Chapter 9: Had We Not Signed the Severance?
#### **Serpentine Stratagems**
- **Zhou Li's Venomous Whisper**
Amidst the resplendent silk-draped luxury of the Four Seasons suite, Zhou Li's lithe limbs coil around Song's form with the sinuous grace of a serpent, her voice a mellifluous yet venom-laden murmur:
*"Reduce the auction house to a smouldering pile of ruins... and I will conduct Wan'er to your private retreat—her autonomy safeguarded as tenderly as a precious moth ensconced in amber."
- **Song's Rapacious Caress**: His thumb etches arcane symbols reminiscent of ancient runes along the velvety, alabaster expanse of her collarbone—*"What transgression has she committed to incite such a venomous enmity in you? Not that I'm one to lament the fervor it stirs..."*
- **Zhou's Obsidian Vow**: *(Internal Pondering)* *"May her immaculate facade of virtue shatter into countless infinitesimal fragments like stardust as she grovels and supplicates for the most paltry of offerings at the feast of destiny!"*
#### **Dawn's Hollow Epiphany**
- **Wan'er's Solitary Awakening**
She stirs from her slumber within a void enveloped in sumptuous silk intricately embroidered with patterns evocative of frost-kissed tendrils, her fingertips brushing against linens that are more frigid than the depths of a lunar chasm. The study vibrates with Chen's spectral absence, his **gaming altar pulsating with neon radiance like a rhythmic dirge** that weaves a mechanical lament for her seclusion.
- **The Abyss Across the Call**: Chen's baritone, suffused with a profound sense of desolation, cleaves through the silence: *"Has... the equilibrium that once united us been restored?"
- **The Taciturn Impasse**: Their shared breaths congeal within the digital expanse—**like colossal, immovable titans locked in a relentless stalemate, awaiting the cataclysmic upheaval that will enforce a surrender**.
- **The Catalytic Outburst**
Chen's disjointed plea—*"Just... obliterate my digital imprint from your life."*—ignites a tempestuous inferno of fury within Wan'er:
*"Then espouse your digital siren!"
Zhou Li's Machinations
Zhao Wan'er had no alternative but to end the call and hasten toward the auction house. If she could expedite a resolution, she might yet witness Chen Liang's triumphant return to the professional arena—his inaugural debut beneath the celestial glare of stadium lights.
He had confided in her before, his voice tinged with old bitterness: a perpetual substitute, forever barred from that hallowed stage. Now, destiny beckoned—a coronation of perseverance, a stride toward redemption.
Yet upon crossing the threshold, the air thickened with unease. Colleagues huddled in murmuring clusters, their gazes skittering away as she passed.
In his glass-walled office, the auction director sat statue-still, his countenance a tempest contained. Zhou Li's lips curled in a frigid smirk amidst the staff—a viper among sparrows.
"Director", Zhao Wan'er ventured, knuckles whitening on the doorframe, "what calamity has struck?"
"Song Xiansheng reneges." The man's fist struck polished teak, a thunderclap in the tomb-silent room. "The contract—signed, sealed—now ash. Three weeks' labour squandered. Our reputation…"
"But the legal binding—"
"Law?" A mirthless bark. "When tigers withdraw their patronage, do ants litigate? Tomorrow's auctioneer's block stands barren. Our buyers—magnates, syndicate lords—will raze this establishment to salted earth."
Zhou Li's phone hummed. Across the room, her manicured thumb danced—a covert signal. The director's device illuminated: *Recall the banquet. His eyes devoured her.
Comprehension dawned, slow and venomous. His scrutiny raked Zhao Wan'er—the jade pendant at her collarbone (Chen Liang's parting gift) and the rouge brushed across lips usually pale with overwork. Memory resurrected Song's clammy palm "accidentally" grazing her thigh beneath the Lazy Susan.
"Xiao Zhao." The director's voice melted into cloying syrup. He gestured to the Chesterfield sofa, its leather sighing under manufactured warmth. "We've nurtured your talents, have we not? Championed your ascent?"
Her throat constricted. Prime consignments were funnelled to her desk, yes—but also midnight "strategy sessions" where brandy fumes choked more than camaraderie. "This house is my second family," she parroted, the lie blistering her tongue.
"Families sacrifice." His smile mirrored a taxidermist's craft. "Song's war bow—a Han dynasty relic—was to be our magnum opus. Retrieve his commitment. By any means." The unspoken codicil hung like a noose. "Or seek employment elsewhere."
Beyond the door, Zhou Li dispatched a single character:
——
Xu Jianing's stiletto tapped an impatient staccato on marble. Forty minutes lapsed, yet no Zhao Wan'er. The arena's floodlights bled through her penthouse windows—a siren call.
She arrived to find Chen Liang backstage, pacing like a caged leopard. "Xu Jianing!" His gaze darted behind her. "Where's—she was meant to…"
"Detained." No sneer accompanied the admission.
His repeated calls met only electronic silence. Beneath his team jersey, dread crystallized—a shard of ice piercing championship dreams.
