High Martial Arts: Slay enemies to become stronger, forge invincibility from billions of corpses.

A bonfire was lit on the riverbank.

More than a thousand people set up camp on a clearing at the edge of the mangroves. Some were boiling fresh water in iron pots unloaded from the ship, while others were sharing dried sea animal meat they had brought from Guangchang Island with the children...

Someone was talking in a low voice, then fell silent, and then started talking again after a while.

Someone was crying, burying their face in their knees, their shoulders trembling, but making no sound.

Lin Zhao sat by the campfire, poking at the fire with a branch.

Sparks rose from the fire, mingling with the eerie blue light of the psionic particles.

She saw Song Chen walk back from the darkness, his clothes stained with the blood of the strange beast, and dark green liquid dripping from the edge of his scabbard.

Song Chen sat down by the campfire and tossed the meat he had brought back over.

"Eat this."

Old Zhou sat opposite him and asked, "Is it cleaned up?"

Song Chen nodded: "It's clean now. Let's move into town after we finish eating."

An hour later, more than a thousand people moved from the riverbank into the town.

Some people moved into residential buildings, some occupied school classrooms, and some even converted hospital lobbies into makeshift sleeping areas...

Song Chen chose a two-story building not far from the riverbank. He had already cleaned up the monster corpses inside and then fetched a bucket of river water from the yard to wash away the bloodstains on the floor.

After rinsing the floor, he sat down against the wall in an empty room on the second floor.

Outside the window, the town's night sky shone brightly with psionic particles against a backdrop of countless stars.

He opened the system panel and bought a Destiny Spirit Pill.

Both the Illusionary Eye and the Nine Heavens Thunderbolt consume a lot of mental energy, and when killing the Abyss Sea Monster on Guangchang Island, my mental energy was not enough.

He plans to raise his mental strength to the fourth level as well.

He held the golden pill in his palm. It looked similar to the Spirit Pill and Blood Qi Pill, with pale gold spiritual energy patterns engraved on its dark red body, but the feeling of holding it was completely different.

The Spirit Pill is almost weightless; holding it in the palm of your hand feels like holding a condensed ball of light.

The golden patterns on the surface of the pill were slowly flowing, forming a closed loop.

He tilted his head back and swallowed it.

There was no burning sensation the moment the pill entered my throat.

The Heavenly Mandate Spirit Pill spreads like a drop of ink into clear water, slowly permeating his body from his stomach.

That force bypassed his meridians and blood vessels, penetrating directly into the depths of his consciousness.

Song Chen closed his eyes, and he "saw" his own mental landscape.

It was a pale golden mist, about the size of a fist, suspended deep within my consciousness.

The power of the Heavenly Mandate Spirit Pill was seeping into the mist from all directions, the golden medicinal power merging with the pale golden spiritual sea.

The fog cloud expanded in size, growing from the size of a fist to the size of a bowl, and its color changed from pale gold to a purer gold.

The mental energy value fluctuated on the system panel: 400, 450, 500, 550, 600, 607.

The swirling mist gradually stopped, and the new mental sea stabilized, its volume nearly half again as large as before.

Song Chen opened his eyes, and deep within his pupils, the golden light of the Illusionary Eyes was much brighter than before.

He turned off the system panel, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes. At this rate, he would reach the fourth level in no time.

The next morning, Song Chen was awakened by the sounds outside the window: the clanging of metal and someone shouting.

He went downstairs and walked along the street toward the town center. The town in the early morning was completely different from the one he had seen the night before.

Some people were cooking over fires in the street, some were moving tables and chairs salvaged from the ruins to the side of the street to make makeshift worktables, and some were squatting by the well to draw water.

As Song Chen walked by, a middle-aged woman who was starting a fire looked up and ladled a bowl of fish soup from the pot and handed it to him.

He took the bowl, drank it, and then returned it.

The town square was the most crowded place.

The square was originally a market, but the cement ground was cracked by weeds, and there was a circle of stalls that had mostly collapsed.

