I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

In the underground city of D district of New Chang'an City, there is a large underground assembly hall converted from an abandoned air-raid shelter.

Unlike the "Great Hunting Era" on the surface, where blood and energy surged and the whole city was in a frenzy, there was no enticing aroma of spiritual food here, only the dripping sound of rusty pipes and the oppressive, muffled breathing.

The meeting place, which could originally only accommodate a hundred people, was now packed with hundreds. And within this underground network, tens of thousands of members distributed across various base cities were connected via encrypted channels.

Their clothes are no longer sleek, even somewhat tattered, but if you look at their past resumes, it would be enough to shock anyone: former chief surgeons at top-tier hospitals, former key members of national-level laboratories, former core engineers at heavy industry companies...

Now, they share a common name—"Pure Humans".

In the top-secret files of the official military and police departments of New Chang'an City, they have another name: an extremely dangerous anti-social extremist cult.

"Yesterday morning, the last thirteen traditional surgical experts at the New Chang'an First Hospital voluntarily submitted their resignations."

Standing on the high platform in the center of the assembly hall was Qiao Yuan. Three months ago, he was a respected academic giant in both sociology and history; but now, because he had no "qi sensation" in his body, he rejected the marginal position of "medical consultant and theoretical guidance" arranged by the authorities and completely embarked on the path of crazy underground incitement.

Qiao Yuan's voice echoed within the massive air-raid shelter, carrying a morbid, paranoid quality and a provocative quality:

"Because on the same day, a mere nineteen-year-old brat who couldn't even read a human anatomy diagram was appointed as the deputy director of surgery! Just because he could conjure up some bullshit 'Rejuvenation Technique' that could bring a dying person back to life in five minutes! The authorities even demanded that our top surgical experts assist him!"

A commotion filled with jealousy and resentment arose in the audience.

A man wearing thick glasses clutched his hair, his eyes red-rimmed, like a gambler who had lost everything: "My lab too! The country clearly reserved the deputy director's benefits for me, but why should the leadership be given to a fire-element cultivator at the third level of Qi Refining?! I've been researching special alloys for twenty years, and he can refine them in ten minutes with 'Samadhi True Fire'! What about my twenty years?! They're trampling on our dignity!"

"The soldiers I trained now look at me with pity, pity! Do I need the pity of these fire-breathing, sword-wielding freaks?!" In a corner, a retired veteran gritted his teeth, his whole body trembling.

This is the real reason for the birth of "pure humans".

The government has not abandoned technology; in fact, it strongly advocates for providing these former elites with generous treatment and transitional arrangements. The problem, however, is that these people are accustomed to standing at the top of the pyramid.

When the extremely simplistic and brutal "spiritual root determinism" and the efficiency of cultivation crushed the "knowledge and experience" they had accumulated over the past few decades, the mentality of this group of former pillars of society completely became unbalanced. They could not accept that they had become supporting characters in the era. The relative loss of their status and the collapse of their academic authority pushed their fragile and arrogant self-esteem to the extreme abyss.

"The authorities actually call those monsters the pioneers of human evolution, and us a vulnerable group that needs to be taken care of!" Qiao Yuan slammed his fist heavily on the podium, his eyes flashing with fanatical evil fire. "But we are the true foundation of humanity! That being high above Kunlun has used cultivation techniques and spiritual energy to strip us of our rights! If this continues, humanity will no longer be humanity, but merely a group of barbaric vassals ruled by mutated forces!"

After a moment of silence, someone in the crowd suddenly spoke in a low voice:

"Then...are we just going to do nothing?"

"Are we just going to accept government pensions and live off their charity forever?"

"Our era must be reclaimed by ourselves!"

In the corner, the retired general slowly raised his head, his gaze sharp as a knife: "Old Qiao, you mean... to take action against Kunlun?"

The air suddenly froze.

This time, no one avoided that name.

Qiao Yuan did not answer immediately. After a few seconds, he slowly said, "If an entity forcibly alters the structure of human destiny, then we must eliminate it and put humanity back on the right track."

"But Elder Qiao, can we afford the consequences?" The old general posed the first practical question in a deep voice. "The Void Monsters haven't been completely eradicated; the spatial rifts remain. If we attack that one in Kunlun now, who will defend against the next Void invasion? If the defenses collapse, all of humanity will perish with him!"

These words struck like a heavy hammer.

However, faced with the risk of the extinction of all mankind, Qiao Yuan slowly turned around, a cruel and insane sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.

The giant screen behind me suddenly lit up, projecting a series of complex military blueprints and data models onto the stone wall.

