Chapter 502: One Against Three

Su Ming stood behind the broken wall of the passage, his hands in his pockets, his back leaning against a crooked steel beam. His eye color had deepened completely, and fine silvery‑gray patterns spread along the edge of his eyeballs.

Time Marrow Worm.

Lin Fan felt it.

He stepped with his right foot, which became sticky, and even the surge of Black Water was dragged down—not a physical slowdown, but the very time in his area was being squeezed.

The flow rate dropped abruptly from the normal 1:1 to 0.3.

Every movement of Lin Fan seemed to be in slow motion. The ripples on the Black Water surface slowed visibly to the naked eye, and the flickering frequency of the Blue Flame of the Nether on the blade was pressed down to a minimum.

A streak of blood trickled from Su Ming's mouth corner.

The Time Marrow Worm churned wildly inside him; sustaining this level of temporal interference inflicted severe backlash on the host. His heartbeat had surged from seventy‑two to one‑hundred‑four, and the pressure on his blood‑vessel walls was nearing the safety threshold.

But he didn't let go.

Liang Wen stood between Lu Yu and Lin Fan, the Black Flame Knife held horizontally across his chest with the tip pointing down. Flames licked the blade's spine, casting a bitter expression over his face that should have been laughing.

He spoke.

"Brother."

Liang Wen shouted a call to Lin Fan, his throat dry enough to smoke, his mouth filled with the ash he had just swallowed in the fierce battle.

"I'm telling you from the bottom of my heart, this Dark‑Blooded King doesn't want to fight you today."

Lin Fan gave no reply. His blue alien eye stared at Liang Wen.

"It's just the orders from above, death." Liang Wen patted his Communicator on his chest with his free left hand, the lingering echo of Wei Gong's "at any cost" still not fully faded.

"Lu Yu is an End of Days Fire Seed. Alive. Must be taken away."

"An order is an order."

On the other side, Su Ming remained silent.

He merely bit his inner cheek hard; each extra rotation of the Time Marrow Worm made his temples throb. Blood seeped from his nasal cavity, and he brushed it away, smearing it onto his cuff.

Su Ming's eyes were filled with complexity.

He glanced at the row of empty containment pods behind Lu Yu, then at the shattered tea cup left by A Jie on the ground, Meng Wan's broken hairpin, and the half‑sleeve of Lao Gui.

His gaze finally fell on Ji Bai's face.

The teen half‑kneeling in the pool of blood had no unscathed skin left, his right hand trembling as he clutched a handful of red‑cloaked ash.

Su Ming stayed silent, but his offensive stalled for half a beat.

Just that half beat.

The boundary of the time‑slow zone showed a fluctuation of a few tenths of a millisecond.

Lin Fan detected it.

He didn't exploit the opening.

He simply lifted his head, looking at Liang Wen and Su Ming with his human left eye.

"End of Days Fire Seed?"

Lin Fan repeated the four words. His voice rasped from deep in his throat, sounding as rough as sandpaper on metal.

"Your Federation's mouths really can spin."

He raised the tip of his blade, pointing at Liang Wen.

"You call him a fire seed. Then what are those he's standing on—"

The blade traced an arc, sweeping over the scattered ash, shattered containment‑pod glass, and the console covered with feeding records.

"—what are they? Firewood?"

Liang Wen's Adam's apple rolled.

Lin Fan's voice leapt out word by word, each syllable carrying the cold gathered from witnessing too many disgusting things.

"I walked from Jiang Hai City to Dong Lin City, from Dong Lin City to the North American border, then crawled out of the S-Class Anomaly Domain. The rotten things I've seen along the way are enough to make me vomit for three lifetimes."

"The aristocrats murder, the system covers it up, and when the Investigation Bureau chased me, none of the Fierce Ghosts who suffered like me ever took the initiative to harm anyone."

"They only died. After death they still remember who they are. Thus, in your eyes they are resources, food, things that can be registered, numbered, and fed on schedule to that insatiable thing—"

He paused, then turned the blade tip toward Lu Yu.

"Feed."

Liang Wen lowered his Black Flame Knife by three inches.

It wasn't a deliberate retreat; the momentum made his wrist involuntarily slacken a bit.

