The Immortal Undead’s Mirror Domain Enhancement was a terrifying ability that even Bai Chunian and Lan Bo found troublesome. Most opponents never considered how to defend against their own power being turned against them.
The Immortal Undead was dragged downward by a force even stronger than his own ghostly hands. Black spectral arms surged upward from Wuxiang Prowler’s replicated mirror world, grabbing his ankles, wrists, neck, and even covering his eyes and mouth, suffocating him.
The hands let out warped, distorted cries, whispering into his ears:
“Save me… Jinxi… save me… please save me…”
He writhed like a drowning man in mud, black water streaming from his gray-white eyes. He screamed skyward, violent shockwaves rippling outward from his body. The piercing hum forced Wuxiang Prowler to cover his ears as blood seeped from his nose and mouth.
He clawed at the ground with his left hand, half of his body already dragged into the mirror. Yet he gritted his teeth and refused to fall.
Copying an A3 deterioration-phase ability with an M2 gland was too taxing. Wuxiang Prowler began to tremble—but the Immortal Undead was indeed trapped. Unable to fly, he became vulnerable.
Jinlüchong fired precise shots. A bullet exploded into a dark, smoking blossom in the Undead’s forehead. Without hesitation, he fired again, shattering what remained of the Undead’s left hand.
The Immortal Undead lost balance and sank further—but still braced himself with his elbow, his malicious eyes snapping upward.
“Hehe… want me to drag you all down with me?”
A violent surge erupted from within him. Wuxiang Prowler and Jinlüchong were thrown backward. The mummy-like figure caught Jinlüchong midair, but both were still flung away. Hak, circling above, caught Wuxiang Prowler and gently set him down. The small chameleon’s tail hung limp, exhausted.
The Immortal Undead was forcibly dragged out of the mirror. The simulated magic mirror shattered instantly. Wuxiang Prowler suffered a violent backlash from the impact and immediately spat out a mouthful of filthy blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, collapsing on the ground and curling into a tight ball.
Beneath the Undead’s feet, a Pandora Mirror spread again. Ghostly hands inside it rushed toward Wuxiang Prowler, rising upward like sharp earth spikes.
Yuxiao Cheng, the closest to Wuxiang Prowler, ran over. He threw himself onto him and hugged him tightly, turning his body around. He summoned a golden sea anemone, wrapping both himself and the severely injured Wuxiang Prowler completely inside it.
“Ying! Catch him!” Yuxiao Cheng forced Wuxiang Prowler out beyond the warning line. He then sealed himself tightly inside the golden anemone, forming a glowing golden-orange sphere. Ghostly hands tore away layer after layer of the anemone. Everyone turned their guns toward the ghostly hands entangling the golden shell, but there were too many of them—each one destroyed was immediately replaced by another.
The sudden change threw the battlefield inside the cordon into chaos. Armed cadets launched a frantic assault toward the Immortal Undead.
The red-tailed buzzard circling in the sky let out a long, mournful cry. Hak folded his wings and dove straight down, slamming into the golden anemone and knocking it out of the range of the ghost hands. But the hands were fast—they seized his wings instead. Hak, like a hawk sinking into a swamp, was dragged deeper into the mirror.
Yuxiao Cheng fell several meters away, scrambling back on all fours toward Hak and reaching out his hand.
“Get out! Don’t get dragged in!”
Hak reached out and grabbed him tightly. He pulled himself upward desperately, and finally his body suddenly lightened. Hak crashed into Yuxiao Cheng’s arms, knocking them both to the ground.
A relieved smile appeared on his face—but all he saw was Yuxiao Cheng’s pupils constricting, his expression blank and lost.
Only then did Hak see, reflected in his eyes, his own body—his left wing had been torn off. The entire left side of his body was severed, his broken chest and lower half falling into the mirror below. Blood splattered everywhere like a spilled milk tea cup.
So even when the body is severed, death is not immediate—the consciousness remains clear.
Hak used his fingertip to write a single character in the sand: “win.”
Then he lifted his head and looked at Yuxiao Cheng’s tear-filled face, forcing out a silly smile that he was often mocked for. Maybe he was too stupid, and Chinese characters were too hard to learn. Yuxiao Cheng had taught him many words, but in the end, this was the only one he remembered.
Hak kept his eyes open, trying to imprint the crying, ugly, messy face of the small omega in front of him into his memory. The blood in his body drained away, and his consciousness froze at that moment.
—
Triggered by the undead summoning wave, Zhenzhu finally snapped back to awareness beneath the Lan Bo statue and left the wishing pool, stepping between the Immortal Undead and the Aphid Island cadets holding the defensive line.
