The bomb shelter still reeked of scorched amber.
Vomit, broken glass, blood, and a scatter of ampoules on the ground that hadn't quite emptied out.
It looked like the set of some third-rate biohazard film.
Su Yu glanced down at the shattered ampoule fragments at his feet, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
He didn't bother looking at the still-convulsing berserkers. He just raised his hand, pressed two fingers together, and swept them through the air in a shallow arc.
The next instant, a few threads of air, almost too thin to see, drove into the necks and chests of those men.
The motion was light—light as if he were just brushing dust off his clothes.
But the effect was immediate.
The berserkers who'd still been forcing out animal snarls from their throats convulsed hard. The purple-black veins bulging under their skin looked like they'd been forced back down by some invisible hand, and the swollen muscle slowly slackened.
The man in front even rolled his eyes back and collapsed flat onto the ground, chest heaving violently, like something just dragged out of water.
Su braced himself against the wall to stay upright, his hair damp with sweat at the forehead.
Watching all this, his brain felt like it was about to crash.
He finally forced out a dry, cracked sentence: "...What was that?"
"Oh, I could see the flow of the drug through their bodies. I just cut it off," Su Yu said.
Su Yu shook out his hand, his tone breezy, like he'd just haggled down the price of vegetables at the market.
"They'll live, but their bodies are basically wrecked. The drug scrambled their organs and nervous systems. They'll survive, but they'll never be anywhere close to normal again."
With that, he turned his head to look at Su, who was still leaning against the wall, catching his breath.
There was nothing threatening in that look—if anything, it carried a certain gleeful 'finally caught you' energy, the look of someone gearing up to settle scores later.
"So. Now what?"
"...Now what, what?"
"Now isn't it about time you had a heart-to-heart with your brothers?"
Su Yu nudged an ampoule on the ground with the toe of his shoe.
"All these years you've been out there under the cover of 'field research'—what exactly have you been up to?"
Su still hadn't recovered from the god-descending door-kick and the 'point-and-paralyze-from-a-distance' stunt he'd just witnessed. At those words, he glared, wide-eyed, and fired right back.
"Shouldn't you two explain what you and Kevin have been up to behind my back first!"
Su Yu swore on the spot.
"We're not brothers anymore? Your two big daddies come running to save you in the middle of the night, and you don't even say 'thanks, Dad'—instead you're digging into my household registration? Get lost."
Beside them, Kevin, playing the role of background scenery, rotated his wrist expressionlessly.
"Hey, if you two are going to argue, can you do it somewhere else?"
He glanced over at the fallen agents in the corner.
"I just checked. A few of your colleagues are hurt pretty badly—some of them won't make it if this drags on. Instead of arguing over who's the dad here, maybe call an ambulance first."
The moment he finished, the air went suddenly still.
Kevin sensed it. Su sensed it too.
But the first one to change expression was Su Yu.
His brow snapped into a hard frown.
Tier-3 Spiritual Power swept over the entire bomb shelter like an invisible net.
The next second, whatever mocking ease had still lingered in his eyes was completely gone.
Su was about to ask what was wrong, but before Kevin could even turn his head, Su Yu had already pressed his hand to the comm at his ear.
"Kiana, open the door!"
The words had barely left his mouth before he was already moving.
So fast that Su couldn't even track it.
Su just felt everything blur, a sudden tightness in his chest, and then he was violently hurled by Su Yu into a warped patch of space.
Weightlessness hit him instantly, as if the ground had been yanked out from under his feet.
Wind and light tore past in every direction, screaming in his ears.
Su only had time for one thought.
Where the hell is this kid throwing me!?
The next moment, solid ground.
He and Kevin tumbled and crashed out of the Imaginary passage, landing hard on unforgiving stone.
A rooftop.
The wind was fierce, the night sky pressing low.
Kiana stood at the rippling, water-like edge of the warped passage, both hands braced against it, a strained look on her face.
Seeing the two of them sprawl gracelessly to the ground, she even had the spare attention to wave.
"Yo, Dr. Su!"
Su opened his mouth, mind completely blank.
Before he could make sense of what sci-fi blockbuster he'd just landed in, a deafening explosion tore through the distance.
BOOM—!!
It was the sound of the earth itself being torn up by the roots and hurled aside.
He turned reflexively.
The sky above the bomb shelter lit up with fire.
The night split open with a massive gash. Rolling black smoke surged upward, scorching half the clouds a stark, blinding white.
The color drained from Su's face.
