I chose the safe house, and the Human Alliance regretted it.

Night falls outside the Kashgar Mountains.

Eighty-two figures streaked across the night sky like shooting stars.

Gangzi, Shi Lei, and eighty others were rushing desperately toward the capital.

Each of them carried a sealed container that Fang Yuanshan had distributed before their departure, which was filled with "samples".

Blood, scales, and severed limbs of strange beasts...

As dawn approached, the eighty-two men finally arrived outside the capital city.

Before they could catch their breath, a black figure emerged from the shadows.

A man in a black uniform, wearing the same badge on his chest as Fang Yuanshan—the Alliance's Special Operations Division.

His gaze swept across everyone's face like a knife, offering no words of comfort, no concern, and not even glancing at their injuries.

He looked around and asked in a cold voice, "Where's Fang Yuanshan? And the other twelve people?"

Gangzi spoke, "...He's dead."

The man in black frowned sharply, but quickly regained his composure.

"Come with me."

He turned around and walked straight into the city. Gangzi and Shilei exchanged a glance and silently followed.

In a spacious, secluded room within the alliance, Gangzi and the others sat quietly.

The white light was blinding, and there were no windows on the walls, only a heavy alloy door.

The "samples" they brought back have been taken away by the Special Operations Unit.

Gangzi sat in the corner.

The image of Qi Wen falling down kept replaying in his mind, along with her last words, "Go, don't look back."

After an unknown amount of time, the door opened.

A man dressed in black walked in.

This one was older, with gray hair at the temples, and the badge on his shoulder had an extra gold trim.

He walked to the head of the long table and sat down, his gaze sweeping over everyone present, then he nodded slightly.

"Congratulations on completing your mission."

He leaned back in his chair. "Who can recount the details of this mission?"

The crowd looked at each other.

Gangzi and Shi Lei spoke up almost simultaneously: "I'll do it."

The man in black glanced at Shi Lei, then at Gangzi, and finally fixed his gaze on Gangzi: "You tell me."

Gangzi took a deep breath. He organized his thoughts and began, "For the future of all humanity, for the sake of the millions of people in the base, we voluntarily accepted this mission with a slim chance of survival..."

"Wait." The man in black raised his hand, interrupting him. "Let's start from when we arrived at the Kashgar Mountains. The earlier part is unnecessary."

Gangzi's words came to an abrupt halt.

Everyone else looked over, and the air suddenly became quiet for a few seconds.

The man in black also sensed something was wrong, and his tone softened slightly, but remained harsh:

"You are heroes. However, we don't have much time and must find out the situation as soon as possible."

Gangzi gave a smile that seemed to have no meaning.

hero.

These two words now sound like a thorn.

He continued, "We entered the Kashgar Mountains and initially didn't find any strange beasts... We went deep into the mountains for dozens of miles without seeing a single one. The team felt something was wrong, but we thought it was just good luck."

"Later he had us split up into groups of three to search. We found powder from the detached scales of the alien beasts; the traces were very fresh, indicating that they were moving, moving on a large scale. But we still didn't see any alive ones."

The man in black tapped his fingers lightly on the table, his brows furrowing more and more tightly.

Then, the ground trembled. Countless scarlet pupils suddenly lit up within the crimson mist.

"Strange beasts poured out of the cracks, surrounding us completely..."

After a long while, Gangzi's voice stopped completely.

The man in black remained silent for a moment, his gaze lingering on Gangzi's face for a few seconds, as if trying to determine whether he was lying.

"Why did the beast tide retreat?" he asked. "Why didn't they continue their attack?"

"I don't know." Gangzi shook his head. "They suddenly started retreating, as if they had received a command, and disappeared back into the crevice. We didn't have time to think much about it; we quickly collected the samples and fled back."

"Has anything unusual happened?" the man in black pressed, leaning forward slightly. "Anything unusual, even if you think it's unimportant."

"Special?" Gangzi paused for a moment, then suddenly laughed, a laugh tinged with weariness and sarcasm. "Special in every way."

He raised his head and looked directly into the man in black's eyes.

"Why were there no strange beasts in the mountains at first, and we only found them after walking dozens of miles in?"

"Why did the strange beasts suddenly appear and surround us, but not all of them attack immediately? Why did they retreat?"

"Why aren't the high-level beasts attacking at full strength? They're just herding us outwards like sheep!"

He fired off a barrage of questions, his voice growing louder and louder.

"It seems the beast knew we were coming. It set a trap, waiting for us to fall in."

The room was deathly silent.

The man in black's expression remained unchanged, but the fingers that were tapping the table stopped.

He slowly exhaled: "You guys rest first. The league will remember your contributions."

He stood up, as if to end the conversation.

"Let us bring back fragments of the alien beast's corpse—what exactly are we going to do?" Shi Lei suddenly asked.

The man in black paused, but didn't turn around; he simply turned his head to the side and said, "You don't need to know these things."

"Just remember," he said, "that this is important for all of humanity."

All of humanity.

These three words again.

The man in black walked to the door, then stopped, turned around,

"The details of this mission must not be revealed to anyone, including your families and comrades. This is top secret."

The door opened, then closed again.

Inside the sealed room, eighty-two people remained silent.

Shi Lei whispered something to Gangzi, and only Gangzi could hear it:

"All of humanity...their all of humanity, not including us."

Gangzi didn't say anything.

1200 meters underground in the capital city. Research base.

Under bright lights, a group of people escorted the sealed containers into the laboratory.

The containers were carefully placed on the transfer vehicle, labeled, and registered.

Professor Lin strode out of the research room, his white coat stained with coffee from who-knows-how-many rounds.

She bent down, opened a container herself, picked up a piece of Thunder Beast scale with tweezers, and examined it under the light.

The electric arc on the surface of her scales was so faint as to be almost invisible, but her eyes lit up.

"Not bad." She nodded.

Then she straightened up and looked around at the total number of containers on the transfer vehicle.

The smile froze.

"Why is there so little?" Her voice wasn't loud, but it revealed her dissatisfaction. "This time, the sample size isn't even as large as last time."

The leader stood still for a few seconds, then spoke: "Of the five hundred men, only eighty-two returned."

Professor Lin frowned.

"I'm asking about the sample size. Why is there so little?" Her tone held a hint of impatience.

The leader's voice grew even deeper: "It's a miracle we came back alive."

Professor Lin did not ask any further questions.

She waved her hand, "Never mind."

At this point, several researchers came over and sorted, registered, and sent the containers into different areas.

Professor Lin said to the leader, "The sample size is still insufficient. Send more people."

The leader stiffened for a moment. "We can't send any more people. The fact that eighty-two people came back was pure luck."

"Of the five hundred, eighty-two returned," Professor Lin interrupted him, the cold number escaping her lips, "a survival rate of sixteen point four percent."

"Such a high survival rate, you're telling me it's just luck?"

"We understand the actual situation—" the leader tried to explain.

"I don't understand the situation," Professor Lin interrupted him again. "The survival rate figures are right here. Nothing is more convincing than numbers."

She turned around. "Sixteen point four percent,"

"If we send 5,000 people, 820 will come back. The sample size can be doubled. We'll be one step closer to a breakthrough."

The leader clenched his fists. "Those people aren't just numbers."

Professor Lin glanced at him.

"They are the numbers," she said. "Every sample, every set of data, will ultimately become a number that saves more lives. For all of humanity, sacrifice is necessary."

She turned away and stopped looking at him.

"You can go back now. I'll be in direct contact with Lao Liu from now on."