"A thousand years ago, in the Sanctuary—the hidden realm where outcasts with supernatural abilities like us reside..."
Linda's voice trembled with a guilt she could no longer suppress. "Chen Wuji and the ancestor of the He Clan fought to the bitter end in a 'Trial' that would determine who would transcend mortality and ascend to godhood."
"Chen Wuji lost. But his obsession with power consumed him. In his desperation, he stole the Caelum Pill, the divine elixir that should have belonged to the victor, He Shuo."
Linda's eyes clouded as she whispered, "He Shuo had no desire for immortality. He fought with every drop of blood in his veins only because that pill was the only thing that could save his young daughter from a lethal poison. Chen Wuji didn't just steal a medicine; he stole a father's last hope."
"He Shuo managed to reclaim the pill, but by the time he reached his home, his daughter had already breathed her last. Despair transformed that father into a vengeful demon. He Shuo ignited his very soul and cast an eternal, indestructible bloodline curse—'The Incineration Hex'."
Every descendant of the Chen Clan, should they ever stir their forbidden power, shall be consumed by karmic fire, their lifespan halved.
"That is why I forced you to stay mediocre, even making you loathe your own strength," Linda laughed bitterly, the sound hollow and sharp. "The Incineration Hex grants you devastating power, but the cost is your very life. Your father... my own brother... was reduced to a pile of charred ash because of this curse."
"And there is something even more terrifying. We recently discovered evidence that a mysterious organization is secretly harvesting the power of this curse. Your parents' deaths... they might not have been an accident."
"Then what exactly happened to them?" Ethan pressed, his voice vibrating with a raw, unstable tremor. His gaze swept over the back of Linda's hand, and he suddenly froze. "Your hand..."
Linda yanked her hand back into her sleeve with lightning speed, but that withered, dark-red mark had already seared itself into Ethan's eyes like a hot iron.
"I'm fine, child. My power is weak; the curse won't take my life so soon."
The realization hit Ethan like a physical blow. Back in the alleyway behind the bar, Linda had forcibly channeled her magic to save him. She had ignited her own life for his.
"Are you ready?" George Wu's voice drifted from the inner chamber, heavier and more solemn than Ethan had ever heard it.
"Wait, where's Marcus?" Ethan asked, glancing frantically around the room.
"I've already sent him home. The less he knows, the safer he is. Let's go!" Linda hauled Ethan to his feet and guided him into a secret chamber that had been reinforced with layer upon layer of protective seals.
In the four corners of the room stood four bronze dragon heads, their jaws agape and their expressions twisted into hideous, terrifying snarls. Carved into the floor was a complex circular array, pulsing with a faint, eerie luminescence.
George Wu raised an ancient, emerald-green jade pendant, and a torrent of incantations fell from his lips like driving rain.
"Lead the way!"
In an instant, the array on the floor erupted with a pillar of golden light. Piercing rays shot from the eyes of the four bronze dragons, converging at the center of the formation and kicking up a violent cyclone of spiritual energy. Ethan felt the ground beneath his feet grow weightless, as if the reality of the world was peeling away from him.
BANG!
A dull, yet excruciatingly sharp explosion tore through the air.
George Wu's movements stopped dead. Without warning, a fist-sized hole erupted in his left chest—the signature of a high-frequency compressed air bullet. Blood sprayed in a radial arc across the glowing jade pendant, staining the pure spiritual light with a dark, sinister red.
Ethan looked up sharply, his breath hitching in his throat. The door had been reduced to fine powder, and three killers in long black trench coats were stepping slowly into the room. Their ashen, emotionless eyes were locked onto the center of the array.
"I really... am getting old," George Wu spat out a mouthful of thick blood, his body swaying as he took a ragged breath through his shredded lungs. "I couldn't feel a single shred of 'human' presence from them."
The two killers didn't even pause to prepare. Their bodies refracted into multiple grey afterimages, moving at a frequency far beyond the human limit. They landed silently, moving like arcs of dark electricity cutting through the shadows.
"You won't escape this time," the leader spoke in a flat, mechanical tone. He ignored the dying George Wu and stepped directly toward Ethan.
"Take him!" George Wu roared, a final scream fueled by the remnants of his scorched lifespan. He held the jade pendant high with his left hand to maintain the array, while several dark-teal spikes slid from his right sleeve with a snap.
Whiz—!
