"【Yanmo】, who is he?" You Shuo's teammate asked. He couldn't make sense of the situation either, but he was alert enough and frightened enough. He took one step back, then two.
You Shuo didn't speak. He was hyperventilating, his chest rising and falling ceaselessly, as though he'd been trapped in his own nightmare.
Ever since he'd sworn to take responsibility for the Edge Squad, he had rarely experienced this kind of helplessness, let alone this loss of control. In that instant, it was as if he'd been dragged back into the past.
When his parents were alive, he could afford to fall short, because the people who loved them were still there.
But after his parents were gone, he had no choice but to step up alone. Whether or not he was capable, he had to step up.
Because Lingling was still young. She probably didn't even understand what death truly meant.
"Bi Xi," his trembling head was held firmly in those twisted, grotesque black hands, as though no matter what request he made, the devil could grant his prayer, "what do you want me to give?"
Whatever the devil wanted from him, he would give anything.
After all, devils in stories never worked for free, right?
But Bi Xi said, "How could I possibly be the kind of person who won't lift a finger without profit? How can you misunderstand me like that? I'm a good person. I'd never do such a thing."
He leaned close to You Shuo, his gaze lowering, and whispered by his ear, "You got angry when I called your sister a burden, so consider this my apology. Forgive me. I shouldn't have said that, all right?"
One black hand released You Shuo's cheek but still rested on his shoulder. Bi Xi extended a single finger, pointing toward the road ahead — toward the night market exit where they had entered.
In the direction his fingertip indicated, past the crowded food stalls and warm yellow-white lights, amid the flow of passersby, a figure pushed through layer upon layer of the human tide, gradually revealing himself.
You Shuo's eyes slowly widened, his pupils trembling as he stared ahead.
【Quick Blade】 had requested the 【Red Moon】 barrier. He should have been lost in the sea of people, waiting for a handler to escort him away.
But now, step by step, he was walking out from the crowd that should have concealed him — then step by step, toward the edge of the barrier that was supposed to protect him.
"What's happening—" You Shuo's teammate cried out in alarm.
Anyone could see how desperately unwilling 【Quick Blade】 was. His pupils bulged as though about to burst from their sockets, his mouth hung open with facial muscles twitching, cold sweat streaming down his face. Terror was written all over his contorted features, yet still he walked — one step, then another — toward his end.
You Shuo's teammate's voice grew louder and louder: "The barrier — it didn't work?!"
You Shuo didn't know.
The only thing he knew right now was this — the criminal he had hoped to capture, the one who might threaten You Ling's life, had walked right up to him of his own accord.
...
The night market was packed with bustling crowds. In the brief moment it took to let go of a hand, in the blink of an eye, Fang Yuan had lost sight of her little niece.
She froze for a second, then was engulfed by a wave of overwhelming panic. She looked around frantically — nothing but dense crowds everywhere, adult faces all wearing the carefree joy of a night out at the market.
"Xiao Qing!" she shouted her niece's name. The child was only five or six years old. In her desperation, she grabbed her phone to call the police.
No, wait. She didn't seem to need to call the police.
She slowly lowered her phone, a momentary blankness crossing her eyes.
Beneath the barrier, all ordinary people lost the conscious will to transmit information to the outside world.
The night market was thick with the smoky aroma of grilled food, wisps of white haze draping everyone in a pale veil.
"My little niece is lost — can someone please help me—" she shouted, a frantic anomaly amid the teeming crowd.
No. She wasn't the only anomaly.
A hooded man came to an abrupt halt right before her eyes. Fang Yuan caught a clear glimpse of his terrified gaze.
"No..." He seemed to be trying to speak, his entire body stiff as a marionette, bound and strung together by invisible threads. His jaw kept trembling, struggling to form words, but only saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth.
His face had twisted into a grotesque mask of fear.
