244 Gray Crow: Finally found you, adventurer! [Four-in-one request for subscription!]

The general manager's eyes froze for a moment, thinking he was hallucinating.

His spiritual pressure surged instantly, and he instinctively entered a combat stance.

Recovering his senses, he was about to call for help when he suddenly realized something was amiss.

He rubbed his eyes. The area in front of his desk was completely empty, without even a shadow of a person.

He spread out his divine sense, yet detected no abnormal spiritual entities whatsoever.

"Security camera records."

He immediately activated the surveillance camera's light screen recording via voice control.

During the few minutes from the end of the meeting until now, he had been entirely alone in the office.

It really was an illusion!

Wiping the sweat from his brow, the general manager finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He walked over to his desk and poured a cup of tea.

Sipping the tea to clear his head, he muttered to himself in self-reproach:

"Staring at the same face too much will drive you crazy. Just missing a cup of coffee was enough to make me hallucinate an enemy...

An adventurer who has been out at sea for less than three months and whose cultivation is below level fifty has actually managed to exhaust the entire company like this.

It seems the chairman really was made neurotic by that woman back then, which is why he is so high-strung.

If this kid were truly that formidable, he would go directly and challenge the Achilles Fortress instead of coming to harass a small company like ours. Isn't a bounty of five hundred thousand giving you too much face?"

After finishing a cup of tea, the general manager's anger had not completely subsided. He still felt uneasy and his vision remained somewhat blurred.

Thus, he casually took off his suit jacket, slumped down into his office chair, sinking the seat three inches.

"No, I need to have Lisa make me another cup of coffee!"

The general manager immediately opened his computer, preparing to use the private communication channel to notify his female secretary, Lisa.

This meant he could not only have coffee, but also let the female secretary provide some other refreshments to help relax his tightly strung nerves.

As a result, the moment he opened the computer, a warning window from the basement control system suddenly popped up on the light screen.

"The basement defense system is being hacked!"

Furthermore, there was a percentage progress bar.

It had already exceeded fifty percent...

Another illusion?

The general manager frowned and rubbed his eyes repeatedly.

The warning window remained stubbornly suspended on the light screen.

In the blink of an eye, the progress had already exceeded sixty percent!

This time, it actually wasn't an illusion...

He rubbed his eyes and confirmed it over and over again. Either someone was attacking the basement system, or the computer had contracted a virus.

Just as he was about to call for help, the computer's built-in camera locked onto his pupils and iris.

A text window popped up on the light screen.

"Living pupil perfectly matched!"

Who is it!

The general manager jumped up in a start, looking around in all directions while unleashing a surging wave of spiritual pressure.

Another new window popped up on the light screen.

"Living spiritual rate perfectly matched!"

What is going on here?!

A sudden chill ran down the general manager's spine.

He immediately tried to cut off the computer's power supply.

To his shock, the computer's light screen was still running.

It was as if someone was recharging the computer's spiritual pool.

He promptly turned on the camera microphone to call the information officer and the female secretary.

However, there was no longer any response from the camera.

The general manager felt a buzzing in his head as a bone-chilling wind pierced through him.

He finally realized the true gravity of the situation!

He wanted to shatter the computer with a single punch, but too many important personal files were stored within this machine.

While he hesitated for a fraction of a second, another line of text popped up on the computer light screen.

"Password entered correctly... Triple codes perfectly matched. Are you sure you want to modify the primary authority for the Fang Tower's security, surveillance, and access control systems? Yes / No."

"No!"

"Primary authority is currently being modified..."

Unable to endure any longer, the general manager smashed the display monitor with a punch.

However, the spiritual runes on the computer host were still flickering.

Following up with another blow, he obliterated the mainframe.

Blue spiritual runes crackled and hissed as electric arcs scattered in all directions.

All the runes and light screens vanished completely.

The general manager let out a slight breath of relief.

Then, a sudden question popped into his mind:

"Did I just enter the password?"

Right at that moment, a man's voice drifted languidly from behind him:

"I entered it for you."

In a mere fraction of a second!

The general manager abruptly stood up, pulling his surging spiritual pressure to its absolute peak.

Yet, he was forcefully pressed back down into his chair.

A light sword descended like a sudden divine enlightenment, splitting his mind wide open.

