The first coffin appeared at 4:17 a.m.
It was placed exactly in the center of the marble bedroom floor of Zhao Yuanlong, chairman of Yuanlong Heavy Industries, the richest man in the eastern district.
Ancient black wood. Bronze nails the length of a man's forearm. Carved on the lid: a single character in blood-red script.
"Return."
Zhao Yuanlong was found sitting upright inside it, eyes wide open, mouth sewn shut with gold thread. No wounds. No blood. Heart simply… stopped.
The surveillance footage showed nothing. One frame he was sleeping. The next frame the coffin was there, lid closed, and every camera in the villa had gone snow-white for exactly three seconds.
By 5:30 a.m., fifteen more coffins had been delivered.
Every single recipient was a name from twenty years ago. The sixteen family heads who had personally signed the order to hunt down a seven-year-old monster and bury him alive in the mountains.
They called it "Project Dragon Suppression."
They thought it worked.
At 6:00 a.m., Jiangzhou City woke up to hell.
Social media exploded.
#SixteenCoffins trended nationwide within seven minutes.
The police sealed off entire districts. Helicopters roared overhead. Special forces in anti-riot gear cordoned off the richest neighborhoods.
Yet no one could explain how sixteen three-meter-long coffins had been carried into locked villas, past armed guards and military-grade security systems, without a single alarm tripping.
The official statement at 8:00 a.m. was short and panicked:
"Terrorist attack by unknown cult. Citizens remain calm."
The unofficial statement, whispered in the highest offices of the province, was far simpler:
"The Reaper is back."
–––
Jiangzhou University, 8:45 a.m.
Lin Feng clocked in as usual.
The head of security, Old Wang, was chain-smoking in the booth, eyes bloodshot.
"Sixteen dead overnight," he muttered. "All big shots. My cousin's a cop—he says the coffins weigh over four hundred kilos each. No footprints, no tire tracks, no fingerprints. Like ghosts did it."
Lin Feng poured him a paper cup of hot water. "Scary world, Uncle Wang."
Old Wang laughed bitterly. "Scary? Kid, if I were you I'd quit today. Rich people are dropping like flies. Next it'll be us little people getting dragged in."
Lin Feng smiled faintly. "Maybe the rich did something twenty years ago that's coming back to bite them."
Old Wang stared at him for a long second, then waved him away. "Go sweep the west gate. Some VIP is coming. Don't slack off."
9:15 a.m., west gate.
A convoy of twelve black Rolls-Royces with military plates rolled in.
The entire campus security team stood at attention like soldiers.
Out of the middle car stepped Su Qingxue again.this time in a black combat uniform instead of a dress.
Behind her, eight men and women in the same uniform, all carrying silver briefcases. Their aura made the air feel sharp, like standing next to unsheathed blades.
Ancient Martial Artists.
Every one of them at the peak of Internal Force.
Students whispered from a distance.
"That's the Su family's Shadow Guard! Even the army has to give them face!"
"They say Su Qingxue reached Transformation Realm at nineteen. She can kill a cow with one finger!"
Su Qingxue ignored the noise. Her cold gaze swept the campus and locked once more on the plain janitor sweeping leaves near the gate.
This time she didn't hesitate.
She walked straight toward him.
The eight Shadow Guards followed like wolves.
Students parted automatically. Phones came out again.
Lin Feng kept sweeping, as if he hadn't noticed the Ice Goddess of Jiangzhou marching toward him with murder in her eyes.
Ten meters.
Five meters.
Three.
Su Qingxue stopped.
"Lin Feng," she said. Her voice carried the chill of a thousand-year glacier. "We need to talk."
Lin Feng finally looked up, expression confused. "Do I know you, miss?"
The surrounding students burst into laughter.
"Did this janitor just pretend not to know Goddess Su?"
"He's dead. Actually dead."
Su Qingxue's eyes narrowed.
She raised one hand.
The eight Shadow Guards moved instantly, forming a perfect encirclement. Invisible killing intent locked the space down. Even the wind seemed to stop.
Normal students felt their knees buckle. A few directly fainted.
Lin Feng alone stood straight, still holding the broom.
Su Qingxue spoke again, slower. "Twenty years ago, Mount Canglong. Sixteen families. One coffin. Nine Dragon Suppression Nails. Do you remember now?"
Lin Feng blinked.
Then he smiled.
It was the same harmless smile he gave yesterday.
But this time, something ancient and terrible looked out from behind his eyes.
"Su Qingxue," he said softly. "Granddaughter of Su Batian, the man who personally hammered the ninth nail into my heart. I remember."
The temperature in a hundred-meter radius plummeted.
Frost appeared on the ground.
