The Heavens: A Qing, the Yue Girl at the beginning

"Funding? Funding!"

Zhao Qing tapped the table with her fingertips. The crisp sound startled the Ouroboros lying on the ground. The little creature raised the tip of its translucent tail and rubbed the corner of her robe in a flattering manner:

"The blood alliance has been signed, now it's time to talk business... Is it time to submit a mid-term report on the research funds for the twelve uses of dragon blood?"

Xia Mi's dragon pupils spun three times, and suddenly thirteen colored glass test tubes fell from her sleeves. The red and golden dragon blood reflected a rainbow halo: "Look how perfect this blood sample separation technology is! Serum, plasma, dragon marrow stem cells, and ancient glial cells are all classified..."

"and then?"

Zhao Qing reached out to take the test tube, pressed down the hair on Xia Mi's head, and made a "hiss" sound as if pressing a steam valve: "What I want is the applicable interim results!"

"The first item is dragon blood nutrient soil."

Xia Mi blinked and took out a celadon jar with a label of "For Experimental Field Only" from somewhere. Dark red crystals were precipitated at the bottom of the jar. "Add one thousandth of purified dragon blood to it, and it can be used to cultivate dragon blood grass, dragon scale fern, red dragon bamboo shoots, etc...."

"Isn't this something everyone knows?"

"It's different, it's different!" Xia Mi shook her head: "The improved variety cultivated with dragon blood serum can theoretically absorb various alchemical toxins in the atmosphere..."

"But there is no alchemical toxin in the atmosphere..." Zhao Qing raised his hand to stop the Dragon King who was about to explain, making him touch his nose guiltily, "Unless there was an experimental accident."

"The second item is the Dragon Blood Beauty Essence." Xia Mi changed the subject without changing her expression and took out a gilded jade bottle with carved patterns:

"Only one ten-thousandth of the serum concentration can increase the division rate of stratum corneum cells by fifty times! Although there is currently a problem of random golden skin color... the wrinkle removal effect is twenty times stronger than Botox!"

Before he finished speaking, Zhao Qing had already carefully examined the ingredient content table of the jade bottle: "Alchemical nanosilver must be used to suppress excess activity. Cell telomeres will naturally extend by 0.3%, but at the cost of inducing scaly keratin hyperplasia - you call this beauty?"

"The third item is dragon blood biofuel."

Xia Mi quickly skipped over these minor issues and summoned a ball of vibrant blue flames. "Look at this 'Dragon Blood-Based Aviation Fuel Combustion Test'. After separating the inert components in the plasma and adding 0.3% of the purification liquid, the flame temperature increased by a full degrees Celsius!"

Zhao Qing naturally drew a line of alchemical formulas in front of him: "Although the energy density is 17.8 times that of ordinary fuel, it will quickly corrode the fuel tank... shorten the engine life to less than 15 minutes? The spiritual energy radiation released during combustion will interfere with the pilot's brain waves, which is equivalent to Longwei?"

"As expected of you, Master... Actually, it would be perfect if it could be switched to autopilot!" Xia Mi snapped her fingers, and a dark golden fountain pen rose from the dodecahedron matrix. "The most practical one is actually this - a stealth paint made from thrombin and sulfur! It can distort radar waves when applied to a fighter plane."

"While consuming the radar waves, it also ate up the skin? The entire plane really disappeared in front of the radar. After all, it had already fallen." Zhao Qing stroked his forehead and frowned, and continued to ask: "What about the fifth super coagulant?"

"This is a groundbreaking invention. Even penetrating wounds can be healed within ten seconds! The efficiency of first aid on the battlefield is increased a hundredfold!"

Xia Mi suddenly became alert, took out the blood-colored crystal and crushed it into powder in her palm, "Sprinkle it on the wound to stop the bleeding instantly...but excessive use will cause the capillaries to transform into dragons..."

"Like making scales grow on the wound?"

Zhao Qing glanced at the culture chamber in the corner, and saw a small white mouse that looked like a pangolin gnawing on a steel ingot.

"Or horns..." Xia Mi's voice became smaller and smaller, "But it's better than dying of blood loss, right?"

She quickly put away the dangerous goods, and the hair on her head swayed as she moved. "In fact, the most valuable thing is the research and development of ink sticks! The carbon quanta in dragon blood can undergo collective chirality reversal in the four-dimensional manifold. Combined with pine smoke, it can be used to write talismans with built-in alchemical arrays..."

She then shut her mouth because Zhao Qing was using Qi to project surveillance footage of himself blowing up the laboratory yesterday into the air.