He flicked his right hand, and a blade of Dead Sea Heartstone extended from his palm. He gripped it, his cold blue eyes sweeping across the group of youths before him.
Lu Yan struggled to stand, using his gun as support. He panted heavily, facing the white-haired, blue-eyed boy. The scent of tuberose drifting from him gave Lu Yan a strange sense of familiarity.
“Looks like… he looks like… Lan Bo… and also like Bai Chunian…”
Bi Lanxing shouted through the communicator, “Ah Yan, move!”
But Lu Yan did not move.
Zhenzhu flashed forward like purple lightning. The tip of his blade stopped only a millimeter from Lu Yan’s throat.
The Dead Sea Heartstone blade absorbed life force upon contact—any human touched by it would instantly be drained into a dry skeleton.
Lu Yan froze, not daring to move. His chin lifted slightly; he even held back his saliva as he trembled and asked:
“Do you… do you know Lan Bo?”
Zhenzhu drifted into a moment of distraction.
Skeleton seabirds circled overhead, carrying crowns woven from withered seaweed, singing hymns to the siren.
He and the Immortal Undead had crossed the sea from Westminster, sinking ships along the way, detonating underwater mines and volcanoes. The number of skeletal fish following them had increased, spreading across the ocean.
Zhenzhu glanced back at the shore. Several stranded whale skeletons were already covered in flies laying eggs in decaying flesh. The once-clear blue sea had turned dark and murky.
Beyond the warning line, the city was now engulfed in flames. Skyscrapers collapsed one after another, black smoke rising into the sky. Fire replaced the sun, painting the heavy clouds a deep crimson. The stench of burning flesh filled the air.
The battle on the beach still continued. Even though the Immortal Undead was injured and facing coordinated fire from nearly a hundred people, his power allowed him to fight against thousands. Human resistance alone could not destroy him.
Yet the youths kept rising again and again despite their wounds, as if sharing the same unbreakable persistence as the Immortal Undead.
The sand was soaked with blood. Even the waves could not wash it clean.
Zhenzhu looked at the city swallowed by fire and smoke, as if realizing it was all caused by his own complicity.
Lan Bo’s voice echoed once more in his ears:
“Is this what you think is right?”
The Immortal Undead called out to Zhenzhu, half-kneeling and propping himself up with a severed elbow, grinning upward:
“Big water bubble, kill them.”
Zhenzhu suddenly snapped.
He turned sharply, raised his hand, and the dark-purple blade flashed under the approaching flames. In a single arc, he reversed the strike and cut the Immortal Undead cleanly in half at the waist.
The Undead froze in disbelief, slowly shifting his gaze from Zhenzhu’s face to his own severed body. Black mist erupted from the wound, scattering in all directions.
He still could not accept what had happened. He lifted his head and met Zhenzhu’s clear, hostile sapphire eyes.
The cadets, still bloodied and furious, gradually stopped as well. The coastline fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the rising waves and mournful seabirds.
Lu Yan, stunned by the sudden reversal, whispered:
“…What just happened?”
Bi Lanxing: “The injection just given to the Eternal Undead is a De-Union agent made by the Medical Association, based on the Promoter-Union Factor combined with a dissociation compound. It can temporarily break the controlling relationship between the controller and the agent. The Eternal Undead has not been replenishing the Promoter-Union Factor to maintain the domination link with the Nether Envoy, so their control connection has already become extremely fragile.”
“You want to escape me? But we are of the same kind.” The Eternal Undead tried to continue releasing control fluctuations. Zhēnzhū was shaken by the buzzing wave until his head felt like it was splitting. He seized this brief moment of clarity, enduring wave after wave of impact and the pain erupting throughout his limbs and bones from resisting the controller’s commands, and decisively turned his back to the undead, stepping heavily toward the Lanbo statue.
The city’s flames reached into the sky, burning into the clouds; the sky dimmed into a dark red, night had fallen, and a hurricane was about to make landfall as storm clouds rolled in with rain.
Zhēnzhū drove the Seaheart Rock Blade deep into the ground, his knees giving way as he knelt before the Lanbo statue.
The Lanbo statue had been erected here by fishermen through collective petition. The most famous sculptor had taken the commission voluntarily and refused payment. They had carved Lanbo’s face into the imagined form of a compassionate, motherly sea deity, head slightly lowered, gazing mercifully upon all beings.
“—Always keep reverence in your heart.” This was the last warning Lanbo had ever given him.
Zhēnzhū touched the pink-white scales on his thigh, then suddenly lifted one and gritted his teeth, tearing it out violently.