The Husband's Gambit
Xu Jianing's atypical composure masked ulterior designs—her true quarry being Chen Liang's team's shadow-cloaked jungler. Having scrutinised two matches with forensic intensity, certainty congealed: this taciturn virtuoso, whose manoeuvres mirrored her phantom mentor's with 99.9% synchronicity, could be none other than the elusive "V" who'd haunted then abandoned their digital trysts. Though junior in years, her assurance burned phosphorescent. *Let that glacial princeling confront my incarnate form,* she silently challenged, the memory of his pixelated indifference stoking her resolve.
Across the city, Chen Liang's repeated summons to Zhao Wan'er dissolved into electronic purgatory. Instincts howling of peril, he shook off Xu's delaying tactics—"She's endangered!"—abandoning both arena and astonished teammates. Their murmured speculations trailed him: this veteran marksman's deathless performances, those surgical strikes, perhaps harbingers of postseason resurgence.
——
In the stratospheric silence of the Four Seasons' apex suite, Zhao Wan'er contemplated Song Xiansheng's calculated summons. The industrialist's earlier pretence of unfamiliarity dissolved into GPS coordinates texted with imperial brevity. She'd navigated such predatory parlays before, emerging unscathed through silver-tongued deflection—yet tonight's rendezvous hummed with altered harmonics.
Song materialized fifty-three minutes tardy, civility veneered over malice. "Steak?" He chuckled, derision clinging like cigar ash as he commandeered the menu—six Pétrus '89 bottles materialized alongside cuts of Kobe beef allegedly "prepared to Madam Zhao's exacting specifications". Each unbroken wax seal became a checkpoint in his psychological siege.
The first empty bottle bought only arched brows. The second propelled her to a marble sanctum, where retching echoes duelled with Chen Liang's nineteenth call. Song's thumb descended upon the silenced device—a chessmaster removing a pawn.
——
Desperation's alchemy transformed Chen Liang. Tang Mengru's brusque "Auction house!" collided with shuttered premises until divine intervention arrived via dealership notification—GPS coordinates glowing like Excalibur's hilt. The luxury sedan's electronic heartbeat led him through neon canyons to a staged predation.
His hand intercepted the third goblet's ascent, burgundy liquid trembling in arrested motion. "Allow me," he rasped, the words flensing pretence.
Song's composure fissured. "By what right—"
"Conjugal privilege." The declaration detonated among Baccarat crystal, suspending chronometry. In that dilated moment, three years of sublimated devotion attained diamond clarity—an oath transcending ink-and-paper covenants.
The Alcoholic Alchemist
Chen Liang's gaze fused with Mr Song's like duelling electron beams. "Your gambit."
The tycoon's facade of nonchalance fractured. *Marital claims?* His ocular sweep dismissed the interloper's threadbare sweater. "Youthful valour charms," he purred, rotating his goblet to catch prismatic light, "though counterfeit vows demand correction. Shall I demonstrate authentic spousal prerogatives?"
Zhao Wan'er's fingernails engraved lunar crescents into Chen Liang's flesh—a cypher of dread and supplication. His response detonated through crystalware: "Our covenant requires no notary." Six Pétrus '82 bottles materialized, their corks detonating like celebratory gunfire. "Choose: libations or prostration."
——
Zhou Li erupted from velvet drapery, her Dior Poison cloud warping with panic. "Desist this buffoonery!" Stiletto met Carrara marble in seismic punctuation. "You annihilate what I've architectured!"
Through Ethanol's gossamer veil, Zhao Wan'er decrypted the conspiracy. "Your machinations..."
"Still your serpent's tongue!" Zhou Li's Lacquer Rouge lips contorted, revealing the pawnshop heir's desperation—the shadowed ledgers, the loan sharks circling her delinquent lover. "One tremor collapses our house of cards!"
Chen Liang's mirthquake rattled Swarovski pendants. "Menace my consort? Witness consequences."
——
Mr Song's pupils dilated with sacramental fervour. Before him stood not a challenger but a communion candidate—a fellow bacchanal initiate! "Let ambrosia consecrate our pact!" He shattered decorum with a Beluga Gold Line decanter.
Tripartite gulps resounded. Zhou Li's inaugural bottle beaded her décolletage with liquid topaz. Her second resurrected dental chair trauma. The third transmuted her into a wraith retching Bizet's *Habanera* into gold-leaf plumbing.
——
Divine intervention struck mid-quaff—the League of Legends interface superimposing reality. *Drunken Rage Activated (Passive: Ambrosial Metabolism; Active: Ethanol Nullification; Duration: 00:02:59)*. Cabernet Sauvignon became a sacramental elixir.
"Tepid swill!" He annihilated empties like conquered foes. "Summon the Sichuan inferno!"
Twenty Moutai amphorae manifested. Mr Song's Dionysian ecstasy curdled as Chen Liang dispatched quintuple vessels, his abdominal curvature mocking Newtonian physics.
"Encore!" The magnate croaked, jugular throbbing like an overdriven metronome.
