The whole nation: You're put to survive on a desolate planet, you'll be running an alien b

Marble shards hit my eyelids, carrying a burnt lime smell.

I lay in the rubble of the hotel lobby, surrounded by screams and the chaotic sound of leather shoes pounding on the ground.

The masked man's final swing was as powerful as if he had been hit head-on by a heavy truck.

I deliberately flew out along the force, smashing the stone pillar and making myself look like a completely exhausted cripple.

Lin Qingwan has disappeared, but I can still smell that faint, cool fragrance lingering in the air.

That was her scent, standing out starkly against the lingering smell of rotting lilies left by the Mirror Assassin.

"This guy is still alive, he's incredibly lucky."

A hoarse voice came from above my head.

I didn't open my eyes, my breathing was erratic, and my lungs deliberately made a hissing sound like a broken bellows.

Another set of footsteps approached, heavy and each step like a steel nail driven into the ground.

"Young Master Zhao, this kid just broke a dinner knife; he's not clean."

That was the butler's voice, which now sounded cold and sticky.

"Even if it's not clean, we still have to investigate. The Mirror Assassin is specifically targeting Qingwan, and this kid just had to show up at this time."

Zhao Siyuan, who had been so scared by me that he wet his pants, started raising his voice again.

A hand grabbed my collar and lifted me up from the pile of stones.

My head drooped, letting the pebbles fall out of my hair.

"Call Elder Feng over. His eyes can see through human flesh and tell whether someone has hidden their bloodline. We'll know in a moment."

Zhao Siyuan said angrily, and kicked my leg as he did so.

I gritted my teeth and didn't make a sound.

The golden flames inside their bodies were raging wildly; they sensed danger and wanted to break through their skin to burn the enemies outside.

I desperately suppressed this restlessness, locking those golden lights deep within my heart.

A few minutes later, a chilling aura approached me.

The surrounding air seemed to drop several degrees in an instant, and the hairs on my body stood on end.

"Put it on the ground."

The man called Elder Feng spoke, his voice sounding like it was being rubbed on sandpaper.

I was roughly thrown onto the cold floor, and my back hit a sharp piece of porcelain, which made my fingertips tremble with pain.

Elder Feng squatted down and placed a cold finger on my wrist to check my pulse.

His fingernails were long, digging into my skin with a chilling, probing sensation.

The chill seeped into my veins, like a venomous snake searching for its prey's lair.

Before the chill penetrated too deeply, I forcibly disrupted my qi and blood circulation.

I crushed the golden flame into countless tiny sparks, hiding them in the corners of my capillaries.

At this moment, the pulse was beating erratically, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, with intermittent pauses, like a critically injured person on the verge of death, gasping for breath.

"How is it, Elder? Is this kid from one of those reclusive families?"

Zhao Siyuan asked anxiously.

Elder Feng withdrew his finger and let out a disdainful sneer.

"His qi and blood are weak and his meridians are blocked like a mud pit. He's just a martial artist who has practiced external martial arts for a few years."

He stood up and dusted off his robe.

"It's probably because his elders gave him some medicine that forcibly widened his meridians. It looks scary, but it's just a one-time thing."

The butler seemed unwilling to give up and leaned in to whisper something in his ear.

"But his palm strike just now sent Lei Bao flying more than 20 meters. Lei Bao is still in the hospital receiving an IV drip."

"It's just explosive power. This kid has already exhausted his potential and won't live more than three years."

Elder Feng left those words behind, and his footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

I lay on the ground, listening to Zhao Siyuan's cursing voice disappear through the doorway.

Only after all the footsteps around me had disappeared did I slowly open my eyes a crack.

The chandelier on the ceiling hung crookedly, and sparks crackled and flickered constantly.

I rolled over and got up, a metallic taste rising in my throat, and spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm.

Lin Qingwan was taken away, and the masked man mentioned "the shadow of the mother".

This shows that Lin Qingwan is not an ordinary person at all, and that there is some deeper connection between her and Lin Mo.

