The Flayer crumpled to the earth, his grotesque form finally still. A collective sigh of relief began to form in the throats of the survivors—a brief, fragile hope that the nightmare was over. Then, the air itself seemed to curdle. From the whispering moss, the groaning trees, the very stones beneath their feet, a sound arose. A melody. A child's rhyme, sung in a voice of crystalline, mocking sweetness that slithered into their ears and coiled around their hearts.
"Little Flayer, nimble and sly,
Played his games, made the villagers cry.
The earth is cold, the soil a bed,
Time to rise now, Little Flayer,
Time to rise up from the dead.
Rise up, rise up, the game's not done, you see?
Rise up, rise up,
And come die with me."
It was airy yet macabre, laced with an unspeakable cruelty that turned their blood to ice.
"Fucking hells! There's more?! Everyone, defensive positions!"
"Circle up! Tight formation!"
"Brace yourselves!"
This had to be the final wave, the Necromancer's last gambit—a grand sacrifice where he himself was the ultimate offering. Hearing the twisted lullaby, Yuqin's brow furrowed, a cold knot tightening in her stomach. She exchanged a swift, knowing glance with the Lin siblings, their gazes then snapping towards Yao. Yao had been right. The final cataclysm was indeed a sacrifice of the dead, but they had assumed it would be drawn from a reservoir of captured souls, not the caster's own post-mortem essence. Of course, the Flayer in life had never gotten the chance, systematically dismantled by Oxus's relentless machinations. The moment he had entered the village, the villagers' fates were sealed. Now, having entered this trial himself, his own fate was equally inescapable. Perhaps this was a form of karmic Samsara—this last, pathetic surge of spectral energy was merely the final, desperate thrash of his indelible resentment.
The incoming wave of minor specters, while numerous, shimmered in the eyes of the remaining examinees not as a terrifying horde, but as crystallized opportunity—points for the taking, lifeblood for their rankings. Over a hundred exhausted candidates from the three cities, who moments before had been trembling on the brink of collapse, now saw a glimmer of salvation. Points meant ranking; ranking meant futures, families, a way out of the grinding obscurity of the outer provinces. A desperate, feverish energy surged through them, a last-gasp adrenaline rush.
"Quit gawking! We have 35 minutes! Kill them all!"
"Move, move! Protect the casters!"
"Godsdamnit, those cursed geese snatched half my potential points! We need to recoup! Focus fire!"
"Lin Hengjing! Control your feathered monstrosities! Keep them off our kills!"
While many fixed their attention outward, their senses straining for the moment the spectral disturbance would erupt from the soil, an equal number watched the Lin siblings, especially Lin Hengjing. Shouts echoed, urging her to restrain her snowy goslings, whose voracious appetites for points were legendary. Yet, in that very moment of collective tension, Lin Hengjing and Lin Chengxiu felt a profound wrongness prickle at their nape. Hengjing's breath hitched—Bara was gone. Vanished without a trace, without a sound. A cold dread, sharper than any spectral claw, lanced through her. Without a word, she and her brother mentally reached for the exit command.
They were a heartbeat too late.
A soft, definitive snapechoed in their minds as they were forcibly ejected from the party. Then came the light—not a beam, but a fluid, luminous river, beautiful and terrifying. It poured from the space behind them, ethereal and silent, and passed through their bodies as if they were mere mist. Not just them. In a single, horrifying breath, a cascade of these brilliant streams pierced everyone in the clearing—save for one petite, fifteen-year-old girl.
Liu Yun, ever the most cunning and vigilant of snakes, had kept a sliver of his focus razor-sharp on Yao. Seeing her apparent disinterest in them, he hadn't triggered his retreat immediately, but had silently signaled his team with a flick of his eyes: Stay sharp. He never anticipated the betrayal would come not from the front during the expected battle, but from behind, in the chaotic scramble for points. As the system ejection sequence took hold, flooding his vision with static, he managed a final, wrenching turn of his head.
He saw her. Yao, the damnable, enigmatic bastard from Jingyang, was perched casually on the massive, lifeless head of the Goblin Merchant boss. One hand was idly rifling through the Flayer's cooling robes, a loot progress bar glowing faintly beneath her fingers. The other rested lightly on her knee. And she was watching them. Not with triumph, but with a detached, almost clinical curiosity. Behind her, the air shimmered, and Bara reappeared, her form slightly translucent, a sad, spectral smile on her lips. The eerie singing voice ceased abruptly, cut off as if by a knife. The destabilized space, which had pulsed with promised violence, snapped back to an unsettling, perfect calm.
There was nothing particularly fierce in her posture or her gaze. Yet, that very casualness, the sheer mundane easeof the entire deception, made Liu Yun's head throb with a dizzying, humiliating realization. There had been no final undead sacrifice. No glorious last stand. It had all been an illusion, a masterfully crafted phantasm by Bara—a dazzling, all-consuming distraction to draw every eye, every scrap of attention, while Yao calmly lined up her shot. The luminous river had been the only real attack. A single, surgical strike of pure, condensed light.
"SON OF A TWISTED—!"
The air in the clearing was rent by a chorus of furious, helpless curses from ninety-nine percent of the three cities' candidates before they winked out of existence, their outrage echoing into the void.
Yuqin stood alone in the sudden silence, the reality settling upon her like a physical weight. Her face was pale, but her voice, when it came, was eerily calm. "Targeting the Lin siblings… I understand that. Payback for their earlier scheme. A debt repaid. But why not eliminate me as well?"
Yao, finally finishing her looting with a soft chime of success, glanced up. The spoils—a faintly glowing spatial key that pulsed like a captured heartbeat and a dense, pulsating petricite core that hummed with condensed life-force—disappeared into her inventory unseen by any spectator. "I don't make a habit of bullying underage, vertically-challenged children," she stated flatly, her tone leaving no room for debate or flattery.
Yuqin felt a flash of indignation so hot and sudden she thought her own spirit might combust from the sheer audacity. But she swallowed it, the bitterness a familiar, acrid taste on her tongue. She had learned, through harsh lessons, when pride was a luxury she couldn't afford. "Fine. What do you need me to do?"
"Hold on." Yao moved with unhurried grace to the Goblin Merchant's bulky corpse, her hands performing the same quick, efficient search. Another soft glow, another item secured into whatever hidden pocket of space she used. Then she turned back, dusting off her hands. "Actually, there is something."
"What?"
Yao didn't answer with words. Instead, she reached into the air beside her, her fingers closing around something that hadn't been there a moment before. With a casual flick of her wrist, she tossed it. The object landed with a solid, definitive thunkat Yuqin's feet, kicking up a small puff of dust. A shovel. Its weathered wooden handle stood a full head taller than the girl herself.
"Dig a hole for me."
"…What?" The question was pure, unadulterated bafflement.
