[A few days later.]
[At night, the city was a dazzling sea of lights, with traffic streaming endlessly through the streets.]
[Chen Dyson sat in a flying car on his way home.]
[As the head of the family business, he didn’t need to drive himself. He had a dedicated driver.]
[Even on the road, Chen Dyson was busy with company business, working online through his smart glasses.]
[At that moment, the car’s AI assistant was playing the news.]
[“At the beginning of this month, Sakura Country made its twentieth application to the United Nations to ‘join the Kuafu Project,’ but Huaxia vetoed it. Just yesterday, Sakura Country made its seventy-first proposal to the United Nations to ‘abolish the veto power of the five permanent members,’ only to have it vetoed by all five permanent members...”]
[Chen Dyson took a brief break from work to listen to the news and couldn’t help sneering.]
[“That little Sakura Country is always hopping around like a grasshopper...”]
[Suddenly, he realized the car wasn’t taking the right route and spoke to the driver.]
[“Xiao Liu, did we take a wrong turn?”]
[“There’s an aerial traffic restriction in the city center. We need to take a detour through the outskirts.”]
[“Oh...”]
[Chen Dyson felt that something was off, but then a work call came in and distracted him.]
[By the time he finished the call and turned to look out the window, he realized he hadn’t been taken to the outskirts, but to an uninhabited agricultural district.]
[“Stop the car!”]
[The driver, Xiao Liu, ignored him.]
[“I said stop the car!!”]
[Chen Dyson realized something was wrong with the man. He immediately slapped the car door to pieces and leapt out from the air.]
[“Thud!”]
[Although he had fallen from dozens of meters up, Chen Dyson was unharmed. His suit was only a little dirty.]
[Before Chen Dyson could steady himself, a sound tore through the night as something shot toward his heart.]
[It was a shuriken.]
[Chen Dyson reacted swiftly. His black leather shoes scraped against the ground, throwing off sparks as he dodged into a nearby cornfield at an angle and speed no ordinary person could manage.]
[The tall cornstalks swallowed him up, blocking the enemy’s view of their target as well.]
[“Who goes there!”]
[Chen Dyson shouted as he moved. Just as expected, the place where he had been standing was soon engulfed by a barrage of shuriken, mixed with explosive tags that burst into clouds of smoke.]
[Chen Dyson casually snapped off a cornstalk beside him and used it to draw some strange characters in the muddy ground.]
[Once written, the characters glowed gold. Then, with a whoosh, they took on physical form and swept toward the direction from which the shuriken had flown.]
[The cornstalks toppled in swathes wherever it passed, plowing a clear path straight through the field.]
[Unfortunately, it didn’t hit the enemy.]
[“Heh heh heh... Chen-san! Surrender quietly! Today, we’ve prepared a big ambush for you! You! No running away, you understand!”]
[Someone hidden in the dark threatened Chen Dyson in a thick, exaggerated Japanese accent.]
[Chen Dyson heard the “rustle, rustle” of footsteps all around him.]
[There were quite a few attackers. They had already surrounded him.]
[Chen Dyson tried to leap out of the cornfield, but a large net dropped from the sky and covered him on the spot.]
[“Prepare to die!”]
[Chen Dyson closed his eyes, bitterly regretting that he had let his guard down and fallen into their ambush.]
[Before he died, he pulled out his phone, intending to alert his family and the fellow cultivators in the country that foreign enemies had crossed the border.]
[But the blade he expected never fell.]
[He heard the people attacking him seemingly fighting someone else.]
[“Who’s there? Show yourself! You bastard!!”]
[“Stop hiding like a coward! Come out and fight me one-on-one!”]
[“Captain! It seems this guy’s just too fast for us to see him. He isn’t hiding from us!”]
[“He’s severing our arms and legs without killing us! He’s torturing us to death!! Damn it!!”]
[Screams filled the cornfield.]
[Chen Dyson freed himself from the net, got to his feet, and looked around. What he saw was a scene of carnage.]
[About twenty cultivators from Sakura Country, dressed in dark clothes like ninjas, had had their arms and legs cut off. They couldn’t stand, couldn’t crawl, and every movement forced their severed limbs to touch the dirt, leaving them in unbearable agony.]
[Chen Dyson saw someone in the distance walking toward him, one step at a time.]
[The night shrouded the man’s face, making it impossible to see him clearly from afar.]
[A full moon hung behind him, its light tinged faintly with blood.]
[He was dragging someone by the hand. It was his driver, Xiao Liu.]
[“You are...”]
[The newcomer said nothing.]
[Only when the man had come closer did Chen Dyson recognize him. It was you!]
[“Chen Dong?”]
[“It’s me.”]
[“You... did you do all this?”]
[“It was nothing. This is your driver. Three days ago, he received a huge sum of money from overseas. He was probably bought off. He’s your man, so I’ll leave him for you to deal with.”]
[Chen Dyson snorted, walked over, and raised his hand like a blade.]
[Xiao Liu was so scared he wet himself.]
[“Boss, don’t kill me, please! I didn’t know you were all superhumans. If I’d known, I never would’ve gotten involved... Spare me! I’ve got elderly parents at home and children to support. I just lost my head for a moment...”]
[“Smack!”]
[Chen Dyson knocked him unconscious and tied him up.]
[You looked at him, somewhat surprised.]
[“I thought you’d kill him.”]
[“This is a society governed by law. How could I kill someone?”]
[“You’re a cultivator. Surely some rules don’t apply to you.”]
[“Cultivators have to obey the law too. We’re all registered with the government and on record. At least, that’s how it is in our country.”]
[“So there’s that, too. Looks like I still have a lot to learn.”]
[From the conversation so far, Chen Dyson had already guessed part of the truth.]
[“Have you been cultivating in some isolated place and only recently come back?”]
[“Use a little more imagination.”]
[Chen Dyson fell silent for a moment.]
[“You came from outer space.”]
[You nodded slightly.]
[Chen Dyson drew in a sharp breath.]
[“Last month, the space agency discovered an unidentified spacecraft that suddenly disappeared near Earth. Was that yours?”]
[“If no other aliens have visited recently, then it could only have been mine.”]
[Chen Dyson suddenly laughed.]
[“What are you laughing about?”]
[“I never thought the Kuafu Project would succeed so quickly!”]
[“Strictly speaking, I’m not extraterrestrial life. I’m human, just like you.”]
[“No. On the surface, the Kuafu Project is about searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life, but its real purpose is... to find cultivators from beyond Earth!”]
[You could sense that although Earth’s cultivators were held back by environmental factors and were generally not highly advanced, their world seemed far from simple.]
[“Why were those cultivators from Sakura Country trying to kill you?”]
[“Although I’m a cultivator myself, I devote most of my energy to business, so I don’t know much about what goes on in the cultivation world.”]
[“From what I can tell, the magical artifacts and talismans they used are all low quality. Only this tooth has a high degree of spirituality. Do you recognize it?”]
[You opened your palm, revealing a snake fang. You had just taken it from one of the “ninjas.”]

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