Zhao Wan'er observed the metamorphosis—this wasn't the man who forgot recycling schedules but a Dionysus incarnate. Her awe crystallized alongside primal terror.
——
As Zhou Li crawled from porcelain purgatory, her Kabuki mask of makeup streaming Pollock-esque despair, Chen Liang proffered a monogrammed handkerchief. "Inform your usurers," he breathed, exuding mountain-spring purity, "their talons shall never profane my wife's domain."
Mr Song's finale erupted in Baroque vomit splatter. Through the vinous apocalypse, Chen Liang's pronouncement cleaved reality: "Coda."
Zhao Wan'er's lacrimal dams ruptured as he spirited her elevator-ward—a Valkyrie claiming her warrior from Valhalla's debauchery. The bronze doors sealed upon Zhou Li's whimper and Mr. Song's slurry ode to "Hades' superior drinking companions".
The Consort's Claim
Mr Song's bloodshot eyes oscillated between the five Moutai monoliths and Chen Liang's glacial stare. The industrialist's legendary alcohol tolerance met its event horizon.
Zhao Wan'er's grip tightened on her husband's arm—this metabolic anomaly defied mortal biology. Patrons at adjacent tables bore witness to liquid alchemy, their throats contracting in sympathetic dehydration.
"Cat caught your liver?" Chen Liang's whisper carried across the frozen tableau.
The tycoon's chuckle emerged frayed. "Younger brother, your Dionysian gifts humble me." His palms rose in surrender toward Zhao Wan'er. "Let's finalize—"
"Negotiations require parity." Chen Liang's knuckle rapped glass. "Empty vessels make the truest music."
——
Mr Song's conciliatory facade shattered. This upstart rejected détente! His liver throbbed in protest as Chen Liang matched him shot for shot, transforming the penthouse into a proving ground for hepatic endurance.
"Another!"
"Cease dawdling!"
"Goldfish sips?"
The industrialist's world dissolved into ethanol fractals. Fourteen bottles to Chen Liang's name, five to his own—the final Moutai column loomed like Everest.
As League of Legends' system chime announced skill expiration, Chen Liang's knees betrayed him. Zhao Wan'er became a living crutch, her Chanel No. 5 cutting through the alcoholic miasma.
"Accord…" Mr Song's forehead met the tabletop, words slurring through mahogany veneer. "...ratified."
Chen Liang's fist slammed down. "Apologies!"
The tycoon's self-flagellation shocked even the waitstaff—a shattered bottle corona crowning his scalp. "S-satisfied, elder brother?" Crimson rivulets charted courses through his Rolex.
Zhao Wan'er's murmured assent triggered Chen Liang's collapse into chivalric duty. "Homeward," he slurred, momentum carrying them through vomit-scented elevators.
——
Dawn unveiled domestic warfare.
"Vagrant!" Tang Mengru's shrill condemnation shattered kitchen calm. "This isn't your flophouse!"
Chen Liang's bloodshot glare resurrected balcony terrors. "Crave aerial theatrics?"
"Mother, enough!" Zhao Wan'er's eruption carried three years' suppressed rebellion. "He's my consort—my jurisdiction!"
The bedroom's reunited linens hosted silent reckonings. Chen Liang's dawn resurrection—pancakes sizzling, coffee percolating—coincided with Zhao Wan'er's epiphany: perhaps trash-day negligence masked deeper devotion.
——
Auction house ovations greeted their entrance.
"Maestro!" The director's unctuous praise curdled at Chen Liang's looming presence. "Our star negotiator!"
Zhao Wan'er's sidelong glance acknowledged her husband's invisible hand. "Your commission—"
"Requires participation." Chen Liang's interruption froze the celebratory bustle. "I'll bid."
The director's monocle slipped. "Sir, the war bow's reserve—"
"Five million starter coins?" Chen Liang's smile channelled poker-faced bluff mastery. "Precisely my budget's lower threshold."
Zhao Wan'er's mental abacus whirred—three thousand nights of instant noodles, forty-eight months of bus fares. Her professional composure cracked. "Since when did you—"
"Marital secrets, Madam Auctioneer." His wink dissolved twenty-eight days' estrangement. "Shall we inspect the merchandise?"
The war bow's glass case gleamed under gallery lights, its Han Dynasty curves whispering of Chen Liang's impending metamorphosis—from drunken saviour to bidder extraordinaire.
The Alchemy of Obligation
Zhao Wan'er's perplexity dissolved beneath Chen Liang's vulpine smile. "My covenant with Patriarch Ma," he intoned, fingertips grazing his temporal lobe. "Even custodians of antiquity require contemporary tacticians."
Her ocular shutters trembled like captive Lepidoptera. "Your… recompense?"
His scrutiny anchored to her carmine lips—a lacquered temptation in chiaroscuro. "Any indulgence?"
"Within ethical cartography." Her auroral flush betrayed severity.
A colibri's benediction alighted on his cheek—crimson sigil efflorescing like Somme poppies. Chen Liang's digits charted the evanescent trophy, savouring her paradoxical audacity.