The fifteen-year-old, all one and a half meters of stubborn will and sharp intellect, stared blankly at the implement, then at Yao's impassive face. For a long moment, she simply stood there, the absurdity of the request warring with the chilling competence of the person who'd made it. Finally, with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire ridiculous day, her expression settled into a mask of resigned annoyance. She bent her knees, grunted with effort, and hefted the oversized shovel. Turning on her heel, she trudged off towards the edge of the clearing, scanning for a patch of soft earth, her small figure nearly disappearing behind the tool's bulk. The viewing screens for the external audience chose that moment to winked out—the instance was functionally over, its narrative concluded, even if the official clock hadn't fully run out. Yao, as the last one standing, the architect of its end, could choose to linger in the silence.
A heavy quiet descended in the external waiting area, broken only by the muffled, furious clamor emanating from the ejection chambers where the ousted candidates were no doubt venting their rage and humiliation. A system notification, cool and impersonal, shimmered before Yao's eyes: Instance concluded. Narrative resolution complete. Broadcast terminated.
So. It was over. A vague, formless unease, like a cold serpent, coiled in Yao's gut, making her reluctant to step back into the scrutiny and complexity of the real world. But the feeling wouldn't stop her from tying up loose ends.
She turned and walked back towards the mortuary. The atmosphere within had fundamentally changed. The oppressive, greedy sentience that had soaked the stones was gone, leaving only the profound, melancholy silence of a place long abandoned by hope. The distorted space that had once housed the Flayer's private sanctum had reverted to a simple, square room. The door, now plain wood, yielded to her touch with a soft creak. Inside, the air was stale but carried a fading, unpleasant tang—oil, dried herbs, the faint, sweet-sour odor of unwashed body and something subtly rotten beneath. This was where he had slept, dreamed his cruel dreams, perhaps. A simple cot, a rickety table. The mundane horror of it was almost worse than any overt nightmare.
The search didn't take long. With the final boss defeated and the instance's core narrative resolved, its rewards lay bare, waiting to be claimed by the victor. Just as Lin Hengjing's prize had been the tangible, living mystery of the Snow-Gosling, the rewards for the third and most arduous phase—the phase she had single-handedly orchestrated and broken—were here for her taking.
Yao opened her palm. Two items materialized from her inventory, resting lightly on her skin. One was a small, intricately carved orb of smoky quartz that seemed to swallow the faint light, humming with a deep, spatial energy—the Flayer's Private Sanctum. The other was a dense, brilliantly glowing amber crystal the size of a robin's egg, radiating such pure, vibrant life-force it felt warm to the touch—the Greater Pet Core from the Goblin Merchant.
Flayer's Private Sanctum: A unique spatial artifact. Integrates personal lodging, advanced concealment, and spatial entrapment functionalities. Upgradable upon binder reaching Level 30.
A portable haven. A hidden retreat invisible to prying eyes. A pocket dimension to trap enemies. Its value for a solo adventurer, for someone who lived in the shadows between great houses and hidden threats, was immeasurable.
The Greater Pet Core was a dense concentration of primal energy, its potency equivalent to a thousand lesser life-essence gems. Her previous efforts had nearly bankrupted her, scavenging and scheming, just to raise her little locust to Level 10. This core was a windfall, a massive infusion of power she desperately needed to fuel her companion's growth. She would feed it to the little glutton, but not here, not now. Not in this resolved, fading space.
Yet, even these treasures felt… curiously lightweight, somehow, compared to a bonded Mystical-White Goose with its innate potential. There had to be more. The instance's true MVP reward, tailored to the one who shattered its cycle, had to be here. Her search of the Flayer's sparse, pathetic room was methodical. It ended at a plain wooden drawer, warped with damp. Inside, resting on faded velvet that might once have been purple, lay an unadorned leadwood box. Lifting the lid, Yao's breath caught in her throat.
Nestled within, cushioned by the velvet, lay a single, slender ampoule of flawless crystal. Within, a liquid the color of deep, forest-jade twilight swirled with its own inner luminescence, like captured moonlight in a bottle of ancient sea-glass.
A single, focused pulse of her Insightskill—a fragment of knowledge from a lifetime lived in a different world—revealed its nature:
Gene-Essence Lure: Product of the Flayer's Forbidden Research.
Understanding dawned, cold and sharp and exhilarating. This was esoteric knowledge, not taught in common academies or standard curricula. Useless to the vast, unwashed masses. Its purpose was singular, rarefied: to aid in Bloodline Advancement for those of noble descent. Only those with the dormant legacy of aristocratic genes woven into their very marrow could hope to ascend from common crimson to viridian, cerulean, or the legendary hues beyond. Why teach what ninety-nine percent of humanity would never use? True nobles guarded such secrets within their vaults and bloodlines.
Yao knew. Her old self, in another life lived through a screen and countless calculated choices, had clawed and connived her way up that very gilded ladder.
Gene-Essence Lure: Significantly increases the success rate of activating dormant noble genes and advancing to Viridian-Tier Bloodline. Estimated success rate boost: +50%. Classification: Top-tier Cerulean Rare Resource.
Its value was staggering, comparable to some Orange-tier artifacts. Unbuyable on any open market. The birthright of great houses or the loot of legendary, one-time instances. This, she realized with a slow, fierce joy, thiswas the instance's true prize. For a noble scion—even a disgraced, talentless one—the greatest advancements were always in innate talent or bloodline purity. "Thoughtful," she murmured to the empty room, the word hanging in the dusty air. "This… this truly matches the value of the goose." A wry twist touched her lips. "Alchemists… a path where fortunes are made and fortunes are burned to ash." She thought of the grotesque sum she had spent on her few, clumsily crafted meditation puppets, and her expression soured. Perhaps she lacked the innate talent for meticulous creation? Perhaps her talents lay in… acquisition. In breaking things to see what fell out.
She stored the ampoule with utmost care in the most secure layer of her inventory, her mind racing ahead on dark, ambitious paths. Oxus's genetic report was a damning testament to his pathetic inheritance from the Xie family. To tap into that legendary, Orange-tier potential sleeping in his blood, she'd need a miracle, a forced mutation, or… a workaround. "Xiao Yao's innate talent is also ocular. The Xie lineage's is as well. A fortunate coincidence… or is it?" Fragments of knowledge, gleaned from ancient temple archives in her past life, surfaced. Heterogeneous talents sought fusion; homogeneous ones repelled, yet that very repulsion could create a pressure, a catalyst for mutual awakening or violent evolution. Genetics were a complex, glorious tapestry, seemingly pre-destined yet riddled with wild, volatile possibilities. "The supreme, unbreakable law of life is evolution," a temple axiom declared. Yao believed it with every fiber of her being. She acknowledged her own craving for the Xie legacy, the cold, calculating envy for its zenith potential. If she could use Xiao Yao's latent ocular genetics as a catalyst, a psychic wedge to pry open Oxus's dormant Xie potential… the risk might be worth the unimaginable reward. "Building a Viridian bloodline from scratch in Xiao Yao's foundation-less body is a thousand times harder than awakening the slumbering talent in Oxus's flawed vessel. But once Oxus's talent is violently awakened, advancing his bloodline becomes… plausible." A strategy of complementary strengths. Two weak reeds twisted together to form a spear.