"Wait! The cleaning agent project should be praised, right?" Xia Mi gritted her teeth and took out an emerald crystal bottle with dragon characters entwined on the bottle like vines. "When the lysosomes are completely separated from the serum, the decontamination ability will surpass all chemical products! Even a 1:100000 dilution can decompose nuclear waste!"

"The premise is to ignore its property of exploding when exposed to light." Zhao Qing's temples throbbed slightly, and a dense list of accidents was projected behind him. His tone was cold: "If you keep talking like this, the debt for repairs will be deducted from the funds, and the compensation will be hundreds of billions."

"It's only sensitive in the visible light band. Scientific exploration is always full of surprises!" Xia Mi took a few steps back tactically: "Let's take a look at the beer in the fermentation project? Using dragon's blood yeast instead of hops, it has a mellow taste and can temporarily enhance muscle strength..."

She pulled out a gilded wine jug like a magician, with tiny dragon-shaped bubbles floating on the surface of the amber liquid.

Zhao Qing took the wine bottle and sniffed it. The next moment, he threw the liquid onto the stone steps outside the hall. "The strengthening effect lasts for three minutes, and the side effect is that the IQ drops by 80%? Forget about 'Dragon Blood Yogurt'!"

"Then...how about the cloud-bursting mushroom?" Xia Mi's toes made circles unconsciously, "It's a dragon subspecies of fungi that is very easy to keep alive. When its spores come into contact with oxygen, they will..." Halfway through her words, a purple test tube suddenly vibrated violently, and a mushroom-shaped microscopic mushroom cloud exploded in the sealed tube, forming spider-web-like cracks.

"Are you using Plants vs. Zombies to make biological simulations?" Zhao Qing's expression became more and more exciting: "Don't tell me you really made the 'Pea Shooter' and the 'Big Mouth Piranha Plant'!"

"They are still in the theoretical verification stage..." Xia Mi laughed guiltily, "But the experimental varieties of 'Destruction Mushroom', 'Confussion Mushroom' and 'Ice Mushroom' have been successfully cultivated! Do you want to try the actual combat effect of 'Ice Mushroom' first?"

As she spoke, she pulled out a cold glass tube from the test tube rack and shook it carefully. The spores floating in the tube slowly rotated under the nourishment of spiritual energy, emitting a faint blue light:

"Referring to the precedent of 'Taixu Seeding Jade Technique', these are all reasonable developments for the dragon genome!"

"Because there are zombies like Deadpool," Zhao Qing raised her hand to hold down the spore cloud that was about to jump out of the test tube, "you formed a plant army instead?" She flicked the test tube open with her finger, and ice crystals instantly bloomed into hexagonal frost flowers on the temple pillars. "It seems that I need to add "Resident Evil" to your game ban list."

Xia Mi stuck out her tongue and didn't dare to respond.

She knew that her research direction had gone astray, but every experiment was like opening the door to a new world, and she couldn't stop at all - after all, she was not spending her personal savings, but funds approved by the "public".

Xia Mi's ahoge drooped down, and while frantically reinforcing the seal of the test tube, she took out a bronze compass from the secret compartment of her belt: "The finale is this!"

"The living compass cultivated from dragon marrow stem cells can be charged with star antimony crystals and can automatically generate an escape route in the alchemical maze..."

"Isn't that the Pikachu Alchemy doll you hid under your skirt?"

Zhao Qing sighed helplessly, too lazy to point out the potential problems with the compass. He flicked it casually, and a yellow-skinned mouse jumped out: "Is it fun to record the Word Spirit Thunder Pool on the alchemy matrix and simulate '100,000 volts'?"

Xia Mi pressed Pikachu's tail, and the entire hall was bathed in a vibrant golden arc of electricity. "Although the power is not proportional to the material consumption, with it, I can sue Nintendo for copyright infringement and send out a stack of lawyers' letters."

"If we make the most of the Pokémon IP, won't we be able to make back our funding?"

“It does sound feasible.”

Zhao Qing's lips finally curved up, and his fingertips drew golden contract terms in the air: "However, considering the progress of your project "Research on the Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood", the funding application is temporarily rejected. Please submit a 20,000-word explanation and review to me first."

"No! You are abusing the ancient cultural heritage!" Xia Mi's wailing voice echoed in the empty hall: "At least tell me first, what is the correct research direction?"

"Take out the review report first." Zhao Qing smiled slightly, threw a few jade plates with a lot of information, and walked outside: "This is the specific terms of reinforcement, and an overview of the recent dragon incident on the other side..."

"The latest intelligence? In just a few days, there have been so many changes in the world?"

