Every minute and every second stretched terrifyingly long. After a long while, Shen Zhuo moved slightly.
Bai Sheng’s hand shot back and pinned him down. The force was truly as immovable as cast steel, but his voice sounded almost amused.
“Come on, darling, surely not. We’ve slept in the same bed, and you’re really going to run off just because some wild man drew you a pretty future and coaxed you with a few lines?”
“He isn’t drawing some pretty future.” Shen Zhuo stared at Rong Qi not far ahead and narrowed his eyes slightly. “I know what he wants now.”
Bai Sheng: “Huh?”
Shen Zhuo did not explain. He only asked, “Is the causal law’s success rate really only eleven percent?”
“...”
Bai Sheng did not answer at once. The cold light in his palm was spinning with dangerous violence. Only after a long moment did he slowly say, “I don’t know where he learned about causal law, but...”
He turned his head and gave Shen Zhuo a half-true, half-false glance. There was a smile on his face, but his tone was obviously deliberate. “Baby, don’t believe that wild man trying to drive a wedge between us. What other purpose could I have for coming to Shenhai? Obviously I just wanted to develop a great friendship with you that goes beyond friendship.”
Shen Zhuo’s dark eyes flicked toward him.
“All right, all right.” Bai Sheng lasted only a few seconds before surrendering. “Before causal law goes out of control, there’s a two- or three-second warning period. I promise I’ll use those two or three seconds to save you first and absolutely give you the greatest chance of survival. Happy? What kind of look is that? You don’t believe in my determination and courage to sacrifice myself for love?”
Shen Zhuo gave a short laugh, though the amusement did not reach his eyes at all. “You’d certainly like to sacrifice yourself for love.”
He took half a step back, pulled off his left glove, and tossed it away. From inside his open coat, he drew out a special syringe. An S mark was printed plainly on the metal cap.
Bai Sheng froze at once. “Wait, you—”
“A radius of three thousand meters is thirty square kilometers at most. Half a kilometer east is a substation. Two kilometers south is a wastewater treatment plant. A major outbound highway runs around the northwest.” Shen Zhuo yanked his tie loose with one hand, stabbed the needle into the blood vessel at the side of his neck, and pushed it all the way down cleanly. “How much is your love worth? What are you using to guarantee innocent people won’t be dragged in?”
The serum entered the artery completely. Immediately afterward, a ring-shaped shockwave burst up from beneath Shen Zhuo’s feet and roared in every direction.
The next moment, an evolution rank slowly surfaced over the crossed knife scars on the back of his left hand.
S!
Shen Zhuo turned his hand over and spread his palm. A black inverted-cross mark appeared starkly before the other two. Rong Qi stopped short and murmured, “Inverted cross...”
In an instant, Bai Sheng’s pupils dilated to the limit.
That was clearly Fu Chen’s ability—the flesh-and-blood shield of absolute protection that bore all damage in the field alone.
The inverted cross!
Strings of blood pattered to the ground.
Starting from the inverted cross, countless threads of blood rapidly spread up Shen Zhuo’s arm. His body could not withstand the forced evolution, and the blood vessels under his skin were bursting violently.
“I can maintain S-Class state for five minutes at most.” Shen Zhuo seemed to have lost all sense of pain. He slapped Bai Sheng on the shoulder, his ice-cold gaze fixed on Rong Qi ahead. “Erase him with causal law within five minutes. Don’t leave even one cell behind. I want this person’s existence to disappear completely.”
The last trace of frivolity vanished from Bai Sheng’s face. He stared straight at Shen Zhuo, as if he were only now meeting the Chief Supervisor of Shenhai City for the first time.
“Shen Zhuo...”
The inverted cross could draw all damage in the field back onto the caster. In other words, as long as the one-in-nine gamble failed, Shen Zhuo would have to stand here and bear the impact for every civilian nearby who might be caught in it.
He would absolutely die.
“...I thought that after everything you’ve experienced, your view of ants would have changed somewhat, and our understanding of peace would grow increasingly similar...” Rong Qi looked at Shen Zhuo, his tone slowly sinking into coldness. “I didn’t expect that I was still wrong.”
“Anything obtained by eliminating the weak isn’t called peace.” Shen Zhuo’s voice was cold. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know what relationship you have with Fu Chen and Su Jiqiao, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll investigate after you’re dead.”