A plan, cold, clear, and fraught with potential for catastrophic failure, began to crystallize in the dark waters of her mind. She left the room.
Outside, under a sky that had inexplicably cleared of its perpetual gloom, the hole was dug—perfectly coffin-sized. The girl had understood without being told, a silent intelligence passing between them. A small, neatly folded note was wedged into the freshly turned soil nearby. Yao picked it up. The handwriting was firm, precise, and stubborn: Thanks. And I won't be short forever.She almost smiled, but the moment was too somber, the air too thick with the scent of damp earth and endings. She carefully, reverently, lifted the carefully preserved remains of Bara's mother, placing them in a simple wooden coffin she'd fashioned from fallen timber, then lowered it into the waiting earth.
A presence materialized beside her, silent as a shadow at dusk. Bara. Yao, now truly looking, saw the girl cast no shadow on the fresh, dark soil. Her form had a faint translucency, like morning mist over a pond.
Bara was already dead. A ghost clinging to purpose.
"You…" Yao began, the question dying in her throat, afraid of the answer.
Bara gazed at the descending coffin, her expression unreadable, her voice a calm, flat pond undisturbed by wind. "I was his bound thrall. A soul-stitched puppet. Betrayal, even for freedom, carries a price. This was mine." His death had severed the thread holding her to the world. The final, magnificent illusion she wove for Yao—the phantom army, the singing void—had been her last act, burning the last of her anchored spirit. What remained was a fading echo, a memory given shape.
A sharp, unfamiliar ache, ugly and inconvenient, twisted in Yao's chest. She turned her face away, focusing on the mundane, physical act of shoveling dirt, the thumpof earth on wood a grounding rhythm against the swelling sorrow.
"You're… strange," Bara observed after a moment, her head tilting with bird-like curiosity. "Not like a normal person."
It wasn't a compliment. Yao understood the subtext: someone so calculating, so ruthlessly pragmatic, who orchestrated mass betrayals and coldly looted corpses, shouldn't harbor this soft, messy grief. It was a flaw. A weakness.
"Maybe… everyone needs to wear a mask sometimes," Yao replied, the words tasting hollow even to her own ears. She finished her work, patting the earth flat, shaping a humble mound. When she finally looked up, blinking against a sudden brightness, the world had transformed. The perpetual, weeping mist that had shrouded the Flayer's domain had burned away under a gentle, genuine sun, its warmth a foreign comfort on her skin. The once-scorched and blighted earth around the gravesite was now dotted with brave, green shoots, life stubbornly pushing through decay. Spring, long held at bay by the Necromancer's despair, was finally arriving. Soon, the terrible blighted fields, the haunted mortuary, the grim burial mounds—all would be buried under a forgiving blanket of green.
She erected a simple stone from the creek bed, using the edge of the shovel to carve a few quiet words: Here rests a mother. Remembered.Finished, she leaned on the shovel, the rough grain of the wood familiar against her palms. She checked her chrono. Five minutes remained.
"I have to go. Take care of this place." She made to activate the exit sequence.
Bara didn't speak. Instead, her form dissolved into shimmering motes of pale blue light, like a galaxy collapsing in on itself. They swirled, coalescing not into the girl, but into a single, exquisite soul card that floated before Yao. The image on it was not of a powerful specter, but of a young girl with long, candy-pink hair. She sat at a table, her head bowed low over a single, perfect slice of cake. Her shoulders were trembling faintly, as if she were holding back a universe of tears.
'I can feel it,'Bara's voice whispered directly into her mind, a sound like rustling leaves and distant wind chimes. 'Your fear of this world. Your uncertainty. The void you walk beside.'A pause, heavy with finality. 'Bind me. I will be your thrall. Your weapon. I will fight for you, until my last echo fades.'
No 'thank you.' This was her repayment. A transaction of loyalty.
Yao stared, conflict warring within her—the pragmatist screaming at the sentimental fool. The power offered was immense. A spirit of Bara's caliber, bound to her will? It was a tactical advantage she was mad to refuse. Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached out, closing around the cool, smooth surface of the card. The image of the girl, forcing down her sorrow, forcing a smile for her captor, struck a chord so deep it vibrated in her very bones. In that moment, she understood: the little girl had known. All those years. She had known what was happening to her mother in the next room. She had played the part of the helpless,clueless, smiling through the horror, aiding the monster to survive, perhaps damning others in the process just to see another sunrise. She had lived, a slave in soul if not always in body. The tears she could never shed, the screams she swallowed every day… they had become the endless, weeping rain that drenched this cursed land.
Yao's grip tightened on the card, her knuckles white. A weapon, a companion, a guide through the spirit world… Her mind listed the advantages. Yet, after a long, silent struggle where the only sound was the sighing of the new grass, her fingers loosened. She walked back to the fresh mound, knelt, and gently, carefully, reopened the coffin. She placed the soul card over the woman's silent, still heart. A mother should have her daughter back, she thought, a wave of homesickness for her own mother, in a world impossibly far away and forever lost, crashing over her with such force it stole her breath. She sealed the coffin for the last time, her actions final. Then, without looking back, she activated the exit sequence and vanished from the resolved instance.
The transition was jarring. The muted, mournful beauty of the clearing was replaced by the sterile, polished metal and hum of active magic in the exit corridor. The real world rushed in—the smell of ozone and polished stone, the murmur of dozens of voices, the weight of countless eyes. She found herself facing a crowd. They were all still there. Had they been waiting for her? For a chance at revenge? A profound, bone-deep weariness settled into her, heavier than any armor. She ignored the complex tapestry of stares—burning anger, sullen resentment, awestruck fear, naked curiosity.
As the last to exit, the instance finalized its judgement.
A resonant, system-generated voice echoed through the corridor and the external halls:
"Jingyang City Intermediate Examination, Third Phase: Concluded. Instance settlement as follows: Participant Oxus, designated Most Valuable Player. Comprehensive Performance Coefficient: 10.12. Confirmed eliminations: Final Boss 'The Flayer,' Sub-Boss 'Wandering Merchant.' Awarded 5000 and 2000 points respectively. Total points awarded: 89,056. Specific rankings are now available on city and tri-city leaderboards. Allocated experience rewards have been distributed."
A torrent of energy, sweet, potent, and invigorating, flooded her system, coursing through her veins like liquid sunlight. Her body thrummed with power as her level surged—17… 18… 19… settling firmly at Level 20. Around her, others also glowed with the soft, silver light of attainment, levels ticking upwards. She knew many had hoarded their precious life-essence gems, saving them for a more opportune moment. Yao had used hers freely in the crucible of the instance. Survival first, hoarding later.
The atmosphere in the corridor was thick with unspoken accusations, a palpable tension that made the air feel stiff. Yet, a voice cut through the silence, clear and formal.
"Thank you. For clearing the instance." It was Lin Hengjing, her voice as stiff and unyielding as ever, but the sincerity beneath the granite tone was unmistakable. She stood straight, her snowy gosling nestled in the crook of her arm, peering at Yao with beady, intelligent eyes.