……

When the perspective was shifted to the side of the dragon world, global abnormal events had already been summarized by Zhao Qing and her allies' intelligence network - in August 2004, when the abnormally active monsoon in the equatorial convergence zone swept across the Indian Ocean, human civilization was standing on the brink of cognitive collapse.

Since late July, abnormal earthquake amplitudes have frequently occurred on the northern foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the United States discovered three spiral craters with a diameter of more than 800 meters through remote sensing satellites, and continuous release of beta radiation was detected in the craters.

Although governments around the world have claimed that it was "abnormal geological activity," the Pentagon's Strategic Threat Assessment Team pointed out in a confidential document, "Lava Dome," submitted on August 8 that thermal imaging showed the presence of "reptilian high-energy organisms" in the pit.

If the target is completely buried in the basalt layer, conventional earth-penetrating warheads will become ineffective.

The Strategic Command proposed to deploy a B83 thermonuclear device at the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, with an estimated equivalent of a staggering 2.7 million tons, but what was ultimately dispatched was only a new type of earth-penetrating neutron bomb.

The US military dispatched the USS Roosevelt, USS Reagan and USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier battle groups to the Indian Ocean in the name of "anti-piracy exercises", but in reality established a blockade zone 200 nautical miles from the East African coastline.

The EU urgently launched the "Hephaestus Plan" and sent a joint geological intervention team to Tanzania. This action caused the international crude oil price to surge by 9.2% in a single day, and the copper futures contracts of the London Metal Exchange were massively shorted by hedge funds.

The East African Economic Community saw unusual capital flows this week, with the South African rand's exchange rate against safe-haven currencies fluctuating by 11.2%, the highest since 1994.

The Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge announced on August 8 the establishment of a "High Density Biomaterials Laboratory", with 15% of its first £240 million in research funding coming from the UK Ministry of Defense's Special Budget for Overseas Operations - the Secret Party's London branch reports this.

According to the analysis of Flamel, vice president of Kassel College, conventional weapons may trigger the "fire element siphon trap" preset by ancient dragons, so it is best to use thermonuclear weapons to attack them.

At almost the same time, the ongoing Pacific Rim Volcano Expedition Competition also encountered a major change.

On August 8, the volcanic eruption index (VEI) of Sakurajima in Kyushu, Japan reached level 7. In the following three days, Mount Usu and Mount Aso erupted abnormally one after another, and derivatives of ambrin were detected in the volcanic ash.

On August 8, although the Japan Meteorological Agency insisted that the probability of Mount Fuji erupting was "less than 10%", the Ministry of Defense suddenly dispatched the 0.03th Engineer Regiment to Shizuoka Prefecture and laid a seismic detector array on the seabed of Suruga Bay. The 8th Biochemical Protection Battalion of the Self-Defense Forces blocked the upper reaches of the Tama River on August 9.

Even more disturbing is that the Yokohama Port Authority reported massive structural damage to the port's breakwater, and surveillance footage captured swarms of translucent, unknown aquatic creatures about 12 cm long, with jaw pressure exceeding 2000 psi, capable of chewing through 30 cm thick marine steel plates in 5 seconds.

Ryohei Nakamura, a professor of bioengineering at Yokohama National University, showed the damaged shield machine cutterhead at a press conference:
"This biological group, which fishermen call 'ghost tooth dragon viper', is spreading at a speed of more than 30 nautical miles per day. If it enters the Pacific warm current system, the global shipping industry will face great risks."

To this end, the cabinet urgently passed the "Important Infrastructure Protection Law", deployed a magnetic mine interception net in Tokyo Bay late at night, and required all underground pipelines to be equipped with a titanium alloy protective layer.

Maruyama Construction, a subsidiary of Genshiki Heavy Industries, successfully won the bid and began to accelerate the research and development of ceramic-based composite material protective layers.

8月7日，挪威卑尔根海洋研究所的深海探测器在墨西哥湾3200米深处，拍摄到体长45米的沧龙活体影像。该生物随后以90节速度撞沉附近的日本捕鲸船“第二日新丸”。

Testimonies from surviving crew members showed that the creature’s head was longer than the sperm whale’s overall size, and the force of its tail strike directly caused the keel of a 3000-ton ship to break: “The monster smashed the cockpit directly with the whaling cannon, and its eyes… were like two lumps of molten copper.”

The Institute of Paleontology at the University of Tokyo insisted at a press conference that "carbon-based organisms could not have such defensive capabilities", but the next day an accident occurred at Omaezaki Port in Shizuoka Prefecture where the keel of a cargo ship was bitten off by an unknown "super-sized" creature.

