Iron Tomb Palace Silver Coffin Golden Casket Jade-Wrapped Corpse

Shandong Province, Jiping City, South Lake District. The wetland area around the lake had been completely sealed off, with the military imposing martial law and forbidding anyone unrelated from getting close. Overnight, a massive wall had sprung up, enclosing everything inside, with high-voltage fences and searchlights standing tall. No one knew what was going on in there. All sorts of strange people had arrived in Jiping City. Though they tried their best to blend in, the locals could still tell these folks didn’t fit in with normal society.

A lot of people guessed these folks had something to do with those so-called "Chosen Ones" everyone was talking about online. For the past month, rumors about the Chosen Ones had been everywhere—making people suspicious, confused, and uneasy.

At 10 a.m., a vehicle that looked like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie rolled into the restricted zone. A person in a hazmat suit jumped out, clutching a sealed box, and dashed into the temporary research facility. He ran up to a man in his thirties and shouted, "Report! We've found an individual from another world!"

The man wore a white lab coat and gold-rimmed glasses, looking prim and proper, every hair in place. He was thin, pale, with a delicate, almost androgynous sort of handsomeness, and a habitual little curve at the corner of his lips. But there was no real smile in that curve—his eyes looked at everything as if it were an experiment, cold but with a hint of fanaticism. "Alright, put it down," he said, fiddling with something on the workbench, his voice calm and unhurried.

"Yes, sir!" The person in the hazmat suit didn’t dare slack off, snapping to attention before quickly backing out. On one hand, he was intimidated by the man’s authority; on the other, he was a bit scared of whatever was in the box. The box was placed on the table, and while the androgynous man ignored it, a young man in his twenties in military uniform stepped up, opened it for a peek, and immediately jumped back in fright. Inside the box lay a dead Facehugger.

"No need to worry, it’s already dead." The androgynous man kept working without even turning his head. "And even if it were alive, it couldn’t kill any healthy adult male head-on. It can’t reproduce or spread—Facehuggers are just trash. Toss it out." As he spoke, he used tweezers to lift a black shard, adjusted his glasses, and muttered, "Now this, this is the real treasure. The Facehugger hasn’t rotted at all, but the mature Alien is so decomposed its shell is almost gone. Interesting…"

"Can’t reproduce?" The guy in uniform, now recovering from his scare, frowned and said, "Doesn’t that mean—"

"Exactly. The interdimensional bioweapon plan is dead in the water. So far, we’ve found seven types of cross-boundary creatures, but outside of the Chosen Ones’ bodies, none of them can reproduce in any environment." He dropped the shard into a test tube of solution, then turned and smiled, "So, if you ever bump into a wandering zombie while shopping, don’t worry—it won’t infect you."

"Damn it, what a bunch of useless trash!" the guy in uniform cursed. "These so-called Chosen Ones do nothing but mess up society! We ought to round them all up and kill them!"

But the man with glasses just shrugged. "On that point, we should actually be grateful."

"Why?" The man in military uniform was puzzled.

"Because it prevents the human world from being destroyed all at once."

"World destroyed? By those Chosen Ones?" The military man was even more confused. "If the Aliens could reproduce on a large scale, maybe. But those Chosen Ones..."

"Aliens are just beasts. Once you figure out their patterns, they're not impossible to deal with. It's not those low-level creatures that could destroy the world." The man with glasses laughed—a sneer, really, totally unfiltered. "The only thing that can destroy the human world is humanity itself. So far, Chosen Ones have appeared randomly, no country can monopolize them. The bigger the population, the more Chosen Ones you naturally get. If the Chosen Ones' otherworldly tech worked, China and India would rise at an unbelievable speed. America would be sidelined, and Russia could fade into the background. If you were from one of those countries, what would you do in that situation?"

"Well..." The military man hesitated, then said fiercely, "I'd strike first and nuke them before they get a chance to grow!"

"Heh, out of all those second-generation rich kids, I picked you to tag along because you're not totally brainless." The glasses guy's lenses flashed, making his expression look a bit creepy. "The world right now is in a delicate balance. People's minds are fragile—a little disturbance gets blown out of proportion and can trigger a storm. If otherworldly tech actually worked, we'd already be in World War III. So the only reason you can still mess around here is thanks to this thing not being able to reproduce." He patted the corpse of the Facehugger.

"Uh..." The guy with glasses was blunt as ever, but the military man could only listen, not daring to argue. He was awkwardly silent, not sure what to say, when a researcher rushed in and shouted, "Sir, we've just received word from the Northwest expedition team—they've found something weird!"

"Oh?" The glasses guy glanced at the report and immediately lost interest. "Don't bother me with tabloid stuff like this."

The man in uniform was curious. "What happened, exactly?"

The researcher glanced at the man with glasses before answering, "The archaeology team found an ancient tomb with a unique structure. What's really odd is that the corpse inside the coffin is wrapped seamlessly in jade. The team didn't dare touch it, so they reported in for instructions."