The information Ryan Cole managed to squeeze out of Charlie was limited, which wasn't surprising. The guy was just a middleman—a delivery runner at best. Someone like that was never going to know where the real supply came from.
Failing to uncover the true origin of CPH4 right away forced Ryan to switch to Plan B.
By the time he showed up again at the Crystal Crown Hotel, Ryan had already altered his appearance completely. He wasn't worried about being recognized—and reality proved him right.
The Korean gang members stationed outside the hotel failed to notice that the man now walking past them bore absolutely no resemblance to the target they were hunting.
Dressed like a clueless tourist, Ryan checked in at the front desk, speaking fluent English with a thick Hong Kong accent that sounded straight out of Central District.
After tipping the room service staff enough to make them forget his face, Ryan took a casual walk through the hotel, mapping out the layout in his head.
Then, under the pretense of filing a complaint, he summoned the hotel's floor manager to his executive suite.
Five minutes later, after a "warm and friendly" conversation, Ryan had everything he needed:the floor the Korean gang was staying on, the layout of the central air system, the security office, and the surveillance control room.
Ten minutes after that, wearing a stolen hotel uniform, Ryan walked into the surveillance room.
The security guards were still chatting when he put them down effortlessly. He shut off the monitoring system completely and removed every hard drive.
Before leaving, he carefully tucked a soda-can-sized high-efficiency thermite charge—something he'd prepared before his transmigration—into a concealed central air duct.
Twenty minutes later, a bottle of highly concentrated non-lethal neurotoxin gas was installed inside the ventilation system on the gang's floor.
This was another one of Ryan's own creations. It wasn't fatal—but even a trace amount could knock someone unconscious instantly.
And breathing wasn't the only risk. Unless you were sealed inside professional-grade protective gear from head to toe, exposure was inevitable. Skin contact alone was enough. Getting hit was only a matter of time.
Thirty minutes later, wearing a compact respirator, Ryan entered the Korean gang's rooms without encountering the slightest resistance.
Every single gangster was sprawled across the floor, just as expected.
Ryan had zero sympathy for them. After taking his time ensuring they wouldn't be getting back up, he collected the sole survivor—Lucy—along with the password-locked case containing CPH4, and left the floor.
Forty minutes in, Ryan rode the elevator down to the underground parking garage, casually supporting Lucy. She looked completely different now—cleaned up, unrecognizable from before, and convincingly drunk.
Using keys taken from the gang, Ryan quickly located their vehicles: two sedans and one large black van.
Just as expected, the trunks were packed with automatic weapons and ammo. The van even held a light machine gun and an RPG launcher.
These guys were seriously confident.
After dumping Lucy—still in her fake-drunk state—into the van's middle seat, Ryan loaded as many weapons and rounds as he could into the trunk. The overflow went into the back seats.
Fifty minutes after it all began, the van—now with swapped license plates—rolled out of the underground garage.
At the same moment—
BOOM! BOOM!
Two massive explosions erupted. The gang's floor and the hotel's surveillance room both exploded in fire and debris.
Every trace Ryan had left behind vanished in the chaos.
The explosions threw the entire hotel into panic. The Korean gang members stationed outside were so busy reacting to the disaster that none of them noticed the van calmly driving away with altered plates.
An hour and a half later, Ryan was long gone.
He made a quick stop at a supermarket to stock up on food and drinks, then drove straight to the outskirts of the city, where he secured a temporary hideout.
The house belonged to an edgy, alternative-style teenage delinquent and her heavily tattooed boyfriend.
When Ryan arrived, the two were in the middle of enthusiastically contributing to the continuation of the human race.
Well—these days, that activity had long since drifted away from its original purpose.
After confirming that the pair were affiliated with a local Taiwanese gang, Ryan felt absolutely no guilt about sending them on their final journey.
As for the bodies, he dumped them into the bathtub and poured in his custom-developed corpse-dissolving solution. In minutes, all that remained was sludge, which he washed straight down the drain. No traces left behind.
