The soles of his shoes hit the dusty concrete without a sound.
The tall thug was busy taking a leak, humming a slurred tune to himself, completely lost in his alcohol-addled stupor.
Right as the tall guy finished up and prepared to shake off, Ross Vance moved.
The paring knife swept out from behind the man, its blade flashing cold in the faint streetlight from the mouth of the alley.
At the same time, Ross’s left hand reached around from the other side, gripping a thick cotton glove he had fished out of a trash can earlier that day.
Filthy and bulky, but perfect for a gag.
Right hand slashed the throat; left hand clamped the mouth.
Both movements occurred in a single fluid second.
The blade cleanly sliced through the thug’s windpipe.
The thick cotton glove smothered the agonizing scream before it could break out.
Blood spurted.
The tall guy’s body jerked rigid, a wet, muffled gurgle escaping his throat.
He began to thrash violently, flailing his arms in panic.
Ross clamped down with all his might, but the man was unexpectedly strong.
Even blitzed out of his mind, the raw muscle of a grown adult was more than a desk-bound nerd who spent all day typing papers could easily handle.
Ross was nearly thrown off balance, his head slamming back against the alley wall hard enough to make him see stars.
But he didn’t let go.
He jammed the paring knife half an inch deeper into the throat.
He couldn’t let go.
Let go, and he died.
The thug’s struggles grew weaker and weaker.
From violent thrashing to full-body tremors, and from tremors to feeble twitches, the whole ordeal lasted about thirty or forty seconds.
To a weakling like Ross, those thirty or forty seconds felt like thirty or forty minutes.
Ross felt the man’s body shift from rigid tension to limp dead weight, turning into an unresisting lump of meat.
And then, nothing.
Ross didn’t release his grip immediately.
He waited another ten seconds, ensuring the body was completely still, before slowly peeling away his left hand.
The cotton glove was soaked in a sickening mixture of blood and spittle, reeking of copper and rot.
The corpse slouched toward the ground.
Ross caught it before it could hit the pavement with a thud.
He dragged the dead weight down the alley toward a massive metal dumpster, hit instantly by a wave of foul, rotting stench.
In that moment, the stench actually brought a twisted sense of relief.
The worse it smelled, the less likely anyone would rummage through it.
He flipped the dumpster lid open, took a deep breath, and heaved the body up.
*Dead weight.* He had read the phrase a thousand times in novels, but now he finally understood what it truly meant.
A fully lifeless adult male was as heavy as a bag of concrete.
Bracing his knee against the side of the dumpster, Ross gritted his teeth and gave one final, powerful shove.
The body tumbled inside, landing on a pile of black trash bags with a dull thud.
Ross quickly grabbed nearby trash bags and piled them over the body.
Rotten leaves, discarded instant noodle cups, moldy bread—he dumped everything on top until the thug’s leather jacket and black combat boots were entirely hidden.
Once it was done, Ross didn’t linger for a single second.
He wiped his messy, bloody hands on his tattered overcoat, turned, and bolted.
He sprinted out of the alley.
Left, right, then left again—he deliberately picked dark, unlit streets free of cameras and pedestrians.
Caution was the key to survival.
Until he secured his first real trump card, the slightest mistake could cost him his life.
He ran for a full fifteen minutes, only stopping when his legs burned so badly he could barely lift them, finding himself in a completely unfamiliar neighborhood.
This area was near the Hudson River.
Not a single homeless person walked the deserted street, and the only sound was the occasional low blast of a cargo ship’s horn echoing from the distance.
The intense tens of seconds of struggle followed by the desperate sprint had pushed his out-of-shape body past its limits.
Only now did he notice an odd sensation he had ignored during the rush.
Heat.
It felt as though a furnace had been ignited in his chest, washing through every inch of muscle and bone.
Ross looked down at his hands.
The blood splatters on his palms had dried into dark red flakes.
Beneath his skin, something was pulsing.
