Chapter 504: The Power of Love

——

The flesh bud burst through the void.

Dozens of them, wrapped in blood foam and slime, carrying the reckless madness of a Taotie Core gone out of control. Each tip grew teeth—no metaphor, real teeth, unevenly embedded in the soft tissue surface, grinding with a creak.

Lin Fan didn't retreat.

He didn't even move.

His dual‑colored heterochromatic eyes stared straight ahead, and a scene flashed in his mind.

Not far away, just three months ago.

That S-Class Anomaly Domain—code name "Yellow Spring Crossing."

He and Xin Yu were trapped inside and encountered a quasi‑A Ji monster tale. That thing had no name; it was a pure mass of malice, without even consciousness, devouring whatever it saw.

Xin Yu risked her life to suppress it.

It wasn't a strike. She used the Fierce Ghost's Core to forcibly overlay the monster tale's instinct, like welding one iron plate onto another—if the weld doesn't kill, it burns through. The process was so painful her entire spirit trembled, and the wheezing sound from her mouth was uglier than crying.

He watched from the side, his fists clenched until they bled.

But he didn't intervene.

Because Xin Yu turned her head, looking at him with the eyes that were once clear but now just two black holes, blood tears streaming down, she wrote two characters.

"Trust me."

He believed.

Xin Yu suppressed that monster tale. She swallowed it, merged it into her resentful body, and grew stronger.

Then he produced a weird device—a Black Water short blade that backlashes onto its holder's mind. If someone else wielded it, they'd be corrupted into a madman within three seconds.

But Xin Yu's lingering resentment wrapped around it.

The monster tale she had just swallowed provided enough buffering, like a layer of thermal insulation, absorbing all side effects of the weird device and digesting them for him. She held the short blade with no backlash at all.

That's how this mechanism operates.

The Fierce Ghost swallows monster tales, while humans equip weird devices. The side effects are offset by the monster tales inside the Fierce Ghost. The more the Fierce Ghost consumes, the larger the side effects it can absorb; the more devices a human equips, the more absurd the combat power.

Infinite stacking.

Infinite nesting.

Sounds like cheating? Yes, it is cheating.

But this bug‑exploiting mechanism has a key.

A key that no one can forge.

During the Fierce Ghost's suppression of the monster tale, its Core becomes fully exposed. In that instant, any human in Symbiosis with her who harbors even a hint of ulterior thought—wanting to use her, control her, or treat her as a tool—will have the fusion collapse on the spot, and the backlash can incinerate both into ash.

It must be unconditional, absolute trust.

Human trusts ghost. Ghost trusts human.

There is no second path.

Lin Fan lowered his head to glance at his right‑hand Black Water long sword. Seven layers of different monster tale patterns were stacked on the blade spine, each layer suppressed by Xin Yu with her life.

He looked ahead again.

Lu Yu's flesh bud erupted from his chest, reaching toward his face.

This reborn one who treats all life as "fuel" and "rations" will never understand this mechanism.

It's not that he's not smart enough.

It's that the word "trust" is absent from his very bones.

In this person's dictionary, the Fierce Ghost is a resource, humans are pawns, emotions are weaknesses. He can calculate each move precisely, and can coldly sacrifice anyone.

But he cannot entrust his back to a ghost.

He cannot, at the moment the Core is exposed, close his eyes and say, "I trust you."

So he can only rely on the Taotie to swallow.

Swallow until it bursts his own limits.

Swallow until even he cannot control himself.

...... Pathetic.

Lin Fan's mouth twitched; it was unclear whether he was smiling or cursing.

The flesh bud arrived before him. The foremost strand had its mouth split open, its three reversed‑grown broken teeth glinting with saliva.

He raised the blade.

It wasn't a block.

The Black Water beneath his feet simultaneously contracted inward; all the expanded domains flowed back onto the blade within 0.3 seconds, the 30‑meter‑diameter Black Water sea instantly dried up, leaving only a thin, translucent black water film on the blade surface.

Compression.

Extreme compression.

Ling Xinyu's afterimage floated up from behind him, a semi‑transparent form perfectly overlapping him. Her hands rested on the back of his hand, fingers interlaced, gripping the same blade.

Two people.

Sharing the same breathing rhythm.

Sharing the same heartbeat.

The same slash.