Yao looked at her, a random, tangential thought surfacing through the fog of her fatigue. "Earlier," she said, her own voice slightly rough, "I noticed many people's point totals stalled for hours. Yours included. Why?"
Lin Hengjing blinked, a flicker of genuine surprise breaking through her composure. "After the Coffin-Bearer mini-boss, some participants received special reward cards. Concealment-type. They mask real-time point gains on the public leaderboards. My brother and I each received one. It is likely others from the rival city teams did as well. You… did not receive one?"
Ah. So her rewards weredifferent. A portable, upgradable sanctum versus a temporary, single-use card. The value was incomparable. "If you have them," Yao mused aloud, her gaze turning inward for a moment, "others from the rival cities certainly do. No wonder the final rankings shook out the way they did." She offered no further explanation, no gloating. She simply gave a slight, tired nod and began walking towards the main exit.
Her comment was cryptic, an offhand remark that sent ripples through the crowd. Lin Hengjing and others quickly pulled up the live rankings on their personal comms.
Jingyang City Rank:
#1: Oxus.
Followed by Lin Hengjing, Lin Chengxiu, Yuqin, Xu Yi, Guan Zizai, Zhang Fulan, Jian Feilan, Yun Cangcang…
Tri-City Combined Rank:
The list made eyes widen.
#1: Luohe Sanqian.
#2: Liu Yun.
#3: Lu Shu.
#4: Chen Shuang.
#5: Wu Xiaomei.
#6: Oxus.
Sixth.Oxus, the undisputed architect of the instance clear, the one who broke the cycle and defeated the final bosses, was ranked sixth. A murmur, sharp with disbelief, rippled through the gathered candidates. How? Even those who currently despised her had to admit, grudgingly, the victory was hers by every metric.
"He… she… didn't move on the points board for nearly half the instance duration," someone whispered, confusion overriding anger. "I thought it was a high-level Concealmentcard…"
"Maybe she wasn't earning points at all during that window," another voice, more analytical, suggested. "She was… setting everything up. Orchestrating the final play. How else could she have secured Bara's cooperation?"
Lin Hengjing absently stroked her gosling's soft, white feathers, thinking of Yao's distant, preoccupied air moments ago. She didn't know about the Concealmentcards. She genuinely wasn't earning points for all those hours. She was… elsewhere. Doing something else.A twelve-hour gap. Had she left the instance entirely? Used the external spectator view to gain god-like insight into the mechanics? The theory fit. But the cost in potential points, the sheer risk… "She doesn't care about the rank," Lin Hengjing realized with sudden, startling clarity. "Only the slot. The real treasure was never the points."
Ahead, Yao walked slowly, head bowed, her attention on her personal comm device. Her expression, visible in profile, was troubled, anxious, her brow slightly furrowed.
She was right to be anxious, but not about the points. The points were irrelevant; the recommendation slot for the top four academies was secured, the true, game-changing loot was safely stored in her inventory. The ranking was a vanity, a number for others to fight over. Something else gnawed at her, a cold worm of dread in the pit of her stomach.
Xie An was dead. So many of the Jingyang Xie were dead. By now, sheshould have retrieved her brother's body. Such a monumental event—the head of a major city branch family assassinated—why was the information networks silent? No news bulletins, no gossip ripples, no official statements. Was it not over? Had the trap not sprung? Anxiety, cold and sharp, clawed at her gut. Pull yourself together, she mentally chided. The exam is done. Your performance was notable, unignorable. You have value now. People with value, with eyes on them, don't just… disappear.She tried to cling to the confidence of her newly formed plans, the solid, tangible weight of her gains. It felt like preparing for the final exams in a past life—terrifying, overwhelming, but the path was clear. Study the material, execute the plan. One step at a time. Don't look down.
The main exit loomed ahead, sunlight and the roar of a waiting crowd of families, officials, and spectators spilling into the corridor. She took a deep, steadying breath, the air tasting of anticipation and sweat, and reached to power down her comm. That's when she heard Yuqin's voice, sharper and tighter than usual, cutting through the ambient noise.
"…Mom? Auntie Qin?"
The world seemed to slow, to thicken like honey. A delayed, cold lightning bolt traveled down Yao's spine, leaving a trail of numb dread. She looked up, slowly, as if moving through a viscous dream.
There, on the second-floor observation balcony, leaning elegantly against the polished railing—Shen Yunyou. And standing beside her, calm as a deep lake, was Qin Yu.
She's here. Why? Your brother's funeral arrangements…The thought was frantic, disjointed. Is it for Yuqin? To witness her protégé's results personally?
Every instinct screamed to hide, to fold into the shadows. She dropped her gaze, a reflex as old as fear itself, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her worn jacket—a feeble, instinctive armor. She changed her trajectory, aiming not for the main doors where the Xie family might lurk, but for where Director Zhang Ruo stood surrounded by a phalanx of city guards and officials. But fate, it seemed, was a capricious and cruel playwright, and it was not done with her tonight.
"Keli! Over here, boy!"
"Ah, Keli! Well done, well done!"
"Incredible performance! A true credit to the Xie name!"
"Simply brilliant! Our shining star!"
They swarmed her—a tide of garish silks and false smiles. The very Xie relatives who had scorned her, who had whispered behind their hands, who had likely sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the attempts on her life. Now their faces were wreathed in proud, avaricious grins, their voices cloying and thick with hypocrisy. She was their golden goose, their unexpected champion. The stench of their opportunism was suffocating.
Yao's smile felt painted on, a stiff mask. She muttered vague excuses, tried to extricate herself from the clinging web of hands and congratulations. "I need to… report to Director Zhang. Official business…"
They pressed closer, a wall of suffocating concern. "Nonsense! That can wait! You must be exhausted!"
"Come, come, we'll go home together! Your father will be overjoyed!"
"Yes, let's go! The carriage is waiting!"
Out of the corner of her eye, a flicker of movement on the balcony. Qin Yu's gaze had shifted, moving past Yuqin, past the crowd, and settling directly on her.
She's watching me.The thought was a spike of ice.
Her fingers in her pocket found her comm, moving by memory, her eyes downcast. A quick, blind-typed message to Zhou Linlang, who stood apart on the balcony, observing the scene with her usual amused detachment: Have to deal with something. Go ahead. We'll meet later.
She saw Zhou Linlang glance at her own comm, a slight, understanding smirk touching her lips. She gave an almost imperceptible nod and melted away into the crowd, a shadow departing. Good.
Pushing through the clinging Xie relatives, their words like buzzing flies, she finally neared Zhang Ruo. The director was on her own comm, her initial smile of professional pride freezing, then shattering into an expression of pure, unvarnished shock. Her eyes, wide and alarmed, locked onto Yao's across the room. Her mouth opened. "Guards! To the perim—"
The sentence died, strangled in her throat.
Not by a threat from outside. From the windows.
