I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

[China, in the southwest hinterland, at an altitude of 10,000 meters]

An invisible current is crossing the ridgeline of the Xuefeng Mountains and flowing slowly towards the eastern plains along the Yangtze River system.

This is not a convection of cold and warm air in the meteorological sense, but a more mysterious kind of "wind" that exists in the collective subconscious of mankind.

If someone were to open the [World Trust Distribution Map] of Gu Qing's system at this moment, they would be surprised to find that, with the nameless, solitary peak in western Hunan as the center, countless golden points of light are spreading outward.

It was fear, it was awe, it was longing.

Three days after the Xiangxi incident ended, although the authorities forcibly blocked the news and explained everything as "natural disaster and hallucination", this only aroused more crazy speculation among the people.

"Do immortals really exist in this world?"

When this question flashes through the minds of hundreds of millions of people at the same time, quantitative change leads to qualitative change.

Although true "spiritual energy" has not yet recovered, the "power of will" formed by the convergence of human spiritual will has begun to subtly interfere with the physical constants of reality. The air has become fresher, the elderly feel healthier, and even the growth rate of plants seems to have accelerated.

This is the effect Gu Qing wanted.

When falsehood is taken for truth, even truth becomes falsehood.

When the whole world believes that there is spiritual energy in the air, even if it is a lie fabricated by Gu Qing, the system will help him turn that lie into the truth.

……

[Jiangnan Province, Linjiang City, Gu Family Old Residence]

Five o'clock in the morning.

The sky outside the window was still a bluish-gray, but Gu Qing had already woken up.

Or rather, he didn't sleep at all.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed and focused. Although he wasn't actually meditating or practicing breathing exercises, he was doing something more important—"tuning his frequency."

In his perception, the "Crimson Fire Dragon Pseudo-Inner Core" located at the bottom of the river several kilometers away was beating rhythmically like a powerful heart.

thump... thump...

With each pulse, an extremely pure fire-attribute heat flowed through the unseen causal connection (that is, the ownership determined by the system), traversing space and continuously flowing into Gu Qing's body.

System monitoring:

[Thermal entropy transport is stable.]

[Host body surface temperature: 36.8℃ (constant).]

Yin-Yang balance: Perfect.

Gu Qing slowly opened her eyes and exhaled a breath of stale air.

This breath was no longer white frost, but warm and moist water vapor.

"That's right."

Gu Qing stretched out her hand, looking at her rosy palm, feeling the long-lost warmth that belonged to the living.

"No more worrying about the person holding your hand getting frostbite, or about the water pipes in your house freezing and bursting."

He got out of bed and stretched his stiff neck.

Walking to the window, Gu Qing opened it a crack and looked towards the riverside shrouded in morning mist.

"It's almost dawn."

A meaningful smile curved at the corner of his mouth.

"Shouldn't that 'big guy' be woken up by now?"

……

[Linjiang, backwater bay area]

Time: 05:15 AM

A thick morning fog blanketed the river, reducing visibility to less than twenty meters.

A rusty, unlit sand dredger, like a sneaky thief, turned off its engine and drifted downstream by inertia, silently gliding into this "backwater bay" that the older generation considered a forbidden zone.

This ship is called "Dafahao," and as its name suggests, it carries the ship owner Liu Tuzi's dream of getting rich.

The cockpit was filled with smoke.

"Boss, is this place really safe?"

The helmsman, Erzhuzi, looked nervously at the radar screen, which showed that the water depth in this area was extremely irregular, with reefs and whirlpools everywhere.

"This place is called Locking Dragon Well... I've heard from the old folks that it's very eerie here. Many people have drowned here in the past, and their bodies could never be retrieved."

"Pah! Stop spouting that feudal superstition!"

Baldy Liu stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, revealing a set of large, yellowed teeth.

"What 'Dragon-Locking Well'? That's just a mess left over from flood control! It's precisely because it's considered eerie, and because nobody dares to come here, that the sand underneath is so fertile!"

Baldy Liu stared greedily at the surface of the river.

The price of river sand has skyrocketed, reaching several hundred yuan per ton. Because no one has mined the river for many years, the riverbed here is filled with the finest coarse sand.

