Solving the case: Combining the police dog's olfactory genes at the beginning

The red line representing magma pressure jumped upwards at a breathtaking speed under his gaze, and the already historically high reading rose another twelve percent in the dozen or so seconds after the impact.

The monitoring system began to emit a piercing alarm, and a flashing red warning box popped up on the screen with only one line of text: "The top structure of the magma chamber is damaged, and high-pressure magma is breaking through the sealing layer."

Takijiro Onishi placed the intelligence terminal on the table, his hands gripping the edge, his knuckles turning white from the force. His gaze was fixed on the data curve on the screen; with each jump of the red line, his eyelids twitched.

His lips moved as if he were saying something, but no sound came out.

In the towns and villages at the foot of Mount Fuji in Naga Prefecture, all the people who were looking up at the plane saw it crash into the crater.

They stood by the roadside, in the fields, on the rooftop, and on the school playground, heads tilted back, mouths agape, watching the billowing flames and thick smoke above the crater, their minds blank.

No one screamed, no one ran, and no one even spoke.

Everyone was frozen in place by that scene, as if they were watching a disaster movie set in another world, only to suddenly realize that the movie was real and that they were sitting right in the center of the first row.

A Shiba Inu tied to the door of the izakaya, which had been dozing on the ground, was startled awake by the deep explosion. It stood up, its ears perked up, its tail held stiffly, and its dark eyes fixed on the direction of Mount Fuji, motionless.

It sniffed the air and smelled a scent it had never smelled before—a pungent, spicy smell, like a mixture of burning stones and rotten eggs.

That smelled of sulfur, hot volcanic gas rising from deep within the crater, spreading outwards at an unstoppable speed.

The izakaya owner reached out and patted the Shiba Inu's head; his hand was trembling.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice trembling, his hands shaking in sync with his voice. “It’s probably just fireworks.”

He himself didn't believe it when he said that.

Then the volcano actually erupted.

It wasn't the slow, elegant scene of red lava flowing down a hillside like honey, as seen in television documentaries. It was a tearing—the feeling of the earth itself being torn apart.

Tens of seconds after the impact, the thick smoke rising from the crater changed from gray to black, then from black to dark red, and its volume increased exponentially. A huge column of smoke erupted from the crater, like a black pillar punched into the sky by a giant.

The column of smoke rose so fast that it was impossible to blink, reaching thousands of meters into the air in just over ten seconds. It then began to spread outwards, forming a huge mushroom-shaped cloud that blotted out the sun and swallowed up all the light of the setting sun.

Immediately afterwards, a truly deafening explosion occurred.

If the previous explosion from the plane crash was the sound of a door being flung open, then this current loud noise is the sound of an entire building being uprooted.

The deafening roar far exceeded anyone's expectations; the sound waves spread outwards from the crater of Mount Fuji, sweeping across the eastern part of Honshu at the speed of sound. Every window in Nagashi Prefecture shattered simultaneously, shards of glass raining down on the streets.

In Shizuoka Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Tokyo—wherever the loud bang passed, houses trembled, car alarms were triggered simultaneously, and countless people were jolted awake from their sleep, stumbling into the streets, only to see the black column of smoke that was constantly expanding in the distant sky.

Mount Fuji erupted.

The smoke and dust ejected from the crater reached an altitude of over 10,000 meters in a very short time, and after meeting the stratospheric airflow in the atmosphere, it began to spread in all directions.

The diameter of the column of smoke and dust continued to expand, from the initial hundreds of meters to thousands of meters. From a distance, it looked like a giant black mushroom blooming on the ground, with the edge of the cap constantly expanding, churning, and swallowing every inch of blue sky.

Volcanic ash fell from the edge of the plume of smoke like a blizzard, the grayish-white powder swirling in the air and landing on rooftops, streets, farmlands, and on the hair, shoulders, and eyelashes of everyone who looked up.

Then the lava came out.

It didn't flow out, it erupted. Crimson magma, heated to thousands of degrees Celsius, spewed from the edge of the crater and, under the influence of gravity, rushed down the slope of Mount Fuji.

