The auditorium's dome stretched impossibly high.
Twelve massive crystal chandeliers hung like frozen tears, their cold light bleaching hundreds of seats bone-white.
Ethan entered, holding Lily's hand.
No applause greeted them.
The air reeked of Hermès leather and overpowering cologne—a nauseating cocktail of wealth and arrogance.
Hundreds of eyes tracked the father-daughter pair.
Their gazes carried venom.
Above the stage, a black-and-white banner proclaimed: **[FIRMLY RESIST LOW-CLASS BOARD MEMBERS - RESTORE PURITY TO OUR CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENT]**.
Ethan ignored the banner.
He crouched down, smoothing every wrinkle from Lily's backpack straps with infinite care.
Across his retina, crimson data streams pulsed frantically.
**[WARNING: Hostile lock-on detected!]**
**[High-threat source scan: Directly behind, lighting control room, 150 feet.]**
**[Threat level: LETHAL.]**
"Screeeech—"
The microphone shrieked feedback.
Sun Zhiqiang stood center stage.
His Italian handmade suit strained against his corpulent frame, buttons threatening to burst.
"Ladies and gentlemen."
Sun's jowls quivered as he jabbed a fat finger toward Ethan's face.
"Behold! The fraudulent board member!"
"Dressed in thrift store rags, dragging along a garbage-picking burden!"
"If this lowlife manages our school, will our children learn to dig through dumpsters next?"
The crowd erupted.
"Expel them!"
"No wonder it stinks in here—beggars invaded!"
The lights cut out.
A single harsh spotlight pinned Ethan and Lily like insects under glass.
Father and daughter became the stage's unwilling performers.
Through his earpiece, the hidden assassin whispered orders to Sun: "Provoke him. Make him lose control. Then I'll have justification to shoot."
Sun's grin turned predatory.
He grabbed a half-empty energy drink from the podium.
His wrist snapped forward.
The bottle flew.
"Splat."
The sticky container rolled to Lily's feet.
Yellow liquid splashed across her pink sneakers—the first new shoes she'd ever owned in her life.
"There's your reward!"
Sun sneered down at them. "Love collecting bottles? Go ahead! Pick it up and get out!"
Cruel laughter erupted.
Sharp. Piercing.
Lily's tiny frame shrank inward.
She stared at her stained shoes, then at the bottle on the floor.
Once, bottles had been her "treasures."
Each one worth ten cents.
Now this one burned like acid in her chest.
"Daddy..."
Her small hand gripped Ethan's pants leg until her knuckles went white.
"Did... did Lily embarrass you?"
Her voice trembled, tears pooling in those enormous eyes but refusing to fall. "Lily won't collect bottles anymore... never again..."
**[CRITICAL WARNING!]**
**[S-Class distress detected in offspring!]**
**[Emotional threshold BREACHED!]**
**[Rules Arsenal: FULLY UNLOCKED!]**
Ethan's eyes showed no ripple of emotion.
Not even the cold fury from before.
This was stagnant water.
Bottomless, lifeless depths.
He knelt down.
Using his T-shirt sleeve, he cleaned every speck of dirt from Lily's shoes with the tenderness reserved for priceless artifacts.
"Lily doesn't cry."
His voice was soft enough to avoid disturbing dust motes. "The fat uncle is playing a game with us."
"What game?"
"Truth or dare." Ethan stood, cradling Lily in one arm while gently covering her ears with his free hand. "The loser becomes tomato sauce."
He walked toward the stage.
Each step landed in perfect rhythm with Sun's accelerating heartbeat.
Sun tried to retreat, but his legs felt filled with concrete.
Ethan strode directly to the main seat and sat down.
He picked up the microphone.
"Lock all exits."
This wasn't an order to security—it was a command to the system.
CLICK.
Every door's electronic lock flashed red simultaneously.
Ethan's gaze swept the audience as his Truth-Seeing Eye analyzed frantically.
"Mr. Li."
His voice boomed through the speakers, making eardrums ache.
"Fortune Jewelry?" Ethan's tone was lazily conversational. "Last week your factory used acid to rush-clean jade. Three workers are still in ICU with perforated lungs. Does your wife know you spent their compensation money on that college sophomore?"
The balding man who'd been preparing to heckle went chalk-white and collapsed into his seat.
The entire hall held its breath.
Ethan didn't pause.
His pace quickened.
"Third row, red dress, Mrs. Zhang. Harvard PhD? Thirty thousand for a fake degree from the dark web—sloppy craftsmanship."