The eight Shadow Guards felt every hair on their bodies stand up. Their Internal Force started circulating wildly, out of control, as if meeting a natural predator.
Su Qingxue's pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Because Lin Feng's voice was no longer coming from his mouth.
It was coming from everywhere.
From the ground.
From the sky.
From inside their own skulls.
"I also remember," the voice continued, "how your grandfather begged at the end. He offered me the entire Su family fortune. I told him I'd collect in twenty years—with interest."
He took one step forward.
The encirclement of eight peak Internal Force experts shattered like glass. All eight Shadow Guards flew backward a dozen meters, coughing blood, eyes filled with horror.
Su Qingxue didn't move. She couldn't.
An invisible mountain pressed down on her alone.
Lin Feng stopped half a meter away.
He reached out and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
The gesture was intimate. Tender, even.
His next words were not.
"Tell your grandfather," he whispered, "the first nail is coming out tonight."
Then he patted her cheek like an elder praising a child, turned, and walked away.
The pressure vanished.
Su Qingxue dropped to one knee, coughing a mouthful of blood. Her combat uniform was soaked with cold sweat.
The entire west gate was dead silent.
Hundreds of phones had recorded everything.
By the time campus security rushed over, Lin Feng was already clocking out for lunch, humming an old nursery rhyme under his breath.
11:00 a.m., Su Family Ancestral Residence, a hundred kilometers outside Jiangzhou.
Deep beneath the mountain, in a forbidden chamber sealed for twenty years.
Nine ancient bronze nails were driven into nine vital points on a gigantic stone platform, forming a perfect array.
At the center lay a black coffin.
Chains thicker than a man's thigh bound it from all directions. Every chain was inscribed with Buddhist scriptures, Taoist talismans, and shamanic runes—an alliance of China's three ancient paths to suppress one existence.
Su Batian, now ninety-seven years old, stood before the coffin with a cane.
His face was calm, but his hands trembled.
Behind him, the entire upper echelon of the Su family knelt on the ground.
"Grandfather," Su Qingxue's father said in a shaking voice, "Qingxue just sent an emergency message. He… he really is alive. And he's coming tonight."
Su Batian closed his eyes.
Twenty years ago, sixteen families had paid an unimaginable price to capture a monster that should never have existed.
They had to sacrifice three Grandmasters at the Transformation Realm just to drive the first nail.
The second nail cost them an entire mercenary army of ten thousand men.
By the ninth nail, only Su Batian himself was left standing.
He still remembered the child's voice from inside the coffin, even as the final nail pierced the heart:
"I'll see you again in twenty years."
Tonight was exactly the twentieth anniversary.
Su Batian opened his eyes.
"Open the ancestral vault," he ordered. "Activate the Nine Heavens Thunder Array. Call the other fifteen families—even if only corpses remain, call their successors. Tonight, the Su family fights to the last man."
He looked at the coffin.
"Twenty years ago, we failed to kill a god."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"Tonight, we finish the job."
Meanwhile, in a cheap rented room on the edge of the slums.
Lin Feng sat cross-legged on the floor.
In front of him floated sixteen drops of fresh blood, each containing a fragment of a screaming soul.
With a wave of his hand, the blood drops flew into sixteen tiny wooden figurines.
Each figurine wore the face of the billionaire who had died this morning.
Lin Feng picked one up—Zhao Yuanlong's—and crushed it.
Far away, in the city morgue, Zhao Yuanlong's corpse suddenly opened its eyes and screamed, a sound no living throat could make.
The coroner dropped his scalpel and ran.
Lin Feng smiled.
"Sixteen greetings delivered," he said to the empty room. "Now for the main course."
He stood up and opened the window.
Outside, storm clouds were gathering unnaturally fast, centering above Mount Canglong a hundred kilometers away.
Lightning that shouldn't exist in winter flashed crimson.
Lin Feng stepped onto the windowsill.
Behind him, the blood-red robed woman from last night appeared again, kneeling.
"Master, the Blood Shadow Sect's 3,000 death warriors are in position around the Su mountain. Shall we begin?"
Lin Feng didn't answer immediately.
He looked toward the distant storm, eyes reflecting the crimson lightning.
"Twenty years ago," he said softly, "I was seven. I begged them to let me live. They laughed and nailed me anyway."
His voice grew colder.
"Tonight, no one gets to beg."
He stepped off the seventh-floor window.
And did not fall.
Instead, he walked forward one step, two steps walking on thin air as casually as walking on ground.
Behind him, three thousand black shadows rose from the city like a tide of demons, following their king into the night.
Above Jiangzhou, the crimson storm howled.
And every old monster who had survived the purge twenty years ago felt it at the same moment:
The thing they buried was no longer in its coffin.
It was coming home.
And it was angry.