Chapter 10: The Crucible of Authenticity
"Pray tell," Gu Chen's voice sliced through the tension like a honed blade, "does your possession alone monopolize legitimacy, while mine stands condemned as artifice? The Ocean's Heart descended to Neptune's realm with that ill-fated vessel—this we concede. Yet must eternity chain it to the abyss?" His gaze swept across the assembly. "Let Jiangzhou's gemological cognoscenti arbitrate this contest—unless your dynasty fears truth's unveiling!"
A tempest of whispers billowed through the gathering, each guest torn between skepticism and awe. Collective memory conjured silver-screen visions of sapphire depths and star-crossed romance, the mythical gem's tragedy now resurrected in palpable tension.
From the shadows of the orchestra gallery emerged a septuagenarian figure, his spine curved like ancient ivory yet his eyes gleaming with undimmed acuity. "This unworthy servant is Huang Wenshi," he intoned, snow-white beard trembling with each syllable. "Eighty-six years have I walked gemstone labyrinths. Should the young master permit…" A liver-spotted hand extended. "…let faded eyes behold this marvel."
Gu Chen's smile turned vulpine. "Shall Jiang gold weigh your scales, venerable one?"
The elder's laughter echoed like wind through bamboo chimes. "Worldly chains fell from these bones when my grandchildren crossed western oceans. Let truth be my only sovereign tonight." His rheumy eyes glinted. "To touch perfection—this alone might justify my wasted years."
Recognition rippled through the crowd—the maestro who'd once transformed a Hubei quarry's rubble into imperial jade worth ten million, whose appraisals dictated fortunes in Macau's gambling dens.
Gu Chen placed the pendant upon a velvet cushion.
Time distilled itself into the dance of loop and limelight. Huang's gnarled fingers—calloused from decades probing mineral entrails—turned the gem with sacramental care. A penlight beam pierced crystalline depths, kindling subterranean constellations. Five eternal minutes unfolded.
Crack.
The jeweller's loupe shattered against the terrazzo.
"The cleavages…" The old man's voice crumbled like ancient parchment. "Their geometry sings harmony with the lesser stone! A single master's chisel!" Tears carved rivulets through parchment skin as he raised the gem aloft. "I have held infinity… Let death's embrace come swiftly now!"
Pandemonium erupted.
Silk gowns whispered urgent secrets. Ice crystals formed in abandoned champagne flutes. Jiang Feng clutched a column, his complexion matching the Carrara marble beneath his nails.
Millionaires forgot their poise, gaping at the plebeian guardian who'd conjured myth into substance. Ling Meixue stood petrified, the gem's cerulean radiance etching her silhouette against reality—a frozen sonnet in human form.
Amidst balcony shadows, a woman's laughter bubbled like poisoned champagne. Golden tresses cascaded over bare shoulders as crimson nails caressed a goblet's stem. "The scent of prey grows sweet," she murmured, emerald eyes reflecting the chaos below. "The gamekeeper becomes the quarry."
The Gauntlet of Pride
Jiang Feng's countenance paled to alabaster austerity, his protest a serpent's venomous hiss. "Master Huang! This mockery transcends decorum! The true relic slumbers in Poseidon's vaults—what infernal alchemy resurrects it here?!"
The elder's spine straightened, his rebuke resonating with ancestral gravitas. "Young scion of Jiang, you profane eight generations of Huang honour. These eyes have appraised gems since your father suckled at wet nurses. That pendant's verity reduces your bauble to costume jewellery—as supernovae eclipse fireflies!"
Gu Chen reclaimed the artefact, its cerulean radiance shimmering like liquid stardust. He approached Ling Meixue, fingers brushing aside the midnight cascade veiling her nape. "Destined for Cupid's calendar," he murmured, securing the platinum clasp with lover's precision. "Yet tonight's theatrics demand immediate encomium."
The gem settled against her sternum—a captured nebula gracing mortal décolletage.
"This... it's sacrilege to accept..." Ling Meixue breathed, the stone's glacial touch kindling fire along her jugular.
"Sacrilege?" Gu Chen's chuckle held arctic winds. "Diamonds crystallize in celestial crucibles. Your laughter forges spring from winter's corpse."
A cathedral hush descended—silk rustled with envy's sibilance, crystal stemware trembled in admirers' grips. Jiang Feng's champagne flute shattered unnoticed, shards mirroring his fracturing poise.
"Our covenant, Young Lord Jiang." Gu Chen pivoted with pantherine lethality. "Shall we consummate this dance of honour?"
The heir's mask of aristocracy splintered. "Bacchanalian jests! You'd enforce wine-addled bravado?!"
"Bravado?" Gu Chen's smile turned lupine. "Had fortune frowned, would magnanimity have stayed your hounds?"
The triumphal cake loomed—saccharine edifice to vanity's folly. Jiang Feng retreated as Gu Chen advanced. "Defile that pastry," he rasped, "and Jiang vengeance shall flay your bloodline from history's scrolls!"
Two colossi barred the path, muscles coiled like siege engines.
"Yield passage."
