Chapter 380: Tempering

Yan Ming saw.

He, thirty meters away, across the shattered concrete and reinforced steel bars covering the ground, clearly saw Qin Zhixia standing up from Xiao Zhang's side.

There was blood on the blade.

Xiao Zhang didn't move.

The aura of that Crimson Crystal completely vanished.

Yan Ming's deep‑blue pupils contracted sharply.

He felt no anger, no sorrow, not even any extra emotional fluctuation.

He was merely using his abnormally cold, pathological brain to compute at speed—Xiao Zhang was his variable in this unfinished tower. A variable that could restrain, even defeat Qin Zhixia.

Now that variable has been reduced to zero.

And the white‑haired woman, though drenched in blood, her left arm hanging empty, her right leg visibly trembling—she had already turned her gaze.

Qin Zhixia's eyes, across the ruins and smoke, met Yan Ming's.

In those Crimson Phoenix Eyes there was no murderous intent.

More terrifying than murderous intent.

It was a pure "execution" that remained after life, death, pain, and cost had all been fully settled.

Yan Ming's right arm was still regenerating. On the cut surface that Su Ming had severed, pink granulation tissue surged wildly, white Bone Spikes poked out of the flesh like seedlings breaking ground. At normal speed, it would take only a few dozen seconds to regrow a full arm.

But he didn't have those few dozen seconds.

Su Ming circled around from the side.

The slender, unremarkable‑looking young man held an electric blade in his hand; his steps were not fast, but each footfall precisely sealed off Yan Ming's left‑flanking route.

Qin Zhixia was ahead, Su Ming at his side.

Yan Ming still clutched the Gavel in his left hand, its crimson sheen dulled by more than half as the domain collapsed. He knew the Absolute Court could not be re‑activated in such a short time.

He couldn't even last two minutes.

Yan Ming made a decision.

Without any warning, he turned his head and ran.

The hem of his deep‑blue suit billowed in the wind, the Windsor knot of his tie creasing for the first time as he sprinted. He leapt through a window. Falling from the seventh floor would be fatal for a normal person, but his mutated body expelled a dozen Bone Spikes from his legs at the moment of impact, embedding them into the outer wall and shedding most of the force.

Debris sprayed. Yan Ming used the third‑floor position to spring, flipped onto the ground, staggered two steps, then surged at full speed toward the depths of the building complex.

Su Ming chased after him.

He vaulted straight down from the window, landing silently. Then he accelerated; the Time Marrow Worm on the inside of his wrist glowed faintly, and the surrounding airflow warped visibly beside him.

But Yan Ming was far more troublesome than he had expected, just like the last escape.

The suit‑clad madman moved through the unfinished tower complex with the efficiency of a rat darting into a sewer—every corner, every broken wall, every exposed steel beam became a pivot point for him. His Bone Spikes could spring from any part of his body, embed in walls as springboards, and his speed only increased.

Su Ming chased for four blocks.

Yan Ming turned into an extremely narrow construction alley, flanked by airtight scaffolding and safety nets. Su Ming slowed, instinctively becoming wary—this terrain was perfect for an ambush.

He brushed his wrist.

The Time Marrow Worm still had just over forty percent energy left. The Absolute Court he had just used against Yan Ming had already consumed a lot; if the opponent had set a trap in the alley, he might not emerge unscathed.

Su Ming stopped.

He stood at the alley mouth, watching Yan Ming's silhouette vanish into the last darkness before dawn.

"...... You ran really fast."

He uttered two words expressionlessly, then turned and walked back.

There were more important matters to handle now.

When Su Ming returned to the seventh floor, Qin Zhixia was still standing beside Xiao Zhang's corpse.

Her white hair was fading.

The crystal‑clear white that resulted from being scorched by "Ignorance" dimmed inch by inch from the tips, while black hair regrew from the roots at a slow pace, like ink soaking into rice paper. The porcelain‑crack‑like white patterns on her skin also faded, extinguishing one by one along her arms, collarbones, and neck.

The translucent white of her pupils faded, and the originally cold Crimson Phoenix Eyes reappeared.

Then her knees gave way.

Her right leg could no longer bear weight. Blood from the penetrating wound still seeped, the Exoskeleton's red overload alarm flashed its last two times, then went completely dark.

Qin Zhixia knelt on one knee beside Xiao Zhang, her left shoulder sleeve hollow.

Su Ming walked over, sheathed the electric blade at his waist, and said nothing.

He wasn't good at comforting anyone. To be precise, he never intended to comfort anyone.

But he stood by Qin Zhixia for a while.

Dawn broke.

The eastern skyline was slowly suffused with a gray‑blue light. Morning rays filtered through the dense scaffolding of Yun Ding Tian Cheng's unfinished towers, casting crooked grids upon the cement floor riddled with bullet holes and blood.

Dense footsteps came from below.

The Special Forces arrived.

Deprived of Prophet Xiao Zhang's command, the Mutated Believers turned into a swarm of headless flies in the morning light. Without a unified order, some fled wildly, some curled up in corners bewildered, and a few, having lost sanity, began to bite each other.

Fully armed Special Forces pressed in from four directions simultaneously.

Suppression rounds, electromagnetic nets, high‑frequency vibration blades.

Standard eradication protocol, textbook‑like and efficient.

After forty‑seven minutes, the last Mutated Believer inside Yun Ding Tian Cheng was subdued.

The Gospel Church stronghold in Lingshui Shi ends here.

Su Ming stood at the seventh‑floor window, watching the Special Forces below load the remains of Mutated Entities into sealed containers. He pressed the Communicator at his left ear and switched the channel to an encrypted line.

"Lord Wei."

A brief electric hum sounded in the communicator.

"Hmm." A steady, elderly voice came from the other end.

"Target Xiao Zhang confirmed eliminated. Executor is Qin Zhixia," Su Ming's tone was no different from reciting a report, "Meanwhile, the Gospel Church stronghold in Lingshui Shi has been swept clean, crisis resolved. Target Yan Ming escaped during the engagement."

The communicator fell silent for a long while.

It lasted so long that Su Ming thought the signal had been cut.

"...... Good work."

Wei Gong's voice carried a quality that seldom appears. If it had to be described, it would be called solemn.

Su Ming gave no reply. He turned off the communicator, glanced back at Qin Zhixia still kneeling on the spot, hesitated for two seconds, ultimately said nothing, and turned to go downstairs to deal with the remaining mess.

Some matters do not require others to intervene.

A few days later.

Lingshui Shi. North Suburbs Cemetery.

The cemetery was quiet in the early morning. Mist clung to the ground, and a thin layer of dew settled on the tombstones.

Qin Zhixia walked along the gravel path.

She wore a crisp black uniform, every button fastened up to the topmost one. The left sleeve was empty, a safety pin neatly securing it to her waist.

In her right hand she carried a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.

She had picked them herself. The flower shop owner asked if she wanted a few yellow roses added, saying "the colors would look nicer that way." She shook her head.

"White is enough," she said.

She stopped in front of two adjacent tombstones.

Qin Zhixia knew whose name was on the left stone.

Zhou Weiguo.

Forty‑nine years old. Twenty‑seven years of police service. In life he most loved drinking two taels of white wine with peanuts at a roadside stall.

She also knew the right stone.

Xiao Zhang.

Twenty‑six years old. Four years of police service. Afraid of ghosts, but loved watching horror movies.

Qin Zhixia set the white chrysanthemums down, splitting the bouquet into two, one for each tombstone.

She said nothing.

She did not cry.

She stood before the stones for a long time. Wind blew from behind, lifting her freshly tied black high ponytail.

It was strange.

After that night, she felt an unprecedented clarity in her mind.

The questions that once troubled her—whether this world could still be saved, whether what she stood for was worth it, whether law and order were merely a joke—no longer entangled her.

It wasn't that she found an answer.

It was that the questions themselves had become unimportant.

Xiao Zhang said before dying, "If it's you now, if you can keep moving forward like this, you might truly succeed; this world may indeed be saved."

Then just keep going.

No reason is needed, no answer, not even a chance of victory.

Just walk.

She will become, and must become, that shepherd.

Qin Zhixia turned, stepping away from the cemetery.

Her stride was steady, even though she lacked a left arm and the exoskeleton on her right knee still emitted a faint mechanical whir; each footfall's rhythm remained exactly as before.

It was even a bit steadier.

Morning light leaked through the gaps in the clouds, illuminating her silhouette.

That silhouette was upright, sharp, clean.

Like a blade that had just been quenched.

——

A thousand miles away.

The tallest office building in a city, its top‑floor apartment.

On the desk before the floor‑to‑ceiling window lay an open medical journal, beside it a cup of steaming hot tea.

Chu Che sat in a leather chair by the window, his right index and middle fingers holding a fountain pen, the tip lightly tapping the air as if assessing a postoperative patient unseen.

In the void before him, the Weird Editor's translucent panel glowed.

The panel displayed replay footage of Lingshui Shi. Xiao Zhang's vital signs had dropped to zero, the Crimson Seed's active signal dissipated, Qin Zhixia's white‑hair form......

Interesting.

Chu Che lifted his hand and nudged his gold‑rimmed glasses.

The lenses reflected the surveillance footage on the screen of Qin Zhixia leaving the cemetery.

The woman who had lost an arm walked with a wind at her back, a blaze of familiar fire burning in her Crimson Phoenix Eyes.

It was not anger, not hatred.

It was conviction.

After being repeatedly crushed, melted, and reforged, the conviction finally solidified into an unbreakable belief.

Chu Che set the pen down, lifted the tea, took a sip, and a warm curve lifted the corner of his mouth.

That curve was very pleasant to see.

If someone were standing in front of him right now, they'd think this is the gentlest, most harmless smile in the world.

But if you get a little closer—close enough to see the eyes behind his lenses—you'll find that those eyes have no warmth at all.

Like an operating lamp.

Only light, no heat.

He says softly, like a chief surgeon commenting on wound healing during a post‑op ward round.

"This is... the exquisitely refined brilliance after tempering."

"Enough to become the protagonist of a story, the perfect new blood of this world."

He closes the editor panel, his gaze passing through the floor‑to‑ceiling window toward the city skyline shrouded in a grayish morning mist.

The sunrise is just beginning.