"Madam Auctioneer misapprehends." His feigned gravitas fractured her poise. "My petition: a symposium of shared sustenance. *This*—he indicated the cosmetic imprint—*constitutes unsanctioned tribute.*
——
The auction house forecourt transmuted into a Grand Guignol theatre. Mr Song descended from his Bentley as a bandaged potentate, cephalic swaddling phosphorescent under matinal rays. Espying Chen Liang, he advanced with ursine effusiveness.
"Frater! Nocturnal bacchanalia—my exchequer's honour!"
Chen Liang's Habano corona eclipsed the magnate's olive branch. "Your hepatic arrears remain delinquent."
Their conviviality petrified mid-gesture as Zhou Li's Icarus plummet unfolded—an Attic drama in accelerated reel. Her usurer consort's palm met cheekbone in percussive condemnation, the report echoing through onyx colonnades to collective apathy.
"Rectification", rumbled Mr Song through Hoyo de Monterrey vapours.
"Cosmic equilibrium", Chen Liang rectified.
——
Within the auction hall's reliquary hush, Patriarch Ma manifested beside Chen Liang, attaché case gravid with liquidated heritage. "Three dynasties' jade legacy," he murmured. "Monetized for your quixotry."
The war bow's revelation suspended pulmonary function. Beneath clinical museum illumination, its patinated arcs whispered of cryogenic eras and obliterated sovereignties. Chen Liang's optic nerves fractured—Anivia's spectral talons materializing, permafrost breath articulating: *"Freljord's absconded heirloom."
The auctioneer's mallet descended.
"Quinque million!" Chen Liang's proclamation detonated like nitroglycerin.
Zhao Wan'er's gavel quivered. This stubble-cheeked iconoclast in selvedge denim now crossed rapiers with Brioni-clad leviathans—their horological armaments glinting like heraldic armatures. Mr. Song's cachinnation ruptured protocol. Six million! Let fraternal allegiance triumph!"
——
The coliseum of high finance erupted. Bidding paddles became gladiatorial rudii, their incremental ascensions dissecting Chen Liang's mortgaged destiny. Patriarch Ma's calculus—index finger tracing jade abacus beads—mapped the fiscal hemorrhage: 8.2...9.7...
At 11.3 million, Chen Liang's cigarillo stub traced parabolic resignation. Then—
"Duodeciem milliones." The contralto incision parted tension like Damascussteel.
Crania pirouetted toward the interloper: a figure sheathed in quantum-tailored qipao, onyx tresses cascading over sable-mantled epaulettes. Recognition propagated through the congregation—Frostfire Industries' sovereign, scion of pergelisolbaronies.
Zhao Wan'er's auction mallet hovered in quantum superposition. "Domina Shivera advances twelve. Countermand?"
Chen Liang's metacarpals blanched. The relic's aura intensified—rime fractals swirling across its carapace like ancestral mnemonics.
"Twelve million," he reaffirmed, immolating jade patrimony and conjugal collateral in conflagrativeresolve.
The Freljord's boreal zephyrs ululated ratification.
The Frostborne Gambit
The auctioneer's mallet had scarcely ceased its reverberations when Chen Liang's arm pierced the air—a javelin of defiance hurled against decorum's gale.
"Juvenile temerity," Patriarch Ma exhaled through clattering jade prayer beads, their nephrite surfaces mapping decades of financial stratagems. His protégés' telltale fervour had breached the unspoken covenant of seasoned bidders, painting crosshairs across their fiscal flank.
Yet the war bow's siren aria drowned reason. Chen Liang's corneas fluoresced with augmented reality sigils—Freljordian runes spiralling across the relic's patina, decipherable only through League-forged optics. This transcended acquisition; it was Darwinian necessity.
As numerals ascended—eight million, nine—new silhouettes materialized in the oaken archway. The auctioneer's cadence fractured mid-cadenza.
Patriarch Ma's prayer beads petrified. "Mo Chuanhe..."
The appellation propagated through the congregation like profane liturgy. The frost-crowned dynast processed on his granddaughter's arm, their advent scattering magnates like startled ptarmigans. Mo SiYu's arctic gaze intersected Chen Liang's—permafrost meeting wildfire.
"Ninety million," she intoned, syllables crystallising bid paddles in mid-arc.
Economic calculus inverted. Where others perceived an archaeological artefact, the cognoscenti recognized influence tender—a gilded visa to Mo familial grace.
Chen Liang's metacarpals whitened. "Ten."
The vacuum of collective inhalation starved the chamber. Mo Chuanhe's cataract-veiled eyes clarified—nonagenarian instincts detecting tectonic shifts.
"Fifteen," Mo SiYu riposted, digits flicking like icicle shards.
Patriarch Ma's abacus beads clattered warnings. "Neophyte, this transcends—"
"Twenty." Chen Liang's baritone fissured Carrara tiles. Zhao Wan'er's ivory gavel sprouted dendritic fractures.