"You'll kneel before betters!" The left sentinel's fist descended—a meteor strike of malice.
Snap.
Gu Chen's palm engulfed the assault, digits constricting like a boa's embrace. Cartilage popped. Ulna fractured with porcelain delicacy. The brute collapsed, howls echoing through vaulted ceilings.
"Vanish."
The remaining guard stumbled over his writhing comrade. Gu Chen's fingers plunged into fondant frost—a grotesque anointing.
In the mezzanine's penumbra, gilded locks cascaded as the observer licked burgundy from vermilion lips. "The pawn checkmates the king," she whispered, eyes reflecting the carnage below. "How tediously... inevitable."
The Oath of Vengeance
Gu Chen cradled the tripartite confection with nonchalant mastery, his gaze transfixing Jiang Feng across the gilt-edged expanse. "A man's covenant echoes through eternity's corridors," he intoned, voice sharper than Siberian winds. "Shall we etch your pledges in sanguine script?"
"You presume to enforce bacchanalian ravings?!" Jiang Feng recoiled, spittle flecking his collar. "Stand down! Attendants! SUMMON THE GUARD!"
"Covenants..." Gu Chen advanced, each footfall resonating like executioner's drums. "Like your oath to that maiden—vowing silver for her sire's chemotherapy after plucking her blossom. What princely sum did you bestow? Three coppers? Five?" The torte quivered in his grasp, fondant weeping like congealed disgrace.
Ten lethal paces separated hunter from quarry.
Within the killzone where lead falters, Gu Chen's knuckles claimed dominion.
Jiang Feng pivoted to flee—a belated epiphany.
Swish.
The pastry projectile struck with trebuchet fury, icing detonating in alabaster shrapnel. The concussive force catapulted Jiang Feng through the vacuum, his Savile Row silhouette cratering into fluted pilasters.
A symphony of inhalations ricocheted through the rococo chamber.
Gu Chen towered above the custard-smeared ruin. "Let this illuminate your path, Scion of Jiang," he crooned, flicking marzipan from his cuff. "When you court conflagration..."
Claiming Ling Meixue's wrist, he cleaved through gawping throngs like Alexander through Gordian knots.
"You've inked our death scrolls!" she hissed, carotid throbbing beneath his grasp. "The Jiang dynasty will—"
"Let their hounds bay." His smirk flashed arctic malice. "No lickspittle moth dares covet my inferno. To glimpse your glory is a boon I grant no mortal."
Her protest withered unspoken. "Who... who proclaimed I'm your chattel?!"
"Frogs flee chilled waters, perish in boiling cauldrons," he chuckled, guiding her through brass-bound portals. "But steep them in tepid baths..." His thumb grazed her radial pulse. "…they'll croak lullabies in your palm."
**Coda: The Viper's Compact**
In the Louis XIV restroom's mercury-glass reflection, Jiang Feng scoured clotted cream from contorted features. Porcelain shards bit his palms—the final casualty of crystal stemware.
From bespoke lapel linings emerged a vellum slip, its embossed numerals glowing like Stygian sigils.
The connection sparked ere the second tone.
"Annihilate him." Jiang Feng's whisper oozed phlegethontic ire. "I demand his sinews shredded, his strumpet's orbs pickled in jars, his—"
"Temper your furnace, Young Liege." The voice rasped like scales on a tombstone. "The overture has barely... commenced."
The Viper's Stratagem
Ling Meixue's fingers froze mid-buckle, her gaze darting across the Porsche's cabin. "My handbag—where has it vanished?" She pressed manicured nails to her temples. "Left at the banquet table! This night frays my wits to tatters."
"I'll reclaim it." Gu Chen released his seatbelt with a metallic sigh, his voice edged with steel. "Remain. Engage all locks."
His right eyelid had pulsed like a war drum since their Haman Palace arrival—a mercenary's sixth sense forged in Balkan gunfire. The grand hall lay ninety seconds at full sprint. Isolation minimized vulnerabilities, though every synapse screamed at severance.
"*Do not exit this vehicle*," he reiterated, scanning the parking complex's chiaroscuro planes before dissolving into the gilt-edged maw.
Ling Meixue fluttered a dismissive hand, already absorbed in social media's dopamine cascade. "Yes, yes. Expedite matters—my Cartier cards nest in that clutch. The bureaucratic purgatory of replacements would eclipse Dante's *Inferno."
Gu Chen's shadow had scarcely dissipated when four wraiths materialized at the Cayenne's flanks.
**Carnivorous Shadows**
Ling Meixue frowned at the seat's imperceptible tremor. The rearview mirror unveiled horror's masquerade—two spectres coalescing in the backseat's gloom.
"Who—"
*Zzzt-crackle!
The stun gun's electric snarl. Her limbs spasmed against Nappa leather, the smartphone clattering like a dying cicada.
The driver's portal yawned, revealing a gilded siren discarding lockpicks. "Neolithic security", Alice purred, settling behind the wheel. Her vowels dripped Moscow winter. "Initiate phase extraction."