Eight points of crimson light bloomed in the air like deadly flowers, swelling into humanoid forms clad in deep scarlet robes embroidered with silver threads that seemed to move like liquid mercury. From their backs, wings of pure, condensed flame manifested not with a roar, but with a silent, terrifying whooshof superheated air. They held ornate, blackened staves tipped with glowing red gems. As one, they pointed.
There was no surge of elemental energy, no gathering of power, no warning chant that any mage present could sense. The air itself flowed, twisting and distorting, becoming eight sinuous, liquid rivers of molten fire. They wove through the crowded hall with impossible grace and terrifying precision, a macabre dance that avoided all but their intended targets.
Yao watched, paralyzed, as the crimson rivers filled her vision, a beautiful, deadly net closing in… and then slid past her, the heat blistering the air inches from her skin.
To pierce the Xie clansmen surrounding her.
Twenty of them. Uncles, aunts, cousins like Xie Lin. Confusion flashed on their faces, then dawning horror as the liquid fire, deceptively beautiful, entered their bodies. The heat was not external; it ignited from within. Blood vaporized, flesh cooked from the inside out, organs charred to ash in an instant. There was no scream, only a wet, sizzling sound and the sickening-sweet, stomach-churning scent of roasted meat and ozone that flooded the hall. In mere seconds, the lively, chattering ring of relatives around her became a circle of smoldering, desiccated husks, their forms collapsed in on themselves, little more than charcoal statues in fine clothing.
They lay at her feet. A charnel circle. The heat radiating from them made the air waver.
Her mouth was parchment dry, her tongue stuck to the roof. Her fingers trembled slightly against her thighs. Her mind, detached and clinical, a survivor's mechanism, processed the truth. This was not random. This was execution. She turned her head, her gaze finding the one person it had to, drawn by a terrible magnetism.
Screams finally erupted then, raw and ragged, tearing from the throats of spectators and examinees alike.
Director Zhang Ruo acted, years of discipline overriding shock. A wave of calming, golden energy pulsed from her, a Sanctuary Aura that washed over the panicking crowd, forcing a brittle, terrified calm upon them.
One of the scarlet-robed figures raised a hand. In the air before him, fire coalesced, not into an attack, but into an intricate, blazing sigil—a stylized, fierce orchid wreathed in flames. The Ember Orchid. The undeniable seal of the Boluke Marquisate.
"By the Ancient Laws of Nobility," the figure's voice echoed through the hall, cold, flat, and final as a guillotine's fall, "the House of Ember Orchid, Sovereign Marquisate of Boluke, executes its justice. You may witness. You may listen. You will not interfere. Bystanders, hold your peace and your tongues on pain of death."
The glowing sigil, radiating ancient authority and overwhelming power, was more effective than any calming spell. The Lin siblings, all the young candidates, stood frozen, their protest dying in their throats. The Blue and Teng family heads, faces ashen, stepped forward as one. Left hand pressed flat over their hearts, they performed a deep, formal bow—a gesture of absolute submission to a vastly superior house. Their families, after a stunned moment, followed suit, a wave of obeisance sweeping through their ranks.
Silence reclaimed the hall, broken only by the faint crackle of cooling bodies and the ragged breathing of the terrified.
Zhang Ruo, her face grim, silently signaled her guards to cordon the horrific area, to form a living barrier between the atrocity and the rest of the crowd.
In the center of the carnage, amid the ring of blackened corpses, one figure remained standing.
Everyone else had recoiled, pressed back against walls or huddled together. All eyes, wide with horror and macabre fascination, were on the lone boy standing amidst the dead.
Yuqin, having just finished assuring her mother she was unharmed, had been about to weave through the crowd to approach Yao, to offer thanks for being pulled through the instance. The sudden, brutal violence had frozen her in her tracks. Her first instinct had been to look up, to find her mother and aunt on the balcony. Her second, to glance at the tubby little earth-element spirit beast—her so-called 'groundhog'—now quivering under a bench, its paws clamped over its head, its fluffy tail curled tightly around itself. Then, heart hammering, she looked for Yao. The boy was staring… at her? No. Past her. His gaze was locked onto someone on the balcony. Qin Yu.
Yuqin turned, a cold understanding dawning. Qin Yu stood by the railing, utterly unperturbed, as if the massacre below were a mildly interesting play. She was peeling an orange with slow, meticulous care, her fingers long and elegant. The peel collected in a neat spiral in her palm. The finished fruit, sections plump and glistening, was offered not to Yuqin, but to Shen Yunyou beside her, who took it numbly, her face pale.
"Auntie, you…" Yuqin began, her voice small, but Shen Yunyou gently covered her daughter's mouth with a trembling hand, her own eyes wide with a dawning, terrible understanding of the woman her old classmate had become.
Qin Yu offered a faint, enigmatic smile that didn't reach her eyes. She discarded the orange peel into a nearby bin, then pulled a crisp white cloth from her sleeve, wiping each finger clean of the sticky juice with fastidious care. Then, with the click of her slender heels a sharp counterpoint to the heavy silence, she began to descend the stairs. Her simple trench coat flowed around her. She stopped before Yao, the scent of citrus and something colder, like ozone after a storm, emanating from her.
"Evidence has come to light," she stated, her voice carrying without needing to be raised, "that the Jingyang Xie cadet branch conspired to murder two hundred and fifteen members of the main family lineage." She gestured with a slight, elegant nod towards the still-smoking corpses. "These were willing participants. He confessed. Allegedly." Her tone was light, almost bored, suggesting the truth of the confession was irrelevant. The verdict had been passed. The sentence, executed.
One of the red-robed enforcers made a small, hooking motion with a finger. The space beside him tore like parchment, and a figure was dragged forth from nothingness, dumped unceremoniously onto the polished floor at Yao's feet.
Xie Hezhou. The second genius of the Xie family, who should have been taking his university entrance exams, not kneeling in his own blood and shame. He coughed, a wet, ragged sound, and looked up. He saw Yao, the implacable red-robed guards, the ring of grotesque, charcoal corpses that had been his clan. His face, already pale, went slack with a horror beyond comprehension.
Yao looked from his broken form to Qin Yu, who had stepped closer. The woman's scent was subtle up close—old ink, pine resin, and the cool, damp freshness of deep water from a mountain spring. It was a clean, intellectual smell, utterly at odds with the charnel-house reek surrounding them.
"Do you not wish to avenge your family?" Qin Yu's voice dropped to a soft murmur, for Yao's ears alone. Was this horrific purge for justice, for the main family's honor, or was it, in some twisted, unfathomable way, a lesson… for her?
Yao's heart clenched, a painful spasm in her chest. She said nothing. Her throat was too tight.
On the floor, Xie Hezhou drew a shuddering, wet breath. Despair twisted, fermented, and erupted into a final, reckless fury. He lunged, not away, but towardsthem, metallic energy coalescing around his fists into shimmering, razor-edged gauntlets—a 25th-tier Metal-Shaper's desperate, suicidal strike aimed at both Yao and the impassive woman before her.
