Ryan Li had spent a restless night.
Not because of some royal temptation, but because he no longer trusted King Huang—not after the attempted drugging and the palace full of honey-trap agents.
So he stayed alert.
And slept with one eye open.
Hungry, he ordered food from his system's survival store—canned rations and purified water. There was no way in hell he'd drink another cup of "hospitality tea" from the Futang court.
By morning, a convoy arrived to escort him.
"Your car is ready," said the attendant.
Ryan didn't flinch.
He had C4 in his inventory. A rocket launcher. And most importantly—a dead man's switch strapped to his chest.
If they tried anything, he was more than ready to leave them all in molten pieces.
—
They drove a winding route—switchbacks, false turns, endless loops meant to disorient him.
Didn't matter.
Ryan's mind was a GPS with teeth. He matched ambient noises, street vendor calls, even bus announcements, mentally plotting their course over a satellite map.
And then he saw it.
The path led straight to Mount Fuji's core.
You idiots built a secret base inside an active volcano? Are you trying to get turned into ash?
He nearly laughed.
But by the time the SUV rolled into a concealed tunnel entrance beneath the volcano's base, Ryan's expression had gone cold again.
They stepped into a structure that felt like the belly of a battleship—steel corridors, blast-proof walls, guards in full tactical armor holding M9s and auto-rifles.
Through two airlocks and past a biometric scan, Ryan entered a high-security lab chamber.
It was massive.
Crystalline containment tubes lined the walls, stretching from floor to ceiling. Inside, alien-shaped organisms floated in bio-gel, twitching, pulsing.
A dozen white-coated researchers worked feverishly around a central platform. At its center—
—a specimen.
Long, pale, and horrifyingly humanoid.
The infamous Chang Organism.
"Welcome," said an old man with steel-gray hair and a voice like a bone saw. "I am Dr. Hong Sankou, Chief Science Officer of the Heavenly Mat Laboratory."
King Huang stepped forward, smug.
"For the glory of Futang," he said, "we present you our most sacred treasure—this creature is proof of legend. Proof that immortality can be engineered."
Ryan chuckled.
It was a dark, sharp sound.
"You call this sacred? I call it disgusting."
"You dare—" Dr. Hong began.
"I dare more than that," Ryan interrupted, raising his shirt slightly—to show the trigger.
A blinking light, strapped to his chest, heart-rate linked.
"You know what this is?"
Silence.
"This is a live circuit. My heart rate spikes, or I let go of this button—BOOM."
"Triggering this place would melt half of Fuji into the sea. Your little dungeon? Gone. Tokyo? Cooked."
Dr. Hong paled.
King Huang tried to maintain his smile, but sweat was already pooling at his temples.
"Don't test me," Ryan said, calmly.
"I'm here to see. Not to be played."
"You wanted my genes? Try asking politely. Or next time... I walk out and bring the world's satellites down on your so-called holy mountain."
"Now," he said, lowering his voice to a razor's edge, "Show. Me. The real specimen."