Chapter 470: Choosing Cooperation

Dawn was breaking.

The downpour had stopped at an unknown time. A slit was torn in the eastern cloud layer, and a grayish light seeped through, striking the ruins of the hillside villa, illuminating the scattered bones and black blood on the ground with stark clarity.

The air was filled with an indefinable odor—rust, earth, charred building material, and the sour, fishy stench that lingers after a ghost story fades—blended together, making anyone nauseous.

The Special Forces were rummaging through the wreckage.

No one spoke.

Occasionally someone moved a concrete slab, revealing half‑crushed combat boots beneath, or a severed hand still clutching a weapon. They lifted the remains gently, as if cradling a baby. The living lined up their dead comrades and covered their faces with mud‑splattered coats.

Su Ming crouched beside a broken stone pillar and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

The pack was crushed, and two of the cigarettes were snapped. He selected a relatively intact one, placed it between his lips, and had to press the lighter three times before it sparked. The first drag burned his eyes red.

He glanced to the side.

Chen Shao leaned against the opposite side of the same pillar, his hair a total mess, a few strands stained with clotted blood hanging over his forehead. His suit retained only one sleeve; the other half was missing. The crimson of his Demon Eye had dimmed to almost the same as a normal eyeball.

Su Ming handed the pack over.

Chen Shao turned his head, his gaze landing on the crushed pack. He paused for two seconds.

Then he pulled out a cigarette and put it to his mouth.

Su Ming passed the lighter. Chen Shao leaned in a bit.

The two stood on opposite sides of the pillar, each with a cigarette, neither looking at the other.

The morning light brightened gradually. Smoke still rose from beneath the ruins.

"You said you wanted to talk earlier," Chen Shao spoke first, his throat hoarse as sandpaper on a metal pipe.

"Mm."

"Talk about what?"

Su Ming flicked off the ash, not hurrying to answer.

In the distance, Liang Wen was finally extracted whole from beneath the rubble. The guy lay amid the broken stones, his black windcoat shredded into strips, only one fingerless glove remaining, yet his mouth was still moving, weakly murmuring to the rescuing Special Forces, "Take it easy... my flesh is near its limit... don't touch the third rib on the left, that one is broken..."

The Special Forces lifted him expressionlessly.

Su Ming withdrew his gaze.

"Zhang Yuanqing is not the starting point of this chain," he said.

Chen Shao remained silent.

"I won't ask what your intelligence network uncovered. You don't need to inquire what my analysis model deduced. But there's one thing we both know—" Su Ming stifled the cigarette, turned to face Chen Shao.

"Going solo means certain death."

Chen Shao exhaled a puff, the smoke dispersing into pale blue threads in the morning light.

He offered no rebuttal.

The after‑force of Zhang Yuanqing's punch still churned inside his chest. The sensation of his Psychic Force Shield shattered by a single blow was unforgettable. That helplessness was more suffocating than the time he faced the Weird Domain rules at Saint John Hospital.

"Intelligence sharing," Chen Shao said, putting the cigarette back to his mouth and spitting out two words.

"Not enough."

"What else do you want?"

"Resource alliance," Su Ming said evenly, as if bargaining at a market. "Your Eden Garden medical system, spatial teleportation nodes, and those dark posts scattered across the Federation—no need to hand them all over, but the parts that trace back to the Weird source must be mutually transparent."

Chen Shao removed the cigarette from his mouth and looked down at the blood‑stained filter.

"You actually dare to speak..."

"If you stay silent and next time someone even more outrageous than Zhang Yuanqing shows up, you and I will end up like that row of bodies beneath the ruins," Su Ming tilted his chin toward the covered faces.

Silence lingered for a long while.

It lasted so long Su Ming thought the cigarette was about to burn his fingertip.

"Fine."

A single word.

After speaking, Chen Shao crushed the cigarette butt onto the stone pillar, stood up. The movement tugged at his chest wound; he let out a muted groan but didn't stop.

