YiChen swallowed the last bite of chicken, leaned against the cold ceramic wall, and shut his eyes.

  His body was stone. Every joint throbbed, every muscle rebelled, his veins seared with a dull fire.

  Sounds in the corridor thinned, blurring into distance, until it felt as though he were sinking beneath a black sea.

  Only his heartbeat remained.

  —Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Then, within the silence, a voice stirred.

  “Gods… how did you end up like this again?”

  YiChen’s awareness jolted. Darkness peeled away—

  —and the golden void unfurled, stars wheeling across a dome without end.

  At its center stood a small silver fox, head tilted, amber eyes glinting.

  Shixi.

  “You’re awake?” YiChen’s voice carried across the void, softened by a relief he hadn’t realized he carried.

  The fox bounded forward, nose pressing to the back of his hand. Warm. Damp. Disarmingly real.

  “You’re hurt again…” Her voice was childlike, yet heavy with rebuke—a lament more than a scold.

  “I can mend you—but you can’t keep tearing yourself apart like this.”

  Her ears drooped. Her eyes dimmed.

  “I spent everything opening the Gate of the Void. There isn’t much left now.”

  YiChen crouched, palm smoothing over her head. His voice fell low, gentle.

  “It’s fine. I can endure.”

  Shixi studied him for a long moment. Then she shook herself, scattering unseen rain.

  Whoosh—

  Golden motes drifted from her fur, stardust spilling into the void.

  A luminous rain, soft yet inexhaustible, drawn to YiChen by invisible threads.

  They melted into his skin, flooding him with warmth.

  Heat surged. Exhaustion ebbed like a tide receding from shore.

  Spirit stirred again—alive, fluid, whole.

  But before his eyes, Shixi dimmed.

  Silver dulled to gray; her small body sagged.

  A fragile yawn escaped, eyelids heavy.

  “Only… this much,” she murmured, voice blurred with sleep.

  “Enough… for three times…”

  She curled into a ball, chest rising in slow rhythm.

  “…I’ll sleep now. Don’t get hurt again.”

  Silence followed.

  Then soft, steady snores.

  YiChen lingered, gaze fixed on the tiny frame.

  His fingers brushed her ear with care, his voice no more than a whisper:

  “…Thank you.”

  Somewhere deep within, the star’s pulse echoed against his own heartbeat—steady, distant, alive.

  He did not yet know what it meant.

  —

  Awareness snapped back.

  Noise surged in—muffled sobs, the drip of water down the hall, the low murmur of survivors.

  The air was heavy with the smell of disinfectant and blood.

  Somewhere, a child whimpered once, then fell silent.

  But his body was no longer the same.

  He drew the Taiwei Guiyuan Art—spirit flowed smooth as a mountain stream.

  The stabbing backlash was gone.

  More than that, something new pulsed within him: warm, steady, vast.

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  YiChen raised a hand.

  Spirit gathered.

  At his fingertip bloomed a mote of golden light—no larger than a star.

  It glowed softly in the corridor’s gloom, fragile as dawn, steady as breath.

  YiChen stared.

  “…What is this?”

  The tiny star quivered faintly—

  as though answering him.

  —

  YiChen rose.

  The hum of the generator trembled faintly through the walls—then faded, as if the entire building held its breath.

  In that single motion, the corridor stilled.

  Breaths caught. Every chest tightened as if the air itself had grown heavy, merciless.

  Even the man who had been sobbing moments before froze, throat locking, knees buckling him half a step backward.

  The burly man’s eyes widened, mind reeling like thunder: What the hell was in that chicken? This isn’t human—!

  Doctor Mark’s gaze sharpened, pupils constricting.

  Just minutes ago his son had been hollow, gray, half-collapsed.

  Now exhaustion was gone—burned away as if it had never existed.

  What remained was something sharper, colder: an absolute calm heavier than rage itself.

  It was not the presence of a man.

  It was the presence of a blade.

  A blade sheathed—yet waiting to be drawn.

  “Let’s go.”

  YiChen’s voice was low, steady. But the weight behind it left no space for refusal.

  “To the fourth floor.”

  The stairwell swallowed their footsteps one by one.

  Each echo carried the weight of a prayer.

  He stepped forward.

  The crowd parted without a word, instinct yielding before the pressure that rolled off him like a stormfront.

  Feet shuffled, spines straightened—some without knowing why—as if even trembling in his presence might be a kind of disrespect.

  The burly man stood frozen for two beats.

  Then he cursed under his breath, lurching after him. “Damn it… should’ve brought two chickens…”

  Doctor Mark exhaled slowly. The hand he laid on his supporter’s shoulder trembled faintly.

