Chapter 327: Shadow Lord and Su Ming

The iron sheet gate of the Abandoned Factory in the North Suburbs hung crooked, its hinges long rusted through, and it creaked whenever the wind blew.

Jiang Yuan stepped over a pool of still‑liquid black blood at the doorway; something stuck to his shoe soles, but he didn't look down.

No need to look.

All the way here, he'd stepped on things ten times more disgusting than this.

The scene inside the factory made his steps falter for a beat.

On the ground lay the wreckage of seven or eight Mutants, some sliced clean at the waist, white smoke still curling from the cross‑sections;

Others had their heads twisted into knots, spinal columns jutting out from the back of the neck, resembling broken Reinforced Steel Bars.

The air was thick with the mingled scent of iron rust and rotting flesh.

Liang Wen leaned against a rusted pillar, his black Windcoat torn in several places, exposing a torso wrapped in bandages.

The patterned Fingerless Gloves were soaked with dried blood, indistinguishable as his or someone else's.

His complexion was at its worst.

It wasn't the pallor of injury but a decay that seeped from within—sunken eye sockets, protruding cheekbones, a few silver strands sprouting at the temples. A man in his twenties looking as exhausted as a forty‑year‑old.

Yet the moment he saw Jiang Yuan, he forced out a textbook, over‑the‑top grin.

"Yo, Shadow Apostle—"

"Enough," Jiang Yuan sighed, cutting him off. "Your complexion looks like someone who's been lying in a morgue for three days."

Liang Wen's smile froze for a fraction of a second, then brightened even more: "What kind of words are those? I call it the price of the dark."

Jiang Yuan ignored him.

Because his attention had been completely drawn to the person at the other end of the factory.

In the corner.

In the dim light, a youth in a plain gray hoodie squatted beside a Mutant corpse, clutching a torn scrap of cloth of unknown origin, slowly wiping the blood from his fingers.

He wiped meticulously, running his hand through every fingertip crevice, even scraping the dark red under the nail.

That detail made Jiang Yuan's spine stiffen for a moment.

It wasn't because the action itself was Weird.

It was because it was too ordinary.

The whole factory was littered with wreckage, the air reeked of blood, yet this man squatted by the pile of corpses wiping his hands, his expression as relaxed as someone washing up after a lunch break.

The surrounding Mutant fragments that could drive an ordinary person to a mental break seemed to him no different from fallen leaves on the ground.

Jiang Yuan's pupils narrowed slightly.

He'd fought many battles: the Weird Domain of Saint John Hospital, the Spider-like humanoid nest in Chicago, the frontal clash with Chen Shao in Anhe City.

Those experiences gave him a reliable instinct—judging whether someone is dangerous doesn't require seeing a drawn blade, only observing their stress response in a blood‑soaked setting.

It's the ordinary who get scared.

Those who can hold back vomit are the trained.

And those who skip the stress response altogether are either battle‑hardened veterans or—

something more terrifying than death itself.

Su Ming looked up.

His gaze collided with Jiang Yuan's.

They stared blandly for less than a second; Su Ming shifted his eyes away first and kept wiping his fingers.

If it were someone else, they might think he was just a slightly braver survivor.

Jiang Yuan didn't think so.

His intuition was sounding the alarm.

The feeling was concrete, down to the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, the soles of his feet tingling, like stepping on a heated radiator and getting a shock.

The last time this reaction appeared was back in Anhe City when facing Chen Shao.

Of course, the opponent's strength hadn't reached Chen Shao's level yet.

But if this momentum continues......

Almost subconsciously.

Under Jiang Yuan's feet, the Shadow moved.

It wasn't a natural play of light; it was a deliberate, aggressive writhing.

The shadow spread outward from his shoe soles, clinging silently to the floor, like a tide receding in reverse; its black edge raced along floor cracks, crossing wreckage and the rust‑spotted industrial machinery bases, seeping toward Su Ming.

It wasn't an attack.

It was a probe.

The shadow was sentient. Whatever it touched, Jiang Yuan could sense—material, temperature, vital signs, even whether the other carried Anomalous Power—all fed back through the shadow's tactile sense.

More precise than any detector.

The shadow slid silently across the floor, less than two meters from Su Ming.

One‑point‑five meters.

One meter.

Su Ming stopped wiping his hands.

He didn't look up. He tightened his grip on the rag, then released. His fingertips dangled from his knees in a relaxed posture, relaxed to an abnormal degree.

Half a meter.

Jiang Yuan felt it.

His shadow sent back an extremely odd tactile feedback—the space ahead was off. Not a physical barrier, but the very void itself was deforming.

Within three meters of Su Ming, the area was folding inward at a rate almost invisible to the naked eye.

The crack lines on the ground showed an angular deviation. A piece of rubble lying at the edge of that area had its surface dust pattern twist slightly, as if viewed through a layer of water.

Then came time.

When Jiang Yuan's shadow advanced to a point three steps from Su Ming, its speed visibly slowed. It wasn't blocked by anything; the flow of the shadow itself became sluggish, like a fast‑forward video suddenly switched to half speed.

The shadow tide was forcibly halted half a step away.

Couldn't get in.

Jiang Yuan's pupils twitched slightly.

Time and space. Two utterly different rule‑forces acted simultaneously, blending together without any sense of dissonance.

In the corner, Su Ming finally lifted his head.

This time he didn't look away. His eyes held no provocation, no hostility, but certainly no friendliness either—just a cold scrutiny.

The distortion in the surrounding air intensified a bit.

