In a high-level martial arts game, a wife is given to you at the start.

The team leader was a middle-aged deacon named Shao Yuan, a senior deacon with many years of experience serving in the Field Operations Department of the Oversight Bureau. He led four team members, carrying a full set of collection tools and testing equipment, searching inch by inch through the ruins of the Bone Tower.

"Captain, we've found something here." A young team member squatted beside a pile of broken bones, holding a palm-sized, fluorescent blue fragment that gleamed faintly in the afternoon sun. "This crystal cluster fragment still has residual energy, though it's weak, it's purer than the ones we recovered before."

Shao Yuan walked over, took the fragment, and examined it closely, his brow furrowing slightly. "It is indeed purer than the other fragments, but the color is wrong. Normal fluorescent blue crystal cluster fragments should appear pale blue or grayish-white after losing energy support. This one is too dark, it looks like..."

He paused, then didn't continue.

What did it seem like? He had a vague guess in his mind, but the guess was so absurd that he didn't even want to believe it himself.

"Put it in a sealed bag and hand it over to the Array Master Guild for analysis when we get back." He handed the fragments back to his teammate and turned to continue walking forward.

They searched the ruins of the bone tower for about an hour, recovering more than a dozen fragments of crystal clusters of varying sizes and several relatively well-preserved bone structure samples. Everything went smoothly, so smoothly that Shao Yuan felt a little uneasy—based on his years of experience in the field, a mission that went too smoothly often meant that something had been overlooked.

His unease became a reality as evening approached.

As they were preparing to return, one of the team members discovered a body in a collapsed crater at the edge of the Bone Tower ruins.

The corpse wore a tattered, greyish-white robe. The robe wasn't the uniform of the Overwatch Council, nor the attire of any known faction in the arena; rather, it was a more ancient and crudely tailored style, as if simply sewn together a single piece of animal hide and draped over the body. The corpse was shriveled, the skin an unnatural waxy yellow, clinging tightly to the bones, as if it had been dried for many years.

But what sent chills down Shao Yuan's spine was that two fluorescent blue crystal clusters were embedded in the eye sockets of the corpse.

It wasn't implanted artificially after death, but rather grew outward from inside the eye socket. The roots of the crystal cluster were deeply embedded in the bone of the eye socket, fused with the skull, and the surface texture was still pulsating extremely slowly, like some living thing breathing faintly in its sleep.

"What...what the hell is this?" The team member who discovered the body asked in a trembling voice, his hand holding the collection forceps shaking slightly.

Shao Yuan crouched down and carefully examined the remains of the corpse's bones and clothing. His fingers paused on the clothing on the corpse's chest—there, a complex rune was drawn with some kind of dark red dye. The rune was shaped like an open eye, with a vertical crack in the pupil.

He didn't recognize the rune, but he instinctively felt a strong sense of unease.

"Take photos, record the coordinates, and then bring the entire body back to the arena." Shao Yuan stood up, his voice carrying an undeniable decisiveness. "Do not touch those two crystal clusters, and do not attempt to peel them off. Pack the entire body in a sealed bag, and no one is allowed to open it on the way back."

Following his instructions, the four team members quickly and carefully placed the body into a specially made sealed bag. No one spoke during the entire process; only the sound of the zipper zipper and the team members' deliberately suppressed breathing were clearly audible in the twilight.

They rushed back to the arena overnight.

The corpse was sent directly to the underground research laboratory of the Array Masters Guild, where it was personally examined and analyzed by the Guild's president, Luo Song. Upon returning, Shao Yuan immediately submitted a detailed mission report to the Oversight Council, specifically mentioning the fluorescent blue crystal clusters growing in the corpse's eye sockets and the rune on its chest that he had never seen before.

The strange thing happened on the night the body was sent to the laboratory.

Nobody knows exactly how it happened.

Laboratory surveillance footage showed that at 11:45 AM, the body placed in the sealed testing chamber suddenly opened its eyes. The two fluorescent blue crystal clusters burst into a blinding light the moment they opened, the light penetrating the alloy walls of the sealed chamber and the laboratory's protective walls, spreading rapidly in all directions like a silent pulse wave.

The pulse wave covered a relatively small area, only extending to the entire building housing the Array Master Guild's underground laboratory. However, everyone within that building who came into contact with the pulse wave stopped what they were doing at the same instant—their bodies froze in place, as if fixed by some invisible force, and vertical slits appeared in their pupils, identical to the runes on the corpse's chest, with fluorescent blue light slowly seeping from their eye sockets.

This process lasted for about ten breaths.

Ten breaths later, those people regained their mobility. Their complexions were normal, their movements were fluid, and they looked no different from before. But their eyes had changed—the emotional fluctuations that belonged to humanity seemed to have been ripped from their souls by something, replaced by an empty, mechanical calm that was controlled by some higher consciousness.

After releasing the pulse wave, the fluorescent blue light in the eyes of the corpse sealed in the detection chamber slowly faded, and its entire body turned into a handful of grayish-white powder, scattered at the bottom of the sealed chamber.

Those "infected" by the pulse wave began to act according to a set procedure over the next period of time—they checked all the equipment and data in the laboratory, destroyed all the test records about the corpse, and then left the Array Master Guild building in various ways, dispersing to various corners of the arena.

No one noticed anything unusual.

Because those infected appear outwardly no different from ordinary people. They behave normally, speak clearly, and can even communicate normally with colleagues and complete their daily work. The only difference is that—deep in their souls, the rune with the vertical pupil crack has been deeply imprinted in the core of their consciousness, like a buried seed, quietly waiting for the opportunity to sprout.

For the next few days, the arena remained calm.

Lin Qiye's daily life remained largely unchanged. He cultivated in the early morning, handled affairs of the Supervisory Bureau in the morning, returned home to spend time with his children in the afternoon, and took a walk in the courtyard in the evening, occasionally exchanging a few words with Luo Sheng, Shuang'er, and Man Ji. The ten maids had also gradually integrated into the rhythm of life in the manor. Qingyin was in charge of preparing medicinal meals, two other maids with cultivation experience assisted in managing the cultivation room and material storage room, and the remaining five handled daily chores. Everything was running smoothly.

But Lin Qiye vaguely sensed that something was wrong.