The spikes shrieked through the air, carrying a sharp, sonic boom. The nails flew toward the two killers, forcing them to twist their torsos in inhuman angles to stop their terrifying advance.
Linda looked at Ethan in the center of the array and suddenly leaned down, leaving a cold, wet kiss on his forehead. Tears slid down her haggard face—the temperature of a final farewell.
"I love you, Ethan. There will be someone to meet you on the other side."
She whipped out a bright yellow Immobilization Charm and slapped it onto Ethan's chest with a resounding thwack. Golden light surged out, locking every joint in Ethan's body and pinning him helplessly within the array. Then, Linda turned around, charging at the three killers with a suicidal, absolute resolve.
"GO TO HELL!"
Linda let out a roar that burned through her soul, and her entire body was instantly enveloped in a violent, red aura of flame. She moved like a burning meteor, grabbing the arms of two killers and using her momentum to shove them back into the outer hall. George Wu, enduring the agonizing pain in his chest, flicked his right hand into a blur of afterimages, striking both killers square in the chest with precision.
Thud! Thud! Following the heavy impacts, the two were sent flying backward.
However, when the cold lights of the hall illuminated the two killers' scorched sleeves, everyone's heart skipped a beat.
The fire had burned through the expensive fabric, revealing not flesh and blood, but a shimmering, silver-grey molecular synthetic skeleton. No veins. No nerves. In the center of their chests, a honeycomb-shaped energy core pulsed with a cold, red light.
These three were not men. They were Killing Machines.
"No wonder I felt no life..." George Wu smiled bitterly, his teeth stained crimson with blood.
"Waste of time. We didn't intend to erase you," the lead robot said as it retracted its weapon, its movements so fast they left a visual afterimage.
Before Linda could react, its fingers clamped onto her left wrist—claws made of high-strength carbon fiber.
CRACK!
The sound of snapping bone echoed in the dead silence. Linda let out a blood-curdling scream, the agonizing pain drenching her clothes in cold sweat, yet she gritted her teeth and refused to release the hand she used for her counter-strike.
The robot's eyes didn't flicker. It grabbed Linda's other arm, preparing to dismantle her like a piece of paper. George Wu flew in with a horizontal kick, attempting to use the force of his leg to break the machine's hold.
However, the robot twisted its torso at an impossible angle and caught George Wu's ankle in mid-air. With a spinning momentum, it hurled George Wu through the air, placing him precisely in front of the two other machines' outstretched fingers.
The two droids' arms underwent an instant reconstruction. The armor plates on their forearms slid open, exposing high-frequency resonance tubes that began to charge with a hum.
"NO!" Ethan screamed at the top of his lungs, struggling frantically within the array as the Immobilization Charm on his chest vibrated violently.
There was no delay. A blinding blue pulse laser swept across the room.
Half of George Wu's body was vaporized into nothingness the moment it touched the high-heat beam.
Ethan's mind went completely white. He watched Linda standing in a pool of blood, struggling to stay upright with her shattered arm, as the power known as "instinct" hammered against every nerve in his body. He wanted to rush out, to tear those cold pieces of scrap metal to shreds, but the charm held him as helpless as a stone statue.
...MOVE! DAMMIT, MOVE!
He roared in his heart. The cauldron of magma that had vanished from his abdomen erupted again, even more violent and frenzied than at the bar. He felt every Soul-Locking Nail in his back vibrate with a scream—it was the curse cheering as it devoured his life.
The charm on his chest began to spark, its edges curling and charring rapidly.
The lead robot approached step by step, its hand reaching for Ethan's face. In that exact heartbeat, Linda pulled out a pitch-black Forbidden Charm and slapped it onto her own ankle.
She knew this was a dead end. The only way out was a life for a life.
Dark-red flame patterns instantly consumed Linda's entire body. Like a bolt of red lightning, she tackled the robot from behind, her feet kicking off the ground with a suicidal force that slammed it into the other two droids.
"Ethan, LIVE!"
BOOM—!
Linda's entire life force transformed into a violent, Lotus Pyre. The chest of the robot she held was melted straight through. In the towering flames, the figure that had protected Ethan for fourteen years shriveled and blackened, eventually turning into a wisp of ash that scattered in the wind.
The robot pushed aside the charred remains and lunged at the array, only to find the center empty.
The teleportation was complete.
In the air, only a faint scent of sandalwood remained, alongside the burnt embers of the only family he had left.