Chapter 329: Accelerating Pace

City Center Plaza.

The Blood Moon turned this open area into a huge dark-red altar.

The fountain pool had long since dried up; two mutant corpses lay twisted on its bottom like wrung-out rags.

The stainless-steel city sculpture in the center of the plaza still stood, but its surface was covered with vein-like patterns that throbbed rhythmically in the red light.

Chen Shao stood directly beneath the sculpture.

His hair was neatly combed, the hem of his black windcoat lifted by the night wind, revealing the gray turtleneck underneath.

Apart from a few drops of someone else's blood spattered on his left cuff, he was spotless, as if he hadn't just walked out of a pile of corpses.

Two people lay prone at his feet.

They weren't kneeling; they had been pressed down.

The asphalt sank nearly ten centimeters where their bodies lay, as if an invisible giant hand had pinned two living people to the ground like thumbtacks.

A muffled crack of breaking ribs came from their flattened chests, mixed with the bubbling sound of air forced from their throats—like stepping on a water-filled plastic bag.

The one on the left was a man in his forties; his back clothing had been shredded, his spine's outline protruding from beneath the skin at an odd angle. His cheek pressed against the asphalt, one eye rolled upward, his mouth stretched to the limit, saliva and blood mingling as they drained out.

"Please... please..."

The one on the right was younger, with dyed red hair. He held out a few seconds longer than the middle‑aged man, both hands still clawing at the ground, three nail plates peeled back, scraping pale white scratches on the asphalt.

Chen Shao lowered his head and glanced at them.

He showed no particular expression; he simply looked.

It was no different from looking at two rats flattened by a car on the roadside.

"When the two of you had agreed to ambush me," Chen Shao said in a flat tone—so even it was unclear whether he was stating facts or passing a death sentence—"you probably don't know what happened to the last person who tried to strike at me."

"They all died in the most desperate, gruesome ways."

The middle‑aged man's wail cut off abruptly.

It wasn't that it had stopped.

He simply couldn't make a sound anymore.

Invisible psychic force poured down from his Heavenly Spirit Cover, crushing along the spinal cord to the coccyx, severing all nerve signals at their source. The middle‑aged man's body jerked twice, like a robot that lost power, then went completely still.

The red‑haired one, however, was still struggling.

He's young—tough to kill.

Chen Shao crouched, pressed his right index and middle fingers together, and lightly tapped the red‑haired man's occiput.

The motion was gentle, like stroking a cat.

Pfft.

The red‑haired man's head split open along the midline.

It wasn't an explosion; it was a precise split along the sagittal suture, dividing the head into left and right halves.

Skull fragments flung outward, carrying brain matter with them; the gray and white matter were clearly visible, hardly different from a medical school dissection specimen.

Clean. Neat. Even elegant.

Chen Shao rose, lowered his gaze to his fingertips— a small scrap of scalp clung there. He frowned, flicked it off, and wiped his hands.

Faint light glowed from the chests of the two corpses.

One was a pendant‑shaped orb—a silver chain linked to a teardrop‑shaped dark‑gold charm—slowly rising from the middle‑aged man's collapsed chest cavity.

The other was far stranger.

From the red‑haired man's stomach floated a pitch‑black finger that belonged to no living person—long‑jointed, its knuckles covered in fine scales, the nail a translucent gray with something flowing inside.

Divine Gift.

Two items.

Chen Shao reached out; the pendant and the black finger flew into his palm of their own accord. He gauged their weight, then turned and walked a few steps toward the plaza's edge.

Xu An.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

Barefoot, pallid‑skinned. The vicious scar sewn shut with black thread on his lip stood out especially stark under the blood‑moon light.

Xu An silently extended both hands.

Chen Shao placed the pendant and the black finger into them.

Keep them safe.

Xu An nodded, slipped the two items into his inner pocket, then retreated back into the shadows—making not a sound, his bare feet on the asphalt feeling like stepping on cotton.

Chen Shao pulled out his phone from his windcoat pocket.

On the screen, the radar interface of the Blood Moon game was running; red dots marking the holders of Divine Gifts were scattered unevenly across Jiang Hai City.

He counted them once.

He counted them again.

His finger halted at the edge of the screen.

There were six fewer than an hour ago.

He pulled down the timeline, his eyes quickly scanning the disappearance log. The six red dots had blinked out within the last forty minutes—three of them vanished almost instantly, intervals no more than two minutes; the other three lasted a bit longer but not over ten minutes.

—the weak ones are all dead.

Chen Shao returned the phone to his pocket, lifted his head, and swept his gaze over the surrounding ruins' skyline.

The red dots still blinking—each one backed by someone who was no pushover.

The true meat grinder had just been switched on.

He turned, the hem of his windcoat brushing over the congealed bloodstains on the ground.

Let's go.

Xu An's Shadow stuck to him, staying three steps behind.