The Blue Flame of the Nether was not released outward. It was fully pressed inside the blade, sealed by the Black Water film, leaking only a thin line of light from the blade's edge gap.

That light was dazzlingly bright.

It shone so brightly that Su Ming had to close his right eye—his left eye was already smeared by the backlash of the Time Marrow Worm.

Liang Wen was stuck lying against the load‑bearing wall, his dislocated jaw not yet reset, muttering something incomprehensible, probably "what the hell".

Lin Fan stepped out.

Just one step.

The blade, wrapped in a Black Water membrane, precisely cut into the center of the flesh bud cluster.

There was no fancy technique name.

No sluggish, power‑gathering shot.

It was just a draw‑knife slash. Horizontal. From left to right. The blade moved in a straight line, without even a curve.

Yet where the slash passed, the space showed a visible wrinkle.

It wasn't shattered; it was pressed into a fold, like a sheet of paper squeezed in a palm.

The flesh buds were severed.

The cut surface was unnaturally neat. Every strand of severed tissue was burnt black, and the Blue Flame of the Nether spread along the cross‑section to both ends, scorching the broken teeth and mucosa with a hissing sound, while the smell of charred protein filled the air.

Lu Yu's eyes widened.

All the eyes—those on his chest, his ribs, the freely rotating eyeball—were all widened.

The blade didn't stop.

After cutting the flesh buds, the blade kept moving forward, striking straight at the wildly spinning Taotie Core in his chest.

Lu Yu instinctively crossed his hands to shield his chest, his right palm's devouring vortex whirring at full power, trying to draw the blade in.

It couldn't be drawn.

The Blue Flame of the Nether sealed on the Black Water membrane met the vortex's suction; instead of being consumed, it flowed backward through the suction channel, scorching cracks into the vortex's inner wall.

A piercing screech, unlike any human could make, sounded from Lu Yu's throat.

The blade pierced his crossed arms and struck the exact center of the distorted vortex in his chest.

The sound vanished.

The entire experiment chamber fell completely silent in that instant, all frequencies of sound waves being suppressed.

Then came a huge roar.

It was the sound of bones shattering, flesh exploding, metal twisting together, merging into a murky thunderous roar.

Lu Yu's sternum collapsed.

It wasn't a dent; it split open in the middle. The broken ribs pierced the front chest flesh, white bone jutting out from the charred wound. The wildly growing flesh buds, scorched by the Blue Flame of the Nether, struggled for less than two seconds before fully carbonizing, turning into brittle black slag that fell away.

That vortex—the outer projection of the Taotie Core—sprouted spider‑web‑like cracks.

Between the cracks leaked an otherworldly light, dark‑red and fishy‑smelling.

Lu Yu's whole body was flung by the residual force of the slash.

He sprang from the floor of the experiment chamber, his back first smashing a row of containment‑cell debris, then barreling through two partition walls, and finally being pinned to a concrete wall thirty meters away that had not yet fully collapsed.

The wall surface fissured into radial cracks. Lu Yu was embedded in the center, the black‑hole‑like wound in his chest still exhaling blue smoke. He looked down at his shattered thorax; the face that had always been chillingly composed now showed genuine bewilderment for the first time.

It wasn't pain.

It was incomprehension.

He didn't understand how he could lose.

In the combat‑power model he calculated from his decade‑plus apocalyptic experience in his previous life, damage of this magnitude shouldn't have occurred to him.

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

Blue smoke seeped from his mouth corner, choking him into two coughs, each spitting blood‑filled foam.

Lin Fan sheathed his blade.

The Blue Flame of the Nether on the Black Water longsword was completely extinguished, and the blade returned to the color of ordinary black iron. Ling Xinyu's phantom image separated from his body and drifted back to Lin Zhi's side.

It quieted.

Fragments of stone fell from the ceiling, striking the ground revealed after the Black Water dried, producing a tinkling sound.

Then everyone heard another sound.

A faint rustle, like the static of an old radio tuning.

Coming from behind.

Coming from Lin Zhi.

The red‑clad Fierce Ghost, who had been collapsed on the ground the whole time with a nearly transparent spirit, was undergoing a change.

Ling Xinyu crouched beside her, both hands pressing on Lin Zhi's Core. The Blue Flame lines seeping from her palms crawled slowly along the torn edge of Lin Zhi's red robe, as if performing an extremely precise suturing procedure.