He bore the orders, bore the S-Class Anomaly Domain, bore the crushing weight of three million lives when Ouyang Feng turned into Bone City. Yet this feeling of having a blood‑soaked fact pointed at his nose for interrogation......

It's uncomfortable.

Really fucking uncomfortable.

"If the price of salvation is to raise a beast that can only grow by devouring innocent Fierce Ghosts—"

Lin Fan's right eye's blue flame burned to the extreme, the iris patterns becoming indistinguishable.

"Then the justice you guard is fundamentally rotten."

The words landed, and the entire test chamber fell silent for two seconds.

In those two seconds.

Su Ming's time‑slow zone showed a second fluctuation.

This time it wasn't a control error; his own heartbeat went awry.

The Time Marrow Worm resonates with the host's emotions. When a certain inner string of Su Ming is plucked, the worm's rotation rhythm becomes chaotic.

Rotten to the core.

The three words drilled into Su Ming's mind, hitting something.

He recalled the first time he saw Captain Lei Yu's corpse in the Blood Moon Weird Domain, and remembered Wei Gong's unnervingly steady tone in the Communicator when he said "the greater picture matters."

He recalled his reason for joining the Investigation Bureau—repaying Lei Yu's life, and finding a new place to reside.

But what lies buried beneath the foundation of this place he now resides in?

Su Ming wiped away a nosebleed.

He did not answer Lin Fan's words. Yet his offensive stalled for that brief instant.

Liang Wen could not utter a rebuttal.

He ran the thoughts around his mind three times, yet could not compose a single decent line. Normally his over‑the‑top, blood‑pressure‑raising chatter, now not a single word sprang forth.

Because he also saw it.

He saw the remnants of ash in that row of containment pods.

He saw the densely packed numbers on the feeding records.

He saw a charred cloth doll in the corner.

It was Yuan Ying Lili's.

Liang Wen's fingers gripping the knife tightened and loosened, loosened and tightened again. He mumbled something, unable to swallow it or spit it out.

The atmosphere was drawn to a delicate tipping point.

The three of them restrained each other, none making the first move. Cold wind from outside the passage poured in, whistling as it blew the crooked light tubes.

But right within this crack—

Lu Yu moved.

It was not an attack.

He leaned against the wall, his left arm hanging, his right hand pressed to the edge of the vortex on his chest, fingers applying a slight downward pressure.

The vortex sounded.

The sound was very low, muffled by the ruin's clamor for most of it. Yet Lin Fan heard it. Su Ming also heard it.

It was a chewing sound.

Viscous, wet, like something being crushed between teeth.

Lu Yu's chest. The Taotie Core was raging wildly.

The Blue Flame of the Nether scar on his left shoulder had not yet healed, blue smoke still billowed, yet the vortex's rotation speed had more than doubled compared to thirty seconds ago.

During the time Liang Wen and Su Ming blocked him, he took no rest.

He was eating.

Eating what?

Lin Fan's pupils contracted sharply.

He lowered his head.

On the ground, the faint lingering resentment traces left after A Jie, Meng Wan, Lao Gui, and Lili dissipated—were being drawn by an extremely fine suction, traveling along the floor cracks toward Lu Yu's feet.

Those were the fragments left in the world by the dead Fierce Ghosts.

Even this they would not overlook.

Lin Fan's left hand curled into a fist, his knuckles creaking.

He turned his head, glanced at Liang Wen, then at Su Ming.

"Saw it?"

Two words, plain and simple.

Liang Wen saw it.

Su Ming also saw it. No expression crossed his face. Yet the finger pressed in his pocket twitched slightly.

The time‑slow zone manifested its third fluctuation at this moment.

The area shrank by one ring.

The sticky sensation at Lin Fan's ankle suddenly lessened.

It wasn't Su Ming easing off. His body could no longer endure the Time Marrow Worm's backlash; pushing further would cause his vessels to burst.

Lin Fan sensed the signal of the restraints loosening.

He said nothing further.

Everything that needed to be said had been said. With the reasoning taken this far, if the two opposite still blocked, there would be no way out.

Ling Xinyu crouched beside Lin Zhi, her semi‑transparent face turned toward him, lips moving slightly.

She made no sound.

But Lin Fan understood.

Xin Yu was saying: He is still snacking secretly.

