The strange, shrill screeches pierced the black night sky. Although unmistakably produced by human vocal cords, the shriek itself resembled an unholy beast and was instinctively unsettling to hear.

Combined with their half-silhouettes perched above the ridgeline of black roof tiles, one name came naturally to Han Qingyu’s mind—ape-men.

Modified humans.

If this was one area where Snow Lotus was ahead of the Azure Coalition, it was better not to catch up. The Azure Coalition was an enormous organization, and if they ever pushed in that direction, it wouldn’t be the planet at risk, but the human species itself. Or rather, humanity.

Some floodgates, once opened, could never be closed again. Like the devil’s temptation, impossible to resist, the final result would be a world ruled by devils.

There wouldn’t be anything worth protecting left at that point.

In truth, precisely because of its vast scale, the Azure Coalition historically had both scientists wanting to experiment in this direction and people supporting them. The human body was not well-suited for hand-to-hand...