Watching Hongniang's utterly oblivious expression from the corner of his eye, Jing Taiyang was elated. It worked!

The hallmark of the Thousand Blades Sect had never been any single weapon, but the legendary Thousand Blades in Unison. Even for a mere early-Foundation cultivator like Jing Taiyang, simultaneously controlling seven or eight blades in combat was commonplace. Now that his true qi was impeded, his signature Eight Blades in Flight was out of the question—but with the meager thread of true qi he could still barely muster, controlling a single poison needle of negligible weight was more than enough.

Die! With success almost within his grasp, the corner of Jing Taiyang's mouth curled into an imperceptible arc. No matter what, for an early-Foundation cultivator like him to fall into the hands of a mundane-world organization was an unforgivable disgrace. Better to die outright than to be taken alive.

Besides, he was not without a chance of fighting his way out of death. If he could kill this Hongniang, Jing Taiyang would overawe the other four; at the very least he could sow chaos, and perhaps in that chaos find a chance to slip away.

Clink! A crisp note of metal striking metal sent Jing Taiyang's heart plummeting to the depths. Neither Hongniang nor the other four had noticed his little maneuver, and the poison needle had indeed struck Hongniang's neck—but it had failed to pierce her skin. All that effort, undone at the last.

"How is that possible?" Jing Taiyang was struck dumb. He simply could not imagine why Hongniang's skin should be metal—one of the Central Headquarters' newest research achievements, tempered skin, something a man of the Primordial Alliance could never hope to understand.

Hongniang made no reply. She turned sideways and drove a savagely violent knee into him. Feeling the burst of agony in his abdomen, Jing Taiyang folded up like a shrimp and went flying backward.

An opening! Jing Taiyang's eyes lit up even as he fought down the pain. Even now he had not abandoned the thought of escape. Using the momentum of Hongniang's kick, he stamped down hard and burst straight through the floor-to-ceiling window. Leaping from the top floor of the Yongheng Building—the twenty-fourth story—was nothing short of suicide. But he was an early-Foundation expert out of the Primordial Alliance; how could death come so easily to him?

Reality, however, proved that Jing Taiyang had thought too much of himself. The instant he shot through the window, the four black-clad men moved as one, and a vast net descended to wrap him up tight. It drew ever tighter, and by the time he was hauled back up, his whole body had been squeezed into a ball, utterly unable to move.

Hongniang watched this without expression and spoke into the communicator implanted in her head: "Target captured. Hunter team, regroup."

A day later, Hongniang and her four companions returned to Central Headquarters, and Jing Taiyang was delivered to the laboratory the moment he stepped off the plane. A pack of mad scientists had long been waiting there for this prey of theirs—he was the first specimen since the founding of the Primordial Research Group.

As an outer-circle researcher, Dafeng-ge had no right to enter the core laboratory, but he could still glimpse it from afar. Looking at the unconscious Jing Taiyang, he could not help but be appalled. Even an early-Foundation expert of this caliber had been seized just like that. Central Headquarters was truly ruthless beyond all reckoning!

He was anxious now. Ever since learning the purpose of this Primordial Research Group, he had known that this was a matter of tremendous consequence for both the Primordial Alliance and the mundane world. And judging by the secrecy and thoroughness of Central Headquarters' methods, the odds of final success were extremely high. Once a large number of Primordial Alliance experts were brought under control, it would be a tremendous blow not only to the Primordial Alliance but inevitably to the mundane world as well—and more concretely, it would sooner or later drag Wei Zhao into it.

So he had to get this intelligence to Wei Zhao as quickly as possible, no matter what. The problem was that he was now trapped at Central Headquarters, unable to move about freely, much less contact the outside world. How was he to send word?

As the most important and most central project of the secular Central Headquarters at present, the entire headquarters had been in a frenzy of activity from the very moment Jing Taiyang was brought back. Lan Xiaoru led Doctor Glasses and the rest into the fray in person. This was the first step of the Primordial Plan, and it could not be allowed to fail.

At the same time, the hunter team under Hongniang was not idle either. They were analyzing intelligence and searching for the next target. If they could find a second early-Foundation expert wandering alone like Jing Taiyang, and plan it as thoroughly as this time, the odds of their failing were negligible.

Of course, if the other party's strength exceeded the early Foundation stage, then they would have to wait until Jing Taiyang was fully under control and act together. With their strength at the Heaven Rank great perfection, capturing an early-Foundation expert was already the limit; against anyone stronger, they would have little confidence.

Two days later, the target was locked on, and the hunter team struck again. Target: early Foundation stage. Success.

Three days later, the hunter team struck once more—this time bringing along Jing Taiyang, who had been thoroughly brainwashed by Central Headquarters. Target: early Foundation stage. Success.

Another three days passed, and the hunter team, in concert with Jing Taiyang and two other successfully brainwashed early-Foundation experts, launched another strike. Target: early-Foundation peak. Success.

In less than ten days altogether, four Primordial Alliance experts had fallen into the clutches of Central Headquarters—one at the early-Foundation peak, three at the early Foundation stage. Such astonishing efficiency left Dafeng-ge gaping in shock. At this rate, it would not be long before every Primordial Alliance expert scattered across the mundane world and operating alone would be like turtles in a jar.

What shocked Dafeng-ge even more was that once these Foundation-stage experts fell under Central Headquarters' control, their strength could rise rapidly within mere days. He did not yet know that this technology had long been mature at the Center—the secular side was merely employing the rudimentary techniques from Cloud Tier Island.

From the very beginning, what had limited the strength of the secular Central Headquarters' experts was never technology but experimental specimens. As long as the specimens' foundations and potential were strong enough, their technology and resources could produce a great host of Foundation great-perfection experts in an extremely short time. And now that the Primordial Plan had been set in motion, with these Foundation-stage experts of the Primordial Alliance in hand, the raising of strength and cultivation was simply a matter of course.

Having witnessed this series of frankly horrifying developments, Dafeng-ge was now beside himself with dread. At this rate, the Primordial Alliance and the mundane world would suffer far more than a mere shock. Even as an outer-circle researcher who only occasionally lent a hand, Dafeng-ge had begun to sense, more or less, Central Headquarters' ambitions. That woman Lan Xiaoru was after something far from small!

The more he perceived all this, the more frantic Dafeng-ge became—yet for all his franticness, there was nothing to be done. He simply had no opportunity to pass word along...