  “Come,” he murmured, hushed but firm. “We follow.”

  At the front, YiChen advanced with the axe balanced in his grip.

  His thumb brushed the haft absently, tracing the silver lines that pulsed faintly beneath the wood.

  Somewhere beneath that glow lingered the warmth of golden starlight, a power he could not yet name.

  He didn’t know what it was.

  But one truth remained—harder than steel, sharper than destiny itself:

  On the fourth floor, people were still waiting.

  —

  The fire door buckled beneath YiChen’s kick.

  Metal shrieked, the frame twisting, the panel crashing against the wall with a thunderclap.

  And beyond—was hell.

  The corridor stank of iron and rot.

  Black streaks scored the walls like ink rotted into plaster.

  Corpses sprawled across the tiles, skin clinging to bone as if every drop of life had been wrung away.

  Worse were the Fiends.

  They loomed larger than those below, their condensed forms nearly doubled in size.

  From the mist, coal-red eyes glowed, locking onto the intruders with ravenous light.

  They had fed well.

  “Hehh… fresh flesh…” one rasped, voice scraping like breath forced through a broken throat.

  Behind YiChen, a strangled sob escaped. Fear rippled through the survivors like a wave.

  The Fiends thrilled.

  —Fear was their sweetest feast.

  “Damn it…” the burly man muttered, teeth grinding.

  His fist clenched until a faint red glow bled from his knuckles.

  YiChen wasted no words.

  He stepped forward. Silver veins flared along the axe, his form blurring into motion—

  Shhhk!

  The first core shattered. Mist hissed into nothing.

  Before the fragments fell, YiChen’s hand drove into a second Fiend, fingers clamping—

  Pop.

  The soul burst like fruit crushed in ice.

  The husk collapsed into vapor.

  His eyes stayed calm. Too calm.

  The axe swept sideways—not a strike, but a dismissal, like dust brushed from a table.

  The third Fiend split down the middle.

  Its core hadn’t touched the ground before YiChen snatched it and crushed it barehanded.

  The fourth. The fifth.

  Each motion exact. Merciless.

  No breath wasted.

  A blur of axe and hand, light and shadow, until the corridor itself seemed to splinter beneath the rhythm of slaughter.

  The burly man had just finished pounding a skull when he looked up, panting—

  And froze.

  YiChen already held the sixth soul core between his fingers, snapping it to ash.

  This… this is his true strength?!

  On the fifth floor he had seemed half-dead, dragging each step.

  But now—he was another being entirely.

  The axe keened once more.

  The seventh Fiend shrieked and disintegrated into smoke.

  YiChen’s gaze was colder than ice.

  His movements flowed like water.

  Slaughter had become instinct.

  —

  When silence finally fell, the fourth floor lay cleared.

  But despair pressed heavier than the mist.

  Blood steamed faintly on the tiles.

  The light in the corridor flickered once, then died.

  People flooded into the wards, searching.

  The hall shook with sobs, grief breaking like waves.

  —No survivors.

  “Mom… mom!!”

  The man who had begged YiChen to descend collapsed beside a bed, clutching a sunken body with shaking arms, tears soaking the gray skin.

  Then his head snapped up. Bloodshot eyes burned into YiChen.

  “This is your fault!!!” he screamed, lunging. “If you’d come sooner—she’d still be alive!!”

  The burly man surged forward, seizing him by the collar, fist raised high. His roar ripped the air:

  “You bastard—!”

  The grieving man recoiled, terror flashing in his eyes.

  Yet he spat through his sobs: “Hit me! Kill me! Even if I die—I’ll haunt you all!!”

  The burly man froze.

  His fist hovered midair, veins bulging.

  But staring at that broken face, he could not bring it down.

  Bang!

  The opposite fire door slammed open.

  Four figures stumbled in—

  A nurse in blood-stained scrubs.

  A plainclothes man with half his arm flayed to bone.

  A girl in torn street clothes, hair matted, face pale.

  And last—

  A middle-aged doctor in a white coat.

  “Help!! Something’s behind us!!” the nurse screamed.

  Shhhkt—!

  A tendril lashed through the doorway—dark red, veined, glistening with mucus.

  Its tip split into five finger-like claws and clamped around the doctor’s ankle.

  “Ahhh—!!” The man shrieked, dragged across the tiles.

  “Dad!!” the girl screamed, clutching his hand with all her strength.

  But the pull yanked harder. She slid forward with him, nails tearing against the floor.

  And then—

  A silver flash split the dark.

  YiChen shot forward like an arrow, faster than sight.

  The axe blazed, a crescent of burning silver cleaving down toward the writhing tendril.