The Mo scion's composure glaciated. Beneath her frosted pupils, quantum processors recalculated—this insurgent's audacity defied all social algorithms.
——
In fiscal wings, Zhao Boss executed transfers with tremulous keystrokes. Liquidated ancestral holdings flowed through digital Styx into Chen Liang's coffers—a damned soul's passage purchased.
"Bedlam!" Tang Mengru's wraith haunted each appended zero. "You'll dragoon us into penury!"
Yet the war bow's hoarfrost tracery now swirled in Chen Liang's irises—Freljordian glyphs vowing puissance beyond specie. Let usurers come with actuarial tablets; he'd answer with gelid wrath.
——
Mo Chuanhe's chuckle resonated like calving glaciers. "This sapling… combustion intrigues."
His descendant's lacquered nail traced paddle contours. "Extinguish the blaze?"
"Let conflagration purify." The patriarch's opalescent gaze mirrored Chen Liang's determined jawline. "Incineration reveals metallurgic truth."
The gavel's final descent at twenty-three million birthed numeric wraiths to haunt ledgers. As authentication tablets approached, the relic's rime patterns flared cerulean.
Chen Liang's fingerprints fogged the display glass.
*System Manifest: Ashe's Bequest Unsealed. Passive: Frostseer's Discernment (Prime Tier)*
Reality sharpened—oligarchs' microtics, convection currents, Mo SiYu's arrhythmic pulse plucking at qin strings. Debt obelisks crumbled before clarion perception.
Zhao Wan'er advanced with trembling folios. "Consummation requires…"
Chen Liang's stylus hovered. Beyond onyx ramparts, Shylocks honed metaphorical blades.
Through frosted lenses, he already saw their crystallized defeat.
The Frostborne Reckoning
Zhao Wan'er's third enunciation trembled at the precipice of silence when Chen Liang's arm cleaved the void like Arthurian steel.
"Twenty million."
The neural material materialised with velvet lethality, its resonance liquefying bone marrow. Zhao Wan'er's ocular apertures dilated—this sum eviscerated proxy protocols. Patriarch Ma's cautionary edict ("Neophytes retreat at fiscal precipices!") lay trampled beneath Chen Liang's monetary blitzkrieg.
Mo SiYu's cryogenic lacquers tensed. Across the oligarchic tundra, social algorithms recalibrated—this insurgent's audacity breached cardinal covenants.
"Twenty-five," she riposted, phalanges articulating glacial poniards.
Chen Liang's pupils fluoresced with augmented reality palimpsests—Ashe's spectral cord thrumming behind retinas. "Thirty."
The auction chamber morphed into a quantum manifold—each bid collapsing probability waveforms. Zhao Boss's digital exsanguination transfused ancestral nephrite into cryptographic vaults. Mo Chuanhe observed through nacreous lenses, divining the relic's encrypted harmonics.
At forty million, superposition collapsed. The mallet fell. Mo SiYu approached through the thermodynamic aftermath, breath crystallizing in triumph's gelid wake.
"Why repudiate our carte blanche?" Her whisper carried a rhyme-sharpened edge.
"Autonomy," Chen Liang parried, though Freljordian sigils now pulsed beneath his sternum—the bow's quintessence having quantum-tunnelled during final paroxysms.
——
Auroral rays unveiled Chen Liang's penance theatre. The Audi emporium's chromium planes mirrored Zhao Wan'er's bewilderment.
"Your 'revelation' reeks of fiscal necrosis," she censured, yet acquiesced.
The personalized plate immobilized her—"A·LC520."
"Lethal Codex 520," Chen Liang decrypted. "Ludic vernacular for 'amatory devotion'."
Xiao Tao's choreographed admiration ("Celestial twin flames!") failed to veil perplexity—why privilege romantic semiotics over economic ontology?
Zhao Wan'er's index digit traced embossed glyphs. "This automotive cypher..."
"Conjugal reconfiguration." Chen Liang's rictus channelled post-cataclysmic absolution. "The relic's essence underwent wavefunction collapse during fiscal supernova. Our carriage now harbours Ashe's bequest."
As combustion roared, hoarfrost mandalas shimmered across the hood's curvature—perceptible solely to enhanced sensoria. Debt monoliths crumbled before the war bow's embedded data torrents, its true purpose transcending mortal ledgers.
The Mo surveillance drone overhead sublimated in silent cryodetonation.
The Frostborne Epiphany
The Audi's cabin transformed into a sacrosanct confessional, Zhao Wan'er's inquiry suspended like thurible smoke.
Chen Liang's gaze charted her visage—this regal raptor who'd armoured him against societal barbs yet seared him in domestic solitude. Her lashes fluttered like caged quetzals awaiting divine judgment.
"Absolution," his basso voice fractured with seismic contrition. "My lethargy forged your crown of thorns."
Zhao Wan'er's fist grazed his deltoid—a zephyr's admonishment. "Should recidivism occur..."
Her ultimatum dissolved as lips caressed her metacarpals. Carmine auroras bloomed across her magnolia complexion. The steering wheel became her cloistered refuge, Nappa leather absorbing discomposed focus.
