After the spiritual energy was restored: Goddess girlfriends came knocking.

Blue Star, Xia Dynasty, Deep City.

It was the evening of the third day of the third year in the real timeline of the Book of Myriad Realms.

Li Jianguo leaned against his balcony, a cigarette between his fingers, squinting at the sky.

He had lived in Shenzhen for forty years and had never seen a sunset like this.

The edges of the clouds were tinged with a golden-purple hue, layer upon layer, surging outwards.

A few kids downstairs, who had just finished school, craned their necks to look for a long time. A chubby boy with glasses shouted, "The end of the world is coming!" and was hit on the head by an adult next to him.

"A typhoon is coming!" Li Jianguo's wife shouted from the kitchen. "The weather forecast said it's a super typhoon, called something like 'Kunpeng'."

"It's only been a few months, the typhoon season is still a long way off." Li Jianguo flicked his cigarette ash and looked at the sky again.

He had been a sailor when he was young and knew what the sunset looked like before a typhoon—red, but not this eerily red, nor for three days in a row.

He stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, and patted the railing.

Who cares?

Let's rewind to the day before.

Deep within Shennongjia, the site of the Xia Dynasty.

Liu happy parked his pickup truck on the side of the road and walked into the woods with his toolbox.

He works at the forest protection station and has been doing this job for over 20 years. Every day he patrols the mountains, inspects, and fills out forms. His life is more stable than the rocks in the mountains.

But today is different.

Something's been off in that area deep in the woods since yesterday.

First, several tourists said their phones had no signal and their cameras were black.

Old Liu didn't take it seriously—the forests of Shennongjia are dense and the signal is inherently poor.

But Xiao Wang, who was sent to inspect the line yesterday, came back and said that about a kilometer in, all the equipment stopped working, and even the flashlights wouldn't light up.

Xiao Wang was a hothead, usually bolder than a leopard, but his expression wasn't very pleasant when he said this.

"Brother Liu, something's not right there. It gives me the creeps when I go in, like someone's watching me."

Old Liu didn't believe in superstitions, so he came today.

He crossed a mountain ridge and then passed through a fir forest.

The compass in my hand, which I had used for five years, started spinning erratically, its needle spinning in place as if it were drunk.

He skillfully opened the toolbox and took out the testing instrument—the screen was filled with static.

I took out my phone—but the screen was black.

The walkie-talkie—the crackling sound of electricity.

"That's a ghost."

I looked up and around.

The forest was still the same forest, the fir trees stood straight, and the pine needles on the ground were thick and soft to the touch.

But he did feel the "hair-raising" sensation that Xiao Wang had described—a very primal intuition, as if something was lurking in the shadows, watching the back of his neck.

Liu happy took a few steps back and suddenly smelled a fishy odor.

He followed the scent and pushed aside a clump of bushes.

Then he saw that thing.

A very large shadow appeared before my eyes.

The fur was dark gray, stained with large patches of dark red blood.

It lay on its side under the fir tree, its body still in a twisted position, as if it had struggled before dying.

What puzzled Lao Liu the most was that it had two heads.

Both mouths were half-open, revealing yellowed fangs, and the forelegs were curled up at an abnormal angle under the body.

Old Liu stood there for about ten seconds.

The hair on my body stood on end.

Then he decisively turned around and ran outside.

"Xiao Wang! Xiao Wang!" he shouted into the walkie-talkie as he ran, but there was no signal.

When he reached the pickup truck, he was panting so hard he could barely speak, his hands were shaking so badly that he had to take out his phone and dial several times before he could get through.

"Management Bureau! I...I'm in Forest Area Seven—there's something—something dead—"

Unable to hear clearly on the other end of the phone, Lao Liu took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

"Forest Area Seven, I'll send you the coordinates later. There's a carcass of an unidentified creature, huge in size, with two—two heads. It might be some kind of unknown—I don't know what it is, not a bear, not a wild boar. Send people over immediately."

He hung up the phone, leaned against the car door, and realized that the back of his clothes was soaked with sweat.

The sunset glow on the horizon was reflected on the car window, as red as blood.

Two hours later, the forest area was sealed off.

The first to arrive were the people from the forestry police station, followed by those from the county, and then the city.

At 2 a.m., five military green trucks silently drove into the forest area, and dozens of people in protective suits got out of the trucks.

They cordoned off the entire area, put up caution tape, and set up searchlights.

The white light of the searchlight shone on the thing, and everyone fell silent.

It was over five meters tall, with two heads and four limbs. Beneath its fur were bulging muscles, and even in its dead state, the lines of those muscles were still clearly visible.

Someone approached with a portable testing device, and the instrument's reading immediately jumped to its maximum value.

Two hours later.

A heavy truck was escorted by four trucks and drove back overnight. The convoy was armed throughout the journey and the route was kept secret.

The following evening, at the Blue Star Federation Building.

This building is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and does not belong to any country. It is the only neutral territory shared by the Blue Star Federation.

At this moment, the circular conference room on the top floor of the building is brightly lit.

A huge round table occupied the center of the room, with five rows of flags stuck on it.

The dragon flag of the Xia Dynasty is in the very center, with the Stars and Stripes of the United States of Radiance on the left, the snowflake flag of the Winter Federation on the right, and the lion flag of the British Empire and the tricolor flag of the Iris Federation on both sides.

Representatives from other member states sat on the outer perimeter, arranged in layers towards the back, like a giant concentric circle.

A strange atmosphere permeated the conference room—tension, excitement, and confusion were all mixed together.

A row of screens against the wall are playing live footage in sync.

The central screen displays the internal monitoring footage of a cleanroom laboratory: on a huge metal platform, the corpse of the two-headed wolf is being scanned by a dozen instruments.

The screens around the room displayed images from all over the world—deserts, islands, deep in the mountains, snow-capped plateaus—each screen showing an area enclosed by iron fences and cordon tape, with soldiers on guard and searchlights sweeping across the area.

The spokesperson for the United States of Glory was a gray-haired man named Harrison, who wore gold-rimmed glasses and had a habit of tapping the table with his knuckles when he spoke.

He was the first to speak.

"Let me confirm one thing first: this wolf—let's call it a wolf for now—is not a species from Earth, right?"

A middle-aged woman in a white coat stood up. She was the deputy director of the Xia Guo Biological Research Institute, and her surname was Qin.

She pushed up her glasses, her tone calm, but there was a barely suppressed tremor in her voice.

"The preliminary analysis results have just come out, and its muscle fiber density, skeletal structure, and the strength of its internal organs are all several times greater than those of any known organism on Earth."

She paused.

"Moreover, I can say with certainty that this creature is definitely not any known or extinct species on Earth, because according to the tests, the preliminary judgment is that it died no more than forty-eight hours ago."

The meeting room was silent for about ten seconds.

Then it was like a pot of boiling water exploded.

Some people stood up, some leaned closer to the screen, and the sound buzzed all around.