68: Chapter 68 Good news: China has laid its cards on the table; Bad news: Nobody dares to believe it!

The emergency closed-door meeting of the Security Council commenced nineteen hours after the incident.

Representatives from fifteen nations sat around an oval table, their embedded desktop screens displaying three sets of data in synchronization.

No one touched the mineral water in front of them; no one flipped through their folders.

The large screen switched to the first set: the time window during which electromagnetic signals in the War Zone vanished.

For a full forty-seven minutes, all electronic devices within a thirty-kilometer radius failed simultaneously.

Satellite signals were interrupted, communication links dropped to zero, and even military encrypted channels were nothing but static.

The second set: the overlap between the thermal imaging blank zone and the activity range of the Chinese inspection team—97.3%.

The third set: video footage of the testimonies from surviving soldiers in the War Zone.

In the footage, a young soldier with his face covered in bandages repeated the same sentence in the local language.

"The sky split open. Monsters fell out. A person wearing silver armor stood in front of us. Then, a person standing on fire burned the monsters."

The video paused.

The conference room was deathly silent for a full eight seconds.

The French representative was the first to speak, their voice kept very low.

"Psychological warfare weapons? Some kind of new hallucinogenic gas?"

The British representative sneered, tapping their finger on the "97.3%" figure on the desktop screen.

"Over a hundred soldiers and refugees from different factions having the exact same hallucination simultaneously? What kind of hallucinogen can achieve synchronization across factions, languages, and distances?"

No one replied.

The intelligence analyst stepped up to the stage.

He was in his early forties, wearing a grey suit, his gaze behind his lenses cold and precise.

"Three puzzle pieces."

He pressed the remote.

"First, three days before the incident, China submitted an application for 'Historical Relic Academic Investigation,' citing archaeological research as the reason."

"Second, the inspection team included a person named Section Chief Han Zheng, who belongs to an undisclosed Chinese department with the internal codename 'The Seventh Division.' Our informants confirm that this department has long dealt with—"

He paused for a beat.

"Suspected supernatural events."

"Third, within six hours after the incident ended, Chinese warships withdrew from the sea area at full speed, and the inspection team pulled back today, as if an evacuation plan had been pre-set."

He turned off the projector and faced the fifteen faces.

"They knew in advance what would happen."

"Either they caused all of this, or they foresaw all of this."

"Regardless of which it is—China owes the world an explanation."

Everyone straightened their backs.

The American representative opened the folder in front of him; it contained only a single sheet of paper with three lines written by hand.

He did not read it aloud, simply closing the folder and looking at the Chinese representative opposite him.

The Chinese representative remained expressionless.

Within forty-eight hours, seventeen global intelligence agencies launched independent investigations.

Satellites were refocused to lock onto the distribution of anomalous heat sources remaining in the War Zone.

Ground agents were dispatched to three refugee camps to make contact with survivors under the guise of "psychological aid volunteers."

Military analysis departments obtained high-resolution satellite imagery of the surface destruction in the War Zone.

Three independent teams, three independent reports, the same conclusion:

No known weapon could cause such large-scale ground collapse without leaving impact craters.

No known explosive could produce that kind of thermal radiation distribution—the center temperature exceeded four thousand degrees, yet organic matter three meters away remained completely intact.

What was even more bizarre was the manner of death.

Some bodies showed characteristics of high-temperature carbonization, which was consistent with standard expectations.

But others—joints bent backward, spines twisted at impossible angles, subcutaneous tissue riddled with honeycomb-like cavities.

The forensic report used a term that had never appeared in any official document—"non-human injury pattern."

And then there were those who "vanished."

Between the pre-war population registry and the post-war headcount, three hundred and seventy-two people were missing.

Not dead—vanished.

No bodies, no wreckage, no biological traces whatsoever.

It was as if they had never existed.

"If this is a weapon," the last page of the Pentagon's analysis report read, "its precision exceeds the limits of human engineering. If it is not a weapon—we do not know what word to use."

Orders were issued simultaneously from seventeen different offices; the wording varied, but the meaning was the same: find the "person wearing silver armor" and the "person standing on fire."

Jingzhou. Three levels underground, windowless conference room.

Section Chief Han Zheng participated in the meeting remotely via video.

The encrypted reports had already been distributed.

One for each person, with red covers, unique serial numbers, to be collected after reading.

Section Chief Han Zheng explained everything from beginning to end.

The sky rift, three E-Rank Exotic Beasts, one D-Rank, abilities like mental domain coverage, personnel assimilation, and so on. And—Kindling.

When he finished, the conference room was silent for a long time.

The person sitting in the main seat took off their glasses and pressed their thumb against their brow.

"Are you certain that the D-Rank thing—"

"Can destroy a city."

Section Chief Han Zheng's voice remained flat.

"Mental pollution, material alteration, Space Distortion—it possesses all three abilities simultaneously! Our weapons are ineffective against it, completely ineffective!"

Silence.

"What if there are even stronger ones?"

Section Chief Han Zheng did not answer.

Because everyone knew the answer.

Another voice spoke up, hoarse and steady.

"That man—the one from Kindling, where is his upper limit of strength?"