The flaxen goon traced Ling Meixue's unconscious collarbones. "Such alabaster perfection. Might we… savour the hors d'oeuvre?"
Alice's glacial stare frosted the rearview. "Lay one finger", she hissed, "and I'll string your intestines as Kremlin Christmas lights. This blossom serves grander designs."
**Arachnid's Web**
Gu Chen prowled through the abandoned ballroom, eyes dissecting damask tableaus. No Prada silhouette. No living witnesses.
A stooped custodian materialized, feather duster clutched like a sceptre. "Seeking lost treasures, young sir?" Her dialect reeked of Yangtze River mud. "Found a fattened wallet near champagne fountains. Come—safety lies in the vault."
His trapezius muscles coiled. Yet he followed through service tunnels steeped in mortuary hush, surveillance lenses blinded.
"Nearly arrived," the crone rasped, gesturing toward a maw of darkness. "Within awaits resolution."
Gu Chen halted at the precipice. The void exhaled malice—a leviathan's gullet.
"Enter, noble youth!" The janitor's grin splintered like ancient porcelain. "Fortune favours the bold!"
From the abyss came the metallic catechism—a Remington 870's shell chambering.
Lethal Stratagem
"Reveal your lurking vermin at the threshold," he commanded, fingers loosening his collar with lethal composure.
The janitress stiffened momentarily before dipping her head in a venomous simper. "Remarkable perception," she hissed through gritted teeth.
Crash!
Doors exploded inward as eight silhouettes materialized, encircling Gu Chen in the narrow passageway.
"Insufferable gnat," he scoffed, observing their regimented postures. These were no common thugs – their bearing spoke of tactical discipline far exceeding Jiang Feng's provincial resources.
"Engage!"
The black-garbed contingent surged forward like rabid jackals.
---
*Haman Palace Perimeter*
The obsidian Porsche Cayenne peeled from its berth, disappearing into the arterial veins of the metropolis.
---
*Corridor of Shadows*
Three minutes distilled into carnage. Eight broken forms writhed amidst shattered tile as Gu Chen stood amidst the devastation, his breath scarcely quickened.
"Sponsor. Now." He daubed perspiration with clinical precision, voice colder than surgical steel.
The argent-haired ringleader choked crimson laughter. "The Tiger Ascendant... lives to legend."
Gu Chen's ocular muscles contracted infinitesimally. This revelation mandated terminal silence.
*Hiss*
His hand materialized at the mercenary's larynx, pinning him against fracturing plaster. "Final opportunity."
"Fool..." The dying man's tremor became a death-rattle chuckle, index finger jerking toward eastern windows. "...checkmate..."
Gu Chen's epiphany struck like lightning. "Craven tactics!" His fist became a piston, collapsing the assassin's thoracic cavity in a spray of viscid scarlet – three sunrises' reprieve at most.
---
*Asphalt Arena*
The vacant parking bay greeted him like a mocking grin. Wallet irrelevant, his focus narrowed to crystalline fury.
"Blast!"
*Trill-trill-trill.
An unregistered Jiangzhou identifier illuminated his screen. "Identity." His vocal cords vibrated with contained detonation.
"Evening, Princeling." Jiang Feng's nasal sneer permeated the connection. "Shall we toast your disarray?"
"Location." Each syllable dripped cryogenic promise.
Deranged cackles distorted the frequency. "Peruse tomorrow's headlines – perhaps the Huangpu reveals... feminine flotsam."
The line died mid-hysteria. Gu Chen's aura coalesced into a homicidal corona as he stabbed another contact.
A contralto purr answered. "Midnight summons, beloved tiger? My boudoir awaits your... restlessness."
Veils of Allegiance
Under ordinary circumstances, Gu Chen might have indulged in Murong Wan'er's coquettish repartee. Yet tonight, his psyche churned with tempestuous disquiet—a maelstrom of fragmented strategies and primal urgency.
"Mark this," he intoned into the device, each syllable a blade honed in frostfire, "Notify the Yang patriarch. Jiangzhou's arteries pulse with foreign malignancies. Mobilize the Iron Guard—*now*."
He chronicled the ambush with forensic detachment: the janitress's venom, the mercenaries' martial precision, and the silver-haired viper's dying taunt.
---
*Jiangzhou Military District, 23:59*
Murong breached the war room trailing jasmine and wrath, droplets from hasty ablutions glistening on her collarbone. "The Tiger's seal demands ratification," she declared to the wizened figure shrouded in pu-erh vapours. "Arm the seventh battalion. I ride at Vanguard."
General Yang sipped his prized Da Hong Pao with ceremonial slowness. "Climax?"
"These jackals mock our sovereignty!" Her fist struck the topographic map, trembling lakes of ink. "Every heartbeat squandered—"
"Border integrity remains uncompromised," he interjected, lids half-lowered over reptilian calm. "Let the feral princeling tend his personal kennels. We are not his hunting hounds."
Murong's lacquered nails scored trenches in teak. "You spurn the pact?"