"General, take a look at these. A high-frequency infrasonic resonator, a portable high-energy particle cutter, and a draft of an orbital-grade electromagnetic array. As long as that 'god' dies, the cultivation system will inevitably collapse, and then the entire country's resources will have to return to our hands!"

Qiao Yuan's eyes revealed a chillingly extreme egoism: "Even if hundreds of millions, or even billions, of civilians die during this three-year reconstruction period, it's all to cleanse those 'heretics' corrupted by cultivation! For the purity and autonomy of human civilization, these growing pains are worthwhile!"

The atmosphere instantly reversed. This group of former elites, blinded by resentment and jealousy, completely tore off their masks of hypocrisy, their eyes gleaming with a madness that threatened to destroy everything.

The old general took a deep breath, seemingly making up his mind, but then he posed the most fatal question: "Fine, even if we can create the ultimate weapon based purely on physics, its physical form is tens of thousands of meters above Kunlun Mountain! If it doesn't descend to earth, we are completely helpless against it!"

Faced with the crowd's doubts, Qiao Yuan adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, and the large screen instantly switched to a magnificent and breathtaking engineering blueprint—a giant track that pierced the clouds.

"General, normally he would stay on the mountain. But tomorrow, he has to come down in person."

Qiao Yuan's finger tapped heavily on the orbital base in the center of the screen: "Ladies and gentlemen, over the past three months, the official Academy of Sciences has exhausted all of humanity's heavy industrial reserves to finally complete the construction of the 'Space Elevator' base, a project that had been in preparation since before the Jianmu tree's descent. To demonstrate the 'perfect fusion' of secular power and the cultivation system, the military and the highest levels have extended the most formal, state-guest-level invitation to Kunlun—inviting that lofty 'immortal' to personally descend upon the central square of the new Chang'an city to 'reinforce and anchor' the main axis of the Space Elevator!"

The top scientists in the basement were suddenly taken aback.

"You are all giants in engineering; you should understand what the moment the space elevator locks onto the Earth's surface means."

Qiao Yuan's voice was very low, but it trembled slightly due to excessive restraint.

"That wasn't a simple docking; it was a dynamic synchronization at the planetary scale."

He raised his hand and projected the slender main axis that stretched from the ground to beyond the synchronous orbit in the projection.

"The carbon nanotube cable, which is tens of thousands of kilometers long, must maintain the same absolute angular velocity as the Earth's rotation. At the moment of connection, we must simultaneously compensate for the difference in gravitational gradient, the change in centrifugal tension distribution, and the nonlinear oscillation caused by lateral disturbances."

"As long as the phase compensation delay exceeds the critical threshold of the structural response period, the system will trigger self-excited oscillation. The amplitude will increase exponentially, and the axial stress will exceed the material limit within seconds."

He paused.

"With the current technical capabilities of the authorities, it's impossible."

The meeting room was deathly silent.

"It's not that we can't calculate it, but that we can't control it. No matter how sophisticated the current control system is, it cannot suppress all disturbance sources in real time on a planetary scale. Wind loads, tidal forces, magnetic field fluctuations... even a one-millionth energy deviation will be amplified on a long cable."

Qiao Yuan slowly raised his head, his gaze as cold as a knife.

"Therefore, this project was never intended for ordinary people from the very beginning."

The projection rotates and freezes on the core structure of the anchor point.

"In our calculations, during that one minute of connection, the so-called immortal must be standing at the very core of the anchor point."

"He must cover the entire main axis with his divine sense, forcibly suppressing the structural oscillations with spiritual power, while simultaneously stabilizing the planetary magnetic field and the disturbances in the upper ionosphere—"

"In other words, he wants to use his own consciousness to complete a planetary-level closed-loop control system."

Qiao Yuan's eyes gradually brightened, revealing a dangerous glint born of extreme rationality.

"But the problem is—"

"When he stretches all his perception to the altitude of a synchronous orbit to counteract the angular momentum of the Earth's rotation, his consciousness will be forced to disperse to its limit."

"In that minute, he had to do everything he could to suppress the system disturbance."

"He couldn't get back on defense for that one minute."

"In that minute, his perception of all low-energy physical targets beneath his feet will be reduced to the minimum."

He slowly exhaled.

"That will be his only structurally locked state."

"It's also our only window."

No one spoke in the meeting room.

Only the thin line on the screen that runs through the sky resembles a bowstring stretched to its limit.

Using the official mega-project and the immense power of planetary rotation, we can lock down his defenses!

Qiao Yuan turned around and lifted a waterproof tarpaulin off the table behind him.

