With her "art project" as a shield, Mo Chen's burning spree became both more efficient and more terrifying. She flew to New York and walked into a Sotheby's auction of contemporary art.
She bid on, and won, a massive, controversial sculpture made of reclaimed industrial scrap metal. The hammer price: $750,000. She had it shipped to a rented warehouse in New Jersey.
Once it was delivered, she stood before the hulking, rusted metal piece. It was ugly, but it had taken an artist months to create. She felt a flicker of hesitation, a remnant of her old life that appreciated creation.
Then she remembered the explosion. The fire. Her father's face, forever frozen in the moment he realized his daughter was dead.
The hesitation vanished. She picked up an industrial plasma cutter she'd purchased.
For the next six hours, she carved the sculpture into a pile of molten, unrecognizable slag. The act was grueling, the heat intense, but the system's notifications were a balm to her soul.
[$750,000 USD in physical assets destroyed. Remaining quota: $250,000.]
She was getting closer. The daily grind of destruction was forging her into something new, something harder. She was no longer just a victim seeking revenge; she was a force of entropy.
She met the rest of her quota by purchasing a collection of rare, first-edition books and burning them page by page in a steel drum. The smell of burning paper and ink was acrid, but the system approved.
[Daily task completed. $1,000,000 USD successfully burned. Host may proceed.]
Her personal funds had grown by another $5,000. It was a pittance, but it was hers. A war chest funded by ash.
That night, she lay in her hotel bed, her muscles aching, her hands smudged with soot. She pulled up the schematics of the family estate on her tablet, the ones Silas had reviewed with her. She focused on the west wing, the gas lines.
Julian's plan had been brutally simple. Create a massive, concentrated explosion at the source. But to do that, his team would have had to tamper with the pressure regulators days in advance, slowly building up a lethal concentration of gas.
She had twelve days left. She knew where he would strike. Now, she needed the power to stop him.