The silver jet of the Lin family did not so much take off as it tore a hole in the sky. Chen Feng stood on the tarmac, the hot backwash from the turbines ruffling his unbuttoned floral shirt. For a long minute after the aircraft had vanished into the clouds, he remained motionless, the weight of Xia's parting kiss still burning like a brand against his lips.
It was a sensation that defied his thousands of years of logic. It was messy, human, and utterly inconvenient. To the world, he was just a lazy security consultant who had stayed behind, but to the girl in that plane, he was a god.
"Boss," Gary said, his voice unusually soft as he shuffled up beside him, clutching a suitcase now leaking a few stray rubber suction cups. "You've got that look again. The one where you're deciding whether to save a soul or just buy a kebab and forget the whole day happened."
"I'm not thinking, Gary," Chen Feng lied, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "I'm vibrating. And not in the 'ascension' way. My skin feels like it's being watched by a version of myself that hasn't been born yet."
"That's... oddly specific," Gary muttered. "The flight to the States is long. If the 'Salted Fish' needs to hide, the neon chaos of North America is as good a place as any to disappear."
The trip to the United States was conducted in a silence that even Gary didn't dare break. While the world knew Chen Feng as a "Remnant" or a particularly skilled "Security Consultant," only Gary knew his true identity as the Sovereign—the architect of the Reset.
Chen Feng sat in the cabin of their chartered flight, staring out at the moonlight reflecting off the Pacific. His mind was a kaleidoscope of Xia's blushing face and the ancient, cold memories of the Sovereigns who came before him. He felt a pull—a biological tether. Somewhere in the sprawling concrete and hidden labs of the U.S., something was screaming in a frequency only he could hear.
The Deep Lab: The Cradle of the Unnatural
Hidden beneath an unassuming industrial park in the American Midwest, the air was not humid with summer heat, but sterile with the scent of ozone and chilled nitrogen. This was a "Dead Zone," a facility built with shielding that even the most sensitive trackers couldn't penetrate.
In the center of the laboratory stood a massive, transparent cylinder filled with a fluid the color of a bruised sunset.
Floating within was the Bio-Human Lamb.
It was a masterpiece of forbidden science. It didn't have a mother or a father; it was a patchwork of refined spiritual marrow and high-fidelity genetic sequences harvested from ancient, "Reset" battlefields. It looked like a young man in his twenties—frail, beautiful, and terrifyingly vacant.
"Pulse confirmed," a lead researcher whispered, his eyes fixed on a monitor displaying a heartbeat that mimicked a celestial rhythm. "The resonance is increasing. He has entered U.S. airspace."
"The subject is reacting to the Sovereign's proximity," a voice crackled over the intercom—a voice that held the cold authority of someone who had survived the Reset and decided to improve upon it. No one in this room knew who Chen Feng truly was; they only knew him as the "Prime Donor" or "Target Alpha."
"Initiate the 'First Cry.' I want to see if our Salted Fish can ignore the sound of his own blood calling out from a vat."
The plane touched down at a private airfield outside of Chicago. As the door opened, the smell of jet fuel and the distant hum of a metropolis hit Chen Feng like a physical blow. He stepped onto the ground and stumbled, his hand shooting out to grip the railing.
"Boss?" Gary asked, catching him.
Chen Feng didn't answer. He was looking toward the horizon, toward the hidden depths where the Lamb waited. His eyes, usually half-lidded and bored, were wide and glowing with a faint, predatory violet light.
"It's not a Remnant," Chen Feng whispered, his voice shaking with a rare, cold fury. "It's a mirror. Someone is playing god with my trash, Gary."
"Your trash?" Gary blinked.
"My DNA," Chen Feng spat. "They're growing a Sovereign. And they've made it hungry."
The "World Tour" had just ceased to be a vacation. The peace of the States was a lie, and for the first time since the Reset, Chen Feng realized that running away from his feelings for Xia had led him straight into the arms of a nightmare he had helped create.