The blade pierced straight from the top of his head down through his stomach, finally plunging into his lower dantian.

His bloated body was rendered semi-transparent by the glowing sword within him.

"It's you..."

The general manager's eyes froze.

A hacker, stealth...

Only then did he abruptly realize that the enemy had already been lying in ambush inside his office ahead of time.

He wanted to call out for help, but he could no longer utter a single sound.

The mush inside his mind was scorched and brought to a boil by the light sword.

Next came his neck, followed by his internal organs, and finally his dantian energy sea—everything was completely charred.

A dignified level-sixty-six spiritual warrior died to a top-down strike from a level-sixty light sword.

Of course, Lu Chen had also added a few practical little techniques.

Once the general manager was thoroughly dead, Lu Chen—fully clad in battle armor—finally revealed his form and retracted his faceplate.

He activated his wristband light screen and camera.

Before the general manager's computer was smashed to pieces, he had already transferred the data and security keys into his own wristband.

He had retained only the camera and spiritual pressure sensor to match the general manager's living pupil membrane and spiritual pressure, thereby modifying the primary authority.

As for the password...

Although a password possessed uniqueness, it was merely a string of data; once brute-forced by a hacker, it became replicable.

However, pupil membranes and spiritual rates had to be detected as living tissue to match successfully, making them extremely difficult to replicate using hacking methods alone.

In reality, the general manager's computer already contained his own pupil membrane and spiritual rate data, but copying them alone was useless for unlocking the system.

It had to be confirmed as an operation performed by the living person himself.

Therefore, Lu Chen had to come to this office in person to obtain the access permissions for the basement.

For Lu Chen, he only needed the general manager himself to be in front of the computer; the actual operations would be handled by Lu Chen.

As long as it was confirmed that the operation was performed by the general manager in person, even if the computer system and data were transferred to Lu Chen's wristband, the system would fail to detect it due to Lu Chen's exceptionally exquisite simulation techniques.

Lu Chen could then continue to operate the system.

"Confirming new pupil membrane!"

"Confirming new spiritual rate!"

"Confirming new password!"

"Triple codes matched. Welcome, Director Lu. You have obtained primary authority over all subsystems of the Fang Tower's internal defense system!"

Goodness, they were even addressing him as Director Lu now!

Lu Chen checked and found that this primary authority granted control over the entire building's internal defense, surveillance, and access control systems.

It did not involve the company's bank accounts or local fleet defenses; otherwise, things would have been far too easy for him.

Overall, the Fang Corporation's distributed independent defense system was still remarkably advanced.

If Lu Chen had chosen not to enter the company premises himself and relied solely on remote infiltration via worm drones, the difficulty would have been immense.

Lu Chen immediately used the private mini-software replicated in his wristband to summon the female secretary Lisa, imitating the general manager's tone:

"Lisa, bring a cup of coffee in."

A short while later.

The well-proportioned and sweetly featured female secretary walked through the door holding a cup of coffee, then locked the door behind her with a reverse turn.

Suddenly, she frowned.

The entire room was filled with the stench of charred flesh and blood.

Raising her head, she was greeted by the sight of the general manager slumped backward in his office chair, his head split wide open and blood splattered across half the wall.

Before she even had time to scream in shock, she was knocked unconscious.

The female secretary collapsed to the floor, fast asleep.

Lu Chen fed her a sleeping pill used by cultivators to ensure she would sleep soundly for a few days.

He then moved to lock the door from the inside, only to discover that the door was already locked.

"To think she even proactively helped me lock the door—what a thoughtful young lady!"

Lu Chen believed that, for at least the next half hour, no one would come to disturb the general manager.

Of course, half an hour might be an overestimate.

Based on the duration he had seen in those short videos earlier, it would only take three to five minutes.

No matter; before the female secretary straightened her clothes and opened the door, nobody would come to bother the general manager.

And the female secretary would likely sleep for three full days before waking up.

Lu Chen lingered no longer.

He immediately opened the window.

Leaping down from the penultimate five-hundredth floor, he vanished into the clouds in the blink of an eye.

The office window closed quietly behind him.

...

A moment later, Lu Chen drifted down gracefully to the entrance of the tower.

This time, he didn't even need to use stealth.

In the eyes of the tower's access controls and cameras, he was none other than the Fang Corporation's general manager, Director Lu.