"If this ship is fully loaded, it'll be enough to feed us for six months!"

Baldy Liu slapped Erzhuzi on the forehead. "Don't you understand the saying 'fortune favors the bold'? Hurry up, anchor! Go down into the tomb!"

"Yes...yes..."

Erzhuzi dared not refute, and could only bite the bullet and proceed.

ka ka ka-

With a screeching sound of metal scraping against metal, the winch at the bow of the ship began to turn.

The enormous, monster-like steel sand dredger, connected to a thick steel cable, crashed heavily into the river.

boom!

Water splashed everywhere.

The steel cable was lowered at high speed.

ten meters.

Twenty meters.

Thirty meters.

"We've reached the bottom!" Erzhuzi shouted. "Boss, this place is really deep, it's over forty meters deep before we reached the bottom."

"Depth is key! Only deep depths yield good quality goods!"

Baldy Liu rubbed his hands excitedly, "Start the machine! Dig! Dig hard!"

Rumbling--

The powerful diesel engine roared, billowing black smoke from the chimney. The steel cable was taut, and the huge dredging bucket began to close at the bottom of the riverbed, like a giant steel hand trying to grab a large piece of fat meat from the riverbed.

however.

Just as the sand dredging bucket closed.

collapse!

The ship jolted violently, as if it had struck an iceberg.

Liu the Bald lost his balance in the cockpit and crashed headfirst into the glass, immediately bleeding profusely.

"What's going on?!" Baldy Liu cursed, covering his forehead.

"It's stuck...stuck!"

Erzhuzi, his face pale, pointed at the instrument panel, "The winch is overloaded! The bucket seems to have caught on something hard, and we can't pull it!"

"Something hard?"

Ignoring the pain, Baldy Liu rushed to the window and glanced at the taut steel cable.

"It must be a sunken ship or a huge rock." Baldy Liu, a seasoned veteran, gritted his teeth. "Power on the gas! Pull hard! Our steel cables are brand new; they can lift a tank! Pull it out!"

"Boss, this isn't a good idea..."

"Enough talk! Full speed ahead!"

Under Liu the Bald's tyranny, Erzhuzi had no choice but to push the accelerator to its maximum.

Om-! ! !

The diesel engine roared under the strain, and sparks even flew from the exhaust pipe.

The bow of the entire sand dredger was forced down by the enormous pulling force, while the stern rose high.

Forty meters underwater.

The huge sand-digging bucket hooked tightly onto the "Dragon-Suppressing Lock" that Gu Qing had buried the night before, which was covered in runes.

This reinforced iron chain is currently bearing tens of tons of tension.

It remained completely still.

However, the other end, connected to the bedrock of the riverbed, transmitted this enormous tremor.

Boom!

The vibration traveled along the chain to the bottom of the well.

The "fake dragon ball," which was quietly radiating heat, was "awakened" by the sudden tremor.

When Gu Qing was refining it, he set up a very simple trigger mechanism: vibration would activate it.

Once subjected to severe external interference, the heat-gathering array inside the Dragon Ball will instantly overclock, releasing ten times the original heat as a form of "self-defense".

then.

[WARNING: External attack detected.]

[Defense mechanism activated.]

[Heat release power: 1000%...]

……

[River surface]

"It moved! It moved!"

Erzhuzi shouted in surprise.

He felt the steel cable slowly rising, and although it was difficult, it was indeed pulling the thing at the bottom of the water upwards.

"I knew it!" Baldy Liu wiped the blood from his face and grinned menacingly. "There's nothing my ship can't pull up! Even if it really is a dragon, I'll skin you alive!"

however.

His smile quickly froze.

He discovered that as the steel cable tightened, strange changes occurred on the surrounding river surface.

The originally white fog suddenly turned red.

It wasn't the red of the morning glow, but a dark red that seemed to be reflected from a fire burning underneath.

Followed by.

Glug... Glug...

The river water around the boat began to bubble.

At first, there were just a few small bubbles, but after a few seconds, they turned into violent churning.

White steam rose into the air, carrying a strong smell of sulfur and fish.

"The water...the water's boiling?"

Erzhuzi looked out the window in horror, "Boss, the water's boiling!!"

"Bullshit! How could river water possibly boil?!"

