Relief spread through the ancestral mansion like warmth after a long winter.
For ten years, the Gu family in the capital had lived in restrained caution — outwardly cooperative with the government and the Institute, inwardly wary.
The return of Gu Yunchen's branch changed everything.
A family that could produce anomalies like Gu Yunchen, Gu Mian, Gu Ya, and the others was not composed of fools.
Even those who had once suffered — those whose ability cores had been forcibly extracted by the Institute in its early years — had not broken.
They endured.
They watched.
They adapted.
After being released, humiliated and weakened, they had quietly studied the spiritual Qi that wove through the air in abundance.
A month after their release, they began absorbing spiritual Qi.
Clumsy at first.
Painful.
But they persisted.
One by one, they became dual cultivators.
They told no one.
Not the Institute.
Not the government.
They trained quietly in sealed rooms and old courtyards beneath ancestral halls.
They were waiting.
They didn't consciously know for what.
But they were waiting.
The seed had been planted the year Gu Yunchen vanished.
They had all seen it.
The crater.
The massive hollow where his mansion once stood.
The aura of devastation and rebirth.
It had been terrifying.
But beneath that fear was awe.
That day, something shifted in their blood.
A belief.
A certainty that their path was not finished.
That someday—
Something would return.
And now it had.
When Gu Yunchen stepped through the gates, when Gu Mian's presence filled the courtyard like a silent tide, the entire family felt the same thing at once.
This.
This was what they had been waiting for.
Internal politics still existed — it always would in a family this large — but the Gu clan had never truly fractured. Generations of discipline, tradition, and shared survival had forged them into something resilient.
Gu Yunchen wasted no time on sentiment.
"I need complete records," he said calmly in the ancestral hall. "Every individual in power. Government. Military. Institute. Corporate allies. Their loyalties. Their crimes."
No one hesitated.
Records began flowing immediately.
Encrypted tablets. Paper archives. Personal testimonies.
Gu Yunchen absorbed everything.
Gu Mian stood beside him, silent, her senses extended beyond walls, beyond streets, beyond the city itself.
The tide was closer now.
—
By 4 p.m., a phenomenon occurred across the capital.
It began subtly.
A minor official in a luxury apartment blinked—
And vanished.
A logistics commander mid-meeting disappeared from his chair.
A weapons supplier arguing in a boardroom dissolved into thin air.
Screams echoed in isolated buildings.
Security footage captured empty chairs.
Dropped cups.
Open doors.
The people whisked away reappeared in confusion—
At the outer gates of L City Base.
GuoSan.
Some fell to the ground.
Some shouted.
Some tried to activate weapons.
But they were immediately surrounded by calm, heavily armed cultivators.
"Remain where you are," came the firm instruction.
"You are temporarily relocated for your safety."
Safety.
The irony was not yet apparent.
The relocated individuals, disoriented and shaken, were directed inside.
Shelter was provided.
Food.
Medical checks.
They assumed it was some emergency evacuation.
Some complained loudly.
Some demanded explanations.
They were told simply:
"You may return tomorrow."
They did not know.
Tomorrow would not exist for the capital.
—
An hour earlier, Gu Ruisheng had sent eagles.
Gigantic spiritual eagles bred in Gu Mian's space.
Their wings spanned dozens of meters.
Each enhanced with speed abilities.
They streaked toward GuoSan like streaks of lightning.
The call went out:
Volunteers only.
No coercion.
No pressure.
More than half the base answered.
Over three million people.
Warriors.
Dual cultivators.
Veterans of forest campaigns.
Mothers and fathers who had trained for years knowing war would come.
They mounted the eagles.
Within thirty minutes, wave after wave arrived near the capital.
They did not land at the gates.
They gathered on the mountainside where the old Gu mansion once stood before it had been torn apart in the previous timeline.
Now it was reclaimed territory.
They waited in silence.
A disciplined army without banners.
Without noise.
Below them, the capital glittered, unaware.
—
Inside the Institute, Gu Mian, Gu Yunchen, Gu Yan, and a small elite squad moved like shadows.
Void Cloaks wrapped around them.
They passed through security barriers undetected.
The Institute was exactly as vile as the reports described.
Laboratories reeking of chemicals.
Rows of containment chambers.
Children with implanted cores.
Adults restrained to extraction tables.
Half-finished experiments.
