Lu Zhao checked the time: 9:10. A commotion was rising outside; he washed up quickly and left the dormitory.
The dormitory corridor was packed with people, many leaning over the railing to look down. When they saw Lu Zhao come over, his colleagues parted of their own accord to leave him a gap, so he could see the scene outside.
Five ink-black, identically styled bulletproof off-road vehicles were parked in the open ground before the camp gate. Standing at attention beside them were thirteen people in black standard-issue duty uniforms, all with a lean, capable air. At their head was a woman with ear-length short hair, speaking with Lü Jinshan.
Every leader of the border defense station, big and small, had come out—Zhang Like among them. As he shook hands, the barely perceptible, deliberately lowered dip of Lü Jinshan's shoulders silently proclaimed just how lofty the visitor's backing was.
"The special investigation team got here awfully fast. Looks like that bandit was carrying something quite extraordinary."
Lu Zhao understood at once. His gaze swept the crowd while, soundlessly, he released a single fine psychic tendril to probe whether one of his own kind stood below.
Soon his eyes settled on the short-haired woman. At that very moment, the woman downstairs abruptly stopped talking and, without any warning, lifted her head to scan the noisy crowd. Her cold gaze flicked rapidly over every window of the dormitory building that might hold a watcher, and every shifting silhouette. She looked over it again and again, but never once actually met Lu Zhao's eyes.
In the psychic domain she was far weaker than Lu Zhao, and by her age not much older than he was—yet today she was being welcomed by a beaming Lü Jinshan.
Lu Zhao was thinking: if not for Chen Qian, shouldn't Lü Jinshan be bowing his head to him today? His old classmates had all become pillars of the Federation; a handful now served as the chief officials of their own localities. The most successful of them had already been brought down, while he was still patrolling mountains at a border defense station.
The next second, the short-haired woman saw him.
Not so bad, Lu Zhao thought to himself. Then he turned and left; he still had flood-control work to attend to.
"Team Leader Lin, what is it?"
Lin Zhiyan gave a slight shake of her head, a flicker of wariness and puzzlement crossing her eyes. Faced with Lü Jinshan's question, she could hardly answer. She could hardly say, 'Your station has a strikingly handsome officer who looks very much like a senior schoolmate of mine.'
* * *
Office 402.
The old room was crammed with all manner of things. Four worn desks were squeezed tightly together, the thick glass sheets covering their surfaces long since dulled at every corner. Under the glass lay maps of Ant Ridge, their edges yellowed and curling. On the wall, the slogan "A Soldier's Mission: Devotion to the Federation" had faded; had Lu Zhao not sealed it under a layer of clear tape, it would long since have peeled away.
The border defense station was a product of the beginning of this century. It had lucked through the Cataclysm without being destroyed, and by now it was thoroughly old.
The four desks belonged respectively to Lu Zhao, Liu Qiang, Zhang Zhenghong, and Zhang Yanfeng. Zhang Zhenghong, a first lieutenant, was an old hand at the station; Zhang Yanfeng was a top graduate of a first-rate university. Either of them might succeed Lu Zhao in his post.
Right now, the two colleagues who should long since have set out on the mountain patrol were still sitting at ease in their chairs. If they would slack off even on work this basic to their duty, Lu Zhao found it hard to believe they could shoulder real responsibility. It was only because they weren't soldiers under his command—otherwise he would long ago have had them out running ten kilometers.
Lu Zhao stood at the doorway and knocked twice on the door. "It's just about time for the mountain patrol. Why are you two still goofing off?"
Zhang Zhenghong, forty years old, was shaving. "The paths don't get easy until the fog has fully cleared in the mountains," he offered.
The mountain patrol was routine duty to begin with, especially in the relatively safe "outer zone." Plenty of people made a habit of driving one token loop at the foot of the mountains or along the highway before turning back. Only Lu Zhao stubbornly walked every assigned route to its end, ranging his territory like a tiger.
Zhang Zhenghong soon had himself packed and called out in a booming voice, "Let's go, top graduate—time to patrol the mountains for Lu the Tiger."
