Silan stared at Ji Jue’s face, feeling that familiar chill. Fuck, this damn kid is serious.

Without Lou Feng needing to remind him, just from the journey into this place alone, he had already fully sensed the power carried by Mercury’s legacy.

As wandering knights and stray mercenaries, they were all here to make money. Even if they lived licking blood off the edge of a blade, there were still differences in whose blood they could spill. Some blood could not be touched at all, and once you did, it was fucking poisonous.

He wasn’t some nameless assassin taking contracts in the Wasteland Assembly. If things went wrong, he could just change his name and lie low for a while. But to openly offend a future Ember master under his real name?

Even if Silan was stubborn as a rock, he still had to think about the rest of the team. At the end of the day, they were all just working for a living. As long as the final payment went through, who would really want to pour their heart and soul into a job like this?

He had tried to hold out, tried to fight for it, and left behind evidence. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done his best, it was just that the opponent was too strong this time. He really couldn’t carry his team to victory. The possibility was gone, but at least they had managed to save the boss’s head in the literal sense.

And they had even taken heavy losses.

Who wouldn’t shed a couple of tears over that, then pay out a few times more in compensation? Besides, weren’t all the gains the boss’s anyway? What did that have to do with them?

Silan sighed, turned around, and took one last look at the loot. He pursed his lips.

Two more boxes were thrown over. One was filled with shattered alchemical constructs—Mercury’s remaining relics. The other contained a series of amber-like containers, each holding faint, flickering lights, wavering like candles in the wind.

These were the blessings retrieved from Mercury’s blessing chamber. Four hundred years had passed, and without maintenance or sustenance, they had regressed back to their most primitive form. Even so, for craftsmen of the Ember Path, they were still worth a fortune.

“The goods are all here,” Silan said slowly, shifting the edge of his blade away slightly while staring at Ji Jue. “I’ll let you hike the price only once. You’d better think it through.”

Ji Jue simply looked at him in silence.

The butt of the gun suddenly rose and fell, slamming hard into the back of Lou Feng’s head and knocking him unconscious. Only then did Ji Jue lower his weapon. Under everyone’s watchful eyes, he reached out and slowly stripped Lou Feng of his glasses, buttons, rings, wristwatch, bracelet, and necklace.

Every object that carried a faint spiritual glow was pulled off one by one and thrown into Horsey’s cargo bed. Finally, a strand of mercury coiled and gathered, forming binding cords that wrapped around Lou Feng.

“Now, let’s exchange hostages.”

Ji Jue casually took plastic explosives from his pocket, holding them in his hand. The sight made Silan’s eyelids twitch violently.

In the end, he said nothing. He simply swung his blade to sever the spear pinning down An Ran, lifted the boy, and walked step by step toward Ji Jue until the two stood face to face.

They stared at each other in silence. For a moment, Silan seemed like he wanted to say something, but he only offered a self-mocking smile and quietly placed An Ran into the cargo bed.

He extended his hand. Just like that, after taking the barely conscious Lou Feng, he slowly retreated, turning back toward his subordinates.

His men had been waiting for his order all this time, but he never gave them a command to pursue. He let the vehicle disappear into the darkness.

“Collect the bodies. Retreat,” Silan said. He raised a finger and glanced at his ring. The pitch-black stain on its surface still hadn’t faded, which was an unmistakable omen of disaster. “This place is bad news. Who knows what ghosts might crawl out next.”

He sighed, then looked toward the shifting core deep within the hall.

I’m never taking another grave-robbing job again. How inauspicious.

***

“Mr. Ji?”

In the narrow, collapsing corridor, An Ran obediently raised his hands as Ji Jue bandaged his wounds.

“Sorry. I dragged you down,” he said.

“You dragged me down? Then what am I, a damn anchor?” Ji Jue rolled his eyes. He looked like he wanted to smack the back of An Ran’s head, but when he saw that pitiful expression, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “So what, you’ve got a head of steel or something? Why would you risk your life for a few hundred bucks? If you can’t win, why not just run?”

An Ran shook his head. “It’s not the same. White Deer and Ember are different.”

Rather, this was exactly why he had come here in the first place. To obtain blessings and get stronger, the Chosen One had to draw closer and closer to the Supreme Benevolence they followed.

Unlike the Ember Path, which represented creation and innovation, the White Deer path embodied wilderness, primitiveness, freedom, and defiance. It stripped away all civilized appearances, abandoned false order, and returned life to its most fundamental nature, where one simply followed desire and chose their own path in life.

It was a path of wildness, glorifying the raw survival of the fittest. The strong controlled everything, while the weak could only submit, endure humiliation, resist in desperation, or die. One either fought and won or died.

When this power was used righteously, it became a dagger aimed at tyrants. When used otherwise, it became a tool for crushing the weak.

For followers of the White Deer Path, there was no such thing as right or wrong. Concepts like correct or incorrect, and good or evil were meaningless. Morality was nothing more than empty rhetoric. On the contrary, strength alone gave meaning to kindness, and strength alone made cruelty something to be feared. For the weak, none of it mattered anyway. Right or wrong was just a joke.

Because of this, strange and massive chaotic organizations like Wasteland Assembly came into being, constantly in internal conflict, never unified, yet thriving in disorder.