There would be no alarms triggered, and passersby did not recognize his face.

Unless he literally bumped into the six meeting participants from earlier, he would not cause any commotion.

As for those six individuals, he remembered their signatures very clearly and would simply turn invisible before getting close to them.

Thus, Lu Chen swaggered through the access gates and strode into the building.

This feeling was simply marvelous!

Upon entering the building, Lu Chen headed straight for the elevator banks.

He then took the elevator down to the first basement level.

The first basement level was off-limits to ordinary people; only high-ranking executives of the Fang Corporation possessed the authority to descend there.

Evading the surveillance eyes, Lu Chen arrived alone at the first basement level.

The first basement level was completely empty, save for a massive floodgate leading down to the deeper underground chambers.

The floodgate was forged from robust materials and reinforced with defensive arrays rated up to level two hundred, its dense network of spiritual runes covered in dust and spiderwebs.

A layer of scattered dust and cobwebs coated the floor.

"It seems someone has been to the basement recently."

Currently, only the general manager himself and members of the board of directors possessed the authority to open this floodgate.

And right now, Lu Chen was the general manager himself.

"Open the gate."

Lu Chen gave a calm command.

The giant floodgate swung open immediately.

However, since the surveillance and recording systems were under Lu Chen's control, the monitors registered nothing and recorded no information.

Entering the true underground chambers, Lu Chen finally discovered—

There were five hundred stories above ground, and an identical five hundred stories below ground.

Moreover, the height of each level exceeded one thousand meters, bearing a strong resemblance to the scene where Lu Chen met Nanyuanzi on the central island of the Bailu last time.

The entire basement complex was another independent subsystem; without coming down here in person, Lu Chen could never have hacked it.

Furthermore, it was a system that had long since been abandoned and sealed away.

Not only were the control systems riddled with vulnerabilities and many recorded files incomplete, but parts of it had also suffered through nuclear explosions and fires.

Judging from the structural schematics, this underground space—exceeding a thousand kilometers in thickness and spanning over three thousand kilometers across—was an interstellar herder humanoid atavism experimental base.

The underground space was akin to carving out a star beast paradise deep within a massive solid planet.

Compared to the scale of star beasts, the underground space appeared somewhat cramped.

Fortunately, it was an atavistic experiment and juvenile rearing space, and since star beasts were tiny in their early stages, it was sufficient.

Lu Chen guessed that the reason the atavism laboratory and breeding base were placed underground was due to the high confidentiality of atavistic experiments; located as they were within imperial territory, they could only be tucked away in remote planets beneath the earth.

Lu Chen randomly stepped into one of the levels to take a look.

This was a star beast paradise that had been scorched by fire.

Above was a sky of blue and white clouds, stretching out into an endless horizon; rivers, lakes, and oceans were all fully furnished within the sanctuary.

There were artificial star beast nurseries and various natural landscapes.

High-grade gathering spiritual arrays were distributed across all four walls and the ground.

There was a rooftop climate control system simulating all four seasons of the year.

Lu Chen could well imagine what kind of fairyland this must have been back in the day.

Now, however, the odors of various molds and ashes blended together into a stench that made Lu Chen's stomach turn.

The paradise space was entirely sealed off, even the air conditioning vents having been welded shut.

For personal exploration, this underground space was simply too vast.

Each level was a microcosm spanning three thousand li horizontally—roughly equivalent to over half the landmass of China.

Combined across all five hundred levels, the total area far exceeded that of Earth.

Yet there was no treasure-hunting objective here.

Right now, Lu Chen had limited time and no way to inspect layer by layer or explore every nook and cranny.

After wandering through a few arbitrary levels, he found the underground servers.

The servers were housed inside a massive mountain body located on one of the middle levels.

This level also served as the living quarters for the research personnel.

Clad in his battle armor and switching on his head-mounted searchlight, Lu Chen walked deep into the mountain.

He found the independent servers of the underground laboratory.

The servers looked somewhat ancient, at least dating back to the stone-tablet era of several centuries ago.

Thousands of tablet-shaped black stone servers were linked together in a series, blanketed in dust and spiderwebs.

They had not been physically destroyed; rather, they were doubly sealed using forbidden spell seals and spiritual rune arrays.

Selecting a random server unit, Lu Chen unleashed the power of all-phenomena resonance, effortlessly shattering both the physical and array-based seals.