With the distractions gone, Ryan finally took stock of his haul.
Four packs of CPH4 that hadn't yet been implanted into human bodies.
And Lucy—still unconscious on the bedroom bed.
Weapons and ammunition barely registered on Ryan's radar. At best, they were toys. In terms of lethality, they didn't even come close to his thermite explosives or neurotoxins.
Two hours later, using a portable analysis device he'd prepared before transmigrating, Ryan completed a preliminary study of the CPH4.
He diluted half a pack with glucose solution, creating four 125-milliliter bags of deep-blue saturated fluid.
Half an hour after that, with everything set, Ryan inserted the needles of four specialized IV lines into Lucy's body.
These IVs weren't standard hospital equipment. The key difference was their absurdly fast flow rate.
All four bags—500 milliliters total—were fully injected into Lucy's veins in under a minute.
The moment the injection finished, Ryan grabbed the remaining three packs of CPH4, jumped into the van, and left the hideout at top speed.
With half a liter of CPH4 flooding her system, Lucy's eyes snapped open moments later.
Three hours passed.
Lucy finally regained full consciousness, thrashing through the wrecked bedroom like someone straight out of a possession horror movie.
Watching the scene unfold through a wireless camera mounted on the bedroom door, Ryan smiled.
Since Charlie couldn't lead him to the true source of CPH4, the biggest issue in this world wasn't how to obtain the drug anymore.
It was how to force Lucy back onto the original storyline.
Anyone who'd seen Lucy knew the truth.
Human civilization in that world originated from a proto-human ape named Lucy—an ancestor who received knowledge passed down from a nearly godlike Lucy after her ascension.
Ryan couldn't be certain that altering Lucy's life wouldn't cause the entire world to collapse.
That was why, after securing both CPH4 and Lucy's blood samples, he injected the remaining half-pack into her—and kept the other half for himself.
Once he confirmed Lucy had regained clarity and activated the prerecorded audio message he'd left behind, Ryan cut all ties to the hideout and triggered his transmigration ability.
Truthfully, the Lucy world contained something even more valuable than CPH4 or Lucy's blood.
The USB drive Lucy left behind for the professor after ascending.
According to the plot, it contained knowledge capable of influencing the evolution of all humanity.
Unfortunately, Ryan's interference had already derailed the timeline.
Even though his recorded message explained Lucy's post-injection condition and guided her toward finding the professor, Ryan had little confidence that the story would fully correct itself.
And even if it did—if Lucy followed the original path and handed over the USB—she would already be something close to a god by then.
Ryan had no confidence he could take that USB from someone like that.
Better to leave early with what he already had.
Marvel Cinematic Universe — EarthUmbrella Biopharmaceutical CorporationUnderground Research Facility
Inside the spacious underground transit zone, a black van suddenly materialized in the parking area.
Ryan Cole sat inside.
Seeing the familiar surroundings through the window confirmed his theory: large objects could indeed be transported during transmigration.
The limits—weight, size—were still unknown.
But for now, bringing back an entire van was more than enough.
Leaving the weapons inside the vehicle, Ryan immediately took the three packs of CPH4 up to the laboratory level.
Half a month later, the first experimental results were disappointing.
Duplicating raw CPH4 was easy.
But attempts to improve it through modified processes and ingredients failed to deliver meaningful results.
As the saying goes—You plant flowers and they don't bloom. You toss a branch aside, and it grows into a tree.
Right before his next transmigration window, Ryan conducted a fusion experiment combining:
Original CPH4
Original NZT-48
His own gene-based compounds
The result was completely unexpected.
The final product was a pale purple liquid.
Computer simulations showed that it reduced the uncontrollable mutation rate of modified CPH4 down to 15%.
This substance—temporarily designated Divine Blood—had:
A 75% chance of stabilizing brain activation at 60%
A 10% chance of exceeding 60%
A remaining 15% chance of instability
It wasn't perfect.
But to Ryan Cole, the first-generation Divine Blood was nothing short of a miracle.