The simplest way to obtain the White Deer blessing was to defeat the strong while being weak, challenge someone stronger than yourself, bet your life and everything you have, prove the gap between you and others through blood and death, and climb the ladder using slaughter as your steps. And of course, if the one you kill was a Chosen One of the Origin Path, even better.

White Deer especially favored the deaths of Origin followers, just as Origin Chosen Ones would naturally turn their blades on White Deer followers once they gained some authority.

“What a pity. I was just a bit short,” An Ran said regretfully. “I miscalculated one step. If I’d been just a little stronger, I might’ve actually won.”

“If you really wanted to win, then back then, you shouldn’t have chosen Lou Feng for that final strike, right?”

That made An Ran fall silent. If it had truly been about obtaining the blessing, then that crucial, life-and-death strike shouldn’t have been aimed at Lou Feng.

A lone charge against the Homecoming Knights, breaking through their defenses and encirclement... if that final sword, the one that wagered everything, had been aimed at Silan instead, would he have been able to block it?

An Ran was willing to give up his life for one thing only: to draw fire away from Ji Jue and buy him the most precious window of opportunity.

If not for An Ran, even if Ji Jue could have used the workshop’s operations to infiltrate Lou Feng’s side, it would not have been so easy to take him down cleanly with the devil’s work ball.

Ji Jue sighed. “You never thought about what would happen if I didn’t react in time? At least discuss something like this with me in advance, alright? Don’t just charge in headfirst all the time. What if something really went wrong? How am I supposed to explain that to Ms. Wen?”

An Ran thought for a moment, then answered seriously, “I figured you would definitely be able to seize the opportunity.”

Smack.

Ji Jue couldn’t hold back anymore and lightly smacked the boy on the back of his head.

“Turn around,” Ji Jue said. “The wounds on your back need medication too.”

“Okay.”

An Ran obediently turned over, revealing the injuries on his back. Aside from the most dangerous penetrating wound on his abdomen, there were also numerous cuts on his arms, neck, face, and legs. Fortunately, Ji Jue had once studied emergency rescue procedures and still remembered most of them. On top of that, his recent studies in anatomy and surgery hadn’t gone to waste either. At the very least, basic emergency treatment was no problem.

Not to mention he had Pacifier now, which rendered even stitching unnecessary. He controlled spirit matter to reconnect torn muscles, seal bleeding points, and even repair blood vessels.

An Ran’s personal healing drugs were also shockingly effective. After everything was treated, aside from the abdominal wound that still needed some time, the rest had already mostly healed.

However, while treating the leg injuries, Ji Jue was startled by the condition of An Ran’s right leg. A nail, as thick as Ji Jue’s thumb, had been driven straight into his knee.

It was an alchemical construct, filled with a cursed aura. Black light flowed through it, suppressing the wound’s recovery while simultaneously corroding newly formed flesh, even fusing itself with the bone.

What horrified Ji Jue even more was the malice behind it. According to his perception, the nail wasn’t indestructible. It could be destroyed, but the moment it was broken, it would leave an unremovable spirit imprint on whoever destroyed it.

It was a warning. Anyone who dared to remove this nail would be making an enemy of the An family.

“Even if it’s family discipline[1], isn’t this going too far?”

Ji Jue frowned. He reached out, intending to read and deconstruct the spirit circuitry on the nail, but An Ran stopped him with a faint smile.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Ji. My sister had kind intentions. As long as her nail is still there, no one else in the family can interfere. If someone else pulls out this punishment nail, then I won’t be considered part of the family anymore.”

Ji Jue fell silent. For a moment, he didn’t know how to react to such an absurd family rule. But since An Ran objected, he had no right to act on his own.

In that brief silence, he could already feel the workshop’s vibrations growing more intense. It was as if he were sitting on a volcano about to erupt.

This ever-changing central hub was continuously drawing in spirit matter, giving rise to some unprecedented and terrifying transformation. Within Mr. Ball’s spirit world, countless intricate circuits were exploding in growth like a massive tree, spreading wildly. As if trying to fill everything, they spread across all existence to once again envelop the entire rift realm.

At that very moment, he heard an unprecedented, piercing scream. It was a terrified, anguished wail, as if coming from hell itself. It echoed from the deepest core of the entire hub, from that sealed darkness.

With a thunderous explosion, layers of locked doors shattered. From within flowed a torrent of spirit entities, already so liquefied and unstable that they could barely maintain their shape. It was the Shepherd of the Dragonrite Society, Formless!

The once-overwhelming Chosen One, a Shepherd who followed the path of draconic transformation, had now completely lost his sanity and had been reduced to a wretched state.

He screamed, wailed, howled, and cursed, but he achieved nothing. He writhed, struggled, and sobbed uncontrollably, scattering countless vengeful spirits as he tried to break free from the horrifying darkness clinging to him like a parasite.

The darkness remained silent, like hell itself in utter stillness. And now, the gates of hell had been blown open.

1. “家法” refers to the traditional rules within a Chinese family or clan used to govern members and maintain order, including clan laws and family precepts. It can also broadly refer to the tools and methods a head of household uses to discipline family members, such as children or servants. The concept covers areas like ancestral rites, upbringing, and family hierarchy, and serves as a general term for written clan regulations and household teachings, such as Zhuzi Family Instructions. In addition, “家法” can also refer to the distinctive style or tradition passed down within a scholarly lineage or master-disciple school. ☜