In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

"Alright."

Bai Lu spread her hands helplessly.

"Since we're going to be laborers anyway, I'll go with you. It'll also be a good opportunity to see what those newly built industrial parks look like."

Su Ran turned her head and began to take the initiative in the conversation.

"White Deer, you've advanced to the third rank, it must have been quite a while since then, right?" he asked.

"what?"

Bai Lu was stunned for a moment, not following Su Ran's leap of thought.

But then he sat up straight and raised his chin slightly.

"I broke through to the third tier in mid-October."

Her tone was filled with undisguised pride.

"All told, it's been over two months now. In the records of the Awakened Headquarters, I'm definitely among the top tier!"

Su Ran leaned back in her chair and nodded slightly.

"The transition from the third to the fourth order is a hurdle."

Throughout Great Xia, and even globally, there are quite a few people stuck in this bottleneck period.

The vast majority of awakened individuals spend their entire lives without ever crossing this barrier.

After he finished speaking, his tone softened and became more certain.

"But you are different. For a genius awakener like you who is among the world's top tier, this will not be a major obstacle."

Bai Lu was clearly very pleased with this compliment, and the corners of her mouth couldn't help but turn up.

As a top-tier mental genius in the world, her mental power already surpasses conventional physical enhancement and elemental abilities.

The fact that she could forcefully implant a mental imprint into the brain of a fourth-order hellhound mother with a human body is enough to prove that her potential ceiling is extremely high.

This barrier is just a slightly thicker layer of paper for her; it's only a matter of time before she breaks through it.

However, what the Great Xia Dynasty lacked most was time.

Su Ran suppressed her smile, turned her gaze back to the tactical tablet in front of her, and quickly tapped a few keys on the control panel.

He has a lot on his mind right now.

The screen displays a high-resolution global heat source distribution map generated in real time by the FAST satellite.

The scene was so jarring it was terrifying.

Dark red patches, representing mutated beasts and zombies, spread like rampant mold, covering the globe.

Even within the Great Xia, which is considered the safest place in the world, several incidents of third-order mutated creatures have recently broken out.

"The number of awakened humans is no more than 100,000 at most."

However, the number of mutated beasts roaming the land is calculated in tens or hundreds of billions.

Su Ran's voice sounded particularly low.

A gap of more than ten thousand times.

Since the outbreak of the cataclysm, humanity has been desperately building defenses, while mutated beasts have been multiplying wildly.

The number of mutated beasts on land is more than ten thousand times larger than the size of the human awakened group.

The reason why Daxia was able to contain the Red Zone was because of the military's heavy firepower coverage regardless of cost.

He paused, his finger lightly swiping along the edge of the screen.

"But this is limited to land only."

Looking at the deep and desolate ocean area at the edge of the map, Su Ran couldn't help but recall the highest-level strategic meeting in the early stages of the Great Cataclysm.

At that time, the top leaders of various war zones were still debating whether or not to defend the economically developed and well-integrated super cities along the coast.

Some have even suggested building a sea fortress relying on deep-water ports.

At the meeting, Su Ran made it clear that he would abandon all coastal areas.

Concentrate all population, industry, and resources inland to build a deep defense line.

This decision faced tremendous resistance at the time.

But in retrospect, that move was absolutely the right one.

The Great Xia Dynasty completed the largest strategic relocation in human history.

Even the beast tides on land are still being dealt with in a chaotic manner, and things in the ocean are currently not even to be touched.

"Su Ran, what's the point of you always looking at these things? Looking at them too much will only make you unhappy."

Seeing Su Ran's furrowed brows and uneasy expression, Bai Lu couldn't help but wave her fair fist.

"Instead of wasting time worrying, we should go to more red zones and wreak havoc on the battlefield!"

"Um!"

Su Ran's thoughts were interrupted, and she responded softly.

He turned off the screen, leaned back in his chair, and couldn't help but mutter something to himself.

"Our generation of young people may be... the last generation in human history to have truly seen the ocean."

The only sound in the cabin was the faint whistling of the airflow.

Bai Lu was looking down at the seatbelt buckle when she heard the sound and looked up.

"Who said they were the last generation to have seen the ocean?"

She didn't hear the first half of the sentence clearly and looked at Su Ran with a puzzled expression.

Su Ran did not explain.

This is inexplicable.

If the current crisis cannot be resolved, the only option for future crises is to temporarily conceal them.

Aside from Su Ran herself, who was a special case who forcibly crossed the threshold by relying on her past life's accumulation and the infinite space.

Of the 1.4 billion people in the Great Xia Dynasty, plus all the survivors worldwide, there has not yet been a second fourth-tier awakened individual.

The lack of top-tier combat power felt like a piece of raw iron pressing on Su Ran's heart.

"It's nothing."

Su Ran took a deep breath and reached out to close the heat source map on the control panel.

"I'm just thinking, more than two months have passed, how come you're still standing still?"

When Bai Lu saw that Su Ran was just brushing it off, she rolled her eyes very rudely.

She could tell that Su Ran didn't want to repeat herself, so she followed up on the conversation.

"Do you think I don't want to?"

She spoke helplessly, rubbing her hair with her hands.

"The crystal nucleus is no longer useful to me at all."

The absorbed crystal energy dissolved directly within my body; it simply couldn't be stored.

As she spoke, Bai Lu reached into her pocket, pulled out a high-purity spiritual attribute crystal core, and began absorbing it right in front of Su Ran.

She closed her eyes and placed her palm on the surface of the crystal core.

It only took a few breaths.

The crystal core visibly dimmed.

Subsequently, the crystal nucleus lost all its energy support and turned into a clump of white powder.

"See?"

Bai Lu spread her hands. "It's no use."

"When I first reached the peak of the third tier, I could feel my supernatural power accumulating and compressing within my body when absorbing the crystal core."

Bai Lu pointed to her head.

"By now, my body is already saturated."

Absorbing more of it will only restore some of the consumed supernatural power; it has no other effect.

The excess energy simply overflowed.

She turned her head and looked directly at Su Ran.

"Professor Zhang Qian performed a detailed brain scan on me before I came here."

This shows that my telomeres and neurons have developed a strong tolerance to the energy of the nuclei that are currently accessible.

"Without finding a higher-dimensional energy stimulus, or experiencing some kind of qualitative change, even if I devour another hundred third-order crystal cores, it will all be in vain."

Su Ran listened to her complaints without being surprised.

Energy tolerance is a dead end that all high-level awakened beings in the past faced.

The human body is like a container with a set capacity; the peak of the third level is already the physical limit of conventional carbon-based organisms.

To advance beyond the fourth level, one must completely break the inherent form of this container and reshape the gene sequence.

That was a leap from quantitative change to qualitative change.

Not only her, but other top awakened individuals in Great Xia also face the same problem.

"Ye Xiao, Mo Yun, Jingye, Miaomiao, and the others are all stuck in this position, and they've all been worrying about it a lot behind the scenes."

Bai Lu continued, her tone tinged with a hint of helplessness.

Su Ran was well aware of this situation.

This is the dilemma of water overflowing when it's full.

The strength of the body's cells and the upper limit of mental capacity have both been developed to their current extremes.

Continuing to accumulate energy will only lead to overflow.

Breaking through to the fourth level is not simply about accumulating energy, but a leap in the level of life.

An opportunity is needed to break the existing physical framework and reshape the rules.

Just then, Bai Lu turned her head, stared at Su Ran, and moved a little closer.

"Su Ran, tell me the truth."

Bai Lu blinked, lowered her voice, and spoke with a probing tone.

"What did you feel when you were about to break through last time?"