His hand tightened on Bai Sheng’s shoulder, and he ordered in a low voice, “Do it.”
“...” Bai Sheng did not move. Looking closely, the orb of light in his palm had begun to flicker faintly. “But Shen Zhuo...”
“Don’t give him a chance to escape. Kill him!”
Bai Sheng took half a step back. “Shen Zhuo, maybe think about it again...”
Shen Zhuo snapped, “Do it!”
Causal law trembled dangerously, like a water balloon swollen to its limit, ready to burst at any moment.
The gale abruptly stilled. At that critical instant, Rong Qi and Bai Sheng moved at the same time.
The former advanced instead of retreating, flying upward like lightning to snatch Shen Zhuo. The latter crushed causal law in his hand instead, and tens of millions of fragments vanished in an instant.
“—I can’t watch you die,” Bai Sheng said through clenched teeth, his face ugly.
He swung his hand with all his strength. Dozens of utility poles in the distance were ripped up from the roots, wrapped in high-voltage wires, and smashed down over Rong Qi’s head. Then he swept Shen Zhuo up by the waist. “Go!”
High-voltage electricity split open the sky. The entire wilderness shook. Shen Zhuo was locked tightly against Bai Sheng’s chest by one arm, shooting out several yards like an arrow from the string. “What are you doing?!”
Countless utility poles were blasted apart by the airflow like Moses parting the sea. Rong Qi’s figure appeared in midair, his face dark as water, his eyes pitch-black, one hand reaching for Shen Zhuo again. Bai Sheng held Shen Zhuo, stepped onto a treetop in a flash, and glanced from the corner of his eye at his watch.
“Three minutes.”
Then he swept his hand decisively again. Every tree around them flew up by the roots and smashed Rong Qi dozens of yards away.
In that instant, Shen Zhuo realized he was calculating the time until Shen Zhuo’s S-Class state ended. The absurdity of it nearly made him laugh. “What are you doing, playing hide-and-seek with him? If we don’t kill him today, it’ll be even less possible later. Don’t give him the chance to complete his evolution!”
“I can’t.”
Shen Zhuo thought he had misheard. “What did you say?”
“I said I can’t personally watch you die. I can’t do it!” Bai Sheng ground out through clenched teeth. “My plan from the start was to use those last two or three seconds to send you away and stay behind myself to gamble one in nine against him!”
If it had been merely absurd before, now it was downright unbelievable. Shen Zhuo drew a deep breath, just about to slap him awake, when Rong Qi appeared again in the blink of an eye. He raised his hand, and a long spear burned fiercely, stabbing straight toward them with heavy, brutal force.
Bai Sheng was furious. “You really think you’re something!”
With several crisp cracks, Bai Sheng seized the flame with his ability and froze it. The long spear shattered into countless shards of ice. Rong Qi swung his hand and cleaved down hundreds of bolts of lightning, which Bai Sheng erased by raising countless electromagnetic lights from the ground. At the same time, he yanked apart a high-voltage cable and whipped it back hard. Spectacular arcs of electricity shot out at once.
Two minutes thirty seconds.
There had never been a record anywhere in the world of two S-Class fighters clashing head-on at close range. It was practically a geyser of abilities. Hurricanes, ice and fire, thunderstorms, magnetic poles—countless abilities collided and exploded like a grand, dazzling fireworks display. As far as the eye could see, countless utility poles beneath them burst with terrifying hundred-meter-long arcs of electricity at the same time.
One minute fifty seconds.
With a sharp whistle that tore through the air, an arrow condensed from lightning in Rong Qi’s hand was blocked head-on by Bai Sheng. The life-and-death struggle brought out Bai Sheng’s killing nature. His left hand held Shen Zhuo against his chest, while his right seized the arrow and stabbed it backhanded. Amid a spray of blood, it pierced straight through Rong Qi’s shoulder blade.
“—Are you forgetting something?” Rong Qi braced one hand against Bai Sheng’s terrifying palm force, which weighed several tons, and raised his brow mockingly.
The next moment, damage backlash activated, and the wound on Rong Qi’s shoulder healed.
An identical backlash wound was about to pierce Bai Sheng’s left shoulder, but Shen Zhuo opened his palm and said coldly, “Are you forgetting something?”
Rong Qi’s eyelid twitched violently, but it was already too late.