——
The geriatric ward morphed into a Colosseum spectacle.
"Behold celestial ambrosia!" Chen Liguo brandished A5 Wagyu tomahawks like Caledfwlch. "Filial piety incarnate!"
Covetous lamentations rippled through catheter-tethered onlookers.
"Two millennia per portion," Chen Liang intoned.
Pensioners recoiled as from kryptonite. Chen Liguo's gnarled claws shielded beef like Fafnir guarding Andvaranaut. "Brigands! Desecrators! Restore my nectar!"
Zhao Wan'er's laughter crystallized the absurd—a virtuoso quelling cacophony with raised baton. "Partake of mine, Father."
Their culinary pas de deux continued until He Feng materialized—a wraith in a sanitised shroud.
"Protocol dictates..." His talon extended toward the sirloin.
Chen Liang parried. "This isn't oblation."
The haematologist's gaze sharpened behind fractured pince-nez. In Chen Liang's receding silhouette, he glimpsed quantum probabilities—the ER resurrection, the diagnostic augury...
——
The Maybach phalanx breached the Hippocratic sanctum, silent klaxons wailing.
Triage personnel were petrified as Mo Chuanhe's praetorian guard stormed healing halls.
"Cease!" The patriarch's cough orchestrated deathwatch beetles. "Let senescence expire with gravitas."
Mo Siyu's glacial mien fault-lined. "Conjure He Feng!"
The physician materialized—therapeutic paradox trailing IV tributaries. "Dismantle this mummers' farce!"
Security atrophied. Tycoons atrophied. Mo Siyu's nod dissolved the blockade.
"Prognosticate!" she commanded.
He Feng's digit indicated liminal shadows. "Soteriology absconded moments prior. That mortal..."
Epiphany detonated. The Audi's retreating luminescence burnt retinae.
"Patriarch!" Mo Siyu's cry fragmented aseptic sterility. "Pursuit!"
The Maybach armada caroused, and vulcanised shrieks rend asphalt. Chen Liang's navigation matrix flickered—rime fractals spiralling across the interface.
Ashe's ectoplasmic susurrus threaded through audio ether: "Wyrd's loom intertwines."
The war bow's ordination commenced.
I, Too, Seek Him!
Mo Siyu's gaze lingered pensively on the retreating silhouette of the Audi TT.
In the fleeting moment their vehicles had crossed paths, she had glimpsed a hauntingly familiar visage behind the wheel—Chen Liang, the man who had spurned her family's overture and locked horns with her over the antique war bow mere hours prior.
She dismissed the notion with a subtle shake of her head. He Feng's mysterious referral could not possibly align with this brash youth. A physician's essence permeates their bearing, and Chen Liang exuded none of that cultivated grace. Yet neither did she fully trust He Feng's ambiguous claims.
"Your certainty falters me," Mo Siyu countered, frost threading her words. "My grandfather's constitution rejects modernity's probing eyes—infrared spectres, X-ray phantoms—all become instruments of torment."
He Feng, the luminary of Western medicine who had once rebuffed her family's lavish courtship, stood unmoved. He knew the cruel paradox of Mo Chuanhe's ailment: a riddle simple in solution yet impenetrable in diagnosis. The patriarch's flesh rebelled against scanners' touch, while the nation's most venerated traditional healers had departed baffled, their wisdom rendered obsolete.
"Merely an intuition," He Feng conceded, his gaze avoiding hers, "forged through fleeting encounters with the young man."
"Intuition?" Ice crystallized in Mo Siyu's voice. "You dare stake my grandfather's life on whimsy?"
"Child…" Mo Chuanhe's murmur carried ancestral weight, stilling his granddaughter's ire. The aged patriarch recognized desperation's many masks.
Their departure from the emergency wing coincided with chaos' entrance—a dishevelled couple descended upon He Feng. Wang Yazhi, her countenance twisted by maternal frenzy, brandished currency like sacramental offerings. "Where is the miracle worker? Name your price!"
He Feng's revulsion manifested in scattered banknotes dancing across sterile floors. Mo Siyu observed, lips curling in derision. Ten thousand yuan? The sum paled against her family's rejected millions.
Yet curiosity prevailed. "This prodigy you chase", she probed Wang Yazhi, "what sorcery does he wield?"
"Sorcery?" The matron's eyes shone with manic reverence. "A single glance unmasked my son's crumbling mind! Weeks of examinations but confirmed his prophecy—a concussed soul!"
(The bitter truth lay buried beneath staged diagnoses—a son's surrender to medical theatrics, seeking respite from a mother's smothering scrutiny.)
Intrigued, Mo Siyu returned to He Feng bearing tribute and tempered pride.
"Our quests converge," the physician confessed. "When he resurfaces, you'll be informed."
---
Meanwhile, within the Audi TT's leather-clad sanctuary, Chen Liang severed his connection with his esports overseer. "The battleground calls," he declared, though his gaze remained tethered to the woman beside him.