"Parliamentary seals require seven dawns to wax." His chuckle stirred the tea's amber surface. "Unless... our wayward warlord cares to kneel before the Five-Clawed Standard."
---
*Jiangzhou Bridge, 00:21*
Taxi tyres keened against guardrails as Gu Chen deciphered Murong's fractured report. "Rebuffed", he concluded, the word clinking like a coffin nail.
His laughter held Arctic vastness. The mandarins' calculus laid bare—they'd leash a tiger for spectacle but let wolves shred an inconvenient beast.
"Provincial protocols mandate delays," Murong's voice frayed through ionospheric interference.
"Rot their protocols." The call died mid-syllable.
His thumbs danced across the screen, awakening the dormant scarab buried in Ling Meixue's phone. A ruby cypher blinked northward, charting its desperate arc toward skeletal towers that pierced the smog like accusatory fingers.
---
*Northern Barrens, 00:47*
The taxi retreated from concrete ossuaries where ambition lay entombed. Gu Chen inhaled the night's metallic tang—cordite and rust and fresh-spilt hope.
Eighteen summers of insular combat arts vibrated through his marrow. Somewhere above, in the ribcage of these concrete leviathans, predators awaited their sacrament.
He ascended crumbling stairwells, each footfall a funeral drum. The moon, a cataract-veiled sentinel, watched as shadows coalesced into steel-fanged greetings.
"Welcome to the abattoir, Tiger," hissed a polyglot chorus.
His smile outshone the absent stars. "You mistake the butcher."
Cinderfall Prophecy
The concrete colossi loomed as necrotic sentinels, their skeletal frames fossilised mid-20th-century gestation—twenty winters of abandonment nurturing Jiangzhou's feral underbelly.
Gu Chen abandoned the purloined taxi at Yuhuatai's gilded gates, this diversion demanding strategic re-equipment before penetrating the northern charnel maze.
At the estate's threshold, his gaze brushed the trussed cabbie sprawled across leatherette. "Indemnity for borrowed steel," he breathed, laying banknote chrysanthemums across the dash before merging with umbral veils.
---
*Villa Septem, 00:58*
Lin Shiyu inhaled ramen strands amidst a polystyrene Pompeii. "Snow's coordinates?" she volleyed through MSG-laced vapours.
"Converge post-errand with your chariot." His diction carved glacial edicts.
"By whose—"
"Sixty dawns' rent remission."
The retort petrified mid-articulation. The disinherited scion, reduced to subsisting on Ling Meixue's noblesse oblige, ground molars at this latest indignity—how had her cosmos contracted to haggling over copper mites?
Gu Chen materialized bearing midnight's visage—an onyx war-mask caressed like a sacred reliquary. "The mechanical steed," he demanded at the liminal space.
"Garage-bound since equinoctial deluges." She catapulted Suzuki-embossed talismans. "Hydraulic arteries bleed vitality. Perish theatrically, and I'll invoice your wraith for carbon scoring."
---
*Scablands North, 01:19*
The Kawasaki's banshee wail cleaved smog-straitjacketed thoroughfares. Above, within the calcified thorax of eviscerated ambitions, carrion-eagles convened.
---
*Level XXII, Ossuary of Ambitions*
Alice's platinum filaments escaped tactical cowling as she scryed through L3Harris lenses. "Infrared sweeps?"
Her adjutants—Blackwater alumni reeking of Montenegrin leaf and existential gangrene—shrugged. "Pressure-plated Semtex garlands," rumbled the Nordic spectre. "Let the Tianshan Spectre come. Six warlords' blood debts demand balancing."
The compact one spun his Gurkha crescent. "We'd have feasted in Chang'an's palaces had that faceless cur not gutted our vanguard."
Alice's digit traced the keloid river bisecting her clavicle—a topographical reminder of the Tianshan purge. "Postulate his identity as the North Star Reaper. Compute our exodus quotient."
Void's answer echoed through steel ribs.
"Precisely." She resurrected Ling Meixue's confiscated device. "Broadcast gridlines. Append this codicil—should he tarry beyond the witching minute, his consort returns via takeout containers in sequential installments."
---
*Ground Zero, 01:28*
Gu Chen alighted, his onyx countenance devouring lunar radiance. Each step detonated echoes through rebar ossuaries—architectural cadavers whispering of crumbled aspirations. Above, arthropod assassins coiled.
Let their final lesson resonate through eternity's annals: when celestial tigers stalk bone-oracles, even death holds vigil.
Chronos' Folly
The Kawasaki's infernal growl devoured hinterland obscurity, its chrome fangs glinting under bruised cloud cover. Gu Chen's phone blazed—a sacrilegious glow from Ling Meixue's hijacked device.
"Declare your requiem," he commanded, sinewed fingers steering through helix turns.
A phlegm-clogged rasp invaded his cochlea: "Crave your concubine's pulse? Grovel northward. Vacillate, and my jackals shall demonstrate cross-cultural gynecology."
"Memento mori," Gu Chen purred, severing the connection as velocity transmuted asphalt into molten streams—thirty clicks evaporating beneath wrath's Event Horizon.
