Tokyo: Proving one's position from behind the scenes

The white light from the fluorescent lamps continued to pour down from the ceiling, illuminating the entire laboratory without a single shadow.

In the center of the laboratory, twelve men in military green T-shirts stood in a row. They were handpicked from the combat troops at Yokosuka base. Several of them had bandages wrapped around their arms, beneath which were old wounds healing, the shapes of which resembled shrapnel wounds. Others had light pink scars on the sides of their necks, probably brought back from Kabul, Persia, or some other place whose names wouldn't appear in official reports.

They stood at attention, feet shoulder-width apart, hands behind their backs, chins slightly tucked in, eyes looking straight ahead. No one spoke, no one whispered, and no one even glanced at the person next to them.

Dr. Ryan stood beside the lab bench, a stainless steel tray in front of him. Twelve syringes were neatly arranged on the tray, their contents a translucent, murky liquid, remarkably similar in color to the shimmering light flowing within the coral.

"Are you sure you don't need to get injections while lying in bed, gentlemen?"

"We don't need PhDs; we are the elite of America's elite."

Dr. Ryan neither confirmed nor denied the question, and had another researcher administer the injections to them.

The first soldier in line stepped forward, turned left, and faced Dr. Ryan. Without hesitation, he rolled up the sleeve of his left arm to his shoulder, exposing the skin on the inside of his forearm. Several old scars, lighter in color than the surrounding skin, with jagged edges, were visible.

The thumb pushed down the plunger, the needle pierced the vein, and the turbid liquid was slowly injected into the blood vessel. The injection process lasted about ten seconds. The moment the liquid entered the blood vessel, the vein on the inside of the soldier's forearm darkened in color, changing from cyan to a deep blue, almost like ink. The deep blue spread upwards along the vein, from the wrist to the forearm, from the forearm to the elbow, from the elbow to the upper arm, and finally disappeared under the sleeve.

The researcher removed the needle and strode away from the soldier. The soldier stood there, looking down at his arm; the deep blue veins were clearly visible beneath the skin, like an ink-stained spiderweb spreading outwards from the injection site. His fingers curled slightly, then his hand clenched into a fist. The skin at his knuckles tightened, taking on an unnatural grayish-white hue.

Then came the second person, the third, the fourth...

One after another, the twelve syringes were emptied. The murky liquid flowed into the veins of all twelve men's left arms. The laboratory was so quiet that only the faint sound of glass syringes hitting stainless steel trays when the syringes were changed, and the increasingly heavy breathing of the twelve men could be heard.

The first soldier knelt down. His knees slammed against the epoxy floor of the lab with a dull thud. He braced himself with his hands on the ground, his fingers spread, the edges of his nails beginning to gleam with a grayish-blue sheen. His back arched, the fabric of his T-shirt stretched taut by the violent spasms of his back muscles, revealing two sharp outlines at the position of his shoulder blades.

Then came the second one. And the third one.

One by one, all twelve people collapsed, falling at different times and in different positions. Some knelt down like the first person, some lay on their sides curled up in a ball, and some lay on their backs with their limbs twitching uncontrollably. Their muscles spasmed violently beneath their skin, and the fibrous bundles bulged and flattened one by one, as if something alive was burrowing beneath their skin.

The whole process lasted about forty minutes.

Forty minutes later, there were eleven people lying on the ground and one person standing.

The person standing was the sixth to receive the injection. He stood in the center of the laboratory, feet shoulder-width apart, exactly the same posture as before the injection, as if nothing had happened. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat, the fabric clinging to his body and outlining the contours of his torso muscles. The contours had changed compared to before the injection; the boundaries of each muscle were clearer and sharper, like a roughly carved marble statue—the chisel marks were still there, but the sense of power was already palpable.

His face was still the same. The contours of his cheekbones, the lines of his jaw, and the height of his nose remained unchanged. But the direction of the muscles beneath his skin had changed; his masseter muscles were more developed, and his temporalis muscles bulged slightly from his temples, making his whole face look heavier.

He looked at his hands, turning them over and over again. Then he clenched his fists, released them, and clenched them again, the movements slow, as if confirming that he still had control over each finger. His breathing was steady, his heartbeat steady, and his mind clear. He could feel a new power within his body, a deeper power, settled within every muscle fiber, a power he could draw upon at any time.

Commissioner Smith walked over from beside the lab bench.

He walked up to the man standing there and stopped. The two stood face to face. Commissioner Smith was almost half a head shorter than him, and he had to tilt his head slightly to see his eyes. Commissioner Smith looked into his grey-blue pupils, into the clear, focused expression on his face, devoid of any confusion or bewilderment, and the curve of his lips changed from a straight line to an undisguised smile.

