I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

North America, Nevada desert, 200 meters underground.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's top-secret laboratory—the "Pandora" Research Center.

The cold, white operating lights cast a stark white glow on this top-tier laboratory, which cost a staggering three billion dollars to build. The air was thick with the scent of disinfectant, ozone, and an indescribable, pungent stench reminiscent of rotting, fermented seafood.

Inside the high-strength explosion-proof isolation chamber in the center of the laboratory, there was a broken shell, only the size of a palm, and purplish-black in color.

This is a small physical sample that the Air Force salvaged from the edge of the Los Angeles nuclear blast ruins at the cost of two of its most advanced F-35 stealth fighters crashing.

At this moment, three Nobel Prize-winning physicists and materials scientists, along with more than a dozen top Pentagon weapons experts, are staring intently at the electron microscope scan data on the holographic screen.

There was no conversation, no argument.

There was only a deathly, suffocating silence.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

Inside the isolation chamber, a high-powered industrial-grade high-energy cutting laser was continuously scorching the palm-sized piece of armor at a terrifying temperature that could melt through an aircraft carrier's armor in seconds.

However, the thermal imaging data on the screen showed an extremely weak, ripple-like, twisting force field emerging from the surface of the carapace. Insulated by this force field, the carapace not only did not melt, but its internal temperature was actually... decreasing.

"Stop, Dr. Richard. If you keep cutting, the isolation chamber's power supply matrix will be drained."

Standing behind the crowd, the Secretary of Defense wearily rubbed his temples, his voice hoarse as if scratching sandpaper. He hadn't slept for forty-eight hours since the Los Angeles nuclear bomb failed to kill the behemoth.

Dr. Richard, his hair completely white, trembled as he pressed the stop button.

He turned his head, and those eyes, which had once seen through the fundamental particles of the universe and were filled with scientific arrogance, now held only extreme terror and a complete collapse of his worldview.

"Minister...this is impossible...this is absolutely impossible!"

Dr. Richard pointed at the blurry energy structure diagram on the holographic screen and shouted hysterically:

"It violates the second law of thermodynamics! It violates the law of conservation of energy! When our laser hits it, the energy carried by the photons is directly 'assimilated' into the energy that maintains the force field the instant it comes into contact with it!"

"I don't want to hear these physics terms, Doctor!"

The Secretary of Defense grabbed Richard by the collar, his eyes bloodshot as he roared, "Los Angeles has been half-eaten by that beast! The streets of Washington are now teeming with those miniature predator monsters! For those low-level insects, our National Guard has to expend hundreds and thousands of heavy armor-piercing rounds, even using main battle tanks to bombard the ground, just to swarm one down!"

"The cost-effectiveness is despairingly low! We're almost bankrupt just from fighting regular soldiers, and what about that monster in Los Angeles?! What weapon can penetrate its shell? Liquid nitrogen? Strong acid? Or the legendary antimatter bomb?!"

Dr. Richard gave a bitter laugh, letting the Secretary of Defense grab his collar.

He spoke in a desperate tone, almost like a dream:

"It's no use, Minister... No physical weapons will work."

He pushed the minister's hand away, stumbled to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew two circles, separating them with a thick shading:

"Don't you understand? No matter how hard the shells of low-level monsters are, they're still within the realm of carbon-based life forms and materials mechanics, which is why you can forcibly tear them apart with cannons. But over in Los Angeles... according to the Chinese cultivation theories we've collected, it has already reached the threshold of the 'Golden Core Stage' and mastered the power known as the 'Domain'!"

Dr. Richard slammed the marker onto the whiteboard:

"This fragment is a remnant of the 'domain'! The 'domain' isn't a bulletproof vest, but a higher-dimensional rule! Under the cover of the 'domain,' using our physical weapons to fight monsters with 'domains' is like drawing a gun on a piece of paper and trying to use this two-dimensional paper gun to kill three-dimensional humans in reality!"

Dr. Richard burst into tears and collapsed to the ground.

"Physics has absolutely no effect on it... From the moment this monster that has mastered the 'domain' appeared, the scientific edifice that Newton, Einstein, Hawking... we humans have built over hundreds of years is a complete joke!"

In the laboratory, all the top scholars lowered their noble heads.

Some people were silently shedding tears, some were making the sign of the cross on their chests in prayer, and some collapsed to the ground because of the collapse of their faith.