---
*Necropolis North, 22:07*
Derelict factories hunched like ossified titans beneath an astral void. This necrotic monument to fiscal hubris wore night as a murderer's gloves—its crevices perfect for swallowing screams.
"Sand's draining, sister!" A grizzled-faced mercenary ground his Balkan Sobranie into steel tendons. "Ghost's gone spectral!"
Two Neanderthalic silhouettes hovered near Ling Meixue's comatose figure, their breath fogging her pearlescent skin. "Let's decrypt her genetic code," leered the ursine one, calloused digits hovering above silk-clad collarbones. "Oriental orchids wilt so melodiously."
Alice's Heckler & Koch kissed his occipital lobe. "Defile this bargaining chip," she whispered with venomous propriety, "and I'll anoint these walls with your basal ganglia."
Hush reclaimed dominion. Digital chronometers hemorrhaged toward 23:00.
"Extraction protocol?" Her adjutant murmured, fingers dancing across Claymore triggers.
Alice's ocular muscles twitched behind L3Harris lenses. Each passing millisecond metastasized their vulnerability—this chess match demanded checkmate, not attrition.
"Exodus at the witching hour," she capitulated. "But if the Tianshan wraith actually—"
A banshee wail ricocheted through ventilation arteries.
Every barrel concertinaed toward auditory ground zero.
The clock read 23:00.
Tenebrity unsheathed its blade.
Labyrinth of Veiled Retribution
"Phoenix, Hydra, Chimaera – acknowledge and retreat." The gilded-haired operative's command fractured against radio silence.
*Kssshhh—*
The transceiver vomited static, its electronic death rattle permeating the derelict arena.
Tactical lamps swept through carcinogenic shadows as mercenaries exchanged feral glances. "All frequencies necrotic?" growled the scarred lieutenant, thumb caressing his Remington's trigger guard.
Alice's Vermeer-complexion blanched. Three strategic cordons vaporized – this electromagnetic void whispered of arterial sprays, not technical glitches.
"Manifest, spectre!" bellowed the chrome-domed enforcer, halogen beams dissecting concrete intestines.
Lunar phosphene birthed a bespoke silhouette from negative space.
"You orchestrate this theatrical summons," Gu Chen declaimed, aligning his Brioni cufflinks with sniper precision, "yet neglect red-carpet formalities?" A monogrammed lighter birthed nicotine constellations.
The platinum-haired huntress arched over the abyssal ledge. "Soliloquy for your captured muse?"
"Entomological nuisances warrant no gallery." Sapphire smoke tendrils framed his words. "My consort's coordinates."
Twin ogres hauled Ling Meixue's suspended animation to the architectural guillotine, her onyx tresses cascading toward the void.
"The fabled War Tiger, domesticated by Hymen's chains." Alice's vermilion talons hovered above carotid topography. "Cryptic surrender ensures her pulmonary continuance."
Sudden metallurgical frostbite at Gu Chen's medulla oblongata. A slab-muscled mercenary's Walther PPK trembled against cranial bone. "Tianshan's faceless reaper – your carnival disguise?!"
Gu Chen rotated with glacial inevitability. His irises collapsed into quantum singularities. "Maternal counsel neglected firearm etiquette?" The cigarette's ember achieved dwarf-star luminescence.
Adrenaline stalled in the gunman's hypothalamus. Between Planck-time intervals, Gu Chen's digits performed ballistic origami—
*Snick-tink.
The firearm disassembled into constituent atoms, raining components like mechanical viscera.
"Decadal paces", he murmured, the argent demi-mask coalescing in his palm, "demarcate my sovereign demesne."
Alice's shriek shredded the stratosphere: "EGRESS! HE'S ACTUALIZED THE—"
Eternity interceded.
The mask's adhesion was finalised. When ocular shutters lifted, they reflected the event horizon's hunger.
Facade of Annihilation
Six moons prior, during the Northern Frontier Campaign, this gilded serpent had witnessed the cataclysm firsthand. A battle preordained for triumph had unravelled at the hands of a spectral figure—a silver-masked wraith whose very presence crystallized moonlight into blades of existential dread.
She remembered the Tianshan Massacre's crimson symphony: six warlords of the western coalition encircling that ivory-clad enigma. For thirty-six hours, steel shrieked and bone fragmented until dawn revealed the generals' corpses dangling from frost-laced pines like macabre wind chimes. The massacre's aftershocks had paralysed global ambitions toward Xia for an entire fiscal quarter.
"Foolish bravado!" The mercenary sneered, index finger whitening on the trigger. "No flesh outpaces bullet—"
A quantum flicker.
Mid-syllable, spacetime inverted.
Gu Chen materialized behind his assailant, obsidian butterfly knife weeping rubies. The mercenary's carotid artery blossomed into a crimson orchid, his tracheal denials gurgling into silence.
"Rot in epistemological oblivion," Gu Chen murmured. Get rid of blade-born vitae.
Above, Alice's operatives recoiled as their comrade collapsed into a marionette with severed strings. "Squads Alpha through Gamma—engage!" she barked into the dead walkie-talkie.