"name."

"Anthony, sir."

His voice was deep, his pronunciation clear, and his speech pace normal. There was no ambiguity, no hesitation, and none of the monotonous syllables that Brandon seemed to squeeze from the depths of his throat, devoid of rhythm.

Commissioner Smith nodded.

"Soldier," he said. "From now on, you'll be called Soldier Boy. Have you seen Marvel movies? I'm talking about something, every American has seen them. You're our Captain America, and you'll lead them like Captain America."

He gestured with his chin toward the eleven figures slowly rising from the ground. The eleven men also stood up. Their posture was different from before the injection; it was a more primal, almost animalistic stance—lowered center of gravity, shoulders leaning forward, arms slightly outstretched, as if ready to pounce on something at any moment. Their irises had also turned grayish-blue, but their pupils reacted more sluggishly than "Soldier Boy's," their gazes unfocused, and white traces of dried saliva remained at the corners of their mouths. One of them was moving his lips, as if repeatedly muttering something, but no sound came out.

The "soldier boy" turned and looked at the eleven men. He walked over and stopped in front of each one, not with words, but with gestures—pressing on their shoulders, tapping their chests, pointing to their own eyes, and then to the other's face. One by one, their grey-blue pupils focused at his gestures, their unfocused gazes sharpened, and their relaxed postures began to adjust. Not to return to military attire, but to adopt a unified stance, like that of a wolf pack awaiting the alpha's command. Lowered center of gravity, shoulders leaning forward, gazes locked in the same direction.

Dr. Ryan stood behind the lab bench, twelve empty syringes neatly stacked on a tray beside him. He then wrote briefly in his notebook: Healthy people can retain some of their consciousness after injection.

Commissioner Smith turned around and walked towards the laboratory door.

"The first batch, twelve people, 100% success rate." His voice came from the doorway. "Continue to increase production. Next batch, I want to see fifty people."

He walked out of the lab. The door closed behind him.

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Adachi Ward, Hoshinomiya Inari Shrine.

Nagayama Akira sat cross-legged on the tatami mat in his room, eyes closed, hands resting naturally on his knees, palms facing upwards. Outside the window, the nandina swayed gently in the night breeze, its leaves rustling softly against each other. Moonlight filtered through gaps in the clouds, casting soft, silvery-white patches of light on the floor through the paper window.

Within his dantian, the golden vortex, compressed to the size of a fist, was rotating at an extremely slow pace. With each rotation, it absorbed a faint trace of spiritual energy from the surrounding spiritual atmosphere, merging it into the light at the edge of the vortex. The flow of mana at the mid-stage of Qi Refining was more than twice as smooth as at the early stage. Although the spiritual atmosphere of this world was still thin, the five elements cycle had begun to take shape. The attraction and agitation between the images transformed the flow of spiritual energy from stagnant ripples into a slowly tightening net.

As his consciousness sank into a semi-conscious state during the practice, it was a unique "observation" state of a cultivator—his consciousness was clearly suspended above his dantian, overlooking each rotation of the golden vortex, while simultaneously sensing its extension in all directions, merging into the spiritual atmosphere surrounding the shrine.

Then his fingertips twitched.

The phantom images of three copper coins appeared out of thin air at the tip of his right finger. There were no physical objects tossed; it was merely a hexagram formed by magical power that unfolded spontaneously in his consciousness. The phantom images of the copper coins twirled at his fingertips, and the invisible destiny was connected by the hexagram, with images unfolding layer by layer in his consciousness.

Yokosuka. Twelve people. Injection. Mutation. One of them, conscious and physically enhanced, became the leader. The imagery in the divination was presented almost vividly—turbid liquid injected into veins, muscles spasming violently beneath the skin, irises turning gray-blue, eleven people collapsing and losing most of their senses, while one stood, his gaze clear. The scene was so clear it was as if he had witnessed it firsthand.

Akira Nagayama's brow twitched slightly.

The secrets of this world are shockingly clear. There are no obscuring effects from higher beings, no intertwined causes and effects, and no interference from the images of powerful beings. The secrets of this world are like a dusty but flawless mirror; a simple wipe is all it takes to reflect a clear image. In his previous life, even after advancing to the Purple Mansion realm, he would have had to expend at least half of his magical power to deduce specific events of this magnitude, and he would also have to risk the reverse tracing of events by the higher beings of the object being deduced. But in this world, he only needed to spare a sliver of his mind during cultivation, and the divination would appear on its own, the image clear, the cause and effect obvious, and the magical power consumed was negligible. It was like scooping a ladle of water from a crystal-clear stream, rather than panning for gold from the muddy river of his previous life.