Zhang Yanfeng sat at his own desk listening to music on an MP3 player, plainly lost in his own world, until Zhang Zhenghong's shout jolted him awake. "Enough of that—keep that up and Lu the Tiger will start in on you next."
Before leaving, Zhang Zhenghong did not forget his parting reminder: "Platoon Leader Lu, if there are demon beasts out there, remember to come to our aid right away."
Lu Zhao didn't look up. His gaze stayed fixed on the aging computer screen, and a slight nod was all the answer he gave.
He was searching for information on the computer. The Federation's level of technology stood in the late 1990s, around the turn of the century; a few technologies could rival those across the great ocean. Computers had only just caught on, the internet was still crude, and going online still meant dialing up. Worth noting, the first internet system ever built was the Federation government's database, and through the computer he could browse the government's internal site.
Entries on Jiajing. On Shao Yuanjie. On immortal cultivation.
The three were directly connected.
[Jiajing was the eleventh emperor of the Ming dynasty, Ming Shizong, Zhu Houcong. From the fifth year of his reign he began setting up altars in the palace for Taoist fasts and rites, conferring on himself the Taoist title "Supreme Grand Luo Celestial Immortal of the Purple Ultimate, Long-Lived Sage of Radiant Wisdom and Luminous Spirit, Uniter of the Origin, Attested One of the Jade Void, Grand True Lord Who Commands the Five Thunders, Sovereign Emperor of Myriad Longevity of the Mysterious Capital Realm..."]
[In the fifteenth year of Jiajing, the Dragon-Tiger Mountain Taoist Shao Yuanjie entered the palace, and with arts of flourishing the state and extending the succession, succeeded in making the Jiajing Emperor the father of princes.]
Divine power had existed since antiquity. What is now called life development has gone by different names in every age—in ancient times there truly was such a thing as refining essence into qi.
But whatever it was called, it plainly granted no immortality; otherwise the kings, lords, generals, and ministers of history would not have died. Whatever their life force, not one of them lived past a hundred and thirty in the end.
In today's society, immortal-cultivation scams have never ceased to exist; repeated official crackdowns cannot stamp them out, and no matter how education is pushed, vast numbers of people stay superstitious. People of every age and every class sink into it—perhaps because life development does, in substance, supply them a basis for belief. Since human beings can move mountains and fill in seas, why should they not live forever? Might it simply be that the method is wrong?
An idea rose unbidden in Lu Zhao's mind, and countless doubts came flooding in on its heels.
'Shao Yuanjie has lived to the present day as a psychic body. Perhaps his path was the right one after all.'
'Who knows what he's after. Maybe immortals simply all like it that way.'
He could not puzzle it out. But one thing was undeniable: the old Taoist had given Lu Zhao a hand up, buying him the capital to break the deadlock. That debt he had to acknowledge, no matter what.
Lu Zhao's life force now stood at 35.6. In forty-four days he would reach forty points; if life supplements were plentiful, he could hit fifty points within half a year.
Fifty points was another watershed, letting his body transform in every respect—for instance, his dermis would be able to stop .45 caliber handgun rounds.
Past fifty points came the second-rank superhuman. Second-rank superhumans would gradually acquire prodigious self-healing: ordinary wounds would close in the space of a breath, and the great majority of injuries fatal to a human would no longer take effect. A peak second-rank superhuman nearing two hundred points of life force could do more still—with the heart itself damaged, muscle alone could keep blood flowing through the whole body while the heart slowly healed.
As for social standing, every rank brought an earth-shaking change.
Take Lu Zhao: he could carry his record with him to a local post. That mattered enormously, and it was one reason he had no wish to resign. If he resigned, then even if he passed the civil service exam again, he would lose his fresh-graduate status and leave a stain on his record. It would be, in its own way, bowing his head and conceding defeat.
If Lu Zhao were a third-rank superhuman, he could be promoted to field officer with no conditions attached, and once his years of service sufficed, advance automatically to colonel. In an administrative post, he would skip straight past the clerk and chief-clerk grades and hold the standing of an official's rank and treatment.
* * *
Chapter 9