"Your chessmen now fertilize Jiangzhou's soil," Gu Chen called upward, strolling through the kill zone like a curator admiring installations. "Hence my tardy arrival."
The blonde gripped the concrete ledge, knuckles calcifying. "The Tiger Marshal reduced to a lapdog security guard? What a cosmic farce. Align with us—unlimited resources, your woman preserved in gilded stasis."
The mask's argent edge caught moonlight as Gu Chen tilted his head—a predator assessing prey's expiration date. "You mistake restraint for domestication," he purred. "This facade?" A fingertip traced the mask's orbital rim. "Merely a courtesy to spare fragile minds before the culling."
Alice's remaining cadre trembled—veterans of Grozny and Fallujah now reduced to mewling kittens. "Contingency?" whispered her lieutenant, sweat corroding his collar's starch.
"Negotiate," Alice hissed, nails carving crescents into Ling Meixue's shoulder. "Release us, and your bride remains intact."
Gu Chen's laughter crystallized the humidity. "Counteroffer: relinquish her, and I'll limit your suffering to seven seconds."
"Mutually assured destruction, then!" She jerked Ling Meixue toward the abyss. "Your 'queen' plummets unless—"
A silver thread whistled through darkness.
Alice's threat died as Gu Chen's butterfly knife quivered in her radial artery, its hilt vibrating with subsonic fury. The blade had traversed forty metres of void, bypassing three human shields, to deliver its surgical ultimatum.
"Tick-tock," Gu Chen whispered, ascending crumbling stairs barehanded. "Six seconds remain."
The mask's void-black eyes drank the moonlight whole.
Lament of the Nephilim
"Have you pondered the celestial maxim," Gu Chen ascended decaying steps with gravitas, each footfall resonating like death knells, "demarcating ephemeral flesh from eternal divinity?"
The gilded serpent's throat constricted, her tactical equipoise crumbling like Jericho's walls. Though encircled by her cohort, their tremors betrayed cosmic terror before this incarnate singularity.
"Utter it!" she rasped, voice fracturing like antique porcelain.
"Beneath the celestial veil, I reign unchallenged; beyond it, I barter existence for oblivion." His silhouette warped into a quantum paradox—simultaneously present and transcendent.
Phantom resonance.
He quantum-leaped beyond mortal perception.
Agonized shrieks scored the night as two sentinels collapsed, carotid arteries erupting into hieroglyphic carnage. Five remained breathing.
"Obliterate the aberration!" bellowed a colossus armoured in depleted uranium gauntlets.
The concrete mausoleum became an orchestra of fracturing ossein—guillotine-edged shadows pirouetting to marrow-deep percussion. Ballistic implements transformed into Neolithic curiosities; edged fury outpaced neurological electricity.
*Crystalline shatter.
Gu Chen's fist reduced a mercenary's skeletal framework to particulate matter, the once-lethal operative regressing to foetal whimpers. Three others voided vital fluids, their elite pedigree dissolving into faecal humiliation.
"Heresy!" The blonde staggered through haemoglobin pools, Louboutins scoring concrete. "These were Archon Brigade paladins!"
"Paladins?" Gu Chen distilled arterial spray into crimson calligraphy on his sleeve. "More accurately, fertilizer."
She collapsed against corroded rebar, thoracic cavity heaving. "Clemency! I swear eternal—"
"Clemency perished when you defiled my sanctuary." He conjured a rose glazed in apiarian amber, its thorns dripping with neurotoxic promise. "Attend—the lycoris radiata thrives most luxuriantly in Tartarus' vestibule."
Her irises dilated into cosmic vacuums.
"I shall engrave a lycoris mandala across your thoracic canvas." His baritone vibrated with collapsing neutron stars. "Each petal shall breach myocardial fortifications, their nectarous vectors attracting *Oecophylla smaragdina* legions—emerald sentinels methodically consuming hepatobiliary systems, nephritic architecture, and ultimately, the cathedral of consciousness. You'll chronicle each microscopic evisceration until cognition deliquesces."
The operative's autonomic systems failed. "You... progeny of Pandemonium Atoll! The Lycoris Artisan!"
His grin devoured lunar radiance. "Chronological grace period expired."
The rose's stem metamorphosed into a stiletto of distilled night.
The abyss commenced its cantata.
Coda of the Abyssal Flame
The gilded operative's psyche fragmented into fractal terror. Devil's Atoll—that chimeric archipelago straddling tectonic continental plates—existed as cartographic dementia, where magnetic poles inverted and satellite signals dissolved into quantum foam. Its denizens, whispered through intelligence circles as walking extinction events, birthed the maxim: *Sooner court celestial bureaucrats than glimpse the Atoll's shores.
Gu Chen's gaze glaciated her tremors. "Comprehension of the Atoll's lore triples your damnation."
---
*Jiangzhou Command Nexus, 01:47*
Murong Wan'er's metacarpals creaked against Yang's rosewood desk. "A tactical unit—twenty operatives with L3Harris thermals!"