He then hacked into all the servers using his hacking program.

Only then did he discover that the experimental data had been heavily wiped, altered, and formatted by human hands...

Additionally, a portion of the data had been lost due to repeated partial formatting, which had caused the servers to age.

Lu Chen could only do his best to restore the historical data and experimental logs of the underground laboratory.

He managed to piece together the main outlines, but the fine details were exceedingly difficult to perfectly recreate.

An hour later, after organizing the collected and restored data, Lu Chen finally figured out the ins and outs of the laboratory.

To his slight surprise, the history of this underground laboratory predated even the Fang Corporation itself.

Based on various pieces of information, Lu Chen calculated the approximate timeline: this laboratory had been established five hundred years ago based on a doctoral thesis from the Imperial Truth Academy.

The title of that thesis was:

"On the Feasibility of Human Atavism to Restore Intelligent Spirit Beasts"

Lu Chen immediately searched the entire network for this thesis.

Oddly enough, neither the original text nor any related discussions of this paper could be found anywhere online.

Even for a thesis from five hundred years ago, this was highly abnormal.

Nor were there any records of the thesis manuscript inside the laboratory.

In fact, wherever the author's name was repeatedly mentioned, the data had been formatted away.

The surrounding data was entirely normal, yet the author's name alone had been completely erased.

Even more bizarrely, this server had not aged; its logical sectors were completely intact.

This was the first time Lu Chen had ever failed to find formatted information within an intact server.

Such a method transcended the boundaries of spiritual rune hacking.

It felt more like some sort of superpower.

Or, to be more precise... it felt like some kind of chosen destiny.

This made Lu Chen wonder: could it be his cheap mentor?

"Madam Fariel, or should I say, Gray Crow, is that you?"

Lu Chen still remembered Vincent mentioning that Gray Crow's techniques in biological cultivation surpassed his own.

Even Madam August, upon seeing Gray Crow's black cat, felt that Gray Crow's skill level exceeded her own.

The thesis titled "On the Feasibility of Human Atavism to Restore Intelligent Spirit Beasts" provided detailed technical methods right within its text.

This technique achieved selective gene expression during early embryonic stages.

It suppressed human genes while promoting the expression of beastly genes.

At the same time, it perfectly preserved the genes governing the development of spiritual intelligence.

Early records noted that some researchers suggested the gene-selective expression technique proposed in this thesis might be used to cause spirit beasts to undergo atavism, thereby cultivating a new generation of dragons.

This was actually quite common; practically every biology professor and student in the Empire wanted to cultivate dragons, hoping to use dragon spirits to ascend to immortality.

After all, dragon-kin possessed genes adapted to the current galaxy's spiritual density and spatial environment; if they underwent atavism into true dragons, perhaps the dragon race could survive in the present universe.

And this thesis provided the first-ever historical technique proposing to restore the dragon race through dragon-kin atavism.

It was said that many shoddy, stunted dragons in the Empire's dragon-themed amusement parks had been successfully cultivated using this exact method.

However, this kind of shoddy dragon race was of little use.

The first version of the technology was not yet fully mature; while it could achieve atavism in ordinary human-kin, causing dragon-kin to undergo atavism remained difficult.

The thesis had initially been published with the support of the Animal Protection Association, and the main text made no mention of dragon-kin.

Yet the Empire reacted swiftly, quickly forcing the academic journal to retract and delete the paper while issuing a warrant for the author's arrest.

Before long, that woman vanished without a trace.

Despite this, the thesis was seen and recorded by a large number of related practitioners, who immediately set to work experimenting in an attempt to replicate the results of human atavism into intelligent spirit beasts.

Using the pretext that this technology violated human ethics and undermined human solidarity, the Empire quickly banned the dissemination of related technologies and laboratory verification.

Nevertheless, the Empire itself secretly established numerous laboratories across the universe to engage in related research.

Why did he say there were many laboratories?

The code name for the Fang Laboratory was: 079.

Moreover, the earliest batch of researchers all hailed from retired imperial professors and graduated students.

Lu Chen was only beginning to catch a glimpse of the bigger picture.

However, the experiments at the Fang Laboratory did not go smoothly.