"But there's one condition—anything involving Chen Yao is outside the trade scope."

"I'm not interested in your sister."

"Who you're interested in doesn't matter," Chen Shao's dim Demon Eye shifted, a lingering glint flickering deep in the pupil, "What matters is who your Wei‑surname boss is interested in."

Su Ming didn't take the bait.

The two stared at each other for three seconds. In those moments, Special Forces were moving bodies in the ruins, a helicopter rotor sliced the air overhead, and Liang Wen kept muttering about his broken rib.

Su Ming extended his hand.

Chen Shao lowered his head to glance at the scarred palm.

Then he also reached out his hand.

The two mud‑, blood‑, and bone‑dust‑stained hands clasped on the hillside villa ruins. No extra force, no pretended solemn gaze. They held briefly, then released.

It was like two long‑haul drivers meeting at a gas station and swapping a secret code.

Yet everyone who witnessed it, from Special Forces to the spade‑unit remnants of Eden Garden, thought it far from casual.

Because they all knew what it signified.

The two strongest human armed forces, after losing dozens of lives, finally decided—damn it—not to fight.

The rotor's roar grew louder.

The military medical helicopter's door opened, a medic in white protective gear leapt out, pushing a folding stretcher toward Lu Yu's position. Jiang Yuan had already cleared a perimeter, and Shadow Soldiers formed a guard line around the outskirts.

Qin Zhixia used her remaining right hand to help the medic secure the stretcher's clamps. Her left sleeve hung empty in the morning breeze; her mechanical prosthetic arm had shattered in battle and hadn't yet been replaced.

Lu Yu was lifted onto the stretcher.

The medic fitted him with an oxygen mask and attached a cardiac monitor. The waveform on the screen flickered weakly but persisted.

Chen Shao stood outside the helicopter, watching the boy strapped to the stretcher. Morning light fell on Lu Yu's pallid face; his eyelashes did not flutter, looking so fragile it seemed unlike the monster that minutes ago had crushed the S Ji Weird heart.

"Eden Garden's resources are open to him," Chen Shao's voice was soft, speaking to Su Ming beside him.

Su Ming nodded, no words.

The stretcher was pushed into the cabin. In the final instant before the hatch sealed, Lu Yu's eyelid twitched.

The slit was extremely narrow—so narrow that the medic and Su Ming didn't notice it.

Yet the gaze leaking through that narrow slit was not something a dying boy should have.

It was an inventory.

It was a chess player's cold, bone‑deep scan, confirming whether every piece lay on its preset square.

The Federation owed him a life. Chen Shao owed him a recognition. The two forces shook hands and made peace because of his existence.

He wedged himself right in the middle of the two camps.

This position is safer than any fortress.

His eyes sealed shut.

The waveform on the cardiac monitor remained weak. Under the breathing mask his lips were bluish‑purple, and the rise and fall of his chest was no different from someone about to gasp their last breath.

Acting—full marks.

The hatch sealed shut. The helicopter rose. The rotor‑driven airflow lifted ground stones and dust into a gray curtain.

Su Ming stood where he was, looking up as the helicopter climbed higher and eventually vanished into the gray‑white clouds.

He turned and swept a glance over the battlefield.

The sight of devastation made the four‑character phrase "scarred everywhere" seem mild.

After the courtroom domain dissipated, the massive crater it left occupied half a hillside; green phosphorescent flames still licked the bottom. The surrounding villa complex collapsed entirely, Reinforced Steel Bars jutting out of the concrete like broken bones.

Casualty numbers were still being tallied. Yet just from the Federation insignia corpses he could see, there were seventeen.

Over at Eden Garden things weren't better either. The Spade Unit arrived with twelve people; only four managed to stand and walk out, including Xu An, whose life was hanging by a thread.

Dozens of top‑tier manipulators.

And it was thus handed over to a former forensic doctor.

Yet that former forensic doctor might just be a piece on a larger board.