"Fifth row, Mr. Zhao. Last night you claimed a board meeting, but you were at the 'Nightshade' club. Should I project that eighteen-thousand-dollar transaction record on the big screen?"
"And you, Director Wang..."
Names.
Explosions.
Each name was a precision bullet.
The well-dressed elite below transformed into naked prisoners paraded through streets.
Some covered their faces. Others trembled. A few tried crawling under chairs.
High society crumbled in minutes.
Finally, Ethan turned.
He faced the sweat-drenched Sun Zhiqiang.
"You... this is illegal! I'll sue you!" Sun blustered, his eyes darting desperately toward the lighting booth.
Ethan smiled.
"Sun Zhiqiang, Changhe Real Estate."
"Yesterday, 3 PM. Your offshore account received five million dollars."
"Sender code: 'Abyss.'"
"Memo: Create chaos."
BOOM!
Sun's knees buckled. He collapsed behind the podium.
"You were planning to flee to Vancouver, weren't you? Leave your wife here to take the fall?"
Below, Sun's wife charged the stage like a fury, nails aimed at his face. "You bastard! You animal!"
Chaos erupted completely.
Ethan looked up.
His gaze pierced through the rioting crowd, through blinding lights, locking onto the dark window at the auditorium's rear.
The lighting booth.
Assassin "Ghost" had his P226 trained and ready.
The crosshairs wavered over Ethan's forehead.
But he didn't dare pull the trigger.
Ethan's words were meant for "Abyss" to hear.
Sun wasn't just a ruined pawn—he knew too much about secret money flows.
By the rules, he had to die.
"Friend upstairs."
Ethan mouthed words to empty air.
"Kill him. Or I announce your position and let hundreds of enraged parents tear you apart."
A naked ultimatum.
A forced checkmate.
In the booth, the assassin's finger froze on the trigger.
One second to decide.
Ethan was already opening his mouth, seemingly ready to call out coordinates.
The assassin's pupils contracted.
Screw the mission.
Survival first.
PFFT.
An almost inaudible muffled pop.
Sun, kneeling and trying to explain to his wife, suddenly erupted in a spray of blood from his left shoulder.
The massive kinetic force launched him sideways.
His scream drowned in the chaos.
"Murder!"
"There's a gun! Run!"
The previously arrogant parents now crawled and stumbled over each other, abandoning Hermès bags and LV purses to be trampled into expensive pulp.
In the instant before blood sprayed, Ethan's large hand had already covered Lily's eyes.
"Wow!"
Ethan's voice carried exaggerated wonder, like he was narrating the most delightful fairy tale. "The fat uncle lost! He performed a tomato sauce magic trick!"
"Lily, count quickly! Count to ten and we'll transform and go home!"
"One... two..."
Lily obediently closed her eyes, even smiling sweetly.
Completely unaware that half a meter away lay a scene from hell.
In the crowd, Roxanne was jostled and shoved, her glasses hanging from one ear.
She stared at the stage in shock.
That man sat at the center of corpses and chaos.
Unmovable as a mountain.
With his not-particularly-broad shoulders, he'd built an absolute fortress around his daughter—one that completely shut out all blood and violence.
In that moment, Roxanne realized this man's silhouette was more terrifying than any powerful figure she'd ever encountered.
And more magnificent than any father she'd ever seen.
...
Night fell over the tenement building like a shroud.
Lily slept clutching her new backpack, perhaps dreaming of that fascinating "magic show."
Ethan sat beside the bed.
His cracked-screen phone lit up.
Unknown message:
[Ethan Blackwell, you broke the rules. Tonight, midnight, abandoned amusement park on the west side. Don't come, and tomorrow the kindergarten becomes rubble. —Ghost]
A threat.
Using hundreds of children's lives as leverage.
CRACK.
The phone crumpled to scrap metal in Ethan's palm.
He stood, dragging a heavy black iron case from beneath the dust-covered bed.
Palm print recognition.
Blue light scanned.
Mechanisms clicked open.
Inside lay no gold or silver.
Only an ancient Tang sword, its blade webbed with hairline cracks.
A demon mask showing only the lower half of a face.
Five years ago, the "Northern Star King" had used these two items to silence half the underground world.
Ethan's finger traced the blade's edge.
His fingertip split.
A drop of blood seeped in, instantly absorbed by the hungry steel.
Dark golden light flashed in the darkness—like a predator's awakening eye.
Ethan donned the mask.
In that moment, the gentle father died.
What remained was a human demon.
"Amusement park?"
Muffled laughter emerged from behind the mask.
"Perfect. Good feng shui there—ideal for burying trash."