"I do not know," Section Chief Han Zheng said.

"Every time he appears, he is stronger than the last. I cannot judge if he has already used his full strength."

Silence again.

Someone spoke, their voice not loud, but everyone present could hear every word clearly.

"Can we win?"

Section Chief Han Zheng did not speak.

"I am not asking about Kindling."

The person lifted their gaze from the report and swept it across the room.

"I am asking—if there were no Kindling, could we win?"

No one answered.

The person closed the report and pressed their palm onto the red cover.

"Even if we cannot win, we must fight."

The voice was not loud, but every word hammered onto the table.

"When humanity came down from the trees, we could not fight the saber-toothed tigers. When we walked out of the caves, we could not fight the floods. When we stood up from ignorance, we could not fight the plagues, the famines, or anything that wanted to push us back into the mud."

He stood up.

"Which time did we ever win?"

"Which time did we ever stop?"

No one moved in the conference room.

"Kindling is Kindling's business. We are our own business."

He put his glasses back on, his gaze behind the lenses as heavy as iron.

"Starting today, initiate the Extraordinary Response Plan nationwide. Military industry, scientific research, intelligence, and medical—four lines advancing in parallel. Three years—if it really is three years, then use these three years to push everything humanity can do to its limit."

"The first task: continue investigating Kindling ruins. Globally, all archaeological discoveries matching the characteristics must be placed under surveillance. If our ancestors really did it, they must have left records. Find them."

"The second task—"

He paused for a beat.

"If other countries ask, tell them the truth."

Someone moved slightly.

"This is a matter for all of humanity. If we hide it, and the next time that thing descends, no one from Kindling appears, what then?"

"They will not believe it," Section Chief Han Zheng said.

"Whether they believe it or not is their business. Whether we speak or not is our integrity."

Section Chief Han Zheng nodded and exited the meeting.

He leaned against his car, pulled out his cigarette case—it was empty—crushed it, and tossed it into the trash can.

D-Rank monster, species unknown.

Mental pollution, Space Distortion, three-year countdown, ruins, international pressure.

Everything piled together, making his temples throb.

Section Chief Han Zheng closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

Regardless, the work still had to be done.

Meanwhile, a joint statement was released.

"An 8.2 magnitude shallow-focus earthquake occurred in the region on Month X, Day X, with a focal depth of 10 kilometers, causing building collapses and casualties. All parties have initiated humanitarian aid."

An earthquake.

Everyone knew it wasn't an earthquake.

But everyone needed this explanation.

Because if words like "The sky split open, three monsters fell out, and they were burned to death by a person stepping on fire" were written into a UN communiqué, global stock markets would evaporate forty trillion within twenty-four hours.

During informal communications after the closed-door meeting, the Chinese representative handed over a redacted version of Section Chief Han Zheng's report.

No one believed it.

"Supernatural biological invasion?" A certain country's intelligence chief threw the file back on the table.

"This is a script for a science fiction movie, not an intelligence briefing."

"What about the forensic reports on those bodies?" the Chinese personnel asked.

"There could be a hundred explanations. New chemical weapons, gene-edited viruses, nanobots—"

"Which one can explain the space collapse?"

The other party was silent for three seconds.

"We will conduct an independent investigation."

The Chinese personnel nodded, saying nothing more.

What needed to be said had been said; whether they believed it or not was up to them.

The War Zone. It had completely ceased fire.

Not because of peace.

Everyone was dead.

Investigation teams moved into the War Zone—twelve teams from seven countries, not communicating with each other.

They scoured every inch of scorched earth, collected every sample, and interrogated every survivor who could speak.

The survivors all said the same thing.

The sky split, monsters came, someone saved us.

The investigation teams did not believe it.

But those bodies could not lie.

Those tissue sections eaten into honeycomb patterns could not lie.

Those black residues that did not belong to the periodic table of elements could not lie.

The investigation teams' reports were labeled as top secret and locked away in the deepest vaults of their respective countries.

And the owners of those vaults began to suffer from insomnia.

At the same time.

In the western suburbs of Jingzhou, at the courtyard house.

Inside Torch Base, the golden glow of the ancient tree was thirty percent brighter than usual.

The newly grown golden leaves swayed gently in the windless space, with visible energy flowing through the veins on the leaf surfaces.

Su Chen sat on the stone steps, his notebook spread on his knees.

The system panel hung quietly in the corner of his vision, a line of numbers pulsing slowly.

"Authenticity: 2500... 2517... 2534... 2551..."

It was still rising.

The survivors in the War Zone were retelling their experiences of that day to their families.

The stories from the refugee camps were spreading by word of mouth.

Although the investigation reports from various intelligence agencies were locked in vaults, the people who participated in the investigations would return home, suffer from insomnia at night, and say to their partners, "I saw something today that I shouldn't have seen."

Every person's "belief" was feeding the Authenticity.

Even if the direction of their belief was wrong—some believed in miracles, some in aliens, some in superweapons.

It did not matter.

What mattered was that they believed in the very existence of "extraordinary entities."

And the narrative power of "extraordinary entities" was in Su Chen's hands.

It was about time; it was time to open the path of the extraordinary for our new members.