His consciousness lingered on the hexagram for a few more breaths.

Dr. Ryan, the old professor in the white coat in the underground laboratory of the Yokosuka base, extracted a certain "active factor" from the "Zhenshui" coral left behind by Yoshida Shodo after he transformed into a demon, and made it into a grayish-blue potion that could be injected into the human body. The divination showed that the potion's working principle was to forcibly inject unrefined, mixed spiritual energy into mortals in an extremely brutal way.

Akira Nagayama opened his eyes.

His expression didn't change much in the moonlight, but the lines at the corners of his mouth relaxed slightly, like someone solving a problem who suddenly discovers an unexpected but real shortcut hidden in the problem.

Miscellaneous Qi Pill.

In the cultivation world of my past life, there was a type of elixir called the "Mixed Qi Pill," a concoction created by some low-level cultivators to deceive mortals and martial artists. Orthodox cultivators, when drawing Qi into their bodies, need to gather true Qi that aligns with their own destiny; those whose destiny doesn't match cannot even begin—this is an ironclad rule of the cultivation world. But the Mixed Qi Pill is different. It's made by crushing and mixing fragments of true Qi of various attributes, adding a large amount of common medicinal herbs to neutralize its potency, and then refining it into a single pill. When a mortal consumes it, no compatibility with their destiny or guidance from cultivation techniques is needed; the mixed spiritual energy within the pill directly infuses their limbs and bones, forcibly enhancing their physical strength and power.

In the ancient times of my previous life, before the [Martial Arts] positions were divided up, advancement was still possible, but it was incredibly difficult. The spiritual energy in the Mixed Qi Pill is unrefined, its attributes mixed, leaving countless tiny blockages in the meridians after consumption. A true cultivator's meridians are like a clear river, allowing their magical power to flow freely. Those who have taken the Mixed Qi Pill have meridians like a riverbed clogged with countless pebbles and silt, unable to circulate their energy, let alone sense spiritual energy. They can only use the mixed spiritual energy infused into their bodies by the pill to strengthen their physical form, following the most rudimentary path of body refinement—great strength and thick skin, but nothing more.

Moreover, it cannot be passed down, cannot be advanced, and cannot prolong life. To put it bluntly, it is a one-time consumable, essentially the same kind of thing as the Dao-transformed demon that Yoshida Sho was forcibly infused with true qi. It's just that the refining method of the Miscellaneous Qi Pill is gentler and will not cause the user's meridians to collapse and die.

No, the position of Buddha in this world is vacant. The person who retains their sanity may also be able to embark on the path of cultivation.

Dr. Ryan's grayish-blue medicine, made from "active factors" extracted from coral, was, in Akira Nagayama's view, a cruder form of mixed-energy pill.

Coral is a spiritual object of the Zhenshui (轸水) element. The coral left behind after Yoshida Shodo transformed into a demon contained remnants of Zhenshui's true qi. The "active factor" extracted by Dr. Ryan is essentially unrefined fragments of Zhenshui's true qi, mixed with the resentment, fear, and chaotic imagery generated during Yoshida Shodo's transformation. Injecting these substances directly into the bloodstream of mortals has the same effect as those inferior qi pills cultivated in his previous life—physical enhancement, mental impairment, and a lifelong inability to progress.

The one who remained conscious, referred to as the "Soldier Boy" in the divination, simply happened to have a faint image of the "Zhen Water" in his destiny, which barely matched the fragment of the "Zhen Water" true energy in the potion. Therefore, while strengthening his physical body, his consciousness was not harmed.

Akira Nagayama placed the teacup back on the windowsill.

Dr. Ryan is indeed a genius. Completely unaware of the existence of cultivation systems, he stumbled upon a path similar to that of alchemy in his previous life, relying solely on scientific methods. Although the destination of this path is immeasurably different from the true Great Dao, it is indeed effective—it allows mortals to gain extraordinary physical strength in a very short time.

More importantly, it can further disturb the spiritual atmosphere.

The simultaneous infusion of fragments of Zhenshui True Qi into twelve people created a far more complex impact on the surrounding spiritual atmosphere than Yoshida Sho's single Dao transformation. Moreover, this was only the first batch. If Yokosuka were to mass-produce this potion, creating hundreds or even thousands of "enhanced soldiers," each injection would cause a disturbance to the spiritual atmosphere, and the very existence of each enhanced soldier would be a weak source of such disturbance.

The stones, and many more stones, were not thrown by Akira Nagayama himself, but by Americans who threw them for him.

Having only the Zhenshui (轸水) won't do; we need to find a way to get them some other spiritual items.