This was it. One of them wouldn't leave this room alive. He turned the knob slowly, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him with a soft click.
The room was steeped in darkness, broken only by a faint red light flickering from the wall panel. Each pulse of crimson revealed two naked figures tangled on the bed, his father, Gander, and the woman Yu Xi knew too well.
The research assistant.
She wasn't innocent. She had laughed during the experiments. She had slapped Xiaobao when he was only three years old because he had cried too loudly from the pain. His cheeks had been swollen for days. Yu Xi had held him, whispered comfort through the agony, feeling helpless. And now... she was within reach.
She stirred, sensing something wrong. Her eyes snapped open but before she could scream, a wave of psychic force slammed into her like a tidal surge. Her body lifted and flew across the room, crashing into the wall with bone-shattering impact. Blood erupted from her nose, mouth, and ears, painting the wall in violent splatter.
Yu Xi's aura surged, emerald and furious, no longer suppressed.
His rage pulsed like a living storm beneath his skin. The psychic powers that had lain dormant for years chained, suppressed and starved now surged through him with violent clarity. His aura expanded, thick and suffocating, and his eyes blazed a dazzling, terrifying green, the same hue as his father's, but far more feral.
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, each movement radiating lethal intent.
The research assistant stirred, shaking off the dizzy spell from the psychic blow. Her head lifted, confusion etched across her bloodied face. Then she saw him.
Her lips parted to scream but they never got the chance.
With a flick of his will, her flesh melted and fused, sealing her mouth shut. Her muffled cry was grotesque, her fingers clawing desperately at her face, trying to tear open what no longer existed. It was as though she had never had lips at all.
She was a Guide, trained in the delicate art of psychic navigation, a master of slipping through fractured minds and disarming volatile thoughts with surgical precision. She had infiltrated dozens of psyches before, each one a maze of trauma and resistance. She thought Yu Xi would be no different. But she was wrong.
Her consciousness reached out, gliding into his psychic field like a whisper through silk. But the moment she touched the edge of his mind she felt unbearable pain.
A violent surge of psychic backlash exploded into her skull like a tidal wave of fire and thorns. Her body convulsed, knees buckling as she staggered backward, clutching her head. Her breath hitched. Her vision fractured into shards of light and shadow. The connection hadn't just been rejected, it had been hunted.
Yu Xi didn't move.
His aura flared, pulsing with raw, unfiltered power. It wasn't resistance, it was sentience. His mind had seen her, recognized her intrusion, and struck with surgical brutality.
The assistant trembled, her hands shaking uncontrollably. Fear crawled up her spine like ice. She had never encountered a subject whose psychic field was so alive, so predatory, so aware.
Her face twisted in shock as realization dawned.
She couldn't control him.
He wasn't just a high-ranking Esper. He was something else.
A hybrid born of power and pain.
She glanced at Gander, her bloodied face twisted in awe and disbelief. He had succeeded. The brat had hidden it well, too well. The psychic surge, the precision, the control. It was all there. Their life's work had bloomed in silence, and now it stood before her, terrifying and magnificent.
But before she could bask in the twisted glory of their creation, a voice echoed in her mind cold, sharp, and final.
"This is for what you did to Xiaobao."
Her throat split open in a clean, psychic slash before she could beg for mercy. Blood spilled in a silent arc as her body crumpled, lifeless.
Yu Xi slolwy turned to his father a malicious aura gathered around him, thick and suffocating. He stood over Gander, who lay in drugged slumber, unaware of the storm about to break. Yu Xi stabbed his father's arm, and the man jolted awake, eyes wide with confusion and pain.
Yu Xi straddled him, one hand clamped over his mouth, the other driving the blade again and again missing every vital point with surgical cruelty. Gander writhed, but his limbs were weak, his strength suppressed by something powerful. He knew he had to buy time if he wanted to live. The suppression collar Yu Xi had removed should have triggered the alarms so someone would come.
But Gander had no idea that someone had tempered with his security system and no help was coming. His eyes suddenly widened not with fear, but with something else.
Yu Xi's eyes blazed with a dazzling emerald light, brighter than ever. Night and day, he had dreamt of this moment. Of vengeance. Of justice.
He had wondered if his father would beg for mercy? Woud he cry? Or maybe he would fight?
But his father did neither of that. Instead, he smiled.
And Yu Xi knew that look.
It was the look his father reserved for his finest creations. His masterpiece.
Yu Xi let go of the blade, stepping back as his father writhed on the blood-soaked bed. But instead of screams, Gander erupted into laughter pained, guttural, and deranged. It echoed off the vantacite walls like a hymn of madness, the sound of a man who had finally lost his grip on reality.
Yu Xi towered over him, fists clenched, resisting the primal urge to end it now. No. That would be mercy. And Gander deserved none.
The blood pooled beneath him, spreading like ink across the sheets, yet the man laughed harder, his body convulsing with manic delight.
"I am a genius!" Gander howled, voice cracking. "A fucking genius! Look at you! You are Dad's precious specimen, a masterpiece, a perfect master—"
Yu Xi drove the blade into his chest. Gander choked, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
"A masterpiece," Yu Xi echoed, a villainous smile carved across his face. He repeated it again, softer, darker. "A masterpiece."
Gander's coughing subsided. As an Esper, his pain tolerance was unnaturally high. Even now, he could speak.
"I made you," he rasped. "You are the perfect killing machine. You don't need a Guide. You are the breakthrough of this era. Everything... your blood, your cells, your very genetics could buy an empire."
Yu Xi tilted his head. "Killing machine, huh?"
Gander's eyes gleamed with manic pride, wide and fevered. Yu Xi saw it, the climax in his gaze. The twisted satisfaction of a creator admiring his final, flawless weapon.
But Yu Xi wasn't a weapon. He was the reckoning.