Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

An even stranger scene unfolded on the side of the fire.

A flame pierced through a partially collapsed underground entrance, and in the firelight, several figures could be vaguely seen inside—they were wearing white coats and trying to escape from the other side.

When the flames caught up with them, their bodies were instantly engulfed in dark red, but they did not utter a single scream.

They simply stood frozen in place, like statues frozen in time, collapsing in the firelight and ultimately turning into nothingness.

The entire process was eerily silent, as if what was being burned was not flesh and blood, but something that should be erased.

A young firefighter instinctively rushed forward to try and save someone, but Chen Gang held him back tightly—the fire couldn't be extinguished.

Strangely, after burning certain areas, the dark red flames went out on their own—not by being extinguished, but as if they had completed their mission, they quietly retreated.

The places that were "spared" by them, though smoky and burning, did not suffer devastating damage.

Chen Gang had worked in firefighting for fifteen years and had never seen a fire with this kind of "selective combustion".

"Isn't this park... abandoned? How come there are people here?" He turned to ask the local police officer who was helping to maintain order.

The officer flipped through his tablet: "Captain Chen, according to official records, this Xingguang Chemical Plant has long ceased production and is located in an area slated for demolition. There should be no activity there."

The two exchanged a glance and both realized the seriousness of the problem.

The young officer immediately picked up his walkie-talkie and gave a brief report on the situation and the unusual characteristics of the fire to the precinct duty room.

One minute later, an emergency report marked "Fire characteristics cannot be explained by current science" was issued from the Seventh Precinct duty room and sent directly to the City Bureau.

……

Chenxi City Police Department.

Although the Seventh District Security Bureau simply reported the "abnormal fire characteristics" according to standard procedures, the alarm level was instantly raised to the highest level in the Special Investigations Bureau—a secret agency that has the highest priority for all "unscientific phenomena".

"Everyone, we're departing in five minutes!"

Zhao Jianguo strode out of the office while buttoning his coat.

Behind him, Wang Gang, Lei Zhen, and Zhou Ming were already fully armed.

Fang Weiguo, a top talent in the field of forensic science, and Chen Jingrun, a specialist from the Provincial Strategic Risk Assessment Center, have recently joined the team.

And Qin En, the leader of the "Abnormal Physiology and Phenomena Research Group," is urgently assembling.

Twenty minutes later, a convoy of light armored vehicles cut through the night in District 7 and headed straight for the abandoned park.

Zhao Jianguo got out of the car, his gaze sweeping over the concrete ruins that had been eroded by high-pressure water cannons.

The fire had been extinguished, but an indescribable smell of burning remained in the air.

On the ground, dark red embers still flickered faintly, like ghosts unwilling to disappear.

"Seal off a two-kilometer radius area. All firefighters and local police officers are to evacuate to the outer perimeter." Zhao Jianguo issued his first order. "No one is allowed to approach the core area without my permission. Wang Gang, arrange for personnel to be responsible for perimeter security and personnel registration—everyone who has been in contact with the scene must sign a gag agreement. The rest of you, come with me."

……

Three underground floors.

This is the eye of the storm in the entire fire.

After the "fire dragon" ignited by Li Rui dissipated, only a deathly silence remained.

Wearing a gas mask and holding a powerful flashlight, Qin En was the first to step into this melted hell.

As the light swept across the scene, even this expert, who had witnessed countless bloody scenes, felt his breath catch in his throat.

"Director Zhao, look here..." Qin En's voice sounded somewhat distorted behind the mask.

Zhao Jianguo stepped forward.

What he saw was an extremely stark visual contrast.

The core area of ​​the laboratory—containing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated experimental equipment and server clusters storing data—was all reduced to black carbonized material.

The stainless steel countertop looked as if it had been splashed with strong acid and thrown into a furnace, twisted into strange lumps of metal.

But in the experimental chamber area, which is just a step away, the transparent glass cages and the iron beds used to restrain the experimental subjects are surprisingly well preserved.

Although there were burn marks, the glass did not shatter.

"This fire... seems to be selectively burning." Fang Weiguo crouched down, wearing white gloves, and gently touched a metal pipe that wasn't completely burned. "Look, this pipe leads to the core equipment, and it's melted. But the one next to it—leading to the detention cells—is just blackened. The flames chose their direction as they traveled through the pipes."

He stood up and looked around: "There are precise boundaries to the energy release. The local temperature here was at least over 1500°C, enough to vaporize steel instantly. But the plastic pipe two meters away..." He tapped it with tweezers, "...only slightly deformed. This doesn't make sense thermodynamically."

The technical team quickly dispersed, and various portable testing devices began to operate.

A technician, carrying a portable gas chromatograph, reported loudly: "Report: No gasoline, alcohol, or oxidizer residues were detected in the air. The electrical system could not be detected due to core meltdown, but no initial molten beads indicating a short circuit or ignition were found."

Fang Weiguo took the data and glanced at it, his brows furrowing: "No accelerant, no ignition point, no trace of electrical wiring. This fire doesn't need fuel. Or rather... its fuel isn't any chemical substance we know of."

"Then what is it burning?" Lei Zhen couldn't help but ask.

No one answered.

Chen Jingrun was squatting at the edge of the core area, carefully examining the remaining burn marks on the wall with a flashlight.

He suddenly spoke up: "Come and look at this."

The crowd gathered around.

On the wall, the traces left by the flames had an eerie sense of flow, and their shapes were horizontal arcs.

"What are the flames chasing?" Chen Jingrun gestured with his finger in the air, indicating the direction of the arcs. "Look, they start from the entrance and converge all the way to the core area. All the scorching lines point to the same point."

His gaze fell on the floor in the very center of the core area.

That was the place where Zhang Zhaoqing finally disappeared.

The flashlight beam focused, revealing a spiral of charred marks spreading outwards from the center on the ground.

The depth and width of each ring are remarkably consistent.

"This is impossible..." Chen Jingrun murmured as he crouched down. "These marks require energy to be released in a spiral pattern, continuously oscillating at extremely tiny points of stress. This can't be caused by a fire, this is..."

He looked up at Zhao Jianguo: "Director Zhao, this seems to be a type of directed energy output. Similar to focused microwaves or particle beams, but to achieve this level of precision and range... with our current technological level, we would need a laboratory-sized facility. We don't have that here."