Thousands of researchers spent a hundred years continuously refining the relevant techniques, yet they failed to successfully achieve atavism in dragon-kin, instead breeding a massive quantity of brainless dinosaurs.

A century later, the initial batch of researchers was forced to evacuate, leaving behind successor personnel to carry on the related studies.

Among these subsequent researchers, Lu Chen suddenly spotted an interesting name—

Blue Flag Fermat.

And he held a moderately important leadership position.

The last time he had heard the name Fermat was back when he encountered Arden Fermat in the Rogel star system.

"Could this Blue Flag Fermat be Arden Fermat's father, grandfather, or great-grandfather?"

Seeing Blue Flag Fermat's name, Lu Chen suspected that Aili was very likely an atavistic werewolf cultivated by this very laboratory!

After the Imperial Truth Academy withdrew its funding, the laboratory had to become self-funding.

To quickly recoup the capital invested in the early stages, the laboratory partnered with the Star Beast Herder Adventure Troupe, launching a vigorous and ambitious Star Beast Atavism Project.

Only then did they discover that cultivating brainless atavistic star beasts was extremely simple!

These juveniles did not grow brains; they only grew bodies, rapidly maturing into star beasts.

Because they lacked brains, atavistic star beasts were initially used as pets, mounts, or ornamental animals.

Soon, however, the Star Beast Herder Adventure Troupe began building star beast ships using atavistic star beasts.

As Pangu's Great Adventure gained fiery momentum, this became the laboratory's most lucrative business!

In between, there had been another experimental direction.

That was utilizing these atavistic semi-intelligent star beasts to construct large-scale neural network servers.

Consequently, the large-scale neural network servers thus constructed were repeatedly infected by the Galactic Heart virus.

There were even instances of mass star beast riots...

Ultimately, the laboratory had no choice but to abandon this direction.

They offered a concluding recommendation: the optimal neural source for neural network servers consisted of certain specialized neural bacteria and the Zerg race.

Atavistic beast-kin possessed an intelligence closer to humans, making them difficult to manage, prone to overactive imaginations, and subject to too much emotional fluctuation.

Bacteria and Zerg, on the other hand, possessed a primitive and highly obedient collective intelligence, allowing them to remain immune to the attacks of the Galactic Heart.

The report made mention of the Zerg...

Lu Chen suspected that it was only after this that the Balch family initiated related experiments, successfully creating neural network servers powered by the Zerg and subsequently beginning the construction of star-insect ships.

From this perspective, although the Balch Corporation's industrial scale fell short of the Fang Corporation's, they were relatively more successful, and their experimental technology was likewise more advanced.

To ensure the laboratory was not discovered or exposed by Lu Chen, the Balch family had even allowed Lu Chen to pillage the Sengu star system without interference, concentrating all their forces on protecting the laboratory instead.

Meanwhile, the Fang Corporation's laboratory had already been shut down.

The closure had taken place twenty years ago.

Specifically, it was connected to a female intern.

Regarding this mysterious female intern, all information within the server had been heavily scrubbed.

It took Lu Chen a tremendous amount of effort to recover a fraction of the data.

Synthesizing information from all sides, this female intern had most likely synthesized embryos capable of freely transforming between human and beast forms.

One had to realize that previous human atavism technology was unidirectional and irreversible.

Once a human transformed into a highly intelligent spirit beast or a semi-intelligent star beast, recovering a human body was impossible.

The improved technology pioneered by this female intern was an absolute, groundbreaking feat!

For this achievement, the female intern was granted various internal accolades by the Fang Corporation.

Yet the Fang Corporation did not immediately report the matter to the board of directors; instead, they covertly restarted the dragon-kin atavism experiments.

Three years later, the experiments appeared to make major progress.

However, right at that moment, the female intern betrayed the Fang Corporation, making off with the seven most perfect atavistic embryos while all laboratory surveillance systems were fully active!

Although those embryos were capable of perfect development—a feat for which the female intern deserved top credit—the laboratory had invested massive funds and countless researchers had poured infinite effort into the project.

A vast amount of experimental data was destroyed, and even the proofs of the woman's existence were thoroughly erased.

It was only later, when the board of directors came to inspect the experimental results, that the incident was uncovered.

The name of this female intern was—

Fariel.

This was also the first time the pseudonym Fariel appeared in history.