Zhao Wan'er's apology hung like mist—a whispered elegy for absent cheers. "Your triumph unfolded unseen…"
"Merely the overture," he vowed, fingers brushing hers. "League laurels await. The global crown—"
"—Remains China's unconquered Everest," she interjected, though her reproach lacked fire. They both knew the statistics: ageing warriors seldom rewrote history.
Undeterred, Chen Liang's voice softened. "Should fate crown me… Let us rewrite our beginning. A procession of roses, not reluctant signatures."
Tyres screamed in protest. Before contrition could form, Zhao Wan'er's blanched countenance redirected his attention.
The world outside had transformed into a trap—twin phalanxes of Wuling Hongguang vans sealing the street's arteries. From their steel bellies emerged a swarm of shadows, forty strong, advancing with methodical menace.
The Dance Begins
The Audi TT became an island besieged by tides of malice.
Zhao Wan'er's knuckles whitened against her phone's screen, its emergency call interface glowing like a digital lifeline. Chen Liang's palm eclipsed the light—a silent vow etched in the pressure of his touch. She remembered the car-crushing spectacle, yet the advancing legion—forty blades glinting under streetlights—threatened to eclipse even that memory.
Chen reclined against the vehicle's obsidian flank, his gaze dissecting the encircling wolves. From the toolkit emerged a humble screwdriver, now pulsing with an opalescent halo. Zhao Wan'er's breath hitched as his silhouette seemed to blur at the edges, dissolving into the night's whispering currents.
"Three minutes," he declared, stepping into the arena before doubt could reclaim her.
Derisive guffaws erupted. "Behold the hero!" mocked the pack leader, his machete carving arabesques in the air. "Armed with a seamstress' needle!"
Chen spun the luminous tool, its hum harmonizing with distant traffic drones. "Retreat now," he intoned, "lest your blades become relics of folly."
From their armoured perch in a distant Range Rover, Meng Chen and Xia Yu observed—the former's smile a rictus of vengeance, the latter's eyes alight with schadenfreude. "Shatter him," Meng hissed, phantom pain throbbing in his bandaged skull. Xia Yu's nod mirrored a raptor's strike—all sharp angles and hunger.
The first strike descended—a silver arc aimed at femoral arteries.
Reality stuttered.
Chen Liang dematerialized, rematerializing behind his assailant. "Pedestrian", he sighed, plucking the machete from nerveless fingers. The thug gaped at his empty hand, comprehension dawning slower than blood dripped from trembling fingertips.
Zhao Wan'er's gasp fogged the window as Chen pirouetted through the mob. The screwdriver—now a conductor's baton orchestrating gales—deflected steel with crystalline *tings*. Tornadic winds birthed from nowhere sent blades cartwheeling into darkness.
"The tempest knows no master," Chen recited, Yasuo's phantom timbre underscoring his words.
Chaos became choreography. Each parry disarmed; each feint fractured clavicles. Knees buckled to whispered touches, wrists snapped under feather-light precision. Yet no arteries wept, no spines shattered—mercy woven through violence.
Meng Chen's triumph curdled to dread. Xia Yu's manicured claws drew ruby beads from her palms.
At 120 seconds, half the horde lay moaning. Chen's screwdriver hovered at the leader's jugular. "Sponsors' names. Now."
The reply died unborn—tyres screeched as their patrons fled, abandoning pawns to their pain.
Returning to the Audi, Chen found Zhao Wan'er's tear-stained visage pressed to the glass. "You… you're not even breathing hard."
He winked, the tool's radiance dimming. "Told you I'd dance through it."
Symphony of Steel
"Solitude walks the blade's eternal road."
Chen Liang's fingers curled around the machete's hilt—Yasuo's phantom baritone resonating through his synapses like stormcellar echoes. The weapon's crude curvature became an extension of his will, its edge singing silent psalms to the gale.
The disarmed brute quivered, a marionette of fury and dread. "Phantom f*ck*r!" he howled, wrenching a steel pipe from his cohort. All warnings forgotten, the swing arced toward Chen's crown—an executioner's strike.
"Ride the zephyr's coattails," Chen breathed, dematerializing as the pipe cleaved empty air.
His reappearance behind the attacker coincided with a surgeon's touch—index finger brushing the man's patellar tendon. The *snap* of rupturing cartilage preceded a mammalian wail that froze the mob mid-roar.
Zhao Wan'er's breath painted frost flowers on glass. Thirty paces removed, Meng Chen's gloating grin petrified. Xia Yu's lacquered talons reopened half-healed crescents in her palms.
"Witchcraft..." a thug croaked, his bravado unravelling.
Chen's gaze swept the paralysed horde. "The hourglass empties," he intoned, the machete humming like high-tension wire. "Come, united—your farce amuses me still."
The gauntlet thrown, pride and terror waged war across forty faces. Three broke first—blades carving silver ellipses through halogen-lit gloom.
Reality skipped frames.