The two vanished at the street corner on the other side of the Square, illuminated by the Blood Moon.

At the same time.

Four hundred twenty‑seven meters above the ground.

Jiang Hai Financial Center, rooftop.

Sai Men sat on the crossbar of the lightning rod, his legs swinging lazily like a person sunbathing on a park bench. Two buttons at the collar of his dark‑red shirt were undone. A black cane rested across his knees, and the Living Eyeball at its tip turned enthusiastically, as if watching a ball game.

Behind the two eye holes of the Gray Mask, crimson pupils stared downward.

Very far.

So far that the humanoids fighting each other on the ground were reduced to ant‑sized black dots. Yet each dot's facial expression was rendered in perfect detail to him.

"Almost done."

His voice drifted out from behind the Mask, carrying the pleasure of finishing an appetizer and preparing for the main course.

He slipped his right hand into the inner pocket of his suit and took out the pocket watch.

The brass‑colored case bore patterns that belonged to no known civilization. The dial had no numerals, only twelve positions each set with a tiny, glowing red gem.

Sai Men lifted the watch cover with his thumb, and his long index finger rested on the sole hand of the dial.

"Rules—now changes begin to occur."

He turned the hand ninety degrees counter‑clockwise.

Click.

The sound was faint—so faint that even the mutated raven perched on the nearby lightning rod was not startled.

But the effect was anything but light.

A colorless, formless wave radiated outward from the pocket watch as its center, spreading in all directions. It was neither wind nor sound nor anything a physical medium could carry. It was the Rules themselves being rewritten.

Speed—light speed.

That meant there was no concept of "transmission."

It either hadn't been emitted yet, or it had already covered the entire city. No intermediate state.

Jiang Yuan held the Spinal Sword in his left hand, while his right hand still clenched the Boning Knife seized from Yuyi Tufu.

His pocket phone flashed once. He planted the Spinal Sword into the ground, pulled out his phone and glanced at it.

On the screen, the red dots on the Radar interface flickered twice.

Then they all vanished.

It wasn't a gradual loss from signal interruption; the entire interface was formatted—map, coordinates, distance values, heat distribution—all layers disappeared simultaneously, replaced by an entirely black screen.

Liang Wen's phone also went black. He shook it twice to no effect, then tapped the back cover twice, "What the hell is this? Where's the Radar?"

Su Ming's expression didn't change much, but the hand tucked in his pocket tightened.

"Someone altered the underlying code," Su Ming said, his voice tightening, "The Radar isn't broken. It's the Seek‑Enemy rule that was erased directly from the game mechanics."

Jiang Yuan and Liang Wen both looked at him at the same time.

"Who?"

Su Ming gave no answer, because he didn't know either.

Suddenly, he felt it.

At his feet.

The ground was vibrating.

It wasn't the mechanical shear‑ and compressional waves of an earthquake, but a humming resonance that ran from inside out, with the entire spatial structure vibrating.

The three of them lifted their heads together.

Then they saw.

Outside the shattered window on the west side of the factory, toward the city skyline, a massive scarlet light column shot upward.

The column's diameter was estimated at over ten meters, its hue three shades richer than the Blood Moon, and it pierced the clouds from a ground coordinate they could not visually pinpoint, tearing a brighter hole in the already scarlet canopy above.

It wasn't just one.

Another one to the east.

Panic tinged Liang Wen's voice as he leaned against the pillar and edged toward the window, his face a shattered display of teenage bravado, "What is this? Fireworks? New Year's?"

It wasn't fireworks.

Su Ming's pupils reflected those scarlet light columns.

The source of each column—each one—was precisely nailed to the head of a strong individual possessing two or more Divine Gifts.

Coordinates exposed.

All.

Without discrimination.

The Seek‑Enemy rule was erased, replaced by a harsher substitute: the stronger you are, the brighter you shine. Everyone can see where you are.

Su Ming glanced at the top of his own head.

No light column.

The Time Marrow Worm inside him and the Spatial Force balanced each other, but after the worm's rebirth it remained unmarked. That, however, did not mean safety—

Because Jiang Yuan was also here.

Jiang Yuan also possessed a Divine Gift, and together with his teammates they emitted a massive light column that surged toward the sky.

In the distance.

In the city's southeast, the thickest, brightest scarlet column pulsed violently.

Directly beneath the column stood a youth whose right eye burned with a faint blue flame.

Lin Fan looked up at the red beam that pierced the heavens and earth atop his head, his expression not quite angry.

The energy of the four Divine Gifts churned inside him, and the corresponding light pillar was a ring thicker than anyone else's.

Within a radius of several kilometers, all the living predators were turning toward this side.

In the Shadow, Xin Yu's icy hair coiled around his forearm and tightened.

Lin Fan grinned.

"Come on."

He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up, shielding the glaring light column that shot out from his crown and the red shadow it cast on his face.

"It saves me from having to go looking for them one by one."