Lying quietly under the tarpaulin was not the futuristic, sleek heavy weapon everyone had imagined. It was an extremely crude and ugly handmade gun—assembled from two thick, seamless steel pipes, one above the other, with the barrel wrapped in cheap black insulating tape, and several old batteries roughly tied to the wooden stock with wire.

The elites below the stage were stunned when they saw this piece of junk that looked like it had been picked up from a garbage dump.

"Old Qiao, are you kidding me?" The old general stared wide-eyed in disbelief. "Use this homemade double-barreled shotgun to kill gods?"

Qiao Yuan didn't laugh. He gently stroked the black duct tape on the gun barrel, his voice sounding particularly cold in the empty basement: "Gentlemen, I wonder if you still remember a piece of history from the old days. In the early 21st century, a former prime minister of a certain island nation was giving a speech in the street, surrounded by extremely tight security. But in the end, he died at the hands of an insignificant civilian."

Qiao Yuan raised his head, looked around at the crowd, and said as if he were preaching: "The assassin's name was Yamagami Tetsuya. The weapon he used to assassinate him was a homemade double-barreled gun that was hand-assembled from steel pipes, wooden boards and black duct tape. The security personnel even mistook it for some kind of photography tripod because of its rough and dilapidated appearance, which allowed him to swagger up to three meters behind the Prime Minister."

"History always repeats itself." Qiao Yuan grabbed the heavy double-barreled gun. "Those arrogant cultivators are too haughty. Their divine sense only scans for fluctuations in spiritual energy and is only wary of formations and magical artifacts. This piece of scrap metal, which is not even as good as a low-level magical artifact, is not even considered trash in their eyes. Therefore, we named this weapon—[Mountain Top]."

Upon hearing this, the audience gasped. Using the most absurd historical events to recreate the most unbelievable assassination!

"But that's just its disguise." Qiao Yuan changed the subject, tapping his fingers on the rough steel pipe, producing a dull metallic sound. "Its outer shell is scrap metal from a junkyard, but its interior is the pinnacle of human technology, handcrafted by the twelve top weapons experts present here using the few remaining precision parts from the old era."

"This gun has no spiritual energy whatsoever; it's purely based on basic physics."

"The steel pipe above has a built-in miniature high-frequency pulse generator. The first shot will fire a directional anti-spiritual particle EMP. Without disturbing the planetary magnetic field and the divine sense of the high-level cultivator, it will instantly sever the protective qi within one meter around him, creating a 0.1-second 'firewall vulnerability'."

"And this thicker steel pipe below..." Qiao Yuan patted the gun barrel, "is a miniature electromagnetic acceleration track. The second shot will fire a depleted uranium armor-piercing round accelerated to Mach 8. Carrying our pure physical kinetic energy, it will directly shatter his lofty heart!"

One shot shatters the demon, one shot delivers the final blow.

Using the simplest black duct tape gun, it can unleash the most advanced high-tech techniques.

"Who will fire?" the old general asked in a hoarse voice. At a distance of ten meters, firing a shot under the noses of so many people, regardless of success or failure, the assassin would be torn to shreds.

From the crowd, a middle-aged man in a worn-out sanitation worker's uniform, with a gaunt face, silently stepped out.

His name is Li Jianguo. He used to be an engineer at the China National Space Administration, and the space elevator was part of his hard work. The authorities wanted to transfer him to be the head of the blueprint review team, but he simply couldn't accept being subordinate to a few cultivators who understood "array formations and restrictions." Unable to accept this huge difference in status and the blow to his self-esteem, he left the space agency in anger.

Now, he deliberately makes himself responsible for cleaning up garbage in the New Chang'an Square, using this extreme self-torture to satisfy his distorted psychology as a "martyr".

Li Jianguo calmly walked up to Qiao Yuan, took the high-tech weapon called "Mountain Top," disguised as a homemade gun made of black duct tape, and hid it under his large sanitation worker's coat.

"Gentlemen, after I fire the shot, please remember to let humanity, through its own strength, once again dominate this world."

Behind him, hundreds of former elites who once held the nation's most important weapons but have now fallen into darkness due to their prejudice and arrogance bowed deeply in unison to this fanatical figure.

"The glory of pure humanity will live on forever."

……

The lights went out.

The dungeon was plunged into darkness once again.

And at the summit of Kunlun Mountains, tens of thousands of meters above the ground.

Gu Qing slowly opened her eyes.

In a higher-dimensional perspective, an almost transparent causal probability branch, representing "physical assassination and extreme malice," is shimmering slightly along the Earth's magnetic field.

He did not choose to cut the line.

He merely looked down at the self-important ants on that azure planet beneath his feet, trying to reverse the wheels of time, a cold smile curving his lips, and softly uttered two words:

"interesting."