After the internet was disconnected, I connected to the magic world.

At three o'clock in the morning, in the conference room of the Special Investigations Department headquarters, the heavy explosion-proof door was tightly closed, and the air was filled with the lingering smell of smoke.

More than twenty people sat around the long conference table, including the action team leader in regular uniform.

There were researchers in white coats, as well as heads of branch offices in various locations connected via video link.

Everyone had dark circles under their eyes, clearly indicating they had been up all night.

Li Jianguo, sitting at the head of the table, pinched the bridge of his nose and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray full of butts. He then gestured with his chin toward Liu Cheng, the head of the statistics department.

"Let's begin. Lay everything out on the table. No matter what conclusions we reach today, we need to understand the situation thoroughly first."

Liu Cheng nodded and turned on the projection screen. The first photo was of an elderly rural man with gray hair.

He was bending over to lift an overturned farm tricycle, with a half-grown child trapped under the wheels.

"Let me first inform you about the 17 cases of supernatural abilities that we have filed in the past five years. All of them have been closed and have complete autopsies and expert identification."

Liu Cheng's voice was hoarse, clearly indicating that he had been working on it for a long time. "The first case was in Linyi, Shandong in 2021, involving 72-year-old Wang Qingshan."

While her grandson was playing, he was pinned down by a 1.2-ton tricycle. The old man lifted the tricycle 40 centimeters with his bare hands and pushed the child out.

Two hours and seventeen minutes after the incident, the elderly man died from multiple organ failure and widespread rhabdomyolysis; there was no chance of recovery.

The projector switched to the second image, a screenshot from the steel plant's surveillance camera. A young worker in work clothes was bracing a slipping steel coil with his shoulder, his face flushed red.

"The second incident occurred in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province in 2023, where 28-year-old steelworker Li Lei lost 5.8 tons of hot-rolled steel coils from the conveyor belt."

There was another maintenance worker below who hadn't dodged, so he rushed up and held him for seven seconds before letting go once his colleagues pulled him out.

The moment the steel coil stopped, he went limp, suffering comminuted fractures of his spine and leg bones, and died on the spot.

Mechanical modeling has calculated that his instantaneous force at that moment was at least four tons, twelve times the upper limb limit of an average person.

The following photos kept popping up: a security guard carrying a 300-pound safe rushed out of the fire, collapsed on the ground after getting out of the fire, and died of heart failure on the way to the hospital.

A young mother in the residential complex caught her child falling from the fifth floor, but suffered comminuted fractures in both arms and intracranial hemorrhage. She could not be saved after three hours.

The old village chief, who pushed away hundreds of kilograms of falling rocks to clear a path for the villagers during the landslide, suffered from muscle dissolution and acute kidney failure afterward and passed away that very night.

The 17 cases involved men, women, young and old, and were located throughout the country, with no connection between them.

"We invited experts in sports medicine, physiology, and forensic medicine to conduct a joint assessment."

Liu Cheng turned to the last page, which was a report jointly issued by experts.

The conclusion is consistent: these are all bursts of human potential under extreme stress.

Normally, the brain limits muscle exertion to protect the body, mobilizing only up to 30% of muscle fibers. In extreme situations, however, adrenaline is secreted in large quantities.

The brain temporarily lifts this restriction, instantly mobilizing over 90% of muscle fibers, resulting in strength three to ten times greater than usual.

He paused, his tone turning serious: "But what is the price?"

The body simply cannot withstand this intensity of exertion, resulting in large-scale rupture of muscle fibers and myoglobin blocking the renal tubules.

Organ overload and rupture; in all cases, the individuals involved died within 12 hours of the onset, with none surviving.

Experts say this is the physiological limit of human beings. This kind of burst of energy is essentially burning one's life force for a few seconds; once it's used up, it's gone, and there can be no exceptions.

The meeting room was quiet. Everyone had heard of these cases to some extent, but it was only when they were all laid out on the table for the first time that they felt their heavy impact.

