Last night, when her Rut Period struck, the name she murmured was Xie Ren.
When the suppressant failed to work, when she curled up trembling on the bed, it was still Xie Ren she called out for.
Sikong Nian released the handrail, turned, and strode toward the door.
He had a rough idea of Xie Ren’s mission location.
The abandoned industrial zone in the eastern part of the city.
That area, requisitioned by the empire and later left to decay, was one of the Dark Division’s frequently used mission sites.
Remote, desolate, and uninhabited—even a gunfight wouldn’t draw attention.
By the time Sikong Nian drove there, the sun had just fully risen.
The orange-red sunlight bathed the rust-stained abandoned factory buildings.
He didn’t notice that about two hundred meters behind him, a small figure was struggling to follow his trail.
Sikong Sui was wearing the same school uniform from yesterday, with a dark jacket over it.
Her nape was still covered with gauze. Sikong Nian’s temporary mark needed time to heal, so she had concealed it with gauze and sprayed a thick layer of pheromone-disguising spray over it.
She had to find out Xie Ren’s mission location—otherwise, she couldn’t complete her task and return home!
So she followed.
By the time Sikong Nian found Xie Ren, the mission had already begun.
Xie Ren stood on the second-floor platform of an abandoned factory building, the morning light shining from behind him.
Today, he was dressed in black combat gear, the tight fit outlining his lean, muscular frame.
Two short blades were sheathed at his waist, a holster strapped to the outside of his thigh, and a concealed weapon belt wrapped around his calf.
He looked like a polished blade—sharp, dangerous, and devoid of any excess emotion.
His target was a defected agent who had been on the empire’s wanted list for years, now cornered by Xie Ren in a dead-end of the factory.
The man was around forty, burly, with a vicious scar running diagonally from his forehead to his jaw.
He exuded a thick, decaying Alpha pheromone.
In his hand was a modified energy gun, its muzzle still smoking.
The shot he had just fired landed less than ten centimeters from Xie Ren’s feet, burning a charred crater into the concrete floor.
“Blood Rose, the empire’s loyal dog. Do you know how many of the people you’ve killed were innocent?”
Xie Ren didn’t answer.
His expression remained unchanged, not even a blink.
His right hand was already resting on the short blade at his waist, his entire body in a state of poised stillness, ready to erupt at any moment.
The man took a step back, his back pressed against the cold wall. There was no way out, yet his smile deepened. “You’re just a blade, a blade without feelings. The empire tells you to kill, and you kill without even asking why—because you have no heart!”
Before his words fully faded, Xie Ren moved.
Too fast to see.
In the blink of an eye, he had darted from the edge of the platform to right in front of the man.
The sound of the short blade leaving its sheath and the whistle of its swing through the air came almost simultaneously—a silvery arc slicing through the air, aimed straight for the man’s throat.
But this man was no ordinary defected agent.
He was a former senior agent of the empire’s Dark Division, Xie Ren’s senior, someone who knew all of Xie Ren’s combat styles and habits.
He dodged sideways just as Xie Ren’s blade was about to touch his skin, simultaneously drawing a short dagger from his waist with his right hand and thrusting it backward toward Xie Ren’s ribs.
The two were locked in a fierce struggle.
Sikong Nian arrived just in time to witness the scene.
The two were locked in a deadlock, neither able to gain the upper hand anytime soon.
Sikong Nian’s hand rested on the gun at his waist, hesitating whether to intervene.
Xie Ren disliked others interfering with his missions, but if the situation spiraled out of control, he couldn’t just stand by and watch his good friend get hurt.
In that moment of hesitation, the man caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye.
A flash of ruthless determination flickered in his eyes as he abruptly hurled the short dagger in his hand toward Xie Ren’s face. While Xie Ren dodged to the side, the man had already drawn an energy gun from his waist, its barrel aimed directly at the direction where Sikong Nian was hiding.
Xie Ren’s pupils contracted sharply.
He saw where the gun was pointed, but before he could even shout a warning, he lunged toward Sikong Nian.
But he was too slow.
Sikong Sui, appearing out of nowhere, threw herself in front of Sikong Nian.
The energy beam struck her left shoulder.
The force of the impact sent her body flying backward, crashing into Sikong Nian’s arms.
Her pupils reflected Sikong Nian’s face, twisted with terror, his lips slightly parted as if trying to say something, but no words came out.
Blood gushed from the wound on her left shoulder, flowing like a faucet turned wide open, instantly staining half of her school uniform crimson.
“Suisui!” Sikong Nian’s voice changed, sounding nothing like his own.
At the same moment the gunshot rang out, Xie Ren’s short blade pierced the man’s heart.
His movements were fiercer and faster than usual, the sound of the blade sinking into flesh dull and abrupt. The man didn’t even have time to scream before his body went limp.
Xie Ren didn’t spare him a glance.
He had already turned and rushed toward the blood-soaked figure in Sikong Nian’s arms.