The blast of light that answered was instantaneous, blinding in its purity. A spear of condensed, white-hot radiance, no thicker than a needle, punched through the swirling metallic storm and through Xie Hezhou's chest with a sound like tearing silk. Qin Yu hadn't moved. The red-robed guards were statues. Only Yao's fingertip, held slightly raised, still glimmered with a fading pinpoint of luminescence.
Xie Hezhou stumbled, the light in his eyes guttering. He collapsed forward. Yao, on some buried instinct, caught him. His head lolled against her shoulder. His final breath was a whisper, hot and bloody against her ear. "Actually… I kinda liked you… little brother. Back… before everything. Stop… dropping the soap in the baths…" The words were a nonsensical fragment of a past, simpler animosity, a shared memory from a life that seemed centuries ago. Then the weight went out of him, the last spark extinguished.
Because that was the inexorable way of their world, of nobility, of power. You made your move, or you were moved. You struck first, or you fell. Sentiment was a luxury few could afford.
Yao heard the whisper. Her face was pale as ash, her expression carved from ice. She released her grip, letting his body slide to the floor with a final, hollow thud. The act seemed the very epitome of Cold-blooded, of heartless efficiency.
As the body settled, a wave of nausea hit her. She clenched her jaw, biting back the bile. Now, she thought, the words a cold stone in her mind. Now the Xie An branch is truly extinct. Wiped from the board. Just as Zhou Miao was left alone, all those years ago.
Qin Yu watched, her beautiful face showing no more emotion than if she'd observed a leaf falling. She reached out, her hand passing by Yao's arm so close the fabric of her sleeve brushed his skin. The space where her fingers hovered shimmered, warped, and tore open into a vortex of churning, incandescent red and gold. Heat, palpable and oppressive, blasted from the rift, washing over the hall in a wave that made everyone gasp and stumble back. The air tasted of sulfur and scorched stone. From within the molten maelstrom, something stirred.
A maw. Vast, lined with teeth like blackened swords, each longer than a man's arm. It yawned open, drooling rivulets of glowing magma that hit the polished marble floor with a hiss and a crackle, scarring it instantly, the stone turning black and bubbling.
Qin Yu's hand dipped into the flowing, thousand-degree magma without a flinch, without a mark. She reached deeper, her expression one of mild concentration, and withdrew, holding something.
A head. Steam rose from it in greasy waves. Hair was matted with semi-congealed rock, features partially melted and distorted but still, horrifyingly, recognizable.
Xie An.
A choked, stifled gasp came from the direction of the two kneeling family heads.
"A plot by traitors," Qin Yu stated, her voice carrying clearly now, a official pronouncement. "Your father was caught in it. He fell in the instance. I arrived too late to save him, only to recover this… remnant." She paused, a ghost of something—not sorrow, perhaps a dark irony—touching her lips. "In years past, by custom, I would have called him 'Brother An.' It seems Brother An had his own… clandestine fortunes. His bones and blood had begun their transcendence, their refinement. Fortunately for his legacy, not all is lost."
Her slender, unblemished fingers held the smoldering, dripping head casually. Her other hand shot out, steel-strong and impossibly fast, and clamped around Yao's wrist. Yao tried to pull back, a instinctive recoil, but the grip was like a mountain's root—immovable.
The searing, horrific remnant of her nominal father was placed into Yao's open, unresisting palm.
The sound was immediate—a sickening, wet sizzle that made onlookers flinch. Yao was strong, talented, a prodigy in combat. But her body was still young, her magical defenses nascent, her physical endurance that of a newly Level 20 adept. The flesh of her left palm blackened, cooked, and peeled back from the bone in an instant as the residual magma and terrible heat ate into her. The pain was absolute, white-hot, consuming. It shot up her arm, a fire in her nerves. Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip instantly. Her lips drained of all color, pressed into a bloodless line. But she made no sound. Not a gasp, not a whimper.
Yuqin flinched, her own hand curling into a fist as if feeling the echo of the agony. "Aunt Qin…!" she called out, her voice tight.
Qin Yu glanced at her, a flicker of something unreadable in her depthless eyes, then released Yao's wrist. Yao did not, couldnot, drop the head. Her hand was fused to it by agony and cooked tissue, the nerves screaming a silent alarm.
"Thank you… for recovering my father's remains," Yao forced out through gritted teeth, each word a shard of glass dragged from her throat.
"So polite?" Qin Yu murmured, leaning in closer. Her perfume, that mix of ink and pine and water, filled Yao's nostrils, a bizarre counterpoint to the smell of her own burning flesh. Qin Yu's finger came up, not to strike, but to trace the delicate skin just below Yao's eye. Her touch was cool, a shocking contrast. "These eyes of yours… they see so much. They lingered on the treasures in the vault with such… naked, human greed. Seven times, your gaze circled them. And yet you walked away empty-handed. Doesn't that ache?" Her voice was a curious blend of clinical analysis and poetic, almost intimate cruelty. "You are not like your father. Not at all. Little Ah Li… you puzzle me."
Seven times.She knew. She had been there, in the vault, watching Yao covet the wealth, wrestle with the temptation to take Xie Yao's body, finally walk away with nothing but information. Had she watched her rifle through the trash, seen her take the cup? Was the cup itself left as a test, a piece of bait to see what the little mouse would do? The realization was a plunge into an icy abyss, a suffocating terror. Monster. She's a monster.
Yao feared the cool finger would drive into her eye, gouge it out as punishment for seeing too much. It withdrew, leaving a phantom chill on her skin.
What now? Will she kill me? Is the 'snake-brother' even dead? If she followed me that closely… she saw the files. The account on the terminal. She knows about Xie Qingyan.The entire plan, the desperate gamble to divert attention, had failed. She was not the chosen heir, the sacrificial lamb. She was a curious anomaly. And anomalies were often dissected. Death felt imminent, a breath away, as tangible as the heat from the head in her hand.
So, as Qin Yu began to turn, the lesson apparently delivered, Yao acted. Her free, ruined hand was a useless lump of pain. Her other hand, the one not holding the grotesque trophy, shot out and gripped Qin Yu's retreating wrist.
Qin Yu stilled, genuine surprise flickering in her dark, depthless eyes for the first time. The red-robed guards shifted almost imperceptibly, a wave of killing intent so potent it made the air hum, but it was held in check, a leash strained.
Yao didn't look at her. She kept her gaze downcast, fixed on the grisly head she held. With her other hand, the one holding Qin Yu's wrist, she produced from her pocket a simple, pale-yellow silk handkerchief, surprisingly clean. Slowly, meticulously, with a tenderness that was horrifying in its context, she began to wipe Qin Yu's fingers clean of the gore, ash, and flecks of cooled magma from Xie An's head.
"If one so insignificant and foolish troubles you," Yao said, her voice low but steady, each word measured, "the fault is entirely theirs. But, Aunt… you have always chosen the optimal path. Not the one dictated by habit or old wounds. Isn't that so?" You saw something in me, some spark of useful difference, and you changed the game mid-play. You are not one for rigid, predictable plans.
