The white light did not stop.
It did not even hesitate.
It dropped in the air, hard and sudden,
like a heavy hammer finally let loose,
and drove straight through the tear it had just ripped open,
crushing its way inside.
In that moment,
Wei truly saw.
Inside the dark assassin's body,
around several vital organs,
there were clusters of thick, gray fire.
It was not fire that burned quietly.
It was—
parasitic.
They clung, coiled, and occupied,
like creatures that had lived for years in a sewer,
surviving by feeding on their host.
But now—
The instant the white light entered,
they broke.
The gray flames began to scatter.
Not erased,
but like a pack of rats that had suddenly lost their leader—
panicked,
spilling in every direction.
They shoved against one another,
blocked their own escape routes.
Some forced themselves into the narrow gaps between organs,
their shapes crushed and warped.
Some let out shrill, soundless screams,
snapping wildly at their own kind as the white light closed in.
Others, driven to the edge of terror,
suddenly turned back,
baring their fangs at the white light—
as if making one last, pitiful show of defiance
for a life spent in filth.
Their true nature
was laid completely bare in that instant.
At the same time,
the dark assassin's body began to take real damage.
That body, already twisted and misshapen from mutation and abuse,
was hit head-on by the white light—
Boom.
A major core point in its chest
detonated.
It did not crack.
It was blown open from the inside.
Black blood,
mixed with gray fire that had not yet gone out,
burst forth like torn organs,
spraying into the air in short, filthy arcs.
The assassin reeled.
It staggered backward.
On the first step,
its footing had already lost its precision.
On the second,
fine fractures began to spread across the armor of its chest.
By the third—
the cracks raced outward,
like sun-baked clay pushed past its limit,
the surface splitting and curling.
What seeped from the gaps
was not bright red blood,
but thick, cold black fluid.
Its body was breaking down.
Not falling—
but moving toward a point of no return.
The assassin's mouth gaped open.
That grotesquely torn maw
seemed ready to roar,
to curse,
to spit out its last shred of malice—
but no sound came.
Gray fire churned deep in its throat,
yet the white light pressed it down,
inch by inch,
forcing it to retreat.
Driven back
into the deepest parts of the body,
into a nest even darkness refused to claim.
The white light did not slow.
If anything—
it moved with savage ease.
It surged through the assassin's body,
faster and faster,
its path sharper with every pass,
like a blade that had finally found its true target.
I will kill you today.
It was not a voice.
It was a will,
driven straight into the white light.
Again and again it swept through the channels where gray fire gathered—
cutting,
piercing,
burning them away.
With every pass,
the gray fire collapsed in sheets,
like filth exposed to direct sunlight,
unworthy even of escape.
Wei saw it all,
clearly.
He saw it—
Ahead of him,
Chun's heart-fire
had been drawn out by more than half.
The red flame, once weak and wavering,
was growing bright again.
It no longer trembled.
It no longer shrank back.
It steadied.
As if, in the darkness,
someone had finally taken its hand.
Wei's heart jolted.
For a moment, he almost believed—
she heard him.
She had waited.
She was coming back.
The red flame burned quietly, firmly,
as if answering the white light—
as if answering him.
As if one more step forward,
just a little faster—
and everything
could truly be undone.
Just one more step.
But in that very thought—
Wei's chest tightened,
sudden and without reason.
It was not fear.
Not hesitation.
It was something harder to name—
unease.
It was too smooth.
Everything was moving forward too easily,
too fast,
as if someone had cleared every obstacle for him in advance.
This was a creature that lived by killing in the dark,
an assassin shaped by torture and the hunt.
And he—
was only a boy
who had never truly stepped onto a battlefield.
This kind of victory
came too suddenly.
Too clean.
Too free of cost.
Like a door
swinging wide open
before you even had time to knock.
Wei instinctively searched for a flaw.
But he couldn't find one.
The gray flames' retreat was real.
Their panic, their collapse, their tearing at one another—
there was no trace of pretense.
The rupture of the core point was real as well.
Black blood still seeped slowly from the裂口,
gray fire flickering within it,
each pulse weaker than the last.
This was genuine damage.
Not bait.
Not illusion.
Reason told him—
this was victory.
One more strike from the white light.
One more push forward.
One heartbeat faster.
The assassin would break completely.
Chun's heart-fire would be pulled back in full.
And it would all be over.
And yet—
the unease did not fade.
It did not grow.
It did not explode.
It simply remained,
quiet and cold,
like a thin needle
pressed into the bottom of Wei's heart.
As if something,
hidden in the darkness,
was holding its breath.
Waiting.