The inverted cross activated. The damage transferred. The backlash wound that should have appeared on Bai Sheng pierced through Shen Zhuo’s shoulder instead.
The serum had temporarily granted Shen Zhuo an S-Class ability, but it had not given him an S-Class body. The massive impact loosened his grip, and he fell from Bai Sheng’s arms toward the ground, trailing a vivid sheet of blood.
“Fuck!” Bai Sheng cursed and dove down to catch him. But the killing intent in Rong Qi’s heart had already been driven to its peak by the sight. A hurricane condensed into a sharp dagger in his palm, and he chopped it toward the back of Bai Sheng’s neck.
One minute fifteen seconds.
Every drastic change happened at the same instant.
Bai Sheng caught Shen Zhuo around the waist and activated a healing skill, instantly restoring Shen Zhuo’s shattered shoulder blade, but behind him, the knife tip was already arriving wrapped in cold wind.
At the same time, Shen Zhuo wrapped his arms around Bai Sheng from behind and pressed his head hard into the hollow of his own neck. While falling rapidly, he turned one temple toward Rong Qi’s dagger.
Clang—
The upright cross activated.
The S-Class ability, upright cross—infinite health plus absolute defense. It instantly rebounded all damage and evenly distributed it to everyone present.
Rong Qi reacted abruptly and tried to withdraw, but it was too late. A cold light pierced through his skull from the temple.
With a sharp whistle, that same cold gleam shot toward Bai Sheng’s temple, only to be blocked by Shen Zhuo’s hand, exactly as he had calculated beforehand. The rebound was instantly canceled out.
The earth shook with a thunderous boom. Rong Qi plummeted and smashed a pit more than two meters deep into the ground, throwing up dust and smoke that filled the sky.
“Cough, cough, cough...” One hand covering the bleeding hole in his temple, he had not even had time to sit up when an iron-pincer hand seized his throat bone head-on, dragged him along the ground at high speed for dozens of meters, and then hurled him into the air.
Boom!
Rong Qi’s back shattered the rock. In the next instant, Bai Sheng flashed in front of him and drove an iron fist straight through his chest. Half the boulder collapsed with a crash.
Broken stones poured down like a torrential rain. Amid the earthshaking roar, Rong Qi blocked Bai Sheng’s second fist head-on, but the impact still blasted the mountain rock behind him into ten million fragments.
“Why bother?” The wilderness cracked as it shook. Rong Qi’s blood-soaked eyes stared close into Bai Sheng’s pupils, and he gave a hoarse laugh.
His entire head had been pierced through from side to side, but the scene of brain matter splattering that should have appeared never happened. Clearly, even simultaneous critical injuries to heart and brain meant nothing to him. Aside from a somewhat cold, thin rasp in his voice, he was unaffected. “I can’t take Shen Zhuo away today, but you can’t kill me either. Aside from burning useless anger, this has no meaning. Why not activate causal law?”
Bai Sheng did not answer. His face was dark as water. “What exactly are you?”
“Guess.”
“What relationship do Fu Chen’s people have with you?”
“Guess again.”
“Is your goal that evolution serum in Shen Zhuo’s possession?”
Rong Qi seemed to have finally gotten a question that interested him. He laughed, exhaling hot, bloody air, a trace of mockery in his eyes.
“—The Human Regeneration Plan.”
It was like a flash of light cutting through heavy fog. Bai Sheng’s sensitive nerves twitched.
“You don’t know anything at all, so why involve yourself in this mess?” Rong Qi asked him with a smile, not without pity. “What a shame. You really should have listened to Shen Zhuo and erased me with causal law. At least that could have expelled me from this planet temporarily... Causal law is a cosmic-level weapon deployed by mistake. You’re too lucky. You shouldn’t have been afraid of gambling one in nine.”
“The next time we meet, causal law won’t be the only obstacle to me anymore.” Rong Qi lowered the hand covering his forehead. The bloody wound at his temple had already healed, and his eyes flickered with a deep, meteorite-cold light. “I’m very curious to see how Shen Zhuo will look at you then. He’ll probably be very disappointed.”
Not far away, Shen Zhuo pressed a hand over the wound in his shoulder and barely pushed himself up from the ground. Blood gathered from the bridge of his refined nose to the corner of his mouth, dripping continuously from the torn collar of his white shirt.