She was gambling everything on a razor's edge. Her only chip was this woman's flicker of intellectual interest, her appetite for the unconventional.
Qin Yu watched her, silent and utterly still, as Yao cleaned each slender finger with a strange, intimate care, as if attending to a revered elder. Finally, when the handkerchief was soiled and Qin Yu's hand was pristine once more, she spoke, her voice barely a whisper. "What did you call me?"
"Aunt." The title was foreign on Yao's tongue, weighted with unspoken implications.
A complex, unreadable emotion passed through Qin Yu's eyes—a fleeting glimpse of another person, another time, a ghost of a memory. It was gone in an instant, replaced by that familiar, calculating calm. Her hand turned within Yao's grip, not to break it, but to grasp Yao's burnt, trembling hand. A surge of vibrant, emerald-green energy, so potent it smelled of crushed leaves and spring rain, erupted from her palm and enveloped Yao's ruined limb.
Death?!The primal fear was instantaneous, a cold flood.
But it wasn't death. It was life, overwhelming and potent. The charred, blackened flesh of her left hand flaked away like old bark, new skin weaving itself over raw muscle and bone in seconds, pink and perfect. The blinding, all-consuming pain vanished, replaced by a tingling warmth, then nothing. Her hand was whole, unblemished, as if the horror of moments before had been a vicious dream. The head, now cool and inert, sat in her perfectly healed palm.
The absurdity of the situation, the sheer theatrical, psychological cruelty of it, reminded her of an old, old film from a dead world. Infernal Affairs.The quiet, intellectual gangster with his glasses and his books. Ultimate filial piety transcends conventional benevolence. Loyalty is a luxury.
Have you ever met someone,a character had asked, where you never know if they're being good to you or bad to you?
This woman was like that. But where that character had been trapped by family, this one… she seemed to have shattered all such cages long ago.
Yao's lips twitched in a humorless semblance of a smile. "I… will not disappoint you, Aunt."
Qin Yu held her gaze a beat longer, a silent assessment, then released her hand and turned. "Senior Shen," she addressed Shen Yunyou on the balcony, her voice regaining its public clarity. "Earlier, I lacked the opportunity for proper conversation. You once spoke of 'peace in obscurity'… it's a poignant contradiction, isn't it? To be obscure is to be vulnerable. To be a leaf on the wind. This world offers no true peace to the weak, only varying degrees of fear." Her words were aimed at Yuqin, at the day's stark dangers, at the choices every parent had to make in this brutal world.
Shen Yunyou's face tightened, the old argument, the old wound, clearly striking home. "Is that Qin Yu speaking these philosophical truths… or…?" She trailed off, her eyes searching Qin Yu's face for confirmation of an identity, a person she thought she knew.
Qin Yu—Zhou Miao—offered a thin, definitive smile that held no warmth. "There never was a 'Qin Yu.' That was always the fiction." She turned and walked towards the main entrance, her heels clicking a final rhythm on the marble.
As she did, two brilliant columns of light descended from the sky outside the shattered main doors, piercing the gloom of the evening.
The Temple procession had arrived. Three hundred Temple Guards in immaculate silver-white armor, a full honor guard, their aura serene yet imposing. They escorted a single, ornate casket of pale moonwood, carried by eight solemn priests. Xie Yao rested within. This place, the scene of his son's trial and his line's decimation, had been designated the procession's starting point. Zhang Ruo's earlier shock-made-sense now; she had received the orders.
Simultaneously, another portal shimmered into existence a hundred feet away, its light a deeper, more regal gold. From it emerged the delegation from the Boluke Ember Orchid Xie Main House.
They lookedlike nobility from the stories. Tall,Majesty, their features sharp and beautiful, radiating an aura of ancient power, unshakeable privilege, and cold grace that made the Jingyang three families look like freshly scrubbed peasants. An elder with a face of carved granite and eyes like chips of flint led them, grief and stern authority warring in his expression. Behind him stood younger men and women of striking, arrogant beauty, their garments woven with light and shadow.
The elder's eyes swept the gruesome scene, the kneeling locals, the smoldering corpses, and settled with apparent sorrow on the approaching woman. "Siyi," he intoned, his voice thick with manufactured grief. "To learn the truth of your suffering… it is tragic. You have endured greatly all these years."
Zhou Miao walked past him as if he were a piece of furniture, her gaze fixed on her brother's casket. The elder's eyes narrowed a fraction, but he said nothing, the very picture of magnanimous, patriarchal endurance.
Zhou Miao reached the casket. She placed a bare hand on its cold, polished surface. "You always promised me peace," she said softly, to the wood, to the silence within. "That you'd protect me. You were wrong. You broke your word." As she spoke, a change came over the casket. From within, through the sealed wood, a luminous, aquamarine light began to seep—not blood, but something purer, a condensed essence of lineage, of power. Intricate runes on the casket flared to life as the liquid light flowed along the grooves and channels, gathering, then streaming up her arm like living sapphire vines and into her body.
A Bloodline Inheritance. From the deceased patriarch to his rightful heir. A transfer of legacy, of potency.
"Elder!" one of the Xie scions behind the old man exclaimed, taking an involuntary step forward, his face a mask of avarice and shock.
The elder raised a hand, stopping him cold. The Temple guards watched, unmoving. This was a noble's sacred right, codified in law older than the city.
As the last of the cerulean essence vanished into her skin, Zhou Miao seemed to finally feel the true, visceral weight of her loss. She turned her head, the motion slow, and looked at the elder. Her eyes were dry. "On the journey here, Cousin Tailong followed me. He saw I was in danger. Came to my aid. The ambushers… he did not survive. I've preserved his remains. My… apologies."
The elder's composure cracked. The air around him vibrated with barely-contained elemental power, a pressure that made the younger candidates gasp. He mastered it, his face turning to stone. "We are… family," he ground out. "He was always fond of you, Siyi. It was… for the family."
Zhou Miao offered a bitter, knowing smile. "I understand. Great-Grandfather said the same to me when I departed. 'For the family.' There are always… necessary sacrifices." Her hand, now glowing faintly with the newly infused power, clenched. Something within the light, a core of it, boundto her.
A pressure wave, vast and undeniable, erupted from her, a physical force that flattened people to their knees and made the very walls of the hall groan. The air grew thick, heavy with unleashed potential.
The elder's eyes went wide with dawning horror. "Seventy! And she's bonded the—! Everyone, RUN!"
It was too late. Zhou Miao flicked her wrist. An ornate, terrifyingly potent staff of dark wood and writhing silver filigree appeared in her grip. Her eyes shifted, the irises swirling into a mesmerizing vortex of cerulean and molten orange. From the tear space behind her, with a sound of tearing reality, a heademerged. Enormous, scaled in plates of obsidian and crimson that drank the light, eyes like pits of simmering magma. The Ember Drake. It opened its maw, and a torrent of liquid fire, hotter than a star's heart, hotter than the forge of creation, roared forth. At the exact same moment, twin beams of blue-orange light, thin as needles and bright as supernovae, lanced from Zhou Miao's eyes.