The stall was cleared out and filled with electronic items salvaged from the ruins: resistors, capacitors, coils, crystal oscillators, stripped wires, and the remains of a radio with its casing smashed off...

Old Zhou, sitting in a wheelchair, was carried to the center of the square by two people.

In front of him was a desk that had been moved from the school, with a pile of components and a disassembled old radio spread out on it.

His hands groped among the components, found a coil, pinched it, set it aside, found a wire, measured its length with his fingers, cut it, stripped out the copper core, and wound it onto another coil.

There were seven or eight people gathered around, including engineers, physicists, and an elderly woman with completely white hair who used to be a communications expert at a research institute in Daxia.

Now they're surrounding that pile of junk like it's a treasure.

Song Chen watched all of this with great interest; he could guess what was going on.

Around noon, a loud voice rang out.

"Communications have been restored."

The square fell silent instantly.

Song Chen stood up with some surprise. Could he finally contact the outside world?

As soon as he stood up, the crowd automatically parted to make way for him.

He walked to the desk, where Old Zhou's hand rested on the radio's control panel, where a small green light was lit and a hissing sound came from the speaker.

Old Zhou's finger touched a knob, and he slowly turned it. The sound of electricity fluctuated, then stopped.

Amidst the rustling sound, a very faint voice emerged, repeating a piece of code—the communication call sign of the Great Xia.

In the square, some people covered their mouths, some turned away with their shoulders shaking, and some squatted down, burying their faces in their hands and crying silently.

Old Zhou removed his hand from the knob and looked at Song Chen: "Young man, you go first."

No one objected to the proposal.

Those who waited for thirty-two years, those who escaped from Guangchang Island, drifted at sea for half a month, and only set foot on land last night, not one of them went to the radio station.

Song Chen did not refuse. He walked to the desk and picked up the microphone.

The microphone was modified by Lao Zhou from an old telephone receiver; the outer casing had a crack, which was wrapped with tape.

He pressed the call button.

"This is Song Chen. Requesting transfer to Tianhai University, President's Office..."

There was a hissing sound, then the shouting stopped, and in its place came a middle-aged woman's voice with a standard Daxia accent.

Please provide the identity verification code.

Song Chen recited a string of numbers, which was the private communication code Zhou Wangyue had given him before, a combination of eighteen digits and letters.

The static lasted for about twenty seconds, then stopped, and an old man's voice came from the speaker.

"Song Chen?"

Zhou Wangyue's voice was a little hoarse than it had been a month ago, but it was very steady.

"teacher."

There was a moment of silence from the speaker, then Zhou Wangyue laughed, like a breath released from deep in his throat after a heavy stone has been lifted from his chest.

"It's good that you're alive, it's good that you're alive."

Song Chen's grip on the microphone tightened slightly.

Zhou Wangyue's voice continued to come from the speaker.

"After the battle of Yunbo Island, I retreated to Tianhai. The Beast King did not pursue me, but they blocked the entire nearshore area with three lines of defense, and two sixth-tier royal families were stationed there."

"I sent three groups of people to look for you, but none of them were able to break through the blockade."

"Later, the spies sent back news that the alien beasts held a grand meeting at the bottom of the sea, and representatives from the three royal families and sixteen royal families were present. The theme of the meeting was to kill you."

Song Chen did not interrupt and listened quietly.

"At the time, I thought, if the three royal families can hold a special meeting to discuss how to kill their disciple, then I, as a teacher, have done a good job."

A very soft laugh came from someone in the square.

"Teacher, I found an island to the west of the Shattered Star Sea."

He recounted the events of Guangchang Island.

The sea creatures are developing artificial nuclear bombs, a 32-year nuclear industry talent training program, and a complete industrial chain.

There's also Lao Zhou's identity, the fifth-tier beast king on the island.

He killed the fifth-tier beast king, blew up the island, and brought more than a thousand people out of the island.

It was said very briefly, like a task report.