Ou Zhanpeng, engrossed in his files, was jolted by the sound of the door opening. Shan Qiuyu entered.
He quickly put down his documents. "Director, you're back."
Shan Qiuyu nodded in acknowledgment, placed his briefcase on the desk, and sank into a chair with a heavy sigh, appearing very tired.
"Sit!" He gestured to the chair opposite him.
Ou Zhanpeng sat down. "Do you have any instructions for me?"
Shan Qiuyu straightened his body, interlacing his hands on the desk. "How have you been feeling lately?"
Ou Zhanpeng managed a wry smile. "That's... hard to say. I haven't encountered any difficulties, just haven't quite adapted."
"You're from fieldwork, so transitioning to internal affairs will naturally take some time to adjust. Nothing strange about that. What I'm about to say is classified, and not a single word is to be revealed to any unauthorized personnel. Understood?"
"Understood, not a single word, not to be revealed to anyone!" Ou Zhanpeng clearly repeated the order.
But a strange feeling stirred within him. He had only been back for a few days, and now this talk of secrets?
Shan Qiuyu remained silent, instead pulling a document from his bag and pushing it forward solemnly. "Take a look!"
Ou Zhanpeng picked up the document and opened it. The first page bore a line of bold red text: "Circular on Strengthening Coastal and Southern Border Defense."
Below it, in slightly smaller but more striking red characters, were two words: TOP SECRET!
He looked up hesitantly, offering a questioning glance. "Is this appropriate?"
Shan Qiuyu nodded emphatically and made a gesture to continue.
Ou Zhanpeng continued reading. The document detailed recent incidents of ferocious beast attacks in the southern region, resulting in over fifty deaths, more than twenty injuries, and over forty disappearances.
According to survivors, they had encountered a beast they couldn't identify, only seeing a flash of black before being pounced upon and subjected to a frenzied mauling. The injured often lost consciousness from the extreme pain.
As the attacks had mostly occurred in remote mountainous areas, no surveillance or other visual data could be found. Only a surveillance camera for wild animals captured a less-than-three-second clip.
Accompanying the text was a nighttime photograph, predominantly black. On the left side of the photo was a blurry, indistinct face, revealing only two shining eyes, half a cheek, and half a mouth filled with blade-like teeth, appearing ferocious and terrifying.
If this photo had appeared on any other medium than an official military document, Ou Zhanpeng would have mistaken it for a screenshot from a horror movie!
He meticulously searched his memory but couldn't recall any animal with a similar face. No, that wasn't quite right. There was a type of deep-sea fish, with a fierce appearance, whose name he didn't know, that bore some resemblance to the creature in the photo.
Ou Zhanpeng looked up. "Director, is this a new monster created by the extraterrestrial races?"
Shan Qiuyu nodded. "Keep reading."
What else was there to read?
Ou Zhanpeng lowered his head and continued.
The document mentioned that to resolve the problem of beast attacks, the local forestry department sealed off the affected areas, using satellite scans followed by drone searches of the mountains, but the beasts remained elusive.
Finally, technical personnel managed to decrypt a personal terminal left by one of the victims, uncovering a relatively clear video.
Below this was a second screenshot. A ferocious-looking monster was hidden among the bushes, its body obscured by shrubbery, revealing only its ugly head and thick neck. It had no fur or scales, only rough, brownish-red skin exposed.
Ou Zhanpeng immediately frowned. He had never seen such a creature, yet a sense of inexplicable familiarity washed over him.
Shan Qiuyu leaned forward, pointing at the screenshot. "Look closely. Have you seen this monster in your dreams?"
Ou Zhanpeng suddenly realized and shook his head. "No, but it feels familiar!"
He hadn't just submitted three drawings; he had also written a report detailing his dreams. Shan Qiuyu was one of the few people privy to this information, and he was clearly seeking clues from him.
Shan Qiuyu pursed his lips and took out another document from his briefcase. "Take a look at this."
Ou Zhanpeng took it and was stunned.
It wasn't a document, but a laminated game poster with a line of text: Starcraft!
The poster's main focus was a human in power armor, but in a corner, there was a ferocious-looking creature with bared fangs and a pair of spear-like appendages on its back.
Apart from the lack of appendages, the monster on the poster bore a striking nine-tenths resemblance to the creature in the earlier photograph!
Ou Zhanpeng looked up abruptly. "Director, what is this?"
"A classic game from the early part of this century. I even played it when I was a kid. This monster belongs to the Zerg. We call them Zerglings, and there's a classic tactic called a 'Zerg rush.'"
"How is that possible?" Ou Zhanpeng was utterly taken aback, staring blankly at the photo on the document.
"I'd like to know the reason too," Shan Qiuyu said. "Think carefully. You mentioned in your report that you dreamed of many extraterrestrial races. Have you dreamed of the Zerg? We suspect that the extraterrestrial races might have visited Earth long ago, and that game was perhaps based on real alien races."
"No, absolutely not!" Ou Zhanpeng stated with certainty. "The ones I dreamed of were all technological races."
No matter how ignorant he was, he couldn't have failed to hear of the Zerg's formidable reputation.
Shan Qiuyu grinned and nodded slowly. "Understood. If the Zerg were not in your dreams, then we have reason to believe that the extraterrestrial races have infiltrated human society. Through some method, they obtained game information and, based on the game's content, designed new biological weapons, which are these Zerglings."
Ou Zhanpeng opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say.
Shan Qiuyu continued, "The higher-ups are also astonished. However, the appearance of these sea monsters indirectly proves that aliens possess biological engineering capabilities far exceeding humanity's. And it has been proven that they indeed have the ability to modify Earth's organisms. As far as I know, they have assembled a group of biological experts to analyze the visual data frame by frame. The experts believe it's highly unlikely that aliens created a new species from scratch. They likely modified some Earth organism, such as ants."
"Ants?" Ou Zhanpeng felt he had used up most of his life's astonishment in just this short time.
"Yes, ants. The expert team believes that this creature differs significantly from the Zerglings in the game, with a considerable number of physical characteristics resembling ants." Shan Qiuyu sighed softly. "If they can modify ants into Zerglings now, perhaps in the future they can modify bees into Mutalisks. I just don't understand, is biological modification really that easy?"
Ou Zhanpeng didn't quite grasp the implications, but he could guess what a Mutalisk was. However, his eyes were so strained from fatigue that he couldn't see any resemblance between the monster in the picture and an ant.