Su Yu hadn't come out yet.
The thought had barely exploded in his mind before his body lurched forward half a step, completely beyond his control.
But the next second, a Shenzhou curse rang out behind him.
"Damn it! Su, this batch of psychos you caught tonight—are they drug dealers or terrorists?"
Su spun around.
Su Yu was stepping out through another torn rift in space, cursing under his breath. His wild hair was singed and slightly curled from the smoke, his shoulders covered in ash.
In his hand he dragged the berserker who'd been restored to normal, now unconscious, tossing him to the ground like a sack.
He was still holding the man, beaten back to human form and unconscious, in a death grip—then dropped him onto the ground like non-recyclable trash.
Thud.
With the dead weight dealt with, he finally lifted his eyes and looked at Su with an expression like he was staring at an idiot.
Utterly exasperated.
"You, a doctor who's supposed to hold a scalpel, tucked a busted gun into your coat and went off to play some real-life 007 cosplay in a place like that in the middle of the night? Tired of living?"
Su had a mouthful of retorts stuck in his throat, but Su Yu had already walked a few steps to the edge of the rooftop, glanced toward the fire in the distance, and sighed, exhausted.
"Tch. This one's not getting covered up easily."
"We already used the 'gas pipeline disrepair' excuse last time. What do we say this round? Municipal construction bureau demolition gone wrong in the middle of the night?"
As he spoke, he pressed the earpiece out of habit.
"Bronie, what's the situation?"
The rapid clatter of keys and faint static came through the comm immediately.
Bronie's voice was crisp and to the point.
"Police and fire department have already set up the perimeter, Boss."
"Also, this is definitely not a simple drug-smuggling case. I cross-referenced the residual traces from your operation with fragments of the nearby surveillance—several of Schicksal's senior agents nearly got wiped out. Whoever's behind this was clearly trying to take the whole group down at once. This was a professional, premeditated hit."
Su Yu's eyes sharpened as he listened, and he turned to fix his gaze on Su.
"Who did you piss off?"
Su's face looked even worse in the light of the flames.
He was silent for a moment before finally lowering his voice and coming clean.
"Most likely... it's connected to that genetic research project I've been secretly pushing forward underwater."
Su Yu nodded, not pressing for details.
"Alright."
"Alright."
"Bronie, trace the nearby surveillance and traffic at the intersections. Check for any suspicious rats sniffing around—especially anyone who retreated early or gave the remote detonation order. Dig as deep as you can."
"Copy."
With that, Su Yu turned and walked over to the seriously wounded agents who'd been moved out.
He crouched down to check their injuries, looking like a completely different person from the death god who'd been in the bomb shelter moments ago.
Several Anti-Entropy staff in hazmat suits immediately closed in around him, moving with practiced efficiency to set up stretchers and emergency equipment, as if responding to the highest order.
Before long, urgent footsteps sounded from the stairwell again.
Lewis rushed up first, with Welt right behind her, along with several fully armed officers.
"Where are they?"
"Anyone still breathing, get them out now. Anyone dead, bag and preserve."
Su Yu didn't even look up, just raising a hand to point at two spots.
"That one on the left has the worst brain injury—priority rescue. That berserker who got beaten back to normal, isolate him separately, top-level containment. Don't let him die. And definitely don't give him a chance to bite anyone."
Lewis swept a glance over the chaotic scene and clicked her tongue.
"You little troublemaker. You really do outdo yourself every time."
Su Yu sighed. "Cut me some slack, Chief. I don't want to cause you trouble either—but we're stuck in the same boat, aren't we?"
Lewis was so furious she actually laughed—it looked like she had a high tolerance for stress, but really, she'd just completely run out of ideas.
What else could she do? Wasn't her job as Chief basically to be sent down from above specifically to clean up after this little menace?
Welt stood at the edge of the rooftop, glancing at the still-burning fire in the distance, the light behind his glasses growing heavy.
"The scene's fully locked down. I'll handle the media and the follow-up cleanup."
The seasoned Old Yang turned back to look deeply at Su, then said to Su Yu, "This isn't as simple as it looks."
Su Yu nodded. He'd originally thought they were catching a couple of small-time crooks—turns out they'd kicked over a hornet's nest.
The two of them hadn't exchanged many words, but they'd both silently arrived at the same conclusion.
Schicksal had a mole.
Su hadn't gotten a single word in this whole time.
He just stood there numbly, watching Su Yu issue orders with effortless ease among the crowd of police, Anti-Entropy staff, and hazmat workers.