The pain made him curl up, weakly leaning against the statue’s fishtail as he gasped for breath.
The bloodied scale drifted from his hand and fell to the ground. Zhēnzhū forced himself upright, pulled up the Seaheart Rock Blade, and gripped it in both hands. He drove it downward hard—piercing the scale. The semi-transparent scale shattered into fragments, its light completely extinguished.
The weakened Zhēnzhū lowered his head before Lanbo’s statue and said with solemn reverence:
“I voluntarily renounce my Siren identity, renounce the throne, and become your follower. My spirit shall be loyal to the divine, my body shall be loyal to the ocean, and I shall no longer be driven by the undead.”
The Eternal Undead’s body stiffened in shock.
——
The door of the investigation bureau office was knocked on. Bi Lanxing, still staring at the screen in high tension, was startled. The person who entered was Pàxíng.
Pàxíng placed a USB drive beside Bi Lanxing.
“Bai Chunian left this with me before he departed for safekeeping. He said that if the Undead attacks, and if you’ve already done everything you can, and further deadlock would cause heavy casualties, then show this to the Undead.”
Bi Lanxing took the USB cautiously. “What’s inside?”
Pàxíng shook his head. “He said you can only choose to show it to him, or not show it to him. Now we’ve already reached the point of no return, haven’t we? What other choice do you have? If this drags on any longer, those students, the soldiers, the police officers—they’ll all die.”
Bi Lanxing closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. We’ve done everything we can. The Eternal Undead is not something we can defeat with our current strength.”
“Play it.” Pàxíng plugged the USB into the computer and connected it to the drone projection system, broadcasting the only video file into the sky above the seaside plaza.
People all raised their heads toward the aerial screen. The Undead also looked up.
The video was shaky footage. Suddenly, an Alpha appeared in frame—only his body below the neck was visible, but Bi Lanxing immediately recognized him as Bai Chunian.
In the trembling camera, Bai Chunian jumped off the hood of a car, walked to the trunk, and opened it. Inside lay a man.
The man was bound and gagged. The moment Bi Lanxing saw his face, his expression turned ashen.
This man was a high-ranking officer in the Red Fox City police bureau. After his son died in a British school incident and a bank card was left on the corpse, he disappeared completely.
He was the father of Zhēn Lǐ, the student involved in the Red Fox High School rooftop fall case—the man who had pushed Jin Xi off the building to cover up his son’s crime, and later left Jin Xi a bank card as “compensation.”
The IOA had been searching for him for a long time.
In the video, Bai Chunian inserted an IV line into the man, then moved the camera upward to a technological building in the background—Building 109 Research Institute.
Bi Lanxing clearly saw it.
After watching the video, the Eternal Undead’s gaze turned obsessive and frenzied. He rose into the air and flew toward the direction of the 109 Research Institute.
“Chunian-ge… has he gone mad? He led the Undead there—now they not only have to search the research institute for the Promoter-Union Factor under extreme danger, but also deal with a mutated experimental subject?” Bi Lanxing pulled out the USB abruptly, realization dawning. “No wonder… he resigned, distanced himself from IOA… he kidnapped Zhēn Lǐ’s father just to use him as bait to lure the Undead away during the city crisis.”
“He can’t…” Bi Lanxing’s voice trembled. “Chunian-ge doesn’t plan to come back.”
The phone rang. Bi Lanxing answered—it was the chairman.
“I’m arriving at the seaside plaza. The team leader said you took over command without authorization. What happened?”
Hearing the reassuring voice, Bi Lanxing finally felt the weight lift from his chest.
“I… I accept punishment. The civilians are safe for now. The Undead has already headed toward the research institute.”
“An international meeting has passed the resolution to shut down Building 109 Research Institute. Special forces have already been deployed. I’m returning with an arrest warrant.”
Bi Lanxing’s eyes lit up.
——
A helicopter marked with the IOA Freedom Bird emblem flew over the seaside plaza. The rotor’s roar shook the storm-dark sky. The chairman leaned out, frowning as he looked down at the burning city.
Unexpectedly, beyond the cordon, he saw the trainees standing in soaked uniforms stained with rain and blood. They slung their rifles behind them, stood straight, raised their right hands over their hearts, and saluted the helicopter.
In unison, they shouted:
“FOR FREEDOM!”
Yan Yi looked at them. The boys’ figures overlapped with the Xiao Bai in his memories. Back then, Xiao Bai would carefully hide in the corner outside the window, raise his hand to his chest in a salute toward him, and with clear eyes silently say: unarmed in hand, my heart is loyal.
They were the loyalty Xiao Bai had left for IOA.