The elder sipped Silver Needle white tea with maddening serenity. "Procedures mandate—"
A fuel-air explosive's concussive wave shattered porcelain tranquillity.
Murong lunged to the bulletproof vista. The northern horizon vomited promethium hues. "Suffocate in red tape!" She commandeered a JLTV's ignition fob, storming into the ionized night.
---
*Scorched Earth North, 02:13*
Gu Chen materialized from plasma curtains, cradled like a slumbering archon by Ling Meixue. Behind him, the blonde's crucified corpus hosted an entomological symposium—*Oecophylla smaragdina* artisans ascending her bio-column in meticulous consumption. Her terminal exhalation crystallized: *Remorse.
A white phosphorus orb traced a parabolic epitaph.
*Thermonuclear crescendo.
The pyre cleansed thirty-six elite vectors of transgression.
---
*Gilded Enclave Yuhuatai, 02:47*
Lin Shiyu intercepted the buzzing summons mid-TikTok trance. "Chronologically challenged much—?"
"Retrieve your liege from Cartesian Grid 3-Ring," Gu Chen's baritone vibrated with unfamiliar density. "Hire chariot. Instantaneously."
The taxi's ABS screamed at the ashen junction. Lin gaped at Ling's comatose elegance and Gu Chen's haematite-flecked battle mantle. "What cataclysm have you—"
"Sake-induced somnolence," he deadpanned, transferring his cargo. "Mature affairs beckon."
Lin's riposte evaporated as Murong's AMG G63 Desert Warrior materialized.
"Garrison conclave," Murong intoned.
"Azure Ocean Pagoda", Gu Chen countermanded, claiming the death seat.
"Hydrotherapy aspirations?"
"To cremate Jiang's genetic legacy."
---
*Azure Ocean Sanctum, Jade Steam Chamber, 03:33*
Jiang Feng supined on nephrite heated to 43.3°C, digits spidering across a masseuse's lumbar topography. "Anticipation seasons conquest," he drawled to his coven of degenerates.
Yang Kun exhaled Cubano carcinogens. "The Cryogenic Sovereign herself! I'll melt her permafrost personally."
A myopic scion moistened cracked lips. "We'll compose epicurean sonnets by matins."
Unobserved, security monitors birthed television static. Five blocks east, Gu Chen's Damascus katana hissed from its saya.
The G63's chronometer stuttered—03:33:33.
The abyss raised its baton for the final movement.
Requiem of the Jade Dynasty
The knock reverberated through the steam-cloaked chamber like a funeral drumroll.
"Who disrupts my sanctum?!" Jiang Feng's bellow ricocheted off onyx walls, his oil-slicked pectorals heaving beneath dangling jade pendants.
The door cracked to reveal an ashen-faced attendant. "Young Master... an uninvited specter demands—"
"Are you ocularly impaired?!" He launched a golden ashtray that cratered the mahogany panelling. "Feed the intruder to the carps!"
*Thunderous implosion.
Gu Chen materialized through vaporized teak splinters, moonlight from the corridor forging his silhouette into a living katana. "Such inhospitality, Jiang *gongzi*," he crooned, obsidian gaze dissecting the tableau of half-clad debauchery. "Shall we review your etiquette manuals?"
Jiang Feng scrambled backward, aromatic oils squeaking against heated nephrite. "You—corpse-dust—should be fertilizing northern fields!"
"Disillusioned?" Gu Chen's smile dripped liquid nitrogen. "Your mercenary pupils failed their final examination." Brass knuckles crusted with oxidized blood glinted as he flexed fingers. "Fear not—tonight's syllabus features postgraduate courses in penitence."
The myopic heir brandished a shattered champagne flute. "Do you comprehend our familial—"
*Crystalline detonation.
Gu Chen's counterstroke detonated across the sycophant's jaw, enamel shrapnel embedding in cedar beams. The would-be challenger collapsed, mewling through a carotid fountain.
"Lamentable," Gu Chen sighed, flicking gore onto Yang Kun's trembling cheek. "Where's the fervour you displayed when tormenting caged songbirds?" He nodded toward quaking masseuses. "Evacuate. Summon Jiang's hounds if courage permits."
As the last silk slipper pattered away, the sybaritic coven transformed into Judas incarnate:
"His malignant design!" Yang Kun blathered, extending a smartphone like a religious offering. "Digital testament! He compelled documentation of the Snow Phoenix's... *tutelage."
Gu Chen's pupils collapsed into quantum singularities as footage unspooled—Ling Meixue's shackled form, Jiang Feng's gem-encrusted fingers manoeuvring crimson-hot branders. Ozone crackled as atmospheric pressure quadrupled.
"Verminous traitors!" Jiang Feng hawked blood-glutted phlegm. "My progenitor will flense your bloodlines atom by—"
Gu Chen's glacial laughter flash-froze the steam. "Your patriarch currently navigates traffic, blissfully ignorant of his lineage's expiration timestamp." He fisted Jiang's pomaded locks, cadaver-dragging him across fracturing jade. "But first... practical demonstrations."