The lava flowed at an astonishing speed, and the high temperature instantly melted the snow on the hillside into steam. When the steam came into contact with the lava, it produced a violent splashing reaction, and orange-red lava fragments flew in all directions like fireworks.

Where the lava flowed, trees were instantly carbonized and then burst into flames. Pine and cherry trees that had grown for decades or even centuries were as fragile as matchsticks in the face of the lava, turning to ashes without even a chance to smoke.

Shrines on the hillside, torii gates, rest stops on the mountain trails—all these man-made structures couldn't withstand the torrent of lava for even a second. Wooden buildings burned like torches when ignited, and concrete structures cracked and collapsed in the high temperatures before being swallowed by the lava, leaving not even ruins behind.

Residents at the border of Nashi and Shizuoka prefectures began to flee for their lives.

The cries of despair echoed through the streets.

A woman carrying a child rushed out of a collapsing house, her bare feet stepping on the volcanic ash-covered road. Her soles were scalded by the hot ash, but she didn't care about the pain and just ran as fast as she could away from the volcano.

An old man was pushed to the ground, his cane flying several meters away. He reached out to grab the cane, but before his fingers could even touch the wooden handle, he was trampled by the surging crowd behind him.

A car veered off the road in a panic and crashed into a paddy field by the roadside. Its wheels spun wildly in the air like a turtle that had flipped over. The driver inside the car frantically pounded on the windows, but his voice was drowned out by the huge roar of the volcanic eruption and the screams of the crowd.

The stray dogs, tails between their legs, darted about in all directions, some running east, some running west. Their eyes were filled with fear and confusion, unable to understand why the earth had suddenly begun to tremble or why the sky had suddenly turned black.

In the Royal Gardens of Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Emperor T had already reached the entrance of the underground shelter.

He was barefoot—the sock on the other foot was missing—his bathrobe was draped crookedly over his body, revealing half of his thin, bony chest.

His face was covered in sweat, his hairstyle was completely ruined, his wet hair clung to his scalp, and a few strands of white hair peeked out from the black dye at the roots, looking particularly glaring under the corridor lights.

He reached out to pull the iron door of the shelter, his fingers bulging with veins from the force, but the door wouldn't budge—he was pulling in the wrong direction; the door was being pushed outwards.

The imperial guards behind him caught up, panting as they pushed the door open for him. Emperor T rushed inside, not even bothering to turn back and pick up his lost shoes.

He didn't ask where his wife was, or if his son had caught up; he didn't even turn around once. The heavy iron gate slammed shut behind him, shutting everything out.

Luo Fei could see all of this clearly from the air.

He was floating at a height of about 100 meters, his body suspended in mid-air, his phone held steadily in front of him, the camera pointed towards Mount Fuji.

From his perspective, the entire disaster unfolded like a giant painting before his eyes—in the foreground were his own feet, suspended in mid-air; in the distance, the massive volcano was erupting wildly; further still, the towns of Nagashi Prefecture were engulfed in flames by lava and volcanic ash; and in the far distance, the outline of Tokyo was swallowed by smoke and dust on the horizon, along with the enormous black plume of smoke that pierced the clouds, its top spreading into a huge umbrella-like structure in the stratosphere, covering most of Honshu. His mouth gaped open.

Luo Fei was not someone who was easily intimidated. He had carried out countless dangerous missions with the Ganjiang team, witnessed the hail of bullets on the border, seen the darkest methods in the interrogation room of the Dali Division, and seen the ugliest and cruelest parts of human nature.

But the sight before him—this massive volcano, which hadn't erupted for centuries, was prematurely awakened by the impact of his plane, and was announcing its existence to the world in a devastating manner—made him involuntarily gape, a look of shock he himself was unaware of flashing in his eyes.

He did indeed want the volcano to erupt prematurely.

But he didn't expect it to actually work.

Moreover, the scale of the eruption far exceeded his expectations.

"Oh my God."

Luo Fei spoke into the phone camera, his voice not loud, but to the 200 million viewers in the live stream, those two words carried more weight than any desperate shout.

The live chat exploded with excitement.

"The volcano erupted! It really erupted!"

"Mount Fuji erupted! Holy crap ...

"Did you see that plume of smoke? How tall was it?"

