Twilight

The room was in disarray, and in the creeping twilight of late afternoon, the lights were dim. In this hastily rented apartment, dead silence reigned, broken only by spreading fury. Thud, thud, thud, thud... Amid the dull thuds, the scar-faced captain had just returned from outside. Slamming the door shut, he looked toward the Celestial Chosen keeping watch in the corner. Once he confirmed the inside and outside were shielded, he could no longer contain his rage. He slammed his hat onto the ground, kicked a chair aside, and roared, "Are you out of your fucking mind today?! Fuck your mother! This isn't the Mid-Continent, do you hear me?! If you truly piss off the Security Bureau, do you think we're making it out of Haizhou alive?! "All day long it's kill, kill, kill, kill—kill your damn mother, kill! We came out here to make money, not slaughter people for fun, you get it? Without money, who's going to pay for your treatment, kid? Do you have any idea how many people out there are hunting us right now? "Happy now? No money to make, and we can just wait to die! Fuck your mother!" Thud, thud, thud... Amid the dull thuds, no one replied. This only stoked the captain's fury further. "Herbert, I'm fucking talking to you! Can you hear me?!" "Heh..." Beside the table, Herbert leaned against the wall, his head bumping rhythmically against it with a vacant smile, his face twitching from time to time. Residue powder lingered on a sheet of tinfoil spread across the table. "Captain, my fault, I know, I shouldn't have, my bad..." Drifting in the hallucinatory haze of contraband drugs, Herbert's pupils dilated as he gasped, "I know, but there's a voice, there are sounds... dripping water, ringing bells, voices talking... so chaotic... "I'm so tired, but I can't sleep." His eyes were bloodshot, turning increasingly crimson through his spasms. "I close my eyes, and there are voices everywhere. "Things like ants, all inside the walls, crawling everywhere, crawling in my veins, but I can't find them." Through hollow laughter, he clawed at his arms and neck, tearing open flesh until thick blood coated his fingertips, so sweet. Licking it tentatively for a moment, he seemed to fall into a stupor, gnawing on his fingers unable to stop. Even as blood dripped freely. The captain's expression darkened, treating the situation like facing a mortal enemy. He yanked Herbert's arm forward to check. "Where's the medicine? You didn't take your shot?!" At his feet lay a bulging backpack. Yet once unzipped, inside was nothing but a pile of used syringes. A month's supply of suppressants had already been completely injected. Now, it was completely empty. "I took them, took them all, every single one, but it didn't work, Captain. That voice is getting louder and louder, right inside my head." Herbert twitched, banging his head against the wall again and again, but the smile on his face grew all the more vacant and eerie as a thick scarlet gradually crept across his pupils. "No matter what, I can't kill them all... heh, heh heh heh... as long as I kill them all, it'll be quiet, it'll finally be quiet..." In that instant, his hollow, unfocused pupils converged once more within the crimson hue. A ferocious glint emerged. Scarlet tears slowly trickled down from the corners of his eyes. He said, "I found it." In that moment, alongside the collapse of reason, a thing of madness was conceived from a shattered soul. *** When Lao Zhang kicked open the main door, breaking through the camouflage laid down by the Mirror branch, all that met his eyes was a scene of utter devastation. Severed limbs and broken bones were strewn about; mangled entrails clung to the walls. Walls, floor, and ceiling were entirely shattered. Riddled with holes. A scarred head slowly rolled to a stop at his feet. The severed head still bore traces of its final expression. Grief, fury, sorrow, tinged with a faint numbness. It was too complex, blurred by death, no longer distinguishable. Only intermittent breathing echoed from an empty corner. "Get the hell out here!" Lao Zhang thrust out his hand. Gale-force winds swept forward, thunder erupted, and amid the shockwave, the illusion woven by the Mirror disintegrated, revealing a blood-soaked figure with a gaping hole torn through his chest, clinging to his last breath. "Help, help me..." Seeing someone rush in, he could no longer care about his identity or the judgment that might await him, begging with every shred of strength, "Save me..." Lao Zhang remained impassive. Silently surveying his surroundings, he stepped through pools of blood, drew close, and looked down. He raised his hand without reaching out; opened between his five fingers, a wisp of life force so pure it glowed with a misty radiance manifested, swirling, illuminating that pair of despairing eyes. "Tell me what happened." "It's Herbert, that lunatic Herbert!" the ecstatic survivor rambled incoherently. "He's crazy, completely insane! Lost control! Even taking his medicine didn't work..." In that instant, Lao Zhang turned back in shock to look at Xiao An. Both of their expressions turned grim. The worst-case scenario had arrived. Corruption! A Celestial Chosen had suffered corruption and lost control—and worse, he belonged to the Swarm, the most adept at slaughter! "Where did he go?!" Lao Zhang grabbed the survivor by the neck, forcibly sustaining a breath of life in him, and demanded, "When did he leave?! Speak!" "Just left... he just left, only a few minutes ago, out the back window! I don't know, I really don't know anything else!" The survivor wailed and pleaded, devoid of the cruel demeanor he had shown during the massacre at the bar. "Save me, please save me, I'm begging you!" Yet Lao Zhang made no move, merely asking one last question: "Who is your employer?" In that instant, a shrill howl abruptly tore through the room. From the writhing shadows, a hand emerged without warning, clutching an invisible dagger with a faintly blurred blade, stabbing straight toward the survivor in Lao Zhang's grip! *Crack!