Lin Fan closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them again, the blue hue in his right eye did not brighten; instead it deepened, sinking into an almost black deep blue, like the perpetual darkness at the bottom of an ocean trench.

That was not anger rising.

It was killing intent sinking.

He raised his hand, grasped the Black Water sword hilt; the Black Water beneath his feet, from a dispersed state, suddenly coalesced, as if a gather command had been pressed.

The Blue Flame Sprout on the blade fully retracted, pulling into the sword body, no longer emitting any light.

The quieter the blade, the deadlier.

Lin Fan's gaze did not lock onto Lu Yu.

He was looking at Liang Wen.

And Su Ming.

"Playing favorites, huh?"

His voice wasn't heavy, and his tone was even a bit flat.

A nerve in Liang Wen's back jolted sharply. He detected what lay beneath that sentence.

It wasn't a question. It was a notice.

Lin Fan stepped forward with his left foot.

The Black Water Realm burst outward from the sole of his foot—no, it didn't explode, it spread.

Like ink splashed on rice paper, it seeped silently in all directions. The black liquid covered every inch of the remaining floor of the experimental chamber, flowed over the wreckage of the collapsed containment bay, over the shattered console, and over the pool of blood where Ji Bai knelt.

The Black Water attacked no one.

But everyone was enveloped within the realm.

Su Ming's eye color changed.

"He wants—"

He didn't finish the sentence.

Lin Fan spoke. His tone was a different person from before—dry, hard, carrying the calm that follows a breached dam.

"Since you insist on protecting, then I'll cut you all together."

He raised the Black Water blade horizontally.

Blue Flame of the Nether leaked through the blade's seams, reflecting on the black liquid covering the floor, like a whole swath of phosphorescence lighting the seabed.

Ling Xinyu rose from beside Lin Zhi, drifting to the back of Lin Fan's right shoulder. Her long, damp hair spread out, the tips sinking into the Black Water, merging completely with the realm.

Dual‑core resonance.

Resentment began to stack.

It wasn't a simple one‑plus‑one. It was the Symbiosis organism's unique mutual‑nourishment cycle—Lin Fan received raw resentment from Ling Xinyu, tempered it with Hellfire and reinjected it; Ling Xinyu then poured the purified resentment into the realm, which in turn nourished both of them.

Like a perpetual machine with no energy loss.

The remaining alarm in the experimental chamber finally failed completely.

The last few emergency lights that were still on also went out.

In the darkness, the only light source was that cold‑blue Hellfire.

Ji Bai lay on the ground, feeling Black Water surge past his knees on both sides, its temperature icy yet non‑corrosive. It automatically bypassed him and Lin Zhi, leaving a small dry patch around the two.

Su Xiao Ya lifted her head while clutching the umbrella cloth, and what filled her sight was an entire world seized by the Blue Flame of the Nether.

Her lips trembled briefly, not from fear but from shock.

Liang Wen gripped the Black Flame Knife tightly.

The flames on the blade surged erratically with the owner's heartbeat, unable to stabilize.

"Got it, playing big."

Liang Wen twisted his mouth into a grin uglier than crying.

Su Ming wiped away his nosebleed, the Time Marrow Worm made its final loop inside his body, barely keeping the slowdown zone within the smallest area that could protect Lu Yu.

His biological clock was severely disrupted. His heartbeat hit 160. His vision began to double.

But he didn't retreat.

Three people. Three directions.

Between them lay the floor‑covering Blue‑Black Water and a youth whose right eye no longer belonged to a human.

Lu Yu leaned against the wall base, his right hand still pressing the vortex that spun ever deeper.

The sound of chewing never ceased.

He, through the gaps between Liang Wen and Su Ming, stared at Lin Fan.

His mouth didn't curl. He said nothing.

But in those eyes, as deep as two ancient wells, something unsettling surfaced.

It wasn't fear.

It was battle intent.

Lin Fan took a second step.

Black Water pushed him forward. Blue Flame of the Nether spread from the blade along his entire arm.

Ling Xinyu's long hair swam beneath the surface, the tips splitting into countless fine strands, each wrapped with Zhun S Ji resentment, drifting in the shadows.

One against three.

Anyway, the opponent's "big picture" card has been played, so he doesn't mind flipping the table.

Black Water surged like a tide.

Hellfire rose in temperature.