The absurd scenes from the bomb shelter moments ago, now cracked open by the explosion, replayed in his mind in vivid, high-definition fragments.
Su Yu's warning, as if he had some kind of full-map cheat activated.
Kevin's inhuman strength, like a human tank.
That portal that had flung them like bowling pins from underground straight up onto the rooftop.
And now.
This man, standing at the center of the storm—younger than himself, yet with a chilling authority that let him force every runaway crisis back under control, one by one.
Su suddenly felt a tightness in his chest.
Some subtle, faintly absurd delayed realization finally crystallized into a mountain pressing down on him.
He'd always stubbornly believed he was the lone hero.
That he was the one, in the shadows, blocking those filthy, hidden, lethal, high-risk storms on their behalf.
He'd thought that as long as he gritted his teeth and carried all the darkness himself, he could let those two carefree idiots keep living in the sunlight—playing ball, gaming, eating instant noodles, getting scolded, living the most ordinary life.
But it turned out.
The one who'd actually been quietly making a fortune, secretly brewing a world-shaking scheme... wasn't him at all.
Kevin walked over and patted him on the shoulder.
The force wasn't heavy.
But it left Su a little dazed.
"You're not the only one with secrets."
Kevin looked toward the distant sea of fire, his gaze settling back on Su Yu at the center of the crowd.
"I warned you before, didn't I? Keep your jaw off the floor—there are still plenty more places ahead that'll make your eyes pop out."
Su's mouth twitched stiffly.
He wanted badly to argue back.
But a thousand words rose to his lips and, in the end, dissolved into a helpless sigh. He lowered his head, looking at his own cuffs, streaked with ash and blood, thoroughly disheveled.
His expression right now was complicated.
Like a lead actor who fancied himself a 'lone hero,' having just performed a tragic, one-man show of carrying all the darkness alone.
And then, at the climax, the theater lights suddenly all switched on—and there in the VIP seats sat his two loaded brothers, who'd bought out the entire theater ages ago, cracking sunflower seeds and watching him perform.
He'd thought he was playing the superhero, only to turn around and find his two brothers had already founded the Avengers.
He might as well be...
...a clown.
The word popped into his head, and Su almost wanted to laugh.
But the faint bitter smile that rose to his lips got crushed without mercy by the exhaustion that had piled up too heavily over this one insane day.
He lifted his head, looking up at the night sky beyond the rooftop.
The pillar of fire hadn't fully died down yet.
The cold wind at this altitude howled past, sweeping smoke and ash away into unfathomable distance.
Su slowly closed his eyes.
Deep down, in an unbearably world-weary tone, he sighed.
Today has been one hell of a long day.
Su let out a long breath, but before he could swallow down that lingering weariness, he spoke.
"That batch of drugs just now... wasn't ordinary black-market stuff."
He finally shared the intel he'd gathered.
Su Yu turned to look at him.
"Codename Asura. Schicksal destroyed a batch of it internally three years ago. Military-grade. Absurdly high lethality. Under normal circumstances, it shouldn't exist in this world anymore."
Welt's eyes darkened.
Lewis lowered the hand that had been resting on her hip.
"You're saying the source is inside Schicksal itself?"
"At minimum, someone's tampered with the warehouse and the supply chain."
Su paused for a beat.
"And it's not something an ordinary person could get access to."
The moment he finished, a soft landing sound came from nearby.
Kiana walked over from the edge of the passage.
She'd spent a fair amount of energy maintaining the Imaginary gate, and her braid had come a little loose, with two strands of stray hair stuck to her forehead.
She glanced at Su first, then at the fire still burning in the distance, the corners of her mouth pressing downward.
"Whoa, that's a lot of commotion this time. Got a PR plan yet?"
"We already used the gas leak excuse. How about a natural gas explosion this time? Actually, never mind—let's just pin it on the municipal construction bureau."
Su Yu replied.
Kiana laughed. "Classic you, Su Yu. Really something. So who do we pin it on next time?"
"Haven't decided. Let Uncle Yang have the headache."
Beside them, Welt's mouth twitched, then settled into a look of helplessness.
Between Kiana and Su Yu's back-and-forth, the tense atmosphere on the rooftop actually loosened up a bit.
Su stood off to the side, watching this all unfold, his feelings more tangled than ever.
He'd thought he was going to die tonight.
Instead, not only had he survived, but he'd also watched his two brothers turn out to be more inhuman than the last.