Gu Mian's jaw tightened.
"Separate teams," she whispered.
They moved.
Gu Mian dismantled energy restraints with a wave of spatial threads.
Gu Yunchen shattered reinforced alloy doors without a sound.
Gu Ya stabilized unstable cores in victims using refined energy control.
People were transferred instantly—
Teleported to prepared medical wards within GuoSan Base.
No alarms triggered.
No cameras detected intrusion.
Meanwhile, Gu Shao and Gu Xing infiltrated the data vaults.
Layered encryption.
Quantum storage drives.
Offsite backups.
It didn't matter.
Gu Xing's fingers flew across interfaces.
Gu Shao projected spiritual arrays that copied entire databases in seconds.
Every experiment.
Every ledger.
Every hidden file implicating officials.
Copied.
Archived.
Prepared for later judgment.
—
Then came phase two.
The researchers.
One by one, they felt a tug.
A subtle distortion of space.
They vanished from labs.
From offices.
From corridors.
And reappeared—
Inside the largest conference room in the Institute.
At first, confusion.
"Where are we?"
"What's happening?"
Security heads tried to access doors.
They would not open.
The walls shimmered faintly.
Spatial locking arrays.
More people appeared.
Mid-sentence.
Mid-step.
Mid-call.
Government officials began appearing too.
Base leaders.
Military directors.
Policy architects.
Faces went pale.
"Is this an attack?"
"Who authorized this?"
They tried communication devices.
Outside lines connected.
But the reports were strange.
"The capital is peaceful."
"No disturbances detected."
"Everything normal."
Normal.
Yet the conference room kept filling.
Researchers looked at officials.
Officials looked at researchers.
Recognition dawned.
These were not random selections.
These were the core architects.
The room filled to capacity.
No one could exit.
Energy attacks dissipated harmlessly against invisible barriers.
Teleportation attempts failed.
Mental abilities bounced back painfully.
It was airtight.
That was when true fear began.
—
Back in the ancestral mansion, Old Master Gu felt the tremor of shifting fate.
"The evacuation?"
"Complete for targeted individuals," an elder reported. "Civilian ancient families secured."
Outside the city—
The earth began to vibrate faintly.
At first, citizens assumed it was distant thunder.
Traffic continued.
Markets bustled.
Nightfall approached.
Capital leadership remained blissfully unaware that its core had already been isolated.
—
On the mountainside, over three million GuoSan warriors stood ready.
They could feel it now.
A pressure in the distance.
Like a storm front rolling in.
Li Qiao closed her eyes.
"They've accelerated."
Gu Ruisheng nodded slightly.
"Estimated arrival?"
"Two hours."
Perfect.
Inside the locked conference room, panic escalated.
"They're lying," one official hissed. "This is a coup."
"A coup by who?"
"Ancient families?"
"Impossible—they don't have this level of ability—"
A researcher slammed a hand against the wall.
"Level 12 spatial suppression… This is beyond us."
Silence followed
The lights flickered briefly.
A subtle spatial distortion rippled across the room.
Then stabilized.
Gu Mian's voice echoed calmly through the chamber.
"You will remain here."
No source.
No visible speaker.
Just her voice.
"You will not die by our hands."
Cold dread settled like ice.
Outside the city, black shapes crested the horizon.
Endless.
Cars packed with pale figures.
Behind them, a sea of bodies.
Millions.
Their synchronized steps created a low, rolling thunder.
Watchtower guards stared through binoculars.
At first, they thought it was dust.
Then—
Movement.
Too much movement.
Alarms began to ring.
Panic spread across communication channels.
"Massive horde approaching from all sectors!"
"Impossible—our reports said—"
Reports.
Lies.
Suppressed data.
Now the truth was visible.
Within the locked conference room, devices buzzed frantically.
"Sir—sir—the outer perimeter reports—"
"What?"
"…Zombies."
"How many?"
"…We cannot count them."
Outside the gates, artillery units scrambled.
Defense shields powered up.
Searchlights illuminated a nightmare.
An ocean of undead.
At their center—
A pale figure standing atop an armored vehicle.
Red eyes glowing faintly.
The Zombie King had arrived.
He felt it.
The pressure from the city.
The concentration of power.
His lips curled slightly.
The architects of corruption finally understood.
They had not been imprisoned for judgment.
They had been preserved.
As tribute.