"These cases were originally filed as normal extreme events, not in the supernatural category."

Liu Cheng tapped on the keyboard, and photos of two men appeared on the projector. One of them wore glasses and looked refined.

The other one was wearing a black coat and looked quite ordinary; you'd easily blend into a crowd.

"Until the recent Kyushu incident, we went back to review old cases and found two suspects who did not fit this pattern."

Liu Cheng tapped on the keyboard, and photos of two men appeared on the projector. One wore glasses and looked refined, while the other wore a black coat and looked so ordinary that he would be lost in a crowd.

"We initially identified two unusual targets. The first was Zhao Lei from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, who is 31 years old."

He previously went live online claiming he had remote viewing abilities, saying he could read sealed documents and see things hundreds of meters away while blindfolded, which caused quite a stir.

When our field staff went to investigate, it turned out to be a magic trick scam, a group operation where a pinhole camera was installed on the glasses frame.

He had a miniature earpiece in his ear, and someone was staking out outside sending him messages. The person has been arrested, the tools used in the crime have been confiscated, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural or Kyushu; he's been cleared of suspicion.

The projected image focused on the face of the young man in the black jacket.

"After ruling him out, the remaining one is currently the only one with ties to Kyushu and the most suspicious—Lin Ze."

Liu Cheng opened his detailed profile and proceeded to explain it line by line:

"Lin Ze, male, 24 years old, grew up in an orphanage, has no parents, and has a college diploma."

Before the incident, he worked in operations and sales at an internet company in Jiangcheng. His performance was not top-notch but stable.

The salary is not low. After working for several years, I have saved up some money by living frugally, and I live a simple life.

He rented a room in the old town, had no criminal record, had never been in a fight, and didn't have any special skills.

For the first twenty-three years, he was just an ordinary office worker, someone who would blend into a crowd and go unnoticed, with no unusual records.

"He resigned from his company more than three months ago. About a week after he resigned, something happened at the intersection of Jianguo Road in Jiangcheng."

Liu Cheng opened the intersection surveillance footage from that time and showed it to everyone in slow motion. "That day, a heavy truck fully loaded with sand and gravel, weighing a total of 47 tons, had its brakes fail."

He rushed straight towards the zebra crossing; there was a little girl in the middle of the road, and it looked like he was about to hit her.

In the surveillance footage, Lin Ze, who was standing by the roadside waiting for the red light, moved almost instantly; his figure was so fast that it left afterimages.

The 17-meter distance was covered in the blink of an eye; they scooped up the little girl and pulled her to the side.

The truck's rearview mirror scraped hard against his back, and he slid three or four meters away without even bending over.

She stood steadily holding the child by the green belt, and apart from a tear on the back of her coat, she didn't even sway.

"The whole process took only 0.8 seconds, which is more than twice as fast as the human limit for 100 meters."

Liu Cheng's voice was deep. "At that time, the traffic police were dispatched, but the person involved had already left. The matter was handled by a woman."

It later trended on social media, but was suppressed after a few days.

We then checked the subsequent street surveillance footage, and the next day he went downstairs to buy breakfast as usual.

I bought soy milk and fried dough sticks, and I was perfectly fine walking and raising my arms; I didn't even have to go into the hospital.

Quiet discussions broke out in the meeting room. The ironclad rules of the 17 cases were there for all to see: the speed and force of the scraping.

An ordinary person would have suffered a soft tissue contusion and been bedridden for at least half a month, but he was completely fine.

"It wasn't until the Kyushu incident came out that we went back to investigate the abnormal fund flows and found him."

Liu Cheng paused for a moment, then continued, "Not long after he resigned, large sums of money started flowing into his bank account and WeChat account."

The amounts ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, with a total of over 400 million yuan earned as of last week.

We traced the money back to several local gold recyclers; he earned it by selling handcrafted gold ornaments privately.