Science is the largest religion in the modern Western world.

Tonight, the god of this religion was mercilessly nailed to the cross before the absolute laws of the void monsters.

……

At the same time.

The White House, the underground doomsday bunker, the Presidential Emergency Decision-Making Room.

The supreme ruler of the United States, the president of this once invincible superpower, is now slumped in a large leather chair like a frail old man.

Seated around the oval conference table were the military's top general, the CIA director, and senior staff from various departments.

The holographic projector in the center of the table is playing two sets of images in a loop.

The image on the left:

It was the terrifying scene after the Los Angeles nuclear bombing, where the wrecked Void Siege Beast, bathed in nuclear radiation amidst the scorching ruins of tens of millions of degrees Celsius, frantically regenerated using the power of its "domain." Countless American soldiers, in despair, fired all their depleted uranium munitions, yet they couldn't even shake its force field, ultimately being crushed into mincemeat by a single tentacle.

The image on the right:

It was a high-altitude aerial video captured by a reconnaissance satellite from China, on the other side of the Earth, a few tens of minutes earlier.

In the scene, a low-level Void Hunter at the Qi Refining stage also appeared on the streets of Jinling City, China. But just as the monster was about to unleash its carnage, a crimson sword light fell from the sky like a meteor.

An Eastern youth dressed in a tattered Taoist robe swung his sword with a single stroke.

The video was slowed down a full 100 times.

The CIA director stood up, pointed to the screen on the right with a laser pointer, and said in a trembling voice:

"Your Excellency, Generals, please look here."

"Although low-level monsters do not have 'domains,' their biological defenses are still extremely formidable. Our army has to rely on firepower to wear them down, but according to supercomputer analysis, in the one-thousandth of a second before the Chinese youth's weapon struck the monster's carapace, the 'red energy' attached to the sword efficiently severed the spatial constant on the monster's surface."

"In other words, it wasn't a simple physical cut. It was... a dimensional reduction and crushing defeat at the same level of energy."

The CIA director swallowed hard. "The Chinese can kill a low-level monster without spending millions of dollars on missiles; a single sword strike suffices. Even more terrifying is that against high-dimensional monsters like those in Los Angeles, at the Golden Core stage and possessing 'domains,' our nuclear weapons are rendered useless. But the people on that mountain in China possess laws of the same level capable of directly breaking through 'domains'!"

Dead silence.

You could hear a pin drop in the decision-making room.

"Director, you mean..." the president began, his lips trembling.

"What I mean is, Your Excellency, in the face of this high-dimensional invasion, the cost-effectiveness of technology has been completely outpaced. This is a war destined to be a war of attrition. Materialism cannot save America."

The CIA director bowed deeply: "While nuclear weapons can severely damage them, the energy from the explosion can also fuel their evolution. The only ones who can kill these monsters and fight against the 'Domain' are those who have also mastered the laws of higher dimensions."

The president's gaze slowly shifted to the right side of the screen, to the young man from the East standing in the deep pit, his sword pointing to the sky. And behind him, to the Kunlun Mountains, shrouded in thick fog and radiating a mysterious aura on the satellite map.

On that mountain, there are not only countless, but certainly not few, "supermen" with terrifying power.

High in the clouds of that mountain sits a true god, known as the "Principal" or "Sect Leader," a being comparable to a supernatural "nuclear weapon."

In this long and desperate night, it was the only lighthouse still shining on Earth.

"Is our...our ambassador still in the capital of China?" The president closed his eyes, as if he had aged ten years in an instant.

"Yes, Your Excellency. But since the Leviathan incident, China has closed all diplomatic channels. They have declared a state of 'martial law'," the Secretary of State reported in a low voice.

"Connect the red hotline."

The president suddenly opened his eyes, which were filled with humiliation, but even more so with an extreme desire to survive.

He gritted his teeth and said, word by word:

"Put aside all our arrogance and, at all costs, get me connected to the highest levels of the Chinese government."

"Tell them that the free world...is willing to relinquish control of the Atlantic Fleet, is willing to share all its cutting-edge technology resources, and is willing to pay any price they want."

The president stared at the holographic projection of the towering flames over Los Angeles, his eyes twitching violently.

"Go and ask the people on that mountain."

"Save us!"