It was as though some monster peered down from above, having ripped the soul from his body. Invisible threads had latched onto his limbs, bending his frame into angles the human body was never meant to reach.
Fang Yuan heard the soft click-click-click of shifting bones.
It was too bizarre — a living person reduced to a machine in an instant, like some macabre piece of performance art. Yet apart from Fang Yuan, absolutely no one noticed him.
"What is..." Her gaze gradually shifted from confusion to emptiness. She had just—
Seen nothing at all.
She needed to keep looking for Xiao Qing.
Fang Yuan turned around and headed in another direction. "Have you seen a child about this tall?"
...
When those golden threads sank beneath 【Quick Blade's】 skin, You Ling understood what her ability was.
The threads acted as conduits, channeling the other person's thoughts directly into her mind. She was like the fungus that infects ants — the filaments burrowed into the target's brain and rooted themselves deep within—
She could control every single one of 【Quick Blade's】 actions.
Those threads were her strings of control over 【Quick Blade】. She was like a distant dancer, her fingers swaying to manipulate the puppet dangling from her wires.
If she had a codename too, it would probably be something like "Puppeteer."
She didn't know why the barrier hadn't severed her connection either. Perhaps the moment the threads latched on, 【Quick Blade】 had become hers — and what belonged to her inside the barrier counted as her being inside the barrier too.
Probably. She wasn't sure. In any case, the threads hadn't snapped, and she could still control him.
You Ling stood behind You Shuo, watching 【Quick Blade】 approach step by step. Behind the red lenses, her eyes burned with cold, razor-sharp killing intent.
It had hurt. It had hurt so much when that ice-cold blade pierced her flesh, and it had hurt just as terribly bleeding out alone in that alley.
Her body, gradually losing its warmth, could no longer feel the chill of the rain. All she could see were raindrops falling from above, the sky beyond the alley framed in a narrow square — so constricting.
She had wondered what her life even was. What she was. What reason she had for existing. What all those years of effort and suppression had been for. What everything she had sacrificed for this family had amounted to. Was her destiny merely to serve as the fuse for You Shuo's breakdown?
You Ling hadn't known. Maybe this world really was just a manga, and she was nothing more than a stock character locked into a single hackneyed role — one whose only purpose was to die.
Perhaps so.
But she hadn't died. And that meant certain things needed to be reshuffled.
She was far more ruthless than You Shuo. The person who had killed her shouldn't expect to live either.
Golden threads sprouted from her sharp, dark fingertips, spreading like fungal hyphae, cocooning her prey in an inescapable chrysalis.
Behind the red lenses, her narrowed eyes became slits.
Draw that knife. She thought.
【Quick Blade's】 trembling right hand reached behind his back and drew a knife. He couldn't speak, but he clearly understood what was happening. He strained with everything he had to shake his head, to force out the word "no."
But why should she stop? Hadn't she shaken her head too, back then? Hadn't she also begged him to stop? You Ling thought coldly.
If he had to blame someone, he could blame her for having a good brother who happened to be a manga protagonist.
Without You Shuo, gaining that kind of popularity wouldn't have come so easily. This corpse of hers might truly have been beyond saving.
You Shuo noticed 【Quick Blade's】 movements immediately, but when he tried to lunge forward, the hands clamping his head from behind held him firmly in place.
"Wait, I still need—" You Shuo blurted out. He still needed 【Quick Blade】 to confess, to give him leads connected to 【Jiao Tu】!
In an instant, a flash of crimson glinted beneath the lights. 【Quick Blade】, face contorted in terror, plunged the knife into his own body.
Again and again, as though he couldn't feel the pain at all.
His wrist began to tremble, slowly losing strength, yet he kept swinging the blade as if he knew no exhaustion.
The night market lay shrouded beneath the barrier. Any passerby only needed to look up to witness this horrifying scene. But their gazes passed right through him — not a single person looked his way.
It continued until his legs could no longer support his body's weight and he crumpled to the ground. Still, no one spared him so much as a glance.