A faint, almost imperceptible golden glow traced the network of his veins, spreading from his palms to his fingertips, then flowing back down to his wrists.
With every cycle, his body felt noticeably firmer and stronger.
The psionic seed.
When the thug breathed his last back in the alley, Ross had felt it.
The orb that had been softly throbbing in his chest had shuddered violently and burst open.
The energy collapsed inward before exploding into countless tiny specks of light that surged through his limbs and organs.
But his adrenaline had been spiking so hard, and his mind so consumed by the singular urge to run as far as possible, that he hadn’t noticed at all.
Now that the adrenaline was fading, the sensation was impossible to ignore.
“Is it…
activated?”
He clenched his fists.
Raw power.
It was as if a long-dormant switch inside him had been flipped.
Power surged back online, initializing a whole new system.
His senses felt heightened to an absurd degree.
Every whisper of the wind, the rhythmic lapping of the river against the embankment, the fading blast of the distant cargo ship horn, even the faint rustle of a rat foraging ten meters away in a trash pile—all flooded clearly into his ears.
“Damn, so this is psionics?”
Ross stood up and rolled his shoulders.
His joints popped with loud cracks, and his fatigue quickly dissolved, replaced by an indescribable lightness.
He closed his eyes, attempting to channel the power using the method implanted by the Emperor.
Truth be told, the method was both simple and complex.
The Emperor hadn’t gifted him some elaborate cultivation manual.
The ten-thousand-year-old corpse on the Golden Throne clearly lacked the patience to write an instruction manual for a forcibly conscripted mortal.
What He gave was more like pure instinct—like knowing how to blink or swallow without instruction.
So long as the desire was there, the body inherently knew what to do.
Ross focused, sinking his consciousness into his chest.
Where the psionic seed had shattered, an invisible fountainhead of psionic energy remained.
With every breath, a faint, warm current welled up from its depth.
He pushed the warm current outward, routing it past his shoulders, down his arms, and all the way into his fingertips.
Then he opened his eyes.
A faint golden light cloaked his hands.
It wasn’t a blinding glare, but a thin, almost translucent film of light clinging tight to his skin—like a pair of invisible gauntlets.
“Is this psionic reinforcement?”
*Time to test its power.*
He scanned his surroundings.
Across from him stood an abandoned brick wall.
Though the mortar between the bricks was flaking away, the wall itself looked solid enough, easily eight inches thick.
Ross walked up to the wall, took a deep breath, and concentrated the psionic energy into his right hand.
Then he threw a punch.
“BOOM—CRASH!”
The first sound was the heavy impact of his fist against the brick.
The second was the deafening roar of the wall collapsing.
The eight-inch-thick brick wall shattered as if blasted from within by explosives, sending brick shards and cement fragments flying in all directions.
Ross instinctively squinted.
As the dust cleared, he saw a hole the size of a washbasin gaping in the wall.
Through the breach, he could see the far side of the river.
Moonlight filtered through the jagged opening, illuminating Ross’s face.
He lowered his gaze to his right hand.
The psionic light still glowed soft and steady.
Aside from a dusting of red powder, his hand was completely unharmed.
He didn’t feel even a trace of pain.
“…Holy shit.”
He stared at the gaping hole for ten full seconds before slowly grinning.
His smile looked exceptionally bright under the glow of the golden energy.
“So…
I can punch straight through a wall now?”
Ross stared at his fist, excitement mounting.
He took several deep breaths to suppress the thrill and force himself back into a calm, pragmatic mindset.
Finally, in this hellhole crawling with heretics, he had gained the power to fight back.
While punching through a brick wall was far from top-tier power, it gave him a real baseline of confidence.
As long as he didn’t run into supervillains who leveled skyscrapers for fun, ordinary street thugs could no longer threaten his life.
He had successfully taken that crucial step from zero to one.
Now, only one thing remained.
Summoning.