The final fifteen seconds.
“Bai Sheng.” Shen Zhuo’s face was white as if washed in water. Every word came through violent gasps. “Kill him. Hurry...”
Bai Sheng had his back to Shen Zhuo and said nothing. The muscles across his shoulders, arms, waist, back, and entire body were strained to the absolute limit, exposing a trace of his ferocious, cold true self.
“Come on. Let Shen Zhuo be buried with me.” Rong Qi smiled teasingly. “Why don’t you dare?”
The inverted cross in Shen Zhuo’s palm was flashing violently, pushing his stamina to the limit faster and faster. “Bai Sheng...”
“Someone like Shen Zhuo—if not for evolution, you wouldn’t even have the right to know his name, much less enjoy the honor of killing him. Are you really going to give it up?”
“...” Shen Zhuo opened his mouth as if to say something, then abruptly spat out a mouthful of bloody foam.
“Are you really going to give up your only chance to leave your name to later generations?” Rong Qi emphasized with a smile. “Bai Sheng?”
With a click, a round chambered. Shen Zhuo staggered to one knee on the ground and used the last of his strength to draw his gun, aiming it at the back not far away.
“Bai Sheng! Do it!”
The next second, cold light finally flared from Bai Sheng’s palm in every direction.
“I’m deeply sorry to any pedestrians who may exist within a three-thousand-meter radius.” The terrifying light of causal law reflected in Bai Sheng’s eyes as he stared at Rong Qi, his voice lower than it had ever been. “If it goes out of control, I’ll be buried with them as your funeral offering.”
Three.
Two.
One.
The countdown reached zero.
The inverted cross vanished. The S-Class state ended. The gun in Shen Zhuo’s hand dropped weakly.
The cold light of causal law surged in Bai Sheng’s palm—
At that very moment.
Rong Qi turned into a field of dark-blue light and vanished. When he reappeared, he was already a hundred meters away, and a spatial black hole had opened behind him.
Bai Sheng abruptly sensed something. In the distance across the wilderness, a figure was lunging at Shen Zhuo from behind.
It was Noda Shunsuke.
In that ten-thousandth of a second, Shen Zhuo had no time to turn around and defend himself. He only felt a fierce wind sweep past his eyes. Bai Sheng appeared almost instantly, grabbing Shen Zhuo with one hand and pulling him into his arms while catching the incoming blade with the other.
Blood arced through the air. The katana was held steadily in Bai Sheng’s palm, unable to cut down another fraction of an inch.
Shen Zhuo gasped violently and tried to lift his head, but Bai Sheng pressed the back of his head by the hair and forced him into the hollow of his neck. In a low voice, he said, “Stay there.”
When facing Bai Sheng, Noda Shunsuke’s aggression was extremely intense. Seeing that his sneak attack had failed, he did not immediately retreat toward the spatial tunnel. Instead, he spat a breath of bloody air at Bai Sheng in provocation, eyes full of eager bloodlust. In the next instant, countless flashes of blade light fell like a wild storm.
Whoosh!
Bai Sheng caught the blade between two bare fingers. The gleaming edge reflected his deep, shadowed gaze, and a trace of bloodlust flickered in the depths of his pupils as he slowly said, “In your next life, don’t put your hands on someone another person marked first.”
Only then did Noda Shunsuke sense something was wrong. He tried to pull the blade back and withdraw, but with a bang of cracking refined steel, Bai Sheng broke the katana in half between two fingers by sheer force. Immediately afterward, an iron-pincer hand clamped around Noda Shunsuke’s throat, lifting his entire body into the air.
“Remember that.”
Those were the last words Noda Shunsuke ever heard.
Bai Sheng’s five fingers suddenly tightened. With a crack, Noda Shunsuke’s throat bone snapped, and his head tilted backward at an unnerving angle, the astonishment still frozen on his face.
Immediately afterward, Bai Sheng gripped the corpse by the neck and exerted force. The muscles, tendons, and bones in his arm bulged sharply.
Squelch!
Flesh and blood compressed with awful clarity. A fountain of blood shot more than a meter high. Bai Sheng tore his head off by force.
The headless body collapsed to the ground, and a spreading pool of blood quickly formed beneath it.