At each point where a Blue Flame line merged into the red robe, a faint "zz" sound was emitted.

Red and blue intertwined.

The violent resentment and abyss‑like Blue stable energy collided back and forth at the junction, eventually ceasing to repel and beginning to fuse.

Merged together, they became an indescribable new hue.

Lin Zhi's spirit solidified from translucence.

Little by little.

Like a watercolor ink painting splashed with water slowly drying, the lines became clear again from blur. Her outline, facial features, and the folds of the red robe all emerged, sharper than ever before.

Her eyes opened.

The pupils were red, with a faint ring of Blue around the iris edges.

The spirit floated steadily in mid‑air, the red robe now bearing spider‑web‑like blue patterns that pulsed bright and dim with each breath. It was neither a Fierce Ghost nor an ordinary Black Water dependent.

It was a brand‑new form born from the balanced coexistence of the two forces.

Su Ming half‑kneeling at the far end of the Corridor, blood smeared across his face, the only functional eye bulging enormously.

"...... What is that?"

He whispered three words, and no one answered him.

Lin Zhi floated down.

She didn't look at the mess covering the ground, didn't look at Lu Yu nailed to the wall thirty meters away, didn't look at the two Federation Core Captains collapsed in the passage.

She lowered her gaze, landing on the boy lying in the pool of blood directly below.

Ji Bai had little of a human appearance left.

No intact skin could be found on his whole body; his right‑hand nails were all broken, the flesh on his fingertips was torn, and he still clutched tightly a handful of red‑cloak ash.

Having gripped for too long, his fingers had frozen into that shape and wouldn't loosen.

Lin Zhi crouched down and gently lifted him up.

A ghost's arm is cold. It has always been cold.

But today, for some reason, it was different.

Ji Bai felt a hint of warmth in the temperature. It was faint—so faint it might have been a hallucination from his severe blood loss.

"Kid."

Lin Zhi spoke. Her voice had the ethereal, drifting quality unique to a female ghost, but her tone was flat, like the way she calls him out of bed every morning.

"I'm back."

Ji Bai's lips twitched twice.

He wanted to say something. He wanted to say "Red Sister, I'm glad you're okay," he wanted to say "They're all gone," he wanted to say "Sorry I'm late."

But only a breathy sound escaped his throat, unable to form a complete syllable.

That right hand that had been clutched so tightly finally released.

The fingers stretched out one by one, fragments and ash scattering from the gaps. The blue veins on the back of his hand still pulsed, and his whole arm trembled.

Lin Zhi held him a little tighter.

No more words.

The three words that needed to be said were already enough.

Su Xiaoya curled up in the corner, still clutching the cloth of Ji Bai's old Black Umbrella. She frantically wiped her eyes with her sleeve three or four times, each wipe making it blurrier.

Because the tears wouldn't stop at all.

Lin Fan withdrew his gaze from here and turned around.

The Black Water long sword hung on his shoulder, his steps neither hurried nor slow.

Ling Xinyu floated behind his right shoulder, her damp long hair hanging down, the tips no longer connected to the field.

"Let's go."

Lin Fan said two words and tilted his head toward Ji Bai's direction.

He didn't intend to fight any more. What needed to be cut was cut, what needed to be saved was saved, what needed to be said had been said. As for whether Lu Yu was dead or not—that's the Federation's own mess.

He took two steps.

The third step hadn't yet touched the ground.

Light suddenly flickered in the concrete cracks of the broken ceiling above the test chamber.

It wasn't a lamp.

It was a projection.

Countless light‑particle images converged from every angle of the ruins, coalescing above the passage into a clear holographic image.

In the image stood a person.

His hair was graying, his back straight, wearing a plain, slightly worn Zhongshan suit. His hands were clasped behind his back; his stance resembled a retired old principal rather than a soldier.

Yet his eyes, cloudy with age, held the keen glint of a hawk, sweeping the battlefield from above.

Lord Wei.

Director of Federal Weird Investigation Bureau.

The hologram's resolution was so fine that even the tiny wear mark on the Zhongshan suit's button was visible.

He said nothing.

He simply stood there, hands behind his back, watching the shattered stones on the ground, the dried Black Water stains, Lu Yu nailed to the wall, Ji Bai in the pool of blood, and Lin Fan about to leave.