The lobby of the Convention Center transformed from a scene of triumph into a chaotic battlefield in a matter of seconds. The assassin lay dead on the floor, his body rapidly decomposing from the inside out—a fail-safe designed to prevent any autopsy or trace of the organization behind him. But the real horror was slumped against Shen Xi.
Mu Feichi, the man who stood as the iron pillar of the nation, was losing his strength. His weight was immense, his breathing coming in ragged, wet rattles that sent a chilled silence through the gathered elite. On the white silk of his glove, the violet stain was no longer a dot; it was a web of dark, bruised veins creeping up his wrist, visible even through the high-quality fabric of his uniform.
"Marshal!" Feng Rui roared, lunging forward, but Shen Xi's voice cut through the panic like a cold scalpel.
"Don't touch him!" she screamed, her eyes flashing with a sharp, clinical ferocity. "The ghost poison is transdermal. If you touch his skin without protection, you are a dead man in thirty seconds."
She didn't hesitate. Ripping a silk sash from her midnight-blue gown, she wrapped it around her hands as a makeshift barrier and caught Mu Feichi before his head could hit the marble. In her mind, the [Spectral Medical System] was flashing a blinding, violent red, the warning haptics vibrating against her consciousness.
Warning: High-concentration neuro-chemical agent detected. Interaction with pre-existing neural lesions: 100%. Cardiac rhythm: Arrhythmic. Time to total respiratory failure: 180 seconds.
"Qi Yuan! Get the armored transport! Now!" Shen Xi commanded. Her voice held a chilling, regal authority that snapped the elite soldiers out of their shock. "Feng Rui, I need a mobile sterile field and the highest-grade adrenaline suppressants in the vehicle. Move!"
The transport ride back to Mount Jing was a blur of high-speed turns and the screeching of tires. Inside the back of the van, the air was thick with the scent of ozone and the heavy metallic tang of blood. Shen Xi had stripped the gloves and the heavy commander's jacket off Mu Feichi, exposing his muscular chest. The violet veins were now crawling toward his heart, tracing the path of the very nerves she had treated only the night before.
"Mu Feichi, look at me," she hissed, pressing her palms against his cheeks. His eyes were unfocused, the stormy grey clouded by a milky film. "You told me if I failed to make you sleep, you'd keep me awake forever. Well, I'm keeping you awake now. Don't you dare close your eyes."
He managed a weak, agonizing smirk, his teeth stained with blood. His voice was a mere ghost of its usual magnetic rumble. "Always... so bossy... Doctor..."
"Save your breath for living," she snapped, though her heart was hammering against her ribs with a force she hadn't felt in two lifetimes.
As the convoy screeched into the hidden garage of the Mount Jing fortress, the sirens of the base were already wailing. These were not medical sirens; they were the sirens of a Level One combat alert.
"Marshal! We're under fire!" a voice crackled over the radio. "A rogue mercenary unit has breached the outer perimeter. They're using heavy jammers—we've lost contact with Capital Command!"
"They planned this," Qi Yuan grunted, drawing his weapon as the doors opened. "The assassination at the summit was just the trigger. They knew the Marshal would be weakened. They're here to finish the job while the dragon is down."
Shen Xi didn't care about the gunfire echoing in the distance or the vibration of mortar rounds hitting the upper tiers of the fortress. She had Mu Feichi moved onto a high-tech surgical table in his private medical bay.
"Everyone out," she ordered, her hands already moving to prep the silver needles.
"Miss Shen, we can't leave you unprotected—" Feng Rui began, his face pale with worry.
"Out!" she shrieked, her eyes burning with a terrifying, absolute light. "In five minutes, his heart is going to explode. I have to perform a Neural Decoupling. It's a forbidden procedure for a reason—if I slip by a single millimeter, his brain turns to mush. I cannot have you breathing down my neck while I navigate his soul."
She slammed the door shut and locked it. The room was a sanctuary of cold steel and blue light.
Shen Xi activated the [Spectral Medical System] to its maximum overclock. The world around her slowed down. The sounds of the siege—the rattling of glass, the distant screams—faded into the background. All she saw was the glowing 3D map of Mu Feichi's nervous system, a map currently being consumed by violet fire.