Su Ming clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking.

This battle was won.

But the victory was hollow.

Jiang Yuan dragged his weary body over and stood beside Su Ming. The Shadow Soldiers had all been withdrawn into his body, making him look even paler than usual.

"How should we arrange the follow‑up?"

"Leave the aftermath to me," Su Ming said.

"As for Lu Yu—"

"I'll keep an eye on it myself."

Jiang Yuan asked no further. He turned his head and glanced toward the direction where Chen Shao was withdrawing with the remnants; those from Eden Garden moved quietly, without the usual hostility.

Very strange.

Clearly they were mortal foes on the battlefield, yet the few hours spent shoulder‑to‑shoulder just now changed something.

What exactly changed, Jiang Yuan still couldn't articulate.

But he felt it might be quite important.

On the other side of the city.

Jiang Hai City Financial District, atop a skyscraper.

The top's steel beam framework was still exposed; a tower crane's arm stretched across mid‑air, casting a long black shadow in the morning light.

Chu Che stood on the outermost I‑beam.

The heavy rain had stopped.

He looked down over the whole city.

On the ruins toward the hillside villas, ant‑sized human silhouettes moved orderly. A helicopter formation lined up in the sky, heading toward the military hospital. Ground traffic control had been laid out, and black‑painted Investigation Bureau vehicles blocked the surrounding three kilometers.

Aftermath. Order reconstruction.

Humanity's greatest specialty.

Chu Che stared for a while, the curve of his mouth faint. Not a smile, more like the satisfaction after reviewing a surgical record.

The Federation's alliance with Eden Garden was within his expectations.

Zhang Yuanqing's piece output more energy than its initial setting, pushing both sides to a critical point where cooperation was unavoidable.

And Lu Yu—

Chu Che folded away his umbrella, holding it in his left hand.

He spread his right hand.

The skin of his palm shimmered with a faint sheen. That light belonged to no known spectrum, bearing a texture that seemed to make the air itself solidify.

A scarlet stream of light seeped from the void, slipping through his finger gaps into his palm.

The child's authority.

The editor fragments stripped from Zhang Yuanqing's body, together with the massive pure Karma the vessel had amassed while hunting sinners during this period, all returned to the main body.

The scarlet light spread along Chu Che's arm, and the moment it entered his skin, something surged deep within the pupils behind his Gold Thread Glasses.

It wasn't a sheen a human would have.

Deeper. More intense.

Like some indescribable entity that was coalescing, about to overflow its container.

Chu Che moved his fingers a bit.

Morning wind poured in from all directions, fluttering the hem of his Doctor's Lab Coat. At a height of over 170 meters, the steel beam was narrow enough for only one foot, yet standing on it felt no different to him than standing on his own living-room floor.

He glanced once more in the direction the helicopter had disappeared.

Lu Yu.

The God-Slayer who came back from the future. The 'hot-update patch' that his future self personally sent back to the past.

It must be said, Su Ming's choice to send him back had its reasons.

The Weird inside him was strong enough, and he himself was ruthless enough.

And he was, according to the predetermined trajectory, perfectly embedding himself into this era's power structure.

The Federation trusts him. Eden Garden acknowledges him. Both sides will provide him with resources, protection, and room to grow.

And under the nourishment of these, he will become ever stronger.

Until one day, he becomes strong enough to stand before himself.

Chu Che pushed his gold-rimmed glasses. The lenses reflected the first golden ray of morning sunlight, completely hiding his expression behind the glare.

"The first act was performed well."

His voice was soft, torn into shreds by the wind.

He turned, stepping onto the steel beam less than half a meter wide, walking toward the crane. His steps were unhurried; his leather shoes struck the rusted steel, producing a clear, rhythmic tapping.

After three steps, he stopped.

He tilted his head.

The morning light gilded his profile with a thin warm hue.

"So then——"

His voice trailed an elegant note in the morning wind.

"Lu Yu, we'll meet at school."