---
*Nephrite Atrium, 03:59*
Surveillance feeds flatlined in sequence as Gu Chen descended the helix staircase, his human wrecking ball painting abstract expressionism in haemoglobin and urea. Private guards averted their gaze—Chechen War veterans now reduced to altar boys before this wrathful deity.
"Compassion..." Jiang Feng gurgled, fingernails etching desperate haiku in Carrara marble.
Gu Chen paused beneath the Jiang totem—a five-tonne jade monolith engraved with *Sanguine Supremacy*. "Compassion?" He traced the gilded mantra. "An antiquated concept requiring revision."
With tectonic ease, he catapulted Jiang Feng through the ancestral emblem. Jade particulates snowed across the lobby like crystallized karma.
---
*Jiang Tianhe's Armored Maybach, 04:29*
The oligarch's platinum-plated smartphone shrieked its seventh alert. "Override traffic protocols!" he snarled at the driver. "My sole heir—"
*Cataclysmic impact.
The ballistic limousine accordioned against unseen forces. Through fractured diamond glass, Jiang Tianhe witnessed his dynastic nightmare—Gu Chen astride the hood, Jiang Feng's mangled form suspended like a broken kokeshi doll.
"Your genetic experiment concludes," the harbinger intoned, moonlit mask mirroring paternal psyche's disintegration. "Take solace—the *Oecophylla* will dine sumptuously."
As law enforcement sirens wailed their belated overture, Gu Chen dissolved into nocturne's embrace, leaving the Jiang empire's smouldering ruins to greet false dawn.
Ashes of Hubris
Gu Chen's iron grip on Jiang Feng's scalp painted vermilion calligraphy across alabaster floors—each crimson streak a brushstroke of divine retribution.
---
*Chamber of Broken Kings, Blue Ocean Club*
Murong Wan'er pirouetted through a maelstrom of obsidian-clad sentinels, her stiletto blade etching sonnets in carotid arteries. "Ascension forbidden," she declared, shattering a mercenary's hyoid with a fouetté kick that echoed through the vaulted ceilings.
Descending the helical staircase, Gu Chen trailed his human wreckage like a comet's bloody tail. "Preordained theatre," he mused, observing Jiang Tianhe's limousine disgorging panic through fractured glass portals.
"Restore my progeny!" The oligarch's roar vibrated crystal chandeliers into discordant shivers. Yang Lao emerged from shadowed alcoves, his wizened face a parchment of calculated diplomacy.
"Annihilate this aberration!" Jiang Tianhe's command ricocheted off marble colonnades.
Thirty Tier-1 operatives stood petrified—weapons lowered in collective psionic paralysis.
"Enforce order!" The magnate wheeled toward Yang Lao, pupils dilated with dynastic desperation. "My coffers buoy your precinct's gilded sloth!"
Yang Lao approached Gu Chen with the reverence of a novitiate nearing a wrathful deity. "Marshal... perhaps... *collaborative resolutions?"
Gu Chen's lighter flared, illuminating hieroglyphs of dried blood on his cheekbone. "Dawn's tabloids shall trumpet Jiang Consortium's eco-crimes and flesh markets," he exhaled, smoke tendrils coiling around Yang Lao's trachea like asphyxiating vines. "Or your desiccated corpse shall nourish northern toxic soil—companion to unmarked graves."
The bureaucrat's Adam's apple convulsed. "Manifesto... assured."
With pantomime abruptness, Yang Lao snapped to attention. "Containment protocols! Sanguinary triage!"
---
*Transylvanian Citadel, 05:17 CET*
A vodka-soaked warlord shattered a holographic war table with his prosthetic arm. "Thirty-six Valkyries reduced to carbon particulates?!" His Uralic-accented roar ignited ancient torches.
A cybernetic adjutant trembled before biometric screens. "Highlord, final transmission received—thermal silhouette of the entity."
The monitor bloomed with Gu Chen's retreating form through infrared hellfire, and Ling Meixue clutched against his chest like Excalibur reclaimed.
"Magnify!" The warlord's ocular implant whirred, scanning pixelated vengeance. "I require mitochondrial DNA sequencing, kinesiological algorithms, ancestral cryptanalysis—incinerate every darknet node until this wraith's true nomenclature combusts!"
---
*Viaduct of False Dawn, 05:59*
Gu Chen slid into Murong's idling Maybach, the vehicle's leather upholstery inhaling scents of scorched jade and iron-rich vitae. "Denouement?"
Murong accelerated through mercury-hued twilight. "Yang's scribes already draft the requiem. Jiang's caustic arteries congeal as we converse."
"Benevolent oversight." Gu Chen examined his nicotine-stained fingertips. "The Formicidae deserved prolonged symphonic feasts."
As police choppers carved aerial mandalas above the smouldering necropolis, neither detected the blacked-out Range Rovers materializing from parallax shadows—their VIN numbers belonging to a Lichtensteinian matryoshka corporation.
The cosmic chessboard inverted. Fresh pawns breached the event horizon.
To be continuous…