I avoided the security guards who were still searching in the ruins, climbed over the broken wall, and slipped into the back alley of the hotel.

Su Wan's voice channel was filled with the crackling sound of electricity.

"Boss...you...are there..."

The signal was extremely poor, as if someone had installed a giant jammer in the atmosphere.

I tapped my headset and whispered a response into the void.

"Stay alive, stop yelling, find a safe house, I'm coming right away."

It was already 3 a.m. when I got back to the tenement building in the northern suburbs.

The motion-sensor lights in the hallway were broken, so I felt the cold, damp handrail and climbed up the stairs one step at a time.

There was a note slipped under my door; it was a code left by Su Wan.

I pushed open the door. The room was dark, with only a faint moonlight filtering in from the window.

Su Wan sat in the computer chair, her leg in a cast resting on a cardboard box, staring blankly at the screen.

She turned her head, her eyes bloodshot.

"The Lin family has gone mad. The whole city is searching for Lin Qingwan, but no one is coming to look for us."

I ripped off my tattered suit, revealing my back covered in bruises.

Elder Feng thinks I'm a useless person, and they won't waste their time on useless people.

I poured myself a glass of cold water and gulped it down.

"There is a spatial rift where Lin Qingwan disappeared, and that masked man is a high-ranking member of the Mirror World."

Just then, there was a rapid knocking at the door.

"Thump! Thump thump!"

The sound was rhythmic, sounding more like a deliveryman's call than a police officer checking a water meter.

I grabbed the bronze dagger from the table and slipped behind the door.

"Who?"

There was no answer from outside the door, only a rustling sound of friction.

Then, a deliveryman wearing a bright yellow uniform quickly walked down the stairs.

I flung open the door, and all that remained in the hallway was the flickering shadow of a motion-sensor light.

A black foam takeout box was placed on the ground.

A ring of dark red liquid seeped out from around the box, emitting a foul odor of rotting flesh.

"Boss, don't move!"

Su Wan leaned on her cane and came closer, holding a detector in her hand.

The detector did not sound, indicating that there were no explosives or electronic traps inside.

I bent down and used the dagger to pry open the tape on the takeout box.

The moment the lid was lifted, an even stronger stench of blood wafted out.

There was no food in the box, only a lump of black, sticky, rotten meat that looked like tar.

Inserted into the middle of that lump of rotten flesh was a piece of yellow straw paper soaked in blood.

The paper was soaked through, and the dark purple writing on it appeared crooked and distorted.

I reached out and picked up the paper, feeling a slippery sensation on my fingertips.

By the moonlight, I saw the five large characters above.

"I, Liu Hu, am not dead."

The handwriting was extremely cursive, carrying the unreasonable and domineering spirit that Liu Hu had in his lifetime.

My pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

At that moment, it felt as if my heart was being gripped tightly by a cold, large hand, and I even stopped breathing.

Liu Hu detonated the high explosives right in front of me.

With that kind of explosive power, even bone fragments should turn to ash; how could anyone possibly survive?

"Tiger Brother?"

Su Wan screamed in surprise, and the detector in her hand clattered to the ground.

She leaned closer to look at the paper, and tears streamed down her face.

"It's Tiger's handwriting! The character for 'death' is missing a stroke; he always misspelled that character when writing his self-criticisms!"

My hand holding the paper began to tremble slightly, and my knuckles turned white from the excessive force.

That's impossible.

The image of Liu Hu jumping into the monster horde flashed through my mind.

Flames, shockwaves, and bits of flesh flying everywhere—it was a suicide attack from a desperate situation.

"Calm down."

I bit my tongue, letting the sharp pain pull me back to reality.

The blood on the paper was still wet, emanating an extremely ominous aura of death.

I looked down at the lump of rotten meat in the box.

The rotting flesh suddenly moved, and a shriveled human eye emerged from the folds of flesh.

Its eyeball was grayish, without a pupil, and stared straight at me.

"It's bait from the mirror world."

I spoke coldly, and then plunged the dagger downwards.