Based on the woman's operational style, members of the board of directors determined that Fariel was none other than the author of the thesis from five hundred years ago.

As for her real name, it remained unknown to this day.

"It really was you!"

Lu Chen had guessed correctly.

He finally recalled the general manager's earlier words about the chairman being driven neurotic by that woman—he had been referring to Fariel, who had betrayed the laboratory twenty years ago.

Later on, the Empire thoroughly investigated the matter. To prevent the laboratory from falling prey to that woman's covetous eyes once more, they ordered the facility sealed, with its researchers and experimental apparatus absorbed into experimental groups in other stellar regions.

Lu Chen searched the servers for a long time longer, piecing together the types of the seven embryos from various fragmented pieces of information.

Snake-kin.

Bull-kin.

Wolf-kin.

Scorpio-kin.

Fish-kin.

And even a slime-kin!

He had only managed to find information on six of them.

There was no dragon.

Yet it included the wolf-kin...

For Lu Chen, this was of paramount importance.

"Could Aili truly be a creation of Gray Crow?

I recall Aili having an extreme fear of the netherworld; could the embryonic process have involved the participation of nether venom?

If I am not mistaken, the final embryo whose name was concealed is likely Black Dragon Godo.

All of this originated from Gray Crow's hands."

Lu Chen figured that since Gray Crow had written the thesis herself and personally improved the technology, there was nothing amiss with her taking away seven perfect embryos.

Freely leeching off the Fang Corporation's experimental equipment and research labor was a remarkably slick move.

Speaking of perfect embryos, up until now, Lu Chen had encountered three perfect star beasts.

Black Dragon Godo.

The werewolf Aili.

And the black phoenix, Gu Li Suzaku.

However, the first two differed somewhat from the latter.

At first glance, the black phoenix achieved free transformation between humanoid and massive phoenix forms, making her skill level appear higher.

In reality, that was not the case.

The size discrepancy between the beast and human forms of Godo and Aili was not massive, yet they retained heaven-defying innate talents, granting them potentially stronger adaptability and higher future potential.

Conversely, the black phoenix would soon find herself constrained by her overly massive beast form and gargantuan energy consumption, making it difficult to conserve spiritual power for improving her cultivation and abilities, and she would likely hit a bottleneck very soon.

It wasn't hard for Lu Chen to guess.

The black phoenix was the handiwork of Vincent.

Meanwhile, Black Dragon Godo and the werewolf Aili stemmed directly from Gray Crow and were two of the seven perfect embryos.

From there, Lu Chen deduced that Gray Crow must have sought out seven different humanoid planets corresponding to the embryo types, implanting the embryos into the wombs of seven female humanoids so they would develop, grow, and be born naturally, after which she paid them no further mind.

Consequently, Aili grew up on Sirius, capable of undergoing atavism into her wolf form from a very young age.

By coincidence, Aili was captured by the Fang Corporation when she was young, and ultimately ended up in Arden Fermat's hands through a twists of fate, leveraging Blue Flag Fermat's connections.

Perhaps Blue Flag Fermat had inadvertently discovered that she was one of the priceless, perfect embryos taken away by Fariel back then, and thus concealed her within Arden Fermat's underground castle.

This also explained why Arden Fermat, who was notorious for his lust, had never made a move on Aili.

Wait...

Lu Chen suddenly recalled something.

"Arden Fermat died at the hands of the scorpion woman Scorpio, and among the seven perfect embryos there was also a scorpio-kin...

Could it be that the scorpion woman can also transform into a perfect scorpion form?

Surely it wouldn't be such a coincidence?"

As a Scorpio himself, Lu Chen suddenly felt a lingering thrill at the thought of a scorpion woman.

With this, Lu Chen used the chaotic, damaged information to roughly outline the full picture of events.

Perhaps certain details were inaccurate, but the general chain of events was undeniable.

All of this stemmed from Gray Crow's thesis five hundred years ago and her refinement of the atavistic embryo techniques twenty years ago.

"Could the crucial point lie within that nether-magic cat?"

"Could this cat have a connection with Goliath?"

"When Kundy August spoke of the secret concerning Goliath, was it related to that cat?"

"Could the thirteenth star beast simply be a cat?"

Lu Chen felt he was getting closer and closer to the truth.

Suddenly, he realized a terrifying fact—

Every single important person who appeared around him ultimately traced back to Gray Crow!