Jiang Yuan's shadow beneath his feet began to churn.

The air temperature between them dropped, not due to anomalous power‑induced cold, but because the pure pressure from two top‑tier combatants facing off was squeezing every molecule in that space.

The shattered glass remaining in the factory began to tremble.

The rusted iron frame emitted a creaking groan.

Right at this brink of explosion——

"No—is—it?!"

A hoarse cry, severely lacking in vital energy but with a pitch pushed ridiculously high, yanked both of them out of their standoff.

Liang Wen came running, rolling and crawling from behind the pillar.

Saying he "charged" might not be accurate. It was more like a critical patient who had just been taken off life support in the ICU, propping up his two trembling legs with adrenaline and sheer will, shuffling awkwardly between them in a posture hard to watch.

"Stop!" Liang Wen staggered twice, nearly falling, desperately steadying his balance, his voice raised in a lament: "How can allies of the Abyss slaughter each other before dawn?"

His weak‑voiced echo reverberated through the factory.

Ally——friend——friend——

It stayed quiet for about three seconds.

Su Ming spoke first, his tone flat as a weather report: "If your leg keeps shaking, I'm afraid you'll do the splits right where you stand."

Liang Wen's left leg was indeed swinging. Standing on one leg, given his internal organs' wear comparable to a forty‑ or fifty‑year‑old, was a serious overexertion for him.

He lowered that stance, both feet back on the ground, but still kept his arms outstretched, blocking the middle.

"Jiang Yuan, hear me out——"

Liang Wen turned to Jiang Yuan, unusually dropping his melodramatic tone. His voice lowered and he spoke quickly.

"This is Su Ming. He survived before the Blood Moon Descent, having been conscripted by Lei Yu. Before Lei Yu left, he told him to stay with the unit."

When the name Lei Yu was spoken, Jiang Yuan's expression changed.

He knew of Lei Yu's sacrifice; Wei Gong had reported it beforehand.

"I saw what happened afterward with my own eyes." Liang Wen fished a thermal cup from his pocket, unscrewed it, took a sip to wet his throat, and continued: "At the crossroads battle, he was forcibly fused with a Divine Gift—not by his own choice. Lei Yu detonated the thermite charge to protect him."

Jiang Yuan did not respond right away.

He glanced at Su Ming.

Su Ming had already stood up, tossed the dirty rag aside, shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets, and leaned expressionlessly against the wall.

Like a passerby waiting for a bus.

The only part of him that didn't look like a passerby was the newly healed skin below his right knee. It was pink as a baby's, creating a stark contrast with the surrounding normal skin—a trace of the wound that had healed through.

Lei Yu died to protect him.

Jiang Yuan's shadow beneath his feet slowly retracted, reshaping into the outline of a normal person.

He didn't apologize, and Su Ming didn't press the matter. They both silently let the probing clash pass.

"Situation." Jiang Yuan said only those two words.

Liang Wen leaned against the pillar, spending three minutes synchronizing the current situation inside the city: the distribution of Divine Gifts, the movements of all factions, and Lei Yu's squad loss list—all compressed into dry data and coordinates, which he reported in full.

Su Ming never interrupted, just listened while leaning against the wall, occasionally shifting his foot to change his weight.

Intelligence exchange complete.

Jiang Yuan walked to the center of the factory's open space, reaching his right hand behind him.

He bore the extraordinarily heavy containment box, which he had not set down since entering. The black casing's paint was scratched in several places, and the metal hinges showed clear impact marks—not from transport bumps, but from something inside striking outward.

"Bang!"

He lifted the containment box with one hand and slammed it hard onto the concrete floor.

The whole factory shuddered, and a layer of rusty ash fell from the corrugated iron roof overhead.

From inside the box came a low, metallic hum—like a sealed sword restless in its sheath.

Spinal Sword.

A vicious weapon forged from Ouyang Feng's lingering resentment—something even Wei Gong dared not let into the storage vault—now lay pressed beneath Jiang Yuan's hand.

Liang Wen's eyebrow twitched.

Su Ming remained expressionless, but the fingers tucked in his pocket clenched.

Jiang Yuan patted the box's lid, and the humming inside fell silent.

"From now on," he said, his voice not loud but unusually clear in the empty factory, "I'm taking full command of the Divine Gift recovery operation in Jiang Hai City."

"Wei Gong's intention."

Liang Wen spread his hands indifferently: "Fine, Lord Shadow, what about me?"

"Your job is to stay alive."

"...... You say that like I'm about to collapse at any moment."

Jiang Yuan didn't pick up the conversation.

He turned his head to look at Su Ming.

The two exchanged a glance.

Su Ming was the first to break the silence, his voice lazy, as if just woke up: "Don't look at me like that; I'm one of you now, the kind that gets a paycheck."

Jiang Yuan stared at him for two more seconds.

"Let's go."

He opened the containment box on the ground, took out the Spinal Sword, held it in his hand, and walked outside.

Behind him, Liang Wen muttered, "The Child of the Abyss never needs rest," limping as he followed.

Su Ming was the last to move.

He glanced at the mutant corpses littering the ground, then at his own fingers, which he had just wiped clean.

Then he slipped his hands back into his pockets, stepped over the gravel and bloodstains, and caught up with the two ahead.

Outside the factory, the red moon's light shone through gaps in the clouds, stretching the three shadows long.

The three shadows overlapped, extending in the same direction.

In the distance, the city's outline wavered in the bloody light. On the radar map, several red dots were still blinking.