the law in Yu City, one of the two great mountains—Zhou Ming didn’t think Gadelia could protect him from them.
A powerful dragon cannot suppress a local snake. Gadelia’s family was far away in Wu San Ka Jia; it would be difficult for them to deal with matters in Yu City.
And then there was Jiang Jialie—just an innocent girl who didn’t know anything, not even an ability user. There was no way he could let her get involved.
Suddenly, Zhou Ming recalled that after he eliminated a monster, he seemed to gain a new special ability. He quickly checked if he had obtained a new power.
His body fused with the surrounding environment. Zhou Ming was surprised to find himself invisible.
No, it should be called optical camouflage.
‘This ability couldn’t be more fitting!’
Marveling inwardly, Zhou Ming was about to leave when he sensed someone approaching from behind. He quickly pressed himself against the wall and stayed still.
A member of the Order kicked a fallen guard and spat heavily on the ground.
“Tch, I should have just gone straight in instead of pretending to blend in. Don’t screw this up, or the enforcer will chew me out.”
Grumbling, the Order member walked away with a sour face.
The Order.
Hearing that, Zhou Ming now understood who these people were.
“Are they looking for something?”
Zhou Ming moved stealthily, planning to observe the Order members’ movements and figure out the purpose of their mission.
Following that Order member, Zhou Ming arrived at a room piled with many documents.
The tech-filled equipment had aged under the erosion of time. From the mottled metallic luster, one could still vaguely glimpse its former glory.
After rummaging for a while, the Order member cursed under his breath and turned to leave.
Once he confirmed the man was gone, Zhou Ming quickly closed the door.
His hand had already healed, and he’d even squeezed out the wooden splinter. Zhou Ming was amazed at his own self-healing ability.
‘Could my ability have an effect where the more I’m injured, the faster I heal?’
He lowered his head to look at the documents.
“The Third Ember Calamity?”
He didn’t recognize the term, so he quickly pulled the file to read.
“Ember Calamity: A designation for major disasters and above. So named because the calamity is so vast that it nearly incinerates everything in the affected area.”
“Manifestations of an Ember Calamity include but are not limited to: natural fires, societal collapse, mental contamination, scientific breakdown, spatiotemporal topological anomalies, and the loosening or reversal of causality.”
“Powerful monsters can actively or passively cause an Ember Calamity. Based on multiple verified sources, the Third Ember Calamity was likely triggered by an extraterrestrial monster. Its manifestations: mental contamination and societal collapse. It severely damaged human civilization, leading to the fall of numerous nations, the loss of nearly eighty percent of the population, and nearly a century of war and chaos.”
Zhou Ming took out his phone, switched it to silent mode, and started photographing the documents as he read.
Although it was not a good behavior, Zhou Ming couldn’t care less now.
The Earth Clan and the Order were both no good. He’d take some photos as evidence to hand over to the government later.
“Mental contamination and societal collapse, and that’s not counting the hundreds of years of turmoil and deaths that followed. The Fourth Ember Calamity probably wiped out seventy to eighty percent of the population too.”
Zhou Ming thought about the casualty numbers from the Third Calamity.
“So the Fourth Ember Calamity happened about 4,500 years ago!”
“The Third was around 10,000 years ago, with a gap of about 5,500 years.”
“Thinking about it that way, the Order destroying the monsters on the spot really was to protect humanity.”
Still, Zhou Ming wouldn’t feel any goodwill toward the Order because of that.
No matter how good their ideals sounded, it didn’t whitewash the evils they committed.
He continued flipping through. The content was mostly investigations and speculations about knowledge lost during the Ember Calamities, with no other information.
Zhou Ming also learned that this building was a relic from about 7,000 years ago, and the Earth Clan was trying to find lost knowledge inside it.
“If there’s a Third Ember Calamity, why not talk about the first two? And the descriptions of the Third and Fourth are incomplete.”
Having glimpsed part of history, Zhou Ming was clearly not satisfied with just that.
He urgently wanted to know more specific details.
He took as many photos as possible, then turned invisible again and walked out.
It seemed the Order members had all retreated. Zhou Ming didn’t encounter any of them on his way out of the building, about ten meters from the rear exit.
The back door was completely destroyed, revealing the dirt underneath.
Tu Xin and Jian Shuoshi had fought their way elsewhere—he had no idea where they’d gone. An Kang and the Tu Family guards were nowhere to be seen. Zhou Ming’s heart sank, and he couldn’t help but shiver.
His mask had been taken off. If those people weren’t dead, they would definitely come looking for him.
If they were all dead…
He shook his head and slapped himself hard, his palm turning red.
‘What are you thinking?!‘
‘Other people’s lives are still lives!’
Retracing his steps, Zhou Ming didn’t see An Kang’s car at the foot of the mountain.
That thought crept back into his mind. Zhou Ming pursed his lips, hailed a taxi, and headed back to Yu City.
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