Dying alone on the busiest street.
Just as lonely and helpless as she had been.
Beneath the red barrier, everything was bathed in a wash of crimson. It seemed so abnormal, yet so perfectly ordinary — just like this world of two faces, where within the normal lurked the abnormality that blinded eyes could never see.
You Ling felt You Shuo's muscles go rigid beneath her palms. Recalling the persona that 【Bi Xi】 was supposed to have, she leaned in and murmured softly by his ear, "I've made my atonement."
Watching 【Quick Blade's】 pupils slowly dilate as he collapsed, You Ling whispered, "This is an atonement gift for my master. Are you pleased?"
She certainly was.
...
【Quick Blade】 was dead.
The instant You Shuo's awareness returned, he broke free from Bi Xi's hands — easily, as if Bi Xi had only been loosely cradling his neck all along.
Bi Xi had never been holding him tightly at all.
You Shuo spun around and fixed Bi Xi with a hard stare. But beneath those red glasses, Bi Xi's jade-green pupils looked utterly innocent — as though everything that had just happened was perfectly normal, as though he hadn't done a single thing, much less breached the barrier of SS-ranked ability user 【Red Moon】 and killed another ability user on the spot.
You Shuo's pupils were still trembling. His breathing was far too rapid, but he had no way to force his skyrocketing heart rate back down.
He stared at Bi Xi, but in truth it was already too late for words. No matter how innocent this devil appeared, everything had already happened.
He should have known better than to trust a devil.
What he had wanted was to capture 【Quick Blade】. Only then might he have pried information about 【Jiao Tu】 from the man's mouth. Only then could he have caught 【Jiao Tu】 and locked down his identity completely, continuing to conceal You Ling's existence.
You Shuo needed 【Quick Blade】. Right now, 【Quick Blade】 had been his only lead.
But Bi Xi had killed him — severed the very thread of information You Shuo needed.
"I wanted to capture him, not—" You Shuo could hear how dry and feeble his own voice sounded — "kill him."
Bi Xi tilted his head, having produced his fan from somewhere again, and lightly tapped his own crossed arms. "Hm? That's your fault, then. You didn't make yourself clear."
But if Bi Xi could see right through him, how could he possibly not know what You Shuo actually wanted?
Even if the wish had technically been granted, what he wanted was not this outcome. Not in the slightest.
"Ha." You Shuo let out a self-deprecating laugh.
When exactly had he started believing a devil could be his salvation? He should have placed more trust in himself.
With no intention of explaining anything to his teammate, he turned his head away. "Bi Xi, can you just leave me alone? At least for tonight — don't let me see you again."
You Shuo walked over to 【Quick Blade's】 corpse and crouched down. Through the barrier, he confirmed the man was dead. The Nightwatch could only try to collect whatever clues they could from the body. It wouldn't be much, but at the very least they needed to find out who he had been in contact with. Perhaps there was still a chance.
He looked up. The red barrier still persisted — it would vanish thirty minutes after the requester's death. He had half an hour to notify the logistics team to handle the body.
You Shuo heard Bi Xi's voice from behind him.
"All right, if that's what you want," he said. You Shuo could almost picture the expression on his face. "I'm a generous person. I'll give you one night. Take good care of yourself, all right?"
You Shuo slowly closed his eyes. Too much had happened today. He was truly exhausted.
After trading away his soul, the rest of his life would probably be just as exhausting as today had been.
After all, he was the one who had let a devil get close. After all, he was the one who had first surrendered to the beautiful dream of a miracle.
"Let it be," You Shuo murmured.
Let it be. Perhaps the one he still hated most was himself.
...
"Ding-dong."
Under the night sky, across different cities beneath the same expanse of stars, the phones of countless strangers chimed with a notification.
When they picked up their phones, they saw a pop-up —
【The manga you follow, "City's Edge," has been updated!】