The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

North America. Nevada.

A classified military base, three underground levels.

The gray-white conference room had no windows, and three screens hung on the front wall.

The largest one is in the middle; the image is frozen on a high-resolution screenshot...

A black-haired girl, unarmed, pinned a fully armed bald man to the ground.

The girl looked to be under twenty years old.

Two small screens to the side were playing the same video from different angles in a loop: fast forward, slow motion, and frame-by-frame analysis.

Lieutenant General Morrison, sitting in the center of the long table, chewed gum and stared at the screen for a full three minutes.

"These are the soldiers we spent so much money training?"

Colonel Hayes, sitting to his left, pushed the tablet forward.

"These are just the initial stage of successful warriors. Their bodies have been injected with an extremely high concentration of Flame Spirit Stone solution, making their muscle density, bone hardness, and reaction speed five to eight times that of ordinary people. They are the combat units that are currently the closest to the concept of 'super soldiers'."

"The closest known," Morrison repeated the phrase, "and then what? Couldn't even last a minute against a group of female college students in their early twenties?"

No one responded in the meeting room.

In the corner, Dr. Williams adjusted his glasses and pulled up another set of documents.

"General, these girls are no ordinary people. According to our intelligence, they are disciples of a folk cultivator from China."

Screen switching.

An edited video started playing—the picture quality was rough, clearly taken from a Chinese social media platform.

A young man stood in an underground river, holding down a giant, churning dragon with one hand.

"This video was leaked five months ago. At the time, our internal assessment concluded that..."

Williams turned a page of the report.

"The CGI-generated videos created by Chinese internet celebrities to gain traffic have been determined to be false information and will not be followed up."

Morrison chewed his gum more slowly.

The screen then cuts to the second segment—the same young man, baring his hands to enter an underwater secret realm, conquering ten levels and defeating various ferocious beasts.

"This segment was also labeled as 'staged.' The analysis team's reasoning at the time was that a short video trend called 'fantasy effects' had emerged in China, with many creators using these effects to attract traffic."

Williams paused.

"Now it seems... that assessment was seriously flawed."

The meeting room fell silent.

Morrison spat the chewing gum into a tissue and threw it on the table.

"His disciples—five of them, two of whom are still in college—outmatched twelve super soldiers in actual combat."

He tapped the table with his knuckles.

"And what about him?"

No one can answer that.

Colonel Hayes flipped through the documents on the tablet.

"Chen Hao. Male, 30 years old, from Shenzhen. There is very limited publicly available information about him on social media, with fewer than three associated accounts. Apart from these leaked videos, we cannot find any information about his training background, organizational affiliation, or skill ceiling."

"Can't find it?" Morrison raised an eyebrow. "Or is China preventing you from looking?"

"Yes, I have both," Hayes replied crisply.

Williams then pulled up another document—abnormal communication records of intelligence agencies from various countries over the past month.

"It's not just us. MI6, Mossad, and the Foreign Security Service of the United States—at least seven intelligence agencies have raised their alert level for the 'Penglai Sea Incident' in China in the past 48 hours. The live video has been viewed over 200 million times."

Morrison leaned back in his chair.

He had spent 32 years in the military and had seen all sorts of things during the Middle East wars.

But one person, with one hand, held down the dragon—

He had indeed initially taken it as a trick by the Chinese.

"Upgrade his threat level," Morrison said.

Hayes opened the threat assessment system, his finger hovering over the screen.

"What level will you be promoted to?"

"SSS".

Hayes paused for a moment.

SSS. This level of evaluation has never been filled since the database was created. Its definition is—

An individual's actions are sufficient to pose a strategic threat to national security.

"General, this level requires authorization from the Joint Chiefs of Staff—"

"I know." Morrison stood up. "Submit the report before tonight. Just two sentences."

He walked to the screen and stared at the young man who was holding down the dragon with one hand.

"First sentence: Our previous judgment was flawed. Second sentence: The upper limit of this person's abilities cannot be assessed at present."

The conference room door was pushed open, and Morrison walked out.

Behind me, the video on the screen was still looping.

The young man's face flashed in and out of the frame, his expression utterly emotionless.

The following week saw a period of high-intensity operations in the waters off Penglai.

The thirty-third island. The thirty-second island. The thirty-first island. The thirtyth island.

Four islands, four great formations, were broken one by one.

Chen Siyao kept the team's pace very tight. They set off at dawn every day and returned to base before dark.

Yang Wanqing was responsible for detecting the fluctuations in the formation, Ying Wenjie was in charge of attacking the point of breaking the formation, and Wu Tian and Ye Chendong were about 70-80% recovered from their injuries and were responsible for providing support from the outside.

Qin Xiaoyu is a petite girl who always wears a high ponytail. She looks quiet and gentle, but she is ruthless and decisive in her actions.

Chen Hao's disciples are all formidable.

The successor of the Thirty-Third Island is a snake demon.

The remaining techniques emphasize poison and concealment, with the core being an internal circulation method that uses poison to fight poison.

The fragments of memory in the jade slip show that this snake demon was hunted by its natural enemy when it was young, and its venom sac ruptured, almost killing it.

An elder of the Tongtian Sect happened to be passing by and rescued it. He asked, "Would you like to join the sect?" and took it in.

The thirty-second island, a tiger demon.

The inherited techniques are centered on explosive power and are a typical close-combat body-refining method.

According to the jade slip's memory, this tiger demon was originally the overlord of a mountain forest, but was suppressed because it trespassed into the territory of the Tongtian Sect.

It thought it was doomed, but the disciples not only didn't kill it, they even asked it if it wanted to stay and learn something.

The tiger demon's reaction at the time was very clear in the fragments of memory—he looked completely bewildered.

A demonic beast was taken as a disciple by a human sect?

When Yang Wanqing finished reading this memory, her expression was somewhat complicated.

"The Tongtian Sect really...accepts everything."

"Education should be provided to all without discrimination." Ying Wenjie stood on the shore, toying with a short knife he had brought from the island. "It does not distinguish between humans and demons, nor does it matter their origins. Anyone who wishes to join the religion is a disciple. This was an extremely rare doctrine in ancient times."

"No wonder other sects are wary of us," Chen Siyao said.

The thirty-first island is the only one of these four islands with a human cultivator.

The remaining cultivation method is a system of formations, combined with the art of cultivating artifacts. The inheritor was a young man from a poor family who encountered setbacks everywhere in the cultivation world before finally being accepted by the Tongtian Sect.