The underground nexus of Bureau 15 smelled of ozone, ancient dust, and something else—something that didn't belong to this era.
Inside the massive, circular containment room, the air was heavy enough to crush a normal human's lungs. Three people stood at different corners, eyeing each other with the wariness of apex predators.
In the north corner stood Elena. She wore the dark, silver-lined robes of a Medieval Inquisitor, her pale fingers manipulating a crystal pendulum that hovered over a glowing star chart.
In the south corner towered Kunto. A warrior from an ancient, forgotten West African empire. His dark skin was carved with earth-runes, and his mere presence made the steel floor beneath him groan, as if he carried the weight of a mountain.
And leaning against the eastern wall was Bai Su. Dressed in a blood-red qipao from 1920s Shanghai, she took a slow drag from a long smoking pipe. Her eyes, curving like a fox's, were filled with seductive danger.
Three different eras. Three different continents. Three completely different systems of power. Pulled from their timelines by the secretive Bureau 15.
But right now, all three of them were staring at the center of the room.
Sitting calmly at a metal desk was a young man in modern clothes. He looked no older than twenty-two. His expression was placid, almost bored.
His name was Lu Chen.
He wasn't polishing a weapon. He wasn't chanting a spell. He was simply holding a dark-purple calligraphy brush, dipping it into a small stone inkwell.
"Are you sure you belong here, little brother?" Bai Su purred, breaking the silence. Her voice was like velvet over shattered glass. She blew out a plume of pink smoke.
It wasn't just smoke. It was a high-tier mental hex. To the naked eye, it looked like mist, but in the spiritual realm, it was a screeching horde of phantom foxes, capable of tearing a man's sanity to shreds in a second.
Elena's crystal pendulum suddenly spun wildly, emitting a sharp, cracking sound. The witch's cold eyes widened. Such a vicious curse.
Kunto tightened his grip on his obsidian spear, the runes on his chest flaring dull gold. He prepared to intervene.
Lu Chen didn't look up. His breathing didn't even shift.
He simply raised his brush and drew a single stroke in the empty air.
The black ink didn't fall to the floor. It floated. In less than a second, an ancient Chinese character materialized in the air, glowing with an oppressive, dark-golden light.
『 静 』 (STILLNESS)
BOOM!
The moment the character was completed, an invisible shockwave blasted through the room.
Bai Su's pink smoke didn't just disperse; it was instantly annihilated, erased from existence. Elena's violently spinning pendulum slammed to a dead stop, frozen mid-air as if caught in invisible cement. Kunto let out a muffled grunt as the earth-energy in his veins was forcefully suppressed back into his heart.
Silence. An absolute, terrifying silence descended upon the room.
It wasn't magic. It wasn't brute force. It was Law.
The three monsters from different eras stared at the young man in modern clothes, their eyes filled with utter shock. With a single flick of his wrist, he had overridden the laws of physics, magic, and energy.
Lu Chen slowly lowered his brush. "My ink is expensive," he said, his voice calm and even. "Please don't pollute the air."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Heavy steel doors slid open, and a middle-aged man in a crisp modern suit walked in, clapping slowly.
"Excellent. It seems the team-building exercise is going well." The man smiled, though his eyes were completely devoid of warmth. "I am the Commander of Bureau 15. Welcome to the end of the world."
Bai Su tapped her pipe, her previous arrogance entirely replaced by caution. "You pulled us from our own times. You gathered a Tarot Witch, an Earth Guardian, a Spirit Medium, and..." She glanced at Lu Chen with lingering fear. "...Whatever he is. Why?"
The Commander didn't answer immediately. He tapped his smartwatch, and the center of the room lit up with a massive holographic projection.
It was an image of the universe. But it was wrong.
Vast sections of the cosmos were covered in a sickly, pulsating black sludge. Space itself looked like rotting flesh, peeling back to reveal unspeakable, writhing horrors underneath.
"The universe is not an empty void," the Commander said, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "It is a living, breathing entity. It has 'Five Senses' and 'Six Consciousnesses'. And right now... it is rotting."
Elena gasped, stepping back. "The stars... they look like they are bleeding."
"Because they are," the Commander replied. "The cosmic laws are shattering. The anomalies you faced in your respective eras were just the early symptoms. If we don't mend the broken laws, existence itself will mutate into a cosmic tumor."
He looked at the four of them. "You are not here to fight wars. You are the 'Order-Weavers'. You are here to perform surgery on God."
WEE-WOO! WEE-WOO!
Before anyone could process the sheer magnitude of his words, harsh red emergency lights bathed the room.
"Location: Sector 4, Modern Earth," a mechanical AI voice echoed. "Class-3 Anomaly detected. The 'Sight' of the universe is collapsing. Reality distortion at 89%."
The metal floor beneath the four of them suddenly shifted, plates sliding back to reveal a colossal, glowing ancient teleportation array. Energy surged, humming with the power to pierce through time and space.
The Witch gripped her tarot deck. The African Warrior slammed his spear into the ground, readying his stance. The Fox narrowed her eyes, her aura flaring.
But it was Lu Chen who moved first.
He casually flicked the excess ink off his brush, the droplets dissolving into pure light before they hit the floor. He stepped onto the glowing array, his white coat fluttering in the energetic wind.
He looked back at the three shocked legends of the past, his eyes calm and absolute.
"Are you coming?" Lu Chen asked. "Let's go cure the universe."