Add in a white-haired girl who'd popped her head out of an Imaginary passage, looking like she belonged to a completely different worldview than his own, and the whole scene had gone well beyond absurd.
All he could say was.
Too much information.
He hadn't even finished processing it.
"Got the footage," Bronie's voice cut in through the earpiece.
"I pulled the surveillance from both nearby intersections. Ten minutes before the explosion, an unmarked van parked in the blind spot outside the bomb shelter. No one got out—the van just drove off afterward. They're the ones who set off the detonation."
"Also, I went through the usual shell accounts in the smuggling chain. Two layers of shell companies, and they all trace back to a medical procurement list tied to some project in Europe. Boss, this one's dirty."
"Understood," Su Yu said, pressing a hand to his earpiece.
"Package up the license plate trail and the account transactions. No sleep tonight. Go hard."
"You're really settling into that capitalist boss persona more and more naturally. You've got a real talent for squeezing your employees."
Bronie snarked, the rapid clatter of keys coming through the comm again—clearly she'd already buried herself back in work.
Su Yu turned, his gaze finally settling back on Su.
This time, he wasn't smiling.
The lines of his face had gone cold under the rooftop lights, and whatever irritating playfulness had been hanging around his mouth earlier had vanished completely.
"Your turn now."
"What?"
"These past few years you've been out on 'field research'—what you learned, what you did, what projects you took on, who you dealt with. Especially that underwater genetic research project."
Su Yu walked over step by step and stopped in front of Su.
"Don't you dare tell me you're still planning to carry this alone."
Su looked at him, saying nothing for a long moment.
Honestly, that had been exactly what he'd planned.
At least, up until tonight, he'd always believed these matters shouldn't drag Kevin and Su Yu into it.
Even if it needed investigating, he should be the one to keep digging. This was, after all, an internal Schicksal matter—military-banned drugs, project leaks, high-level smuggling—none of it was something an ordinary person should touch.
But now.
The phrase 'ordinary person,' applied to Su Yu and Kevin, was basically a joke.
Su let out a breath.
"I'll tell you."
"That's more like it."
Su Yu nodded, about to say more, when Kevin—who'd just finished righting a foldable stretcher nearly knocked over by the wind—cut in.
"You'd better tell him everything in one go, or he'll just keep yelling at you after."
"I already want to yell at him now."
Su Yu shot back instantly.
"Do you have any idea how close you came to getting yourself killed tonight?"
Su's ears burned a little under the scolding. He turned his face away and coughed.
"I originally thought it was just a private..."
"You originally thought my ass."
Su Yu cut him off.
"What you 'originally thought' nearly got your head caved in by three monsters in that bomb shelter. Su, I've noticed—you look steady on the surface, but when it counts, you really do have a talent for getting yourself killed."
"Well, I didn't expect you two to come kicking down the door either."
"Kevin kicked the door."
"Then I didn't expect you to open it."
"Now I sound like some taxi driver."
Kiana couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Lewis turned her head aside too, her shoulders shaking—clearly holding back laughter.
Surrounded by all of them, the heavy weight that had been sitting on Su's chest loosened up a little.
He raised a hand to rub his brow, finally resigning himself, and spoke.
"Fine. I'll talk."
"But it's too windy up here. Let's find somewhere else first..."
Su Yu suddenly seemed to remember something, and his expression darkened again.
He looked at Su, his voice low.
"Answer me one thing first."
Su blinked, caught off guard.
"What?"
"Can you get in touch with Otto?"
Su was about to open his mouth, but the next second, the look on Su Yu's face froze him in place.
That face, which usually ran its mouth and could twist any atmosphere sideways with a couple of glib lines, had turned grim in a way that was genuinely unsettling.
"Things have gotten this loud now—that old fox isn't getting to stay comfortably out of it either."
The corner of Su Yu's mouth pulled into a chilling, cold smile.
"For some personal reasons, neither Uncle Yang nor I really want to cross paths with that man. But my brother nearly died in there tonight because of him."
The wind whipped the hem of his coat, snapping loudly. In the light of the still-burning fire, his eyes carried an undisguised edge of killing intent.
"This debt—if it isn't settled properly with him, it's not over."
No one on the rooftop spoke up right away.
Su stood there, looking at Su Yu, and for the first time, understood something with total clarity.
Tonight's explosion hadn't just torn open the bomb shelter.
It had also blown a hole through the thin, deliberately-unspoken paper that had still been keeping up appearances between them.
Whatever came after this, there'd be no faking it, no smoothing it over, anymore.
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