Affected by this, Lloyd's of London raised ocean shipping insurance rates by 300%, and the backlog of applications for passage through the Strait of Malacca exceeded 1500 ships. Shanghai Baosteel Group urgently launched the "Dragon Strike Steel" R&D project, attempting to improve the impact resistance of ship steel by doping with yttrium.

While the British Museum reopened its dusty 19th-century "Sea Monster Sighting Archives", the Qingdao Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences launched the "Great Wall of the Abyss" project to deploy an infrasound array in the South China Sea.

In August, the melting rate of the Arctic ice sheet accelerated by 8% compared with previous years. The Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute released satellite monitoring data: a circular warming zone with a diameter of 400 kilometers appeared at five coordinate points in the central Arctic Ocean, and the surface sea temperature reached 3°C, forming a standard five-pointed star geometric pattern.

French explorer Pierre Leclerc, who was filming a documentary in Greenland, claimed that he witnessed giant runes made of lava emerging from the ice during a snowstorm.

The Vatican issued a rare encyclical on August 8, condemning the "Neo-Satanist" rally in Tromsø, Norway.

According to information intercepted by Italian intelligence agencies, spokespersons of the sect have repeatedly claimed that "the sealed throne is about to thaw" and that a bronze column with a dragon-shaped relief was found in the ice pyramid built in the Svalbard Islands. Carbon-13500 dating showed that it was about years old.

On the same day, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway was broken into by unidentified persons, and the incomplete files of the Nazi "Thule" plan seized in 1945 were lost.

Munich Reinsurance Group has included the Arctic climate anomaly in its special risk assessment and expects global marine insurance premiums to rise by 2.5 percentage points. The European Environment Agency proposed the establishment of a "Special Polar Research Channel", but was strongly protested by Swedish environmental organizations.

The Pan American Health Organization confirmed on August 8 that there were more than 11 cases of "squamous disease" in Guatemala. The stratum corneum of the infected people thickened at a rate of 2300 mm per day, forming blue-gray scales similar to those of reptiles. Late-stage cases showed characteristics of mandibular fission and serpentine changes in the retinal lens.

The first patient was a tomb robber named José Mendoza, whose gang broke into the bottom chamber of the Tikal pyramid and had sexual intercourse with a mummy wrapped in mercury ribbons.

The latest research from the biosafety laboratory under the Cuban branch of the secret party shows that "scaly disease" is actually a parasitic phenomenon of the newly discovered dragon subspecies "Quetzalcoatan Trypanosoma". This semi-alchemical organism will rewrite the host's DNA chain and transform it into a degraded version of Deadpool.

The local indigenous elders claimed that this was "the punishment of Kukulkan", but Mayan culture researchers in a museum in Mexico pointed out that the "servants of Quetzalcoatl" mentioned in the Aztec epic were "with skin like crocodiles and eyes like candlelight."

The latest CNN poll shows that 68% of Americans believe that the government has concealed "important truths." A YouTube channel called "Guardians of the Center of the Earth" has 230 million subscribers. Although the "Pentagon Dragon Dissection Video" it released was confirmed to be fake, it still caused global panic.

Mysterious short-selling transactions have appeared on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, involving multiple sectors such as military industry, shipping, and rare metals. It is suspected that an organized group is taking advantage of panic to make profits.

Under the surface, the Hunter website's transaction volume surged 8% in August, with multiple anonymous accounts seeking to buy dragon fetal blood at high prices. A user nicknamed "Crimson Viscount" uploaded mosaic-processed files and secretly auctioned off the "Dragon Blood Hound" biological weapon information that leaked in 670.

On August 8, the University of Tokyo announced the establishment of the "Institute of Superancient Civilization". The recruitment notice specifically stated that it needed compound talents who were proficient in the writing of the Age of Gods and nonlinear topology.

On the same day, Trinity College of Cambridge University secretly reopened the "Abraham van Helsingt Room" which had been sealed for a century. The medieval manuscripts in the collection were interspersed with parchment scrolls depicting dragon anatomy.

It is worth noting that many domestic universities have added the elective subject of "Mythological Semiotics" to their independent enrollment examinations, and the test questions include a comparative analysis of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and the Mesopotamian creation epic.

On August 8, thousands of local residents on the Nazca Plateau in Peru witnessed the "burning Quetzalcoatl" passing through the night sky.

The real evidence of this event, which has been defined as a collective hallucination by embassies of various countries, is now locked in a safe at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Infrared images taken by the LandSat-7 satellite show that the legendary Nazca lines are being rearranged at a speed of 3 centimeters per day, gradually outlining a pattern of a giant snake with dragon wings.

