Classroom 301 – 4:17 a.m.
The rain had begun in earnest.
It hammered the windows like countless tiny fists demanding entry.
Every drop that hit the glass left a red smear, as though the sky itself were bleeding.
Chen Xiaoxiao had stopped crying.
She sat frozen in Seat 25, staring at the blood-written lesson on the board as if the characters might rearrange themselves into an escape route.
They didn't.
Su Qingxue's breathing had grown shallow.
A thin layer of frost crept outward from her desk, spider-webbing across the floor.
Her pupils kept flickering—round one second, vertical slits the next.
Dragon blood waking up, level by level, exactly as Liu Ruyan had promised.
Little Feng skipped between the desks, humming a nursery rhyme from 1994.
Every time his bare feet touched the floor, the temperature dropped another degree.
He stopped in front of Lin Feng and tilted his head.
"Big brother's crying," he sang softly. "I can taste it. Salty. Like the sea the night our clan burned."
Lin Feng didn't answer.
He was staring at his own hands.
They were shaking.
Liu Ruyan stood at the podium, arms folded, watching him with the patience of someone who had waited twenty years for this exact moment.
"Homework reminder," she said lightly. "Make Lin Feng care enough to suffer.
Deadline: before he kills me.
I'm a very patient marker, but even I have limits."
She tapped the attendance book.
The page flipped by itself to a new section titled **Penalty Log**.
The first entry appeared in fresh crimson:
**Student 0000 – Emotional relapse detected. Penalty: one innocent life added to roster.**
Underneath, Chen Xiaoxiao's name glowed brighter, as though freshly branded.
Little Feng clapped. "Yay! New toy!"
Chen Xiaoxiao whimpered.
Lin Feng finally spoke.
His voice was raw, scraped clean.
"Change the terms."
Liu Ruyan raised a perfect eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Make it me. Only me. Whatever you want to do—do it to me. Leave the rest of them out of it."
Little Feng's humming stopped abruptly.
Liu Ruyan's smile thinned. "That's not how cause and effect works, darling.
You discarded your humanity to become a reaper.
Now it's come back wearing your face and asking to be let in.
You don't get to shut the door again without paying interest."
She walked down the aisle until she stood directly in front of Lin Feng.
Close enough that he could smell the faint scent of peach blossoms clinging to her hair—exactly the same as the night she betrayed him twenty years ago.
"Besides," she whispered, "you're already suffering. Look at you.
Eyes wet. Hands shaking. Heart beating for people who will never matter in the grand scheme.
You're becoming human again, one drop of inconvenient compassion at a time.
And every drop costs someone else."
She reached out and brushed a tear from his cheek with her thumb.
The tear froze instantly into a tiny red crystal.
She popped it into her mouth like candy.
"Delicious," she murmured. "Guilt always is."
Thunder cracked directly overhead.
The emergency lights flickered, then steadied—now permanently blood-red.
Su Qingxue suddenly stood.
Frost exploded outward from her feet, racing up the walls.
Her voice was ice cracking.
"Enough."
Her eyes were fully draconic now—golden slits in a sea of white.
Scales of translucent ice glimmered beneath the skin of her forearms.
She looked at Liu Ruyan without fear.
"State the real objective. Stop playing."
Liu Ruyan turned, delighted. "Finally, the princess speaks."
She spread her arms.
"Very well. No more games."
The classroom rippled.
The walls peeled away like burning paper, revealing an endless void filled with floating fragments of past battlefields: the burning Lin clan compound, the shattered Heavenly Throne, the nine upper classes reduced to ash, Su Qingxue's own execution platform from a previous life.
All of them orbiting the classroom like moons around a dead planet.
Liu Ruyan's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"The final exam has been moved forward.
Effective immediately.
Objective: Kill the Heavenly Emperor.
Time limit: Until the thirteenth bell finishes tolling.
Current toll: two."
A distant bronze bell shuddered through the void—deep, mournful, impossible to ignore.
Little Feng giggled and covered his ears. "It tickles my teeth."
Liu Ruyan continued.
"Rules update:
1. Only one graduate allowed. The one who delivers the killing blow claims the throne.
2. All seals on Student 0000 are removed—immediately.
3. In exchange, every time he takes a life from this moment forward, one memory of his childhood burns away forever.
4. Su Qingxue's dragon blood is fully awakened—immediately. In exchange, every time she uses it, one person she secretly cares about begs to die. Starting with her little brother back on Earth.
5. Little Feng is granted independent corporeal form. He no longer needs a host. In exchange… well. He gets to choose one city block whenever he feels lonely.
6. I—" Liu Ruyan bowed mockingly—"will act as examiner. If any student attempts to kill me before the Emperor dies, the entire class is disqualified. Instant erasure."
She straightened.
"Finally: Chen Xiaoxiao is now official collateral. If Lin Feng refuses to feel anything for her, she lives. If he begins to care… she dies the moment his heart admits it."
Chen Xiaoxiao finally found her voice. Small. Trembling.
"I… I want to go home."
Liu Ruyan smiled gently at her. "You are home, sweetheart. Seat 25. Forever."
Lin Feng stood.
Power flooded back into him like a dam breaking.
The air around him warped.
Black killing intent poured from his pores, thick enough to cast shadows.
The temperature soared from arctic to inferno in a heartbeat.
His eyes were pits of absolute darkness.
For the first time in twenty years, the Reaper was whole.
He looked at Liu Ruyan.
"Fine," he said. "New rules accepted."
Then he looked at Little Feng—his own childhood face, smiling with too many teeth.
"Come here."
Little Feng skipped forward eagerly.
Lin Feng placed a hand on the boy's head.
Not gentle.
Not cruel.
Simply inevitable.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Little Feng's golden eyes widened.
"Big brother…?"
Lin Feng's fingers tightened.
Black threads erupted from his palm, wrapping around Little Feng's throat, arms, legs—binding, piercing, drinking.
Little Feng screamed.
It was the scream of a terrified child.
The sound tore through the void like shattering glass.
Lin Feng did not let go.
Memory after memory flooded into him:
The smell of his mother's hair.
His father teaching him to hold a sword.
The night the clan burned and he hid under the floorboards, clutching a stuffed tiger.
The first time he killed and felt nothing.
Each memory burned away as he absorbed the boy.
Little Feng's body shrank, withered, dissolved into black smoke that poured into Lin Feng's chest.
When it was over, nothing remained.
Not even ash.
Lin Feng lowered his hand.
His eyes were wet again.
Liu Ruyan watched silently.
Su Qingxue's frost retreated slightly.
Chen Xiaoxiao stared in horror.
Somewhere in the void, the great bell tolled a third time.
Lin Feng wiped his face.
His voice was steady now.
Dead steady.
"Three down. Ten to go.
Let's go kill a god."
He walked toward the classroom door.
It opened onto a staircase of bones that led upward into storm clouds.
Behind him, Su Qingxue stood.
Frost and black killing intent swirled together, forming twin dragons that coiled around them both.
Liu Ruyan followed last, humming softly.
Chen Xiaoxiao remained seated, trembling, unable to move.
The classroom lights finally went out.
In the darkness, fresh blood wrote one final line on the blackboard:
**Class Zero – Roll call: 4 students.
Expected graduates: 1.
Current survival rate: pending.**
Far above, in the Heavenly Palace, the Emperor stood.
Twelve dragon robes fluttered though there was no wind.
He stared down at the rising storm.
His ex-wife's scent was stronger now.
And beneath it—something that made even an immortal emperor's hands tremble.
The scent of a Reaper who had finally remembered how to cry.
The fourth bell began to toll.
And this time,
the entire Heavenly Mandate Academy shook.