BOOM.
The sound was not loud, but profound, a pressure wave that burst eardrums. The elder's head and upper torso simply vaporized in a puff of ash and superheated air. The other Xie scions, their shields and screams just beginning to form, were consumed in the dragon's apocalyptic breath, leaving behind only silhouettes of shadow on the scorched floor and wall.
"You are correct, Third Uncle," Zhou Miao said softly to the dissipating ashes, her voice carrying in the sudden, ringing silence. "That is precisely why Great-Grandfather sent you. Funeral details… are a family matter. One surviving member of the main Xie line is quite enough."
No one from the Temple moved. They stood like silver statues. They had their orders: Escort the coffin. Observe the house cleansing. Do not interfere.
She stepped onto the spine of the great dragon, which lowered its head like a step. The Ember Drake, with a single, earth-shaking beat of wings that stirred gale-force winds in the confined square, took to the air, the moonwood casket magically secured behind it. The Temple Guard fell into a flawless aerial formation around it. Official skiffs from the education center and the city government rose from nearby rooftops, flanking the procession in a silent, solemn escort.
Xie Yao was no mere noble. He was a Marquess, a General who had earned his stars. His death was a national affair. Today's events were merely the first bloody footnote in a longer, darker story. The elder and his retinue were the sacrificed pawns, the Main House's concession—for now. Because Zhou Miao had risen, not just to claim her inheritance, but to a level of power that made her more formidable, more terrifyingly unbound, than Xie Yao had ever been.
"Everything… for the family."
The words hung in the air, in the settling dust and the smell of ozone and ash, long after the dragon had become a distant, fiery speck against the twilight sky. The candidates, these teenagers baptized in fire, politics, and naked power, would remember this day. They had seen the gilded, blood-soaked underbelly of true nobility. Beautiful. Dazzling. Reeking of absolute power and casual death.
Yao watched it all from her knees, forced down by the pressure, but the details of Zhou Miao's transformed visage were lost in the blinding glare of the Ember Drake's aura and her own unleashed might. She only remembered the silhouette against the darkening sky—lonely, resolute, and utterly, chillingly cold.
The adrenaline crash hit her like a physical blow as the pressure lifted. A deep, bone-chilling fatigue, mixed with the aftershocks of terror and pain, settled into her. She felt hollow, scraped raw. Slowly, like an old woman, she pushed herself up and shuffled to a nearby bench that had survived the chaos, sitting down heavily.
Director Zhang Ruo, having overseen the grim cleanup of the new set of corpses, approached. Her face was lined with exhaustion and something like pity. "Your hand."
"Hm? It's… fine." Yao looked at her perfectly healed left palm, flexing the fingers.
"The nerves. The phantom pain lingers. Healing magic mends flesh, not memory." Zhang Ruo gestured, and a soft, soothing golden light, gentler than the previous aura, enveloped Yao's left hand and forearm. A combination Soothe and Nerve-Block spell. The ghost of the agony, the memory of the burn, faded to a dull, distant echo.
"Sorry… can I… have a drink?" Yao asked, her voice hoarse.
A flicker of surprise, then resignation in the older woman's eyes. "Suit yourself."
Yao looked down, the world feeling slightly unreal. With her now-healed right hand, she carefully lifted Xie An's head from where she had instinctively placed it on her lap and set it on the floor beside the bench.
Zhang Ruo's eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly. He won't even give the man's head the dignity of the seat.
Free of the grisly burden, Yao fumbled in a hidden pocket of her jacket and pulled out a dented, room-temperature can of cheap beer. She popped the tab with a hiss and took a long, shuddering swallow. It was bitter, foul, tasting of metal and despair. It made her cough, her body trembling not from the chill of the drink, but from the delayed, soul-deep terror that was only now surfacing, now that the immediate threat was gone. She couldn't cry. Not here. Not ever. She had to be like Bara, swallowing the tears until they became rain inside.
She took another swallow, then stopped, grimacing. It tasted like ash and failure. Belatedly, she realized the oddity, the vulnerability of her action—drinking cheap beer amidst this carnage, under the eyes of enemies and allies. Almost absently, as if to cover the lapse, she leaned over, picked the head back up from the floor, and placed it on the bench beside her, as if it were a bag or a hat.
Zhang Ruo stared, utterly speechless for a moment, then simply shook her head and turned to leave. At that moment, the remaining Xie family servants—the pale, terrified butlers, maids, and minor stewards who had accompanied their masters—rushed over, their faces streaked with tears and confusion.
"Young Master! Young Master!"
"The manor… it's in chaos! The guards are gone… messages from the capital…"
They wailed, kneeling before her, a picture of pathetic, directionless chaos.
Yao, who wanted nothing more than to scream or vanish into the earth, found their noise unbearable. The frustrated was a live wire under her skin. All the other candidates, the Lins, Pang Ci, everyone was watching this pathetic spectacle. "Shut up," she said, her tone flat, devoid of all energy. "Make the arrangements for the funerals. All of them." She waved a vague hand. "We're going back. Now." To emphasize her point, to drown the rising panic, she lifted the beer can and drained the remaining half in one long, desperate gulp. Then, with a distracted flick of her wrist, born of a thousand hours of target practice, she tossed the empty can towards a distant recycling bin across the hall.
Clang.A perfect shot, from over seven meters out. The can landed squarely in the bin.
The head steward, wringing his hands, let out a shrill, horrified scream. "Young Master! You… you threw the Master's headinto the trash!"
Yao blinked. Looked at her empty hand. Looked at the space on the bench beside her, now occupied only by old wood. Looked at the garbage can where the can had landed with a metallic echo.
"Ah." The sound was small, almost silly. She got up, her movements heavy, and trudged the distance to the bin. Reaching in, she fished out the grisly object, holding it by the matted hair.
Zhang Ruo and the assembled survivors could only watch, a collective, bewildered silence hanging over the hall, broken only by the muffled sobs of the servants.
And so, with the head of Xie An retrieved from the municipal waste bin, the chapter of the Jingyang Intermediate Examination, and the bloody ascension of Oxus, finally, irrevocably, closed.
The result: Oxus was the Jingyang City Intermediate Exam Champion. And, improbably, catastrophically, the new, sole, and terrified head of the annihilated Jingyang Xie Household.
All in less than a month since his "homecoming."
None present knew that in a distant park pavilion overlooking the education complex, a man who now looked like an utterly ordinary, unremarkable young fellow watched the live feed of the aftermath on a small, handheld screen. The light from the display reflected in his calm, tired eyes. He was silent for a long, long time. Then, he finished the last of a small bottle of cheap liquor, the burn a familiar comfort. He placed the empty bottle neatly in a nearby recycling bin. He noticed a stray plastic bag that someone had dropped, picked it up, disposed of it too with the fastidiousness of long habit. Then, without a backward glance at the glowing screen now showing a girl fishing a head from the trash, he turned and walked away, his plain coat blending him into the city's endless, uncaring flow.