Chen dissolved into argent smoke, coalescing behind the triad. Three synchronized *cracks* scored the asphalt symphony—kneecaps fracturing, weapons clattering like discarded maracas.
In their fleeing steel chariot, Meng Chen's voice emerged strangled. "Own him," he hissed, fingers tightening in Xia Yu's scalp. "Daily dismantling becomes our ritual."
Her whimper dissolved beneath fresh screams.
Upon the asphalt stage, Chen pirouetted through collapsing foes—each touch a sonnet of dislocation, each parry a haiku of shattered wrists. The remnants fractured—some fleeing like spooked mustangs, others charging with cornered-wolf ferocity.
"Halt!"
Chen's command froze the scattering horde. The machete stood embedded in bitumen, quivering like a tuning fork struck by God's hammer.
The lead deserter collapsed, urine pooling around polished loafers. "M-mercy…"
Behind the marble-carved facade, Chen's vision swam. The system's glacial alert pulsed:
**[SWORDMASTER'S CADENCE TERMINATED]**
**[QUIESCENT PHASE ENGAGED]**
One hawk-eyed mercenary noted the pallor beneath Chen's bravado. "He's drained!" The cry kindled dying embers of valour.
As the mob teetered between rout and resurgence, Chen summoned final theatrics. "Who among you", he gasped, "volunteers to quench steel's thirst?"
The bluff held for three trembling heartbeats.
The Puppeteer's Requiem
The machete's edge hovered like Damocles's sword above the crew-cut leader's jugular. Chen Liang's pallor betrayed ebbing vitality, yet his blade remained unwavering—a cobra's poised stillness before the strike.
"Elder Brother… *mercy*," the man mewled, his cheek grinding against oil-stained asphalt. Behind him, forty sword-hardened souls mirrored the prostration—a grotesque ballet of capitulation.
Zhao Wan'er's breath crystallized on glass, her worldview fracturing. The man she'd dismissed as frail now stood deific amidst halogen-lit haze, his shadow stretching long over trembling supplicants.
---
**Street's End: Crown of Thorns**
Meng Chen's Range Rover convulsed, a metallic beast in death throes. "Goddamn pedal, *stomp it*!" he shrieked, clawing at the driver's seat. Tyres screamed their swan song before guardrails embraced the chassis in metallic consummation.
Chen approached the wreckage, moonlight glinting off steel. Meng's blood-masked visage emerged—defiance crumbling to atavistic dread. "Fate's humour eludes me, Meng *shao*," Chen murmured, boot pinning the heir against crumpled steel.
"This… changes nothing!" Meng spat through shattered teeth. "My family's attorneys will flay your—"
The machete's flat silenced him with symphonic *clangour.
"Your bleating wearies me," Chen sighed. Beneath theatrical calm, his sinews shrieked—crimson digits blazing behind eyelids:
**[VITAL RESERVES CRITICAL: 8%]**
**[COMBAT MODE TERMINATED]**
---
**Masque of the Damned**
Xia Yu's vermilion claws scrabbled at Chen's ankle. "Unhand him!" Her shriek carried the timbre of breaking porcelain. "You'll drown in retribution—"
Chen's laughter—glacial, mirthless—froze the plea. "Regrets, Xia *meiren*?" He crouched, voice velvet-wrapped arsenic. "When you traded chessmaster for rabid hound… did doubt ever whisper?"
Her riposte died as Meng thrashed: "Strike! Let's see your f*ck*ng ga—"
Crunch.
The steel pipe kissed his temple with ballistic precision. Meng's eyes rolled skyward, consciousness fleeing mid-taunt.
"Novel petitions", Chen mused, examining the sanguine-stained implement. Behind him, the grovelling horde quaked—their leader's bravado now pooling in amber streetlight.
---
**Coda: Web Unwoven**
Dawn's first blush illuminated the carnage when sirens pierced the haze. Investigators catalogued:
1. **Meng Chen**: Concussion, shattered pride, viral humiliation (courtesy of Zhao Wan'er's discreet livestream).
2. **Xia Yu**: Scrubbing digital trails—a breadcrumb path leading to offshore vaults and compromised magistrates.
3. **The Broken Cohort**: Singing confessions like Byzantine chorales, their ballads ensnaring three aldermen in Meng's silk-web empire.
As strobes painted the Audi crimson, Chen leaned against its flank, holographic script shimmering:
**[REPUTE ASCENDANT: 'GHOST EDGE']**
**[UNDERWORLD INFLUENCE: -37%]**
Zhao Wan'er approached, epiphany dawning through adrenaline's afterglow. "This theatre… calculated from the first move."
Chen's smile held arctic fire. "All wars conclude ere steel kisses steel, *zhījǐ*. Rabid curs… *particularly*… demand choreographed falls."
Their gazes locked, compact sealed in blood and revelation. Elsewhere, spectral digits tallied:
**[NEXUS IDENTIFIED: MO PATRIARCH'S VITALITY – TERMINAL DECLINE]**
**[PREPARATIONS INITIATED: MEDICAL INTERVENTION PROTOCOL]**
To be continuous…