* The quickest to react was Xiao An. The instant he detected the attacker, he turned and dashed off without hesitation at blistering speed. In a flash, he vanished from the spot, speeding off in pursuit of the aura Herbert had left behind. He showed zero concern for Lao Zhang's safety. Or rather, deep down, he didn't believe... there was any possibility Lao Zhang could get hurt. And then, the blade struck that unremarkable, withered old hand. Slack skin draped over gaunt bones, the veins distinct on the back of the hand—yet the moment such a decrepit palm met the blade, a brilliant, gold-like radiance burst forth. Sparks flew; the blade accomplished nothing. Yet a streak of emerald green spread from where the edge touched the skin... Poison! With a thought from Lao Zhang, the spreading unnatural hue was forced back into a single line, dripping from his fingertip with a sizzling hiss. "Trying to silence him?" Glancing at the indistinct shadow lurking in the dark, he smiled in understanding. "Isn't it a bit late for that?" "Old bastard, no need to risk your life for a few hundred bucks. Wouldn't it be better to lie flat and collect your pension?" The Celestial Chosen hidden in the shadows spoke in a raspy voice. "If possible, I don't want to fight someone from the Security Bureau. Put him down and pretend nothing happened, how about it?" "Wild Gathering again, huh..." Lao Zhang fell silent, staring at him. After a long pause, he slowly nodded. "To be frank, I have no interest in your White Stag infighting, nor do I want the kids dragged too deep into it. They're all very good kids. They should have bright futures ahead of them, not get dragged into a dog-eat-dog brawl between scumbags and trash. "So handing this guy over to you doesn't really matter. "No need to be so tense." He said, "It's no big deal." With that, he tossed the despairing survivor onto the floor between them without a care. Even the Celestial Chosen sent to silence him froze on the spot. He hadn't expected someone from the Security Bureau to be so easy to talk to. Immediately after, he heard the withered old man speak again. "...However, I need a favor from you." The old man lowered his gaze, looking at the wrinkles on his palm and the lingering blood, unable to suppress a soft sigh. Having worked his whole life in the Security Bureau, having fought tough battles his entire life. How had he regressed so much now that he was old? Back when he was in his thirties and forties following the first bureau director, everyone was so full of vigor and high spirits, as if the whole world was waiting for them to change it. Yet in the blink of an eye, everyone had grown old. Some dead, some retired. Leaving behind an old relic like him, who had survived the longest by sheer luck, clocking in and out every day, day after day, year after year. Unwilling to go on, yet unwilling to leave, enduring an endless slog, his grand ambitions lost, just waiting for death. And the world had turned into this wretched mess. To the point where... petty garbage like the Wild Gathering dared to stir up trouble in Yacheng, and even sleazy rats like this dared to strut smugly before his very eyes, throwing their weight around. It was utterly laughable. If the old director could see this scene, he would surely double over in laughter, thoroughly amused, wouldn't he? Sadly, he was dead. Dead many years ago... Staring at the dim twilight outside the window, he suddenly said, "I'm in a bad mood and need to vent. "So—" He pleaded, "Just don't die too quickly." BOOM!!! In that instant, before an answer could be given, before anger could flare or questions be barked, even before the brain could register... The shadows violently convulsed. The flickering figure seemed frozen in place, already engulfed by a wrath erupting like a volcano. In that moment, consciousness seemed to snap. What happened? What just occurred? What... is wrong with me? Through unprecedented, agonizing pain, the man lying amidst the ruins and rubble finally realized what had happened. He couldn't lift a hand, couldn't move a leg, broken and battered like a ragdoll. It seemed... someone had thrown a punch at him. And after that, he remembered nothing. Why was this place ruined like this? Where was I just a moment ago? Wait, who am I? He couldn't remember. He couldn't recall anything at all. The only thing he felt was unprecedented terror and despair. "Very good. As expected of the White Stag." From far away, a voice drifted over. Through the holes in more than a dozen walls punched through by his crashing body, an unfamiliar face emerged from the smoke and dust. Nodding as if in approval: "Tough bastard!" Yet that face was no longer ordinary flesh and blood, but a radiant gold more dazzling than any metal, solemn and divine, like a god or Buddha. Using the Metamorphosis rank blessings [Iron Bones], [Bronze Heart], and [Divine Qi] as the foundation, mastering and unifying them, and tempering the physical body in the Regeneration rank for decades, even a century... through such an immense span of time, never missing a day, never slacking for a moment, refined hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of times, what it achieved was this astonishing, world-shaking power— —The Imperishable Golden Body! Tracing back to the primordial, reversing time, stepping out from the ignorant Age of Mortal Iron to manifest once more the countenance of the legendary "Golden Humanity." To call it evolution would be imprecise; to call it devolution would be too dismissive. This was the majestic glory displayed when human essence and bloodline ascended back to their point of origin! "Don't worry, we can play for a long time." With a single stride crossing hundreds of meters, the old man was already right in front of him. Gazing down at the terrified Celestial Chosen, he suddenly grinned. "I also hope you won't die too quickly." In that instant, upon an invincible iron fist, dense life force surged forth like a waterfall. Mercy and destruction gathered between five fingers. And so, upon that stunned face, he brought down devastation! BOOM!!!!