With one hand, Bai Sheng held Shen Zhuo down so he could not look. With the other, he gripped Noda Shunsuke’s head, swung it in a full arc, and threw it upward with a whistling sound. The head flew more than a hundred meters, trailing an arc of blood, and was caught by Rong Qi inside the spatial tunnel.
The spatial black hole rapidly closed. It was already too late to activate causal law. Across the distance, the two of them looked at each other, and the corner of Bai Sheng’s mouth curved.
His usual careless smile always hid his hostility well, but this smile made no attempt to conceal its cold, bloodthirsty savagery. Like an asura standing in a river of blood, he silently mouthed:
Next time, it’s you.
Rong Qi held the dripping head in his hand. He had no expression and gave no answer. His emotionless gaze shifted to Shen Zhuo, who was held tightly in Bai Sheng’s arms, and fixed on his back.
The next second, the black hole vanished completely, as if it had never appeared. Only thick gunpowder smoke and blood all over the ground silently declared what had just happened here.
From the distance came the roar of rotors. Two armed helicopters were approaching at high speed.
It was the military district.
·
Shen Zhuo began coughing low in his throat. Bai Sheng finally showed mercy and let go, holding him while looking him up and down. Then, as if nothing had happened, he showed a teasing smile.
“You all right, Supervisor? Look at you. Honestly, it breaks my heart. No wonder you said two S-Classes can’t stay in the same city back then. Turns out you were hiding a trump card like this. But it’s fine. I’m a broad-minded man. Come on, let me heal you first...”
Smack.
Shen Zhuo slapped Bai Sheng’s face sideways.
In truth, it was very light, but the air went terrifyingly quiet. After a long while, Bai Sheng turned his face back, pressing his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Oh? I cherished beauty and refused to kill you, and now you’re holding a grudge.”
“From this moment on, he’ll use every means possible to kill you.” Shen Zhuo panted, his voice cold. “Take care of yourself.”
He turned and stepped over the headless corpse, staggering toward the helicopter landing not far away. But after only a few steps, his choking coughs grew more and more spasmodic, more and more urgent. Bloody foam seeped through his fingers. Then he collapsed to one knee.
Chen Miao jumped down from the helicopter before it had fully landed, several military district personnel close behind him.
“Senior!”
“Supervisor!”
“What’s wrong, Supervisor?”
Bai Sheng sensed something was off. “Shen Zhuo?”
Shen Zhuo bent over and abruptly spat out a great mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs.
Everyone around them changed color at once. The military officer leaped up and sprinted wildly back toward the helicopter. “S-Someone! Call the Central Supervision Office!”
Blood poured from Shen Zhuo’s throat and even his nasal cavity, soaking through his uniform collar and into the dirt. He clutched his chest, his five fingers digging deep into the ground. Then, because of the extreme pain of his internal organs tearing apart, he tipped to one side.
“He was fine just now. What’s happening? He was just...”
Bai Sheng stopped abruptly. A chill shot into his bones, and he realized what it was.
Genetic-chain breakage.
The horrifying side effect caused by forcing himself up to S-Class. Just like Liu Sanji after second evolution.
Chen Miao rushed over. This underclassman, who was always impatient and loud, was now frighteningly calm. He took a ghostly blue injection from a refrigerated medical case and stabbed it directly into the back of Shen Zhuo’s cervical spine. Then he pushed another serum all the way into the artery of Shen Zhuo’s arm.
“It’s okay, Senior. It’s okay.” Chen Miao’s voice was steady, aside from the faint tremor at the end. “Anticipated side effect. Suppression success rate within ten minutes is as high as ninety-eight percent. You’ll be fine after sleeping.”
“...Too late,” Shen Zhuo gasped. “What they want is the HRG Plan. That Rong bastard got away.”
Chen Miao’s face changed violently. In that instant, he dropped the medical case.
“Effective immediately, the post of Supervisor of Shenhai City will be temporarily assumed by S-Class evolutionist Bai Sheng. Everyone is to obey Bai Sheng’s every command and deployment unconditionally. Additionally.”
Shen Zhuo closed his eyes as the world spun around him. His vocal cords had already torn, so every word carried blood in it, intermittent and slow amid the chaotic crowd.
Bai Sheng’s pupils constricted sharply. He heard Shen Zhuo rasp:
“If I die, delete all HRG Plan data immediately. Destroy the serum samples. Execute every senior researcher.”
“Leave no one alive.”