On August 8, a holographic projection occurred in New York's Times Square. In the blurry image, a humanoid creature could be seen holding a scepter-like object, but ground surveillance did not detect any projection equipment.

The FBI has intervened in the investigation, and preliminary technical analysis shows that the light wave modulation technology used in the image is beyond the existing level.

On August 8, Fox News in the United States broadcast a special program "They Are on Wall Street", claiming that there are "cold-blooded people" in the underground gold vault of the Federal Reserve. Although CNN confirmed that the report was based on the setting of Marvel comics, it still caused an abnormal selling of 25 lots per second in COMEX gold futures.

As a number of supernatural events occurred one after another, Facebook was forced to activate the "Lizard Man Keyword Filtering Algorithm". A poll conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government showed that 18% of people aged 25-41 believed that "the government has been infiltrated by extraterrestrial creatures."

The FBI remained unusually silent on the "rumor" and only alerted state police departments through informal channels to pay attention to "suspicious persons with reptilian features" and to possibly implement the "ugly law" popular in the 19th century.

The Department of Social Psychology at Cambridge University has detected the "Lindman resonance" phenomenon in the collective subconscious. Margaret Weber, an analyst at the Jungian school, pointed out: "The number of dream reports about scales and flames worldwide has reached 780 times that of the Cold War period. This collective anxiety may be due to some primitive fear archetype that has not yet been scientifically recognized."

In this period, which was later called the "Summer of Awakening", governments around the world spontaneously activated their dusty emergency plans:
In a nuclear shelter 300 meters underground in Washington, D.C., the lead door of the sixth laboratory of the "Blue Book Project" was pushed open by a hydraulic device; on the Gobi Desert of Lop Nur, China, the fourth-generation synchrotron radiation biological analysis light source bloomed like a silver-white dandelion in the night;

The moment the "Secret Directive No. 137" voted by the European Parliament came into effect, the antennas of 30 Galileo satellites turned simultaneously, weaving an electromagnetic net covering ° north latitude.

But all actions point to the same dilemma - in the face of these existences that go against common sense, the technological system that humans are proud of is showing its pale background and is exposed in the supernatural black domain.

As the morning light of the last week of August illuminated the United Nations headquarters building, representatives of the five permanent members of the Security Council signed the "Sunset Agreement" that would never be recorded in the archives amid the hum of the electronic incinerator.

From actuaries at Zurich Insurance Group to materials scientists at the National University of Singapore, from epidemic prevention workers in Rio de Janeiro to submarine commanders in Vladivostok, the strange phenomena in the summer of 2004 are quietly rewriting the development trajectory of human civilization.

When the Pentagon's beta radiation map and Lop Nur's nanolattice make peace in the depths of the dark web, when Yokosuka's infrasound and Geneva's muon flow are entangled at the quantum level, and when Guatemala's reverse-growing telomeres appear on the cover of Nature magazine, those trillion-dollar emergency plans are nothing more than sand castles built by children before a storm.

And the beeping of all detectors at this moment will eventually become a slight tremor in future history books.

On the other side of the sky, the spindle of fate seems to have pierced the longitude and latitude of time and space.

The first broken thread was burning into pale green ashes in the northern lights.

At the same time, deep in the ice cellar of Kassel College, Vice President Flamel stared at the dancing stars on the bronze compass and murmured to the mercury in the alchemical matrix: "Dear old friend, why do you think humans want to wrap fear in the sugar coating of science?"

"Because the bitter medicine of truth needs hope as a medicine." Angers voice suddenly came from the mist of mercury, and his shiny Oxford leather shoes crushed the ice crystals on the ground.

In the whiskey glass that the principal was shaking, the amber liquid was emitting strange golden-red ripples.

"Your cigar ash is about to fall into the alchemical array." Flamel stirred the mercury liquid without looking up, popped the cork of the wine bottle, and the bronze compass danced the Gödel code dance in his palm. "Special reminder, the 1961 Cohiba limited edition has only three millimeters left."

"So the King of Bronze and Fire is smoking a cigar in the Nibelung? The King of Ocean and Water is raising a school of mosasaur fish?" Angers twirled the Damascus folding knife with his fingertips, cutting through the cold air of the ice cellar. "Could it be that both monarchs awakened at the same time this time? Several years earlier than predicted?"

"It could be even worse." The vice-president drank the bloody Mary soaked with the dragon viper embryo and suddenly whistled: "You'd better take a look at the monitoring data from Iceland--" The white air he exhaled condensed into two ancient runes on the ice:

Nidhogg's Awakening
……

(End of this chapter)