The ghost poison was clever; it was a molecular parasite that fed on the electrical signals of the brain. To kill the toxin, she had to momentarily "kill" the host's neural activity. It was a gamble that defied every law of modern medicine.
She grabbed a long, hair-thin needle and a bottle of clear, experimental solution she had prepared in secret at the Yun Estate.
"I'm going into your brainstem, Mu Feichi," she whispered, her hands as steady as the ancient mountains surrounding them. "It's going to feel like falling into a frozen lake. Don't fight the cold. Trust me."
She drove the needle into the base of his skull with surgical precision.
Outside, a massive explosion rocked the room. The lights flickered and died, leaving only the dim, battery-powered emergency red glow. The heavy steel door groaned as something—a ram or a high-grade explosive—hit it from the other side.
"They're at the door, Miss Shen!" Feng Rui's voice shouted from the hallway over the sound of rapid gunfire. "We can't hold them for much longer! You have to finish!"
Shen Xi didn't blink. She was staring at the heart monitor, her world reduced to a single line of green light.
10 bpm... 5 bpm...
Mu Feichi's body went perfectly still. The violet veins turned a dull, lifeless grey. The toxin was dying because its food source—the Marshal's life force—had been cut off.
0 bpm.
The flatline tone wailed in the small room, a long, continuous note of death that seemed to mock her efforts.
"Come on," Shen Xi whispered, sweat pouring down her face despite the freezing air conditioning. She reached for the defibrillator paddles, but her System flashed a warning: Biological restart required. Manual cardiac massage combined with neural stimulation only. Time remaining: 15 seconds.
She climbed onto the table, straddling his waist, and began a rhythmic, brutal compression of his chest. At the same time, she twisted the needle in his skull, sending manual pulses of her own specialized energy into his dormant brain.
"Wake up!" she commanded, her voice breaking with a desperation she usually reserved for the dead. "You haven't seen me burn the Shen family to the ground yet! You haven't seen the end of the story! Wake up, Mu Feichi! I won't let you leave me in this hell alone!"
The door to the med-bay buckled inward. A gap appeared in the steel. A flash-bang grenade was tossed through the opening, bouncing once before detonating.
Shen Xi didn't look up. She threw her body over Mu Feichi to shield his chest and head from the blast.
BOOM.
The room filled with white light and thick, acrid smoke. Her ears rang, and the scent of burnt hair and hot metal filled the air. She felt a sharp, searing pain in her shoulder—shrapnel—but she didn't stop. She kept pushing on his chest, kept twisting the needle with a hand that refused to tremble.
"Wake... UP!"
Suddenly, a hand—scarred, powerful, and surging with a terrifying new heat—clamped around her throat. It wasn't the weak, trembling grip of a dying man. It was the grip of a predator returning from the grave with a vengeance.
Mu Feichi's eyes snapped open. They weren't grey anymore. They were a piercing, electric violet, the ghost poison having been absorbed and converted by his unique physiology under the pressure of her reckless procedure.
He sat up with a violent jolt, his other hand reaching out and catching a mercenary who had just stepped through the ruined door. Without even looking at the man, Mu Feichi snapped the intruder's neck with a single, sickening crunch.
He looked at Shen Xi, his breathing heavy and primal. His thumb traced the blood trickling down her shoulder from her shrapnel wound, his touch searing hot.
"You brought me back," he whispered, his voice sounding like two tectonic plates grinding together in the dark.
The purple glow in his eyes didn't fade; it intensified as he scanned the room, his aura expanding until the very air seemed to vibrate with a murderous intent. He pulled Shen Xi flush against his chest, his heart beating with a ferocity that felt like a war drum echoing through the fortress. Outside, the sounds of the siege suddenly stopped, replaced by a terrifying, absolute silence that was far worse than the gunfire.
Mu Feichi stood up, still holding her as if she were a fragile treasure, and looked toward the shattered door.
"They wanted to see a god bleed," he rasped, a dark, overbearing power radiating from his skin. "I'll show them what happens when I truly lose my patience. But first..." He turned his gaze back to Shen Xi, his grip tightening almost painfully. "Who gave you permission to bleed for me? For every drop of your blood they spilled, I will take a gallon of theirs."