Sikong Sui lay in Sikong Nian’s embrace, her face as pale as paper, the last trace of color fading visibly from her lips.
Her eyes were half-open, her pupils slightly unfocused, but she was still conscious. She could see her brother’s face, feel his hands trembling, his entire body shaking.
She could also see Xie Ren running toward her from a distance, his face finally showing emotion.
It was as if something that had always held his world together had, in that moment, collapsed completely.
Sikong Sui almost felt like laughing. How could she have been so foolish as to think she could block a blade with her bare hands…
“Suisui! Suisui! Look at me, look at me!”
Sikong Nian pressed his hand against the wound on her left shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding.
He turned and shouted at Xie Ren, “Call an ambulance! Now!”
Xie Ren had already taken out his communicator, his fingers flying across the screen, but his hands were trembling too…
It was the first time Sikong Nian had ever seen Xie Ren’s hands shake so violently.
The empire’s top assassin, who killed without hesitation, the Blood Rose who never faltered, never made mistakes, never panicked—now his fingers trembled so badly he could barely tap the screen.
“The nearest hospital, fifteen minutes.”
“That’s too long!” Sikong Nian roared. “She can’t wait fifteen minutes!”
Sikong Sui’s consciousness was fading bit by bit.
She could hear her brother and Xie Ren’s voices, but they were growing farther and farther away.
“System, am I going to die?”
[Don’t worry, you won’t.]
Before her consciousness completely sank into darkness, she heard one last voice.
“Let me handle this.”
Then, a pair of slender, well-defined hands appeared in her blurred vision.
Those hands were pale and clean, without any unnecessary adornments.
Sikong Sui wanted to look up to see who these hands belonged to, but she no longer had the strength.
Darkness engulfed her completely like a tide, and she fainted.
Pei Sichen was passing through this abandoned industrial area on his way to the academy. He had originally intended to visit Xie Ren but caught the faint scent of blood.
The scent of blood was extremely faint—so faint that anyone else would have overlooked it. But Pei Sichen was no ordinary person.
He was the empire’s finest surgeon, an SSS-level Alpha, and the sole heir of the Pei family.
He possessed a sense of smell far beyond that of ordinary people, along with an extraordinary sensitivity to blood.
He stopped his car, and when he entered the factory building, the scene before him finally caused a crack in his perpetually unchanging expression.
Sikong Nian knelt on the ground, holding Sikong Sui, who was covered in blood, while Xie Ren crouched beside them, his fingers trembling as they hovered over his communicator.
Sikong Sui’s school uniform was soaked through with blood, transformed from white into a shocking dark red.
All color had drained from her face.
It took Pei Sichen only half a second to assess the injury—an energy gun.
A penetrating wound, affecting the left scapular region. Fortunately, it had not directly struck the heart or major arteries.
Unfortunately, the blood loss had already exceeded the safe threshold. Without immediate treatment, she would go into shock within ten minutes, and within twenty minutes, she would…
He didn’t allow himself to finish the thought.
“Let me handle this,” he said.
Both top-tier Alphas looked up at him simultaneously. In that moment, both had shed all pretense and armor, laid bare before Pei Sichen.
Pei Sichen didn’t spare them another glance.
He had already crouched down, pressing his hands against Sikong Sui’s wound. His slender fingers precisely located the bleeding point and applied firm pressure.
“Find a clean room with sufficient lighting and a flat surface.”
Xie Ren froze for a second, then stood up and rushed deeper into the factory building.
Thirty seconds later, he returned. “There’s an office on the second floor. The table is large enough.”
Pei Sichen took Sikong Sui from Sikong Nian’s arms.
The office on the second floor had been abandoned for years.
Xie Ren had swiftly cleared the tabletop and laid down a sterile cloth from the emergency kit he carried.
Pei Sichen placed Sikong Sui on the table and retrieved the emergency kit he kept in his car.
“You two, step outside.”
The procedure lasted forty minutes.
Pei Sichen used forceps to grasp the tissue around the wound, carefully probing the bullet trajectory.
Energy gun wounds differed from ordinary gunshot wounds—they weren’t simple penetrations but complex injuries caused by high-energy beams burning through tissue.
On the surface, it might appear as just a small hole, but the internal tissue damage could be far more extensive, requiring meticulous exploration, debridement, and hemostasis.
His forceps touched a small piece of tissue near Sikong Sui’s Gland.
The structure of that tissue was completely different from that of a typical Alpha Gland.
An Alpha’s Gland should be dense, fibrous, and almost devoid of blood vessels.
However, Sikong Sui’s gland tissue was soft, plump, and rich with blood vessels, presenting a healthy, vibrant shade of pink—that was…
An Omega’s gland.
An SSS-grade Omega’s gland.
Pei Sichen’s fingers paused for a moment.
He raised his head and glanced at Sikong Sui lying on the table.
Her face was still pale, but it looked slightly better than before, and a faint trace of color had begun to return to her lips.
His gaze lingered on her face for two seconds before he withdrew it, focusing once more on the wound.