Kai had always believed that ordinary people could still change something.
He was just a 24-year-old office clerk, with average height and average looks, the kind of person you would pass on the street and forget in three seconds. He lived in a tiny rented apartment with his parents and his younger sister, Kiki, who was still in her last year of high school. Every night after work, he sat at the old wooden desk and typed reports for a company that paid him just enough to keep the lights on.
But three months ago, everything changed.
He was walking home from work, passing through a busy street with people coming and going, when he saw a teenage girl run out of an alley and shout for help. Behind her was a thug, some rich kid's son, grabbing her arm, yelling she belonged to his "friends." The girl looked terrified, tears streaming down her face.
Kai did not know her. He was not a hero. It was simply the result of the values he had been taught since childhood.
So he stepped in.
He shoved the thug back and threw a punch. The kid fell to the ground, his nose bleeding. The girl said "Thank you" quietly and ran.
Then the nightmare began.
The thug looked up through the blood and smiled. "You're dead. My family will make you and everyone you love pay."
At the police station, the truth was buried alive. The girl he had saved sat across from the officers, sobbing. But she wasn't thanking him. She pointed a trembling finger at Kai and told them he was the one who had tried to assault her, and the rich kid was just bravely trying to stop him. The CCTV footage had been conveniently cut to show only Kai throwing the first punch. Kai was charged with aggravated assault.
Three months behind bars.
While he sat in his cell, the Li family, the city's untouchable clan, took revenge.
They took Kiki first.
His seventeen-year-old sister. They dragged her away, violated her, filmed it all. The video exploded online with captions mocking "the fake hero's little sister." She called him once, her voice broken: "Brother… I'm sorry." Then she hanged herself.
The police called it suicide. Case closed.
His parents were next.
They were driving home from the supermarket when a black SUV slammed into them at full speed. The car burst into flames before anyone could reach them. The police ruled it an "accident." No one was charged.
Kai read the news in his cell. He was powerless. Regret, betrayal, and grief overwhelmed him, and he broke down and cried.
But they did not stop.
When he was finally released three months later, he walked out like a man already dead.
He was going to find the Li Family's young master. He was going to make them pay with his bare hands.
He never made it far.
In the central city square of Haicheng, the biggest, busiest plaza in the city, surrounded by shopping malls, office towers, and thousands of people on lunch break, the Li Family's men were waiting.
They didn't drag him away. They didn't take him to some dark alley.
They beat him right there.
In front of everyone.
The first punch split his lip. The second cracked a rib. They took turns, slow, deliberate, professional. One held his arms while another stomped on his legs. When he tried to scream for help, a heavy boot slammed into his spine with a sickening crunch.
The sound echoed across the square.
Kai collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
People quickened their steps. Heads turned away. Eyes dropped to phones. Mothers pulled children along faster, whispering "Don't look." Men shouldered past, carefully stepping around the blood so they wouldn't ruin their expensive shoes. A few muttered something under their breath, but no one stopped. No one shouted. No one called for help. They just… kept moving. Like he was something unpleasant to step around.
The young master crouched down, patted Kai's bloody cheek. "You should have stayed quiet, little hero. This is what happens when trash tries to play savior."
Then he stood and waved at the crowd like a celebrity. "Anyone who posts this gets a red packet from the Li Family. Enjoy."
The beating continued for another ten minutes. By the end, Kai's vision blurred with blood and tears. The last thing he remembered was the backs of hundreds of people rushing away, avoiding eye contact and stepping wide.
No one helped.
Not one.
When the ambulance finally arrived, the paramedics found him lying in a pool of his own blood, spine shattered in three places. The doctors told him in flat voices: permanent paralysis from the neck down. Never walk again. Never hold anything again.
They moved him to a public ward because he had no money left. His family was gone. His savings were gone. The online accounts that once called him brave now posted memes of his broken body.
For the next three weeks, Kai lay in that bed like a corpse that hadn't finished dying.
Only his eyes could move. His face was frozen in a numb mask.
He stared at the cracked ceiling every single day. The truth had been completely twisted by the media.
From a nurse's phone nearby, a local news broadcast played loudly. The girl he had saved was crying on the screen, bowing slightly as she publicly thanked the Li family's heir, Li Xuan, for rescuing her from a "vicious attacker."
The nurses changing his IV drip didn't even bother to lower their voices. They looked at Kai's paralyzed body with pure disgust.
"Did you see the interview?" one nurse whispered sharply. "Thank goodness Young Master Li stepped in. Otherwise, who knows what this creep would have done to that poor girl..."
"I know, right?" the other nurse replied, aggressively tossing a soiled towel onto Kai's legs. "To think he even tried to play the victim. Ugh, I really don't want to take care of this kind of scum. It makes my skin crawl just being in the same room."
He heard every word.
He felt every second of the hatred and injