Chapter 447: Strange Tale Tide

Su Ming stared at the last few frames on the surveillance wall; before the Blood Mist swallowed the camera, he counted them.

Seven pairs.

Fourteen pairs.

Twenty-six pairs.

Red eyes.

More than one order of magnitude beyond what was expected.

The Special Forces member in the surveillance room was still pounding the keyboard trying to restart the signal, while Su Ming had already kicked the chair aside and walked out.

"Stop fixing it."

His voice was soft, but all six people in the surveillance room froze.

"That's not signal interference. It's a Strange Tale Tide."

When he finished those three words, the floor-to-ceiling window on the First Floor of the villa exploded.

It didn't shatter.

Instead, the whole pane of tempered glass was pulverized by a giant hand made of seven or eight severed arms from the outside, turning it to powder; the debris, mixed with rainwater and blood foam, swept into the hall, instantly slashing three cuts into Chang Jianping's Tang suit cuffs.

The old man let out a scream and rolled from the sofa onto the floor.

When Su Ming burst out of the surveillance room, he saw Liang Wen already standing in the hall.

The black Windcoat's hem fluttered in the night wind, the long sword was drawn, and dark violet patterns spread across the blade.

"Where are those wedge nails you set?" Liang Wen asked at breakneck speed.

Su Ming looked down briefly.

The first wedge nail driven into the floor had its rune on the nail head cracked into a spiderweb pattern, its faint glow resembling a flattening waveform on a cardiac monitor.

"Can't hold it," Su Ming said, "The concentration on the other side exceeds the estimated upper limit. Those aren't loose troops; they're packaged. B Ji Strange Tale spliced into a cluster, and the local intensity has already reached the A Ji threshold."

"How many?"

"At least thirteen groups."

Liang Wen whistled.

"Nice guy, buy one get thirteen, huh? That old forensic doctor Zhang Yuanqing is generous enough."

Before he could finish, the second window was destroyed.

A sphere woven from rotting entrails and broken bones slammed into the living room, toppling the coffee table, bouncing twice on the floor before breaking apart. The creature that crawled out had no head; its neck stump was covered with dense teeth, chewing the flesh that fell from its own body.

Chang Jianping was so frightened he could no longer form a complete sentence.

"You, you—this is protection—"

Su Ming didn't look at him.

Liang Wen also didn't look at him.

Liang Wen was looking at the doorway.

The villa's main door was sealed by four Containment-level anchor bolts, its panel coated with three layers of suppressive paint. Yet at this moment, the slit in the center of the door was leaking red light outward.

Like a sun rising from underground.

Liang Wen walked over.

The Containment Object compass spun wildly, its needle whirring until it snapped in two with a "pop". Su Ming saw Liang Wen's finger joints tighten around the sword, but his stride didn't slow.

"Old man Chang," Liang Wen said without turning his head.

Chang Jianping lay on the ground trembling.

"If you die tonight, the Zhang Yuanqing you eliminated three years ago will have died in vain."

Liang Wen suddenly laughed.

"So you'd better not die; if you die, no one will overturn your case—turn it over for the whole world to see what good deeds you actually did."

At that instant, the main door was blasted open.

The iron door panel was flattened into an iron disc and embedded into the load‑bearing wall at the end of the corridor. What surged in from outside wasn't wind or rain, but a dense crimson Blood Mist, packed with amalgamated forms of all shapes.

Some walked on six legs, their knees bent outward.

Some had no torso, only a face stretched two meters wide, crawling forward using their jaw.

Some were cloaked entirely in wet black hair, with gaps in the hair housing dozens of constantly blinking eyes.

When Su Ming saw this scene from behind Liang Wen, the hairs on his back stood up.

Not from fear.

It was a kind of aesthetic discomfort.

Too many. Too dense. Like dumping an entire truckload of human parts into a blender and hitting the start button.

Liang Wen slung the sword over his shoulder.

"I shall say a word."

His voice rang clear amid the roar of the Strange Tale.

"Tremble, under the Dark-Blooded King's black flame—"

The six‑legged amalgam at the front lunged forward.

Liang Wen swung his sword down.

Where the blade passed, dark violet flames poured along the cut into the amalgam's body; the Strange Tale emitted a shriek unlike any creature's, its torso burning in half at the waist, the flesh evaporating before it could fall.

"—turn to ash!"

Second one. Third one. Fourth one.

Liang Wen never stepped back, standing at the center of the doorway; the long sword spun in his hand leaving afterimages. Each slash carried dazzling dark fire, the Strange Tale's limbs were flung into the air, and the corridor's tiles cracked and burst under the black flame.

But Su Ming saw it all clearly.

Liang Wen retreats.

It's not his steps that are retreating. It's his blade speed that is decreasing.

He split the fifth amalgam in half, but the flames couldn't burn through. The half‑rotting body struggled, lunged at his calf, and he kicked it aside with a side foot.

When the sixth one charged, a wisp of Blood Mist spewed from Liang Wen's nasal cavity.

The price of Time Reversal still bears down on him.

But he doesn't stop.

"I can still kill ten thousand!"

Su Ming knows he's bragging.

He also knows that Liang Wen knows he's bragging.

But this man insists on bragging.

On the other side of the hall, Su Ming snatched the last yellowed plaque from the containment crate, flicked his wrist to trigger its residual rules, and the plaque turned into a pallid light curtain that shrouded the corner where Chang Jianping stood.

It's not to protect that old thing.

It's to prevent the prey from dying.

Su Ming drew a tactical short blade, rushed into the Corridor to cooperate with Liang Wen in harvesting the scattered amalgams spilling in. Neither he nor Liang Wen possessed the superhuman power of other Core Captains; they relied solely on spatial calculations and predictions of the urban legend's behavior, cutting joints and prying cores in the gaps like threading a needle.

Yet the tide of urban legends keeps surging.

The Blood Mist outside the door thickened.

More red eyes lit up.

At the same time.

The slum basement.

Xu An's "Correction Place" domain has fully unfolded.

All four walls vanished, replaced by an endless punitive execution ground; the floor was littered with rusted iron fences, the ceiling hung with trembling amber bulbs. The air reeked of old desks mixed with disinfectant.

Within this domain, all external forces are nullified.

Weapons fail. Superhuman abilities are suppressed.

Only the Rules operate.

Only the Red Wood Ruler adjudicates.

Xu An raised the Red Wood Ruler, and the black liquid flowing over its surface began to coalesce into characters.

Those characters are the charges.

Zhang Yuanqing's charges.

Murder. Dismemberment. Using an urban legend as a weapon to exact revenge. Whatever the cause, the result is—he killed someone.

Members of the Spade Squad retreated to the edge of the domain; they have witnessed Xu An's executions and have never missed.

The rules of the Correction Place are simple.

Conviction. Sentencing. Execution.

No defense lawyer. No appeal channel.

The moment the Ruler falls is the final judgment.

Zhang Yuanqing stood at the center of the execution ground, watching Xu An approach slowly.

He doesn't panic.

He even smiles.

That kind of smile made several veterans of the Spade Squad feel a chill down their spines—not arrogance, not madness, but the relaxed feeling of a student who has finished his exam paper as the proctor approaches.

"A Rules domain," Zhang Yuanqing rubbed his fingers, his tone sounding like a discussion of a forensic report's format. "Interesting. Closed space, one‑way trial, unavoidable. Very cleverly designed."

Xu An says nothing.

A person whose mouth is sewn shut doesn't need to speak.

The Ruler is lifted over his head; the black liquid drips down the ruler, drawing viscous threads in the air.

The trial initiates.

Zhang Yuanqing extends his right hand.

His five fingers spread, palm up.

Something appears in the air.

Invisible, yet everyone present feels it—a faint tremor, as if someone sliced the underlying code of reality.

A layer of scarlet light flashes in Zhang Yuanqing's pupils.

What they don't know is that it's a hallmark of the editor's sub‑authority activation.

"Your domain," he says, his voice low yet echoing unnaturally in the Correction Place. "Essentially a closed execution protocol."

Xu An's Ruler slashes down.

Zhang Yuanqing clenches his fist.

"—Cut with the precision of a scalpel."

The iron fence floor of the Correction Place cracks open.

It's not shattered.

It's edited.

The rust‑stained bars seem grasped at both ends by an invisible hand and pulled apart—structures deform, logic collapses, and the iron fence turns into meaningless twisted metal lines.

Xu An's Ruler hovers mid‑air.

He looks down as the domain beneath his feet is being deleted and rewritten line by line, a muffled groan issuing from his sewn‑shut lips.

Then the ceiling.

Those shaking light bulbs exploded one after another, but the fragments did not fall; they floated in the air, rearranged into another geometric shape. The Correction Place's rules were deconstructed by external force at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"You—" a member of the Spade Group began to speak.

His voice was cut off.

Because Xu An spurted blood.

The blood was not flowing from a wound. It seeped from his pores.

Rebound of the domain.

The Correction Place and Xu An's life were bound; the domain being torn apart was equivalent to his body being torn apart.

Dozens of blood gashes opened simultaneously on Xu An's body—arm, chest, thigh—the incisions were so neat they were hair‑raising, deep enough to see the white bone.

As if an invisible scalpel were performing a live dissection.

Xu An dropped to one knee.

The Red Wood Ruler slipped from his hand, bounced twice on the ground, and rolled to Zhang Yuanqing's feet.

Zhang Yuanqing looked down at the boy whose mouth was sewn shut, and raised his right hand that glimmered with a sheen.

He pressed his five fingers together, pointing at Xu An's throat.

A beam thinner than a hair flickered from his fingertips.

"Don't blame me," Zhang Yuanqing said lightly. "You shouldn't have come looking for me."

The beam tightened.

The skin at Xu An's Adam's apple sank into a shallow groove.

One millimeter deeper lay the carotid artery.

Everyone in the Spade Group drew their guns at the same time, but within the residual rules of the Correction Place, the triggers would not pull.

Just as the beam was about to cut into the vessel—

The concrete slab overhead exploded without any warning.

It wasn't a rupture.

It was ground into powder by a telekinetic force far beyond physical limits.

Several tons of rubble were pushed aside by that force, forming a circular passage as if Moses had split the sea.

Rainwater poured down the passage.

A gaze also poured down with it.

A gaze cold to the marrow.

Zhang Yuanqing looked up.

At the top of the passage, against the backdrop of night and torrential rain, stood a man with a slicked‑back hairstyle.

His left eye was a normal black pupil.

In his right eye swirled a scarlet, cracked Demon Eye.