"At least 10,000 meters. I've seen documentaries about volcanic eruptions, and this plume of smoke is definitely in the 10,000-meter range."

"The lava flowed down, it really flowed down, the whole mountain is burning."

"Li County is finished. Li County is completely finished."

"Not only Lixian County, but the entire Guandong Plain will be doomed."

"Do you guys remember what I mentioned in the previous live stream? There's a super magma chamber beneath Mount Fuji."

"If the magma chamber were to erupt completely, half of Honshu would sink."

"The end of our peaceful lives has come."

"Captain Luo single-handedly wiped out the entire Cherry Blossom Country."

"He did it, he really did it."

"This isn't a mutual destruction; this is one man taking on an entire nation."

"Great Xia is mighty! Team Luo is mighty!"

"I can't bear to watch anymore, but I can't bear to stop watching."

Just as the barrage of comments was scrolling wildly, Luo Fei heard a new explosion coming from afar.

He turned sharply in the direction the sound came from, and saw that another volcano dozens of miles away from Mount Fuji—a mountain whose name he didn't know—was also suddenly billowing thick smoke.

The volcano was no match for Mount Fuji in size, but its crater was expanding at a visible rate, and orange-red light emanated from the crater, like a ferocious beast opening its eyes.

A chain reaction has begun.

Honshu Island is home to one of the world’s most densely populated volcanic clusters, with dozens of active volcanoes. Mount Fuji is the largest of these clusters, and its eruption would inevitably disrupt the geological balance of the entire region.

Those small volcanoes that had been silent for hundreds or even thousands of years began to awaken one after another under the enormous energy impact and crustal vibrations transmitted from the eruption of Mount Fuji.

Luo Fei looked down.

He floated at a height of one hundred meters, and from this angle, every detail on the ground was chillingly clear. He saw the earth being torn apart in a way that was visible to the naked eye—not a metaphor, but a real tearing apart.

A crack snaked forward from the farmland at the foot of Mount Fuji. The land on both sides of the crack moved in opposite directions, one to the east and the other to the west. The crack in the middle got wider and wider, from the thickness of a finger to the thickness of an arm, and then to a width that a car could fall into.

Wherever the cracks passed, houses collapsed in swathes, like models made of building blocks. Wooden houses cracked and snapped as they collapsed, while concrete buildings twisted and deformed like cardboard boxes crushed by an invisible foot before crashing down, raising clouds of dust mixed with volcanic ash.

A major earthquake struck.

The intensity of the tremors escalated from a slight shaking to a violent jolt within seconds, as if some unimaginably huge creature was turning over underground.

Luo Fei hovered in the air and could see the ground undulating like waves on the sea, pushing forward. Those still standing were thrown off their feet by the undulations and rolled on the ground. Cars that were still moving were jolted up, their tires lifting off the ground by several centimeters before crashing back down, their chassis colliding with the road surface and creating blinding sparks. Utility poles swayed like wheat being blown by the wind, and after the high-voltage lines broke, they flung blue-white arcs of electricity into the air. These arcs struck the ground and ignited the dry grass and trees, and new fires broke out everywhere in the collapsing city.

Nagashi Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture, Tokyo—the entire eastern part of Honshu is trembling.

Luo Fei looked at the phone in his hand; the screen showed that the battery level was still 97%.

Since he jumped off the plane, his phone has only used up 3% of its battery. Perhaps the low temperature at high altitudes has a protective effect on the battery, or perhaps this brand of phone is indeed durable.

He turned the camera around to face himself. His face was still covered in volcanic ash, and his hair was blown around like a messy bird's nest by the wind, but his expression had recovered somewhat from the shock he had just experienced.

"The anchor is currently positioned over the southern mountainous region, at an altitude of approximately 100 meters," he said to the camera, his tone as calm as a reporter covering the news. "Mount Fuji has fully erupted, volcanic ash is spreading eastward, and a strong earthquake has occurred in eastern Honshu."

The small volcano I just saw, located about several dozen kilometers southwest of Mount Fuji, has also begun erupting. Following this trend, other volcanoes on Honshu Island could very well be triggered in a chain reaction.

The viewers in the comment section were momentarily at a loss for words upon hearing his overly calm report. (End of Chapter)