"Pfft!"

The dagger pierced the eyeball, and golden flames instantly ignited the entire box along the blade.

The rotting flesh hissed and screamed in the flames, as if countless wronged souls were begging for mercy.

A few seconds later, the takeout box was burned to ashes.

The paper with writing on it turned into smoke, leaving only a faint wisp of black smoke lingering on my fingertips.

"This is a trap."

I turned around and looked at Su Wan, whose face was covered in tears.

"Someone is using the deceased's name to lure me there."

Su Wan wiped her face, her voice choked with emotion.

"What if... what if he really isn't dead? Anything can happen in the underworld."

I looked at the dark clouds outside the window, and the purple bead on my chest began to burn again.

The beads reflected a dark red hue that seemed almost desperate, pointing towards the north of the city.

"Even if there's only a one in ten thousand chance, I have to go."

I poured the remaining cold water over my head to keep myself awake.

"But if it's a trap, I want the person who set it up to leave with their life."

Su Wan sat back down at the computer and started typing furiously.

"I tracked that delivery driver's movements; he didn't go far!"

A red flashing dot appeared on the screen.

The red dot sped through the maze of the old town, finally stopping in front of an abandoned clock tower.

I grabbed the black leather jacket and put it on, then tucked the bronze dagger back into my waistband.

"Su Wan, stay here. If I'm not back in an hour, contact President Xu and have him take you away."

"Boss, be careful, that place is the point where the mirror world overlaps."

I didn't reply, and pushed open the door, rushing into the dark stairwell.

The wind outside was strong, carrying the smell of the sea, and made the old windows creak.

I got on that old, leaky motorcycle, twisted the throttle, and the engine roared out.

The streets in the old town are narrow, and there are electrical wires lying everywhere.

I could feel that many eyes were staring at me in the darkness.

Those eyes were in the cracks in the wall, at the bottom of the trash can, and they turned as I moved.

The outline of the clock tower appeared on the distant horizon, like a giant tombstone.

I stopped the car and threw the motorcycle into the green belt.

There was a clear trail of footprints on the ground, each step covered in black slime.

That was left by the deliveryman.

I followed the footprints into the first-floor lobby of the clock tower.

A pendulum hangs silently in the center of the hall.

A man in bright yellow work clothes sat on a wooden stool with his back to me.

He was holding an empty takeout box in his arms.

"Have you received your takeout?"

The man's voice came from his chest, with a dull tremor.

I gripped the dagger tightly and approached step by step.

Where is Liu Hu?

The man slowly turned his head.

His face was flat, without a nose or a mouth, only a drawn smiling face.

It was drawn on with black blood, and the smile looked uglier than a cry.

"Tiger said he's been waiting so long down there, and he wants you to come down and have a drink with him."

The man's chest suddenly split open, and a large, hairy hand reached for my throat.

I dodged to the side, the dagger tracing a golden arc.

I sliced ​​off half of the man's shoulder, but he didn't fall down.

He deflated like a punctured balloon, until only a yellow human skin remained.

A bloodstained invitation card emerged from human skin.

I picked up the invitation; it had a familiar badge printed on it.

That was a seal that the Li family had guarded for generations, except that a blood-dripping skull was engraved in the center.

"Donghai Grand Theatre, final performance, see you there."

The invitation slowly melted between my fingers, turning into a puddle of black water.

I looked up at the top of the clock tower.

Suddenly, the bronze bell there rang out, its deep, thunderous sound echoing throughout half of Donghai City.

This is no longer an ordinary anomaly; it is a trial of my bloodline.

They exploited my weakness: my last remaining attachment to my brothers and family.

I turned around and strode out of the clock tower.

The theater lights in the distance came on, appearing particularly glaring against the dark clouds.

I have to go.

Even if it's a bottomless abyss, I have to drag that bastard who's using Liu Hu's name out.

The leather boots made a crisp sound as they stepped on the blue bricks.

The night grew darker, and the whole world seemed to be waiting for the opening of that "final act".