The first person who took him out to sea was Goliath.

His second teammate was Aili.

His very first mission after entering the Pangu Corridor was to hunt for a cat, and the black cat he finally found was handed over to Madam August, Gray Crow's former mentor.

The biggest event encountered along this adventure was the Ancestral Saddle Nebula incident associated with the black dragon.

And Kundy August, the Gelnica Beast-Taming Troupe, the Fang Corporation, the Balch family...

More or less, all of them bore the shadow of Gray Crow.

"Could this woman have set her sights on me twenty years in advance?"

The more Lu Chen thought about it, the more spine-chilling it felt.

As for Vincent, he had visited the Fang Corporation only a month prior.

His visitor logs were still on file in the laboratory.

The dust, cobwebs, and footprints left upon the floodgate were precisely from Vincent's visit.

Vincent had come to Fariel's former laboratory, but seemed not to have gleaned much useful information.

He had spent a fortune purchasing some talented humanoid slaves, yet failed to unearth Fariel's techniques.

One couldn't blame him; Lu Chen hadn't found them in the database either.

At the same time, Lu Chen could perceive something else.

Although Vincent carried a bounty of five million from the Empire, no one dared to touch him, and the Empire wasn't actively hunting him down either.

Presumably, the Empire also wanted to observe his experiments.

At least for now, Vincent had not achieved the experimental results he desired.

Once he produced results, the Empire would stop offering bounties and step in to arrest him personally.

Following Vincent's visitor logs, Lu Chen proceeded to the third-to-last level of the laboratory.

This level was where Fariel had worked twenty years ago.

Here, the atmospheric pressure was high, the temperature was sweltering, and the space was relatively compact.

Inside a castle that might once have boasted blooming flowers and babbling brooks, but was now blanketed in colorful molds, Lu Chen located Fariel's former laboratory.

Because the spiritual concentration on this level was extremely high, a mere twenty years had caused the experimental tables to be overrun by moss and mildew, making it feel as though millennia had passed.

Beneath the laboratory floor lay the footprints left by Vincent and his entourage from a month ago.

Lu Chen glanced around casually, finding nothing special; anything of value had long since been transferred away.

This was precisely why the Fang Corporation had permitted Vincent to come and tour the premises.

There were no secrets left, nor anything worth seeing.

Just as Lu Chen was about to leave, he felt as though something was missing.

In his view, any place Gray Crow had lingered invariably bore a traveler's signature mark.

Yet none was visible here.

Thus, he spread out his power of all-phenomena resonance, resonating with the entire laboratory, indeed with the entire castle, and continued to expand outwards...

"Hm?"

He caught a trace of an anomalous reaction.

Stepping out of the laboratory and leaving the castle, he headed down to the dry, moated riverbed in front of the castle. Clearing away the dead algae, he began to dig downward into the silt and sand.

Before long, Lu Chen excavated a dead seashells.

Prying open the shell and clearing away the mud and sand, he looked inside:

Inscribed on the inner wall of the shell was a black travel hat, with a grey crow perched atop the brim...

On the inner wall of the other shell valve, a short line of small characters was engraved:

"I've finally found you, adventurer."

Recommended a new book by an old author: "Deity Descent: I'm Truly a Food Blogger"

Evil spirits are reviving, and the apocalypse is imminent!

There are red-eyed evil spirits entering towns by night; regardless of human or beast, all who remain awake perish.

There is a city imprisoned by a hundred-li fog; regardless of old or young, all who harbor fear within their hearts die.

There are nightmare evil spirits stepping into dreams by daylight, seeking to reduce reality to the realm of dreams to achieve eternal life.

I, a newly reborn food blogger, received no strongest awakened one system, but instead acquired a Gourmet Hunter System, leading to the bizarre realization that the evil spirits threatening humanity's doom had instead become high-end ingredients and video material.

...

[Dark Demon Red Mantis Foreleg, Destructive Power: Ripping Tanks Apart]

[Edible Grade: Level 1 Gourmet Food]

[Preparation Method: Steaming—Steam for 24 hours, best served dipped in Hunan chili sauce]

...

Years later.

Within the Yan Kingdom, evil spirits were on the verge of extinction.

To clarify regarding my fans calling me the savior: I really am just a food blogger!

(End of this chapter)