Pop.
The sound, a tiny, almost comical, champagne-cork pop, was the only thing that had happened.
And then, silence.
A profound, heavy, all encompassing silence, so deep it felt like the world had been submerged in deep water. The distant, useless sirens, the thrumming of the news helicopter, the whimpering from inside the house, it all stopped.
The tiger, the 800-pound, [Level 5: Blood Vitality] monster that had just defeated a [Level 4] Prodigy... was a crumpled, unmoving heap in the middle of the street.
It was dead.
Inside the house, time had stopped.
Lin Meng was still pressed against the blinds, her eye a perfect, wide, unblinking circle of blue-white terror. She had seen it. The pounce. The... flick. The... pop. The... end. Her 16-year-old brain, which had just accepted the new reality of "Awakened" monsters, was now trying to process a second, deeper, impossible reality.
Her father, Lin Wen, was still holding the golf club. He stared at the dead beast, then at the man-shaped void on his lawn, then back at the golf club in his hand. A small, dry, choking sound escaped his throat. He slowly, reverently, lowered the club, his "Mortal Root" body finally understanding what true helplessness, and what true power, looked like.
Her mother, Jia Li, who had been sobbing, was now silent, her eyes locked on the masked figure, her mind simply... blank.
They were all, as one, staring.
Down the street, in the wreckage of the suburban park, the reaction was identical, but laced with a profound, professional horror.
The news helicopter's spotlight, which had been frantically trying to find the "defeated" Li Wei, now snapped to the new, victorious figure, illuminating him in a brilliant, angelic, white light.
Inside the crashed minivan, Li Wei, the "Shining Serpent," was cradling his shattered, bloody, and useless arm. He had watched the entire, one-second "fight" through the spider-webbed, broken glass.
His "Crushing Jade Palm," a technique refined over seventeen years of brutal, "Guardian Family" training, had failed to stop this beast.
This... thing... this... ghost in a mask... had killed it.
With a finger.
The humiliation he'd felt from his defeat was nothing. It was vapor. It was instantly replaced by a new, cold, dread. A dread that a world existed, a power existed, so far beyond his "heritage" that his entire life, his entire identity as a "Prodigy," was a lie. A pathetic, childish, joke.
A few yards away, "Rhino," the one-armed Level 2 BSA agent, had stopped groaning. He stared, his one good eye wide, his mind delirious from blood loss. He had seen his team vaporized. He had seen the Level 4 "Expert" shattered.
And he had just seen a man in a mask flick the monster to death.
"He... he..." Rhino whispered, his voice a broken, bloody rasp. "He... flicked it..."
Across the street, on the second floor of a dark, terrified house, a neighbor who had been cowering in his bedroom had his smartphone pressed against the glass.
His shaky, pixelated, vertical-video camera had been zoomed in on the tiger, waiting for the gruesome, inevitable end of the family across the street.
He had, instead, captured everything.
He had captured the arrival. He had captured the flick. He had captured the pop.
And now, his camera, the future's most valuable piece of footage, was zoomed in as far as its digital, grainy lens would go, centered perfectly on the Man in the Gray Mask.
Lin Hao stood in the center of it all. The silent, unmoving eye of the storm.
He felt the eyes on him. He felt the helicopter. He felt the wounded BSA team. He felt the neighbor's phone.
And he felt, most of all, the three, terrified, mortal heartbeats in the house directly behind him. His family.
His job was done. His message was sent. It was time to vanish.
He turned, slowly. His back was now to the dead tiger, his face to the house.
Lin Meng, still at the blinds, gasped. The mask... the blank, gray, nothing-face... was looking right at her.
The neighbor's camera zoomed, capturing the moment.
The figure in the gray mask... nodded.
It was not a bow. It was a slight, almost imperceptible, downward tilt of the head. A simple, profound, reassuring gesture. A gesture that said, You are safe.
Lin Meng, her heart in her throat, knew, with an absolute, world-changing certainty, that that nod... was for them.
And then, before the BSA helicopter could even begin to process a landing... before the news anchor could find her voice... before Lin Meng could even blink...
He moved.
He bent his knees.
He didn't jump. He vanished.
The neighbor's camera whipped up, capturing only a blur. A black and gray streak, ascending into the night.
The figure, who had come from nowhere, had landed on the roof, and in the next instant, was gone, leaping into the darkness, disappearing into the suburban night as if he had never been.
He was gone.
In the street, a new, louder wail of sirens began to approach. The real cavalry was arriving, now that the war was over.
But they were too late.
The monster was dead. The hero, "Li Wei," was a broken, humiliated mess.
And the myth... the myth of the Man in the Gray Mask... had just been born.