Liu the Bald cursed, but as he stretched his hand out the window, he felt a wave of heat rushing towards him.

Even more terrifying.

Countless dead fish, belly up, floated to the surface of the water.

They weren't poisoned; their bodies had an eerie, ripe white color and were even steaming.

"What...what is this...?"

Just as the two were filled with terror.

The taut steel cable finally pulled the thing from the bottom of the water to the surface.

Crash!!

A large amount of boiling river water was spilled.

A huge, dark thing burst out of the water.

That wasn't a rock, nor was it a shipwreck.

It was a thick, suffocatingly black iron chain.

The iron chain was covered with water plants and silt, but beneath the silt, dark red runes were flashing on and off, like living blood vessels.

At the end of the chain was the sand-digging bucket.

The sand scoop didn't grab any sand; it just hooked onto a link in the chain.

But what truly terrified Liu the Bald and Erzhuzi was not the iron chains.

Instead, as the iron chain was pulled, a deep, ancient, and furious sound came from the depths of the riverbed…

roar--!!!!

The sound didn't seem to belong to any known creature.

It was deep, powerful, and carried a metallic vibration.

It pierced through a hundred-meter-deep layer of water, penetrated the steel plate of the ship's bottom, and exploded directly in the chests of the two men.

With that roar, the cockpit windows shattered completely!

"Dragon... Dragon..."

Erzhuzi's legs went weak, and he wet his pants, collapsing onto the floor covered in broken glass.

"That's a dragon-locking chain!! Boss! We've woken the dragon up!!"

Liu the Bald was completely dumbfounded at this point.

He stared at the iron chain suspended in mid-air, radiating terrifying heat and red light, and at the river water around him boiling like dumplings in a pot. His worldview of decades collapsed in an instant.

"Quickly...quickly loosen your grip!"

Liu the Bald man lunged at the control panel like a madman, desperately trying to smash down the brake lever that had released the steel cable.

"I won't dig anymore! I was wrong! Grandpa Dragon, have mercy!!"

Click!

He smashed the brake lever.

The steel cable came loose instantly.

The massive iron chain, having lost its pull, crashed back into the river with tremendous force.

Boom!!!

The resulting waves were as high as ten meters, crashing directly onto the dilapidated sand dredging vessel.

The Dafabet ship shook violently and almost tipped over.

But this is not the end.

After the iron chain fell into the water, the red light at the bottom of the river did not disappear; instead, it became even more dazzling.

That sound, that terrifying roar, still echoed on the river, growing clearer and clearer, as if something was crawling out of hell along the iron chains.

……

[From the perspective of an elderly man exercising on the riverbank in the morning]

At this time, the sky was just beginning to brighten.

A few hundred meters away in the riverside park, several elderly men who had gotten up early for their morning exercise were staring in disbelief at this scene.

In their view:

A sand dredging vessel in the middle of the river was spinning around in circles as if it had gone mad.

Around the ship, the river water turned an eerie blood red, and large wisps of white mist rose up, obscuring the sky.

Indistinctly.

Within that red mist, a huge, long black shadow seemed to flash past beneath the water's surface.

"A dragon...is that a dragon?"

An old man dropped his Tai Chi sword on the ground.

"Quick! Take a picture!"

Another old man frantically pulled out his old-fashioned mobile phone.

……

[Gu Family Old House, Bedroom]

Gu Qing stood by the window, watching the red light soaring into the sky on the distant river, and the faint, terrifying power of faith that was fed back through the "Dragon Ball".

[Faithfulness Value +500]

[Faithfulness Value +800]

[Faithfulness score +2000...]

Although it was just the fear of two sand thieves and a few elderly men doing their morning exercise, this was only the beginning.

"The results were even better than expected."

Gu Qing nodded in satisfaction.

"Boss Liu, I won't accept your appearance fee."

"However, now that the stage is set up, sound and light effects alone are not enough."

"system."

Gu Qing gave the order in his mind.

"Now that they have seen the 'shadow' and heard the 'sound'."

"Then let's add some more spice to their lives."

"Activate the illusion runes on those two 'Guardian Beasts'."

"Let the world see what's locked beneath this Dragon-Locking Well."