The drama room had been cleared of students, leaving only Chen Feng, Xia, and a staggering amount of strawberry milk. In the hallway, the sound of muffled sobbing continued as the Zhao and Sun heirs—the "Milk Bearers"—neatly stacked the final crates.
Chen Feng leaned against a velvet-curtained pillar, watching Xia inspect the prop list. He was currently performing some mental gymnastics.
If I am a Sovereign who can rewrite reality, Chen Feng mused, how is it that one girl from a wealthy family in Asia makes me feel like I've been caught skipping class?
He began to compare. His previous "suitors"—those cosmic entities and ancient kings—wielded the power of lightning, stars, and divine decrees. They were flashy, loud, and ultimately easy to dismantle with a well-timed joke. But Xia's family? Their power was different. It was the power of Logistics.
"She managed to get a fleet of refrigerated vans across three borders and through a US Customs blockade in forty-eight hours," Chen Feng whispered to himself. "That's not just wealth. That's a level of bureaucratic wizardry that even I find intimidating. If I tried to do that, I'd accidentally turn the customs agents into goldfish. She just... signed a form."
He looked out into the hallway at the Zhao and Sun heirs. They were currently sharing a single granola bar, looking utterly defeated. A wave of genuine pity washed over him.
They've been incredibly diligent, he thought. They haven't missed a single delivery since the Great Bet of the Nine Heavens. Maybe I should reward them. Perhaps I'll grant them a small portion of my 'Salted Fish' longevity. Or at least buy them some better shoes. Carrying three tons of dairy in loafers is its own kind of hell.
"Chen Feng!" Xia barked, snapping him out of his reverie. "Are you staring at the milk or are you going to help me block this scene?"
"Coming, my Empress of Logistics!" he chirped, scurrying toward the stage.
Thousands of miles away, in a location so secluded it didn't appear on any GPS, a different kind of production was reaching its finale.
The facility was buried deep within a hollowed-out mountain in the Balkans. It was the headquarters of Aethelgard Biotech, a company that didn't exist on any stock exchange. Inside, the air was chilled , and the lighting was a dim, sickly violet.
The "First Batch" stood in rows.
These were not the shambling, rotting corpses of horror movies. They were masterpieces of bio-engineering. Their skin was the color of unbaked porcelain, translucent and shimmering. Their eyes were wide, fixed, and a haunting shade of grey. To a casual observer, they looked like expensive, life-sized dolls—overwhelmingly beautiful, yet fundamentally wrong.
"Report," a voice commanded from the shadows.
"The Necro-Synthetic sequence is stable, Director," a scientist whispered, his breath visible in the cold air. "They possess the strength of ten men and feel no pain. However, the 'Solar Sensitivity' remains. Exposure to direct UV rays causes immediate cellular combustion. They are... creatures of the night."
A man stepped into the faint light. He wore a suit that cost more than a small country's GDP, and his grin didn't reach his eyes. He reached out and touched the cheek of the nearest "doll." It was cold as marble.
"Perfect," the Director whispered. "Grotesque monsters are easy to hate. But who could shoot something so beautiful? The world is busy watching a drama teacher in a red jacket perform a high school play. They have no idea that the real theater is about to begin."
He turned to a large monitor displaying a map of the United States, with a glowing red dot centered directly on a small town in the Midwest.
"It's about to go down," he grinned, his teeth white and sharp. "Let's see how the Sovereign handles a cast that doesn't know how to die."
Back at St. Jude's: The Shadow on the Wall
Chen Feng suddenly stopped mid-sentence as he was explaining the "emotional arc of a chair" to Xia. He felt a shiver—not a human one, but a ripple in the fabric of the local reality.
"What is it?" Xia asked, noticing his sudden stillness.
"Nothing," Chen Feng said, his smile returning, though it didn't quite reach his violet eyes. "Just a draft. I think someone left a door open to a very cold basement somewhere."
He looked at the Manuscript of Fate. A new page was turning, but the ink was red.
"Gary!" Chen Feng shouted. "Forget the mop! Go to the Milk Bearers and tell them they're promoted to 'Security Consultants.' And tell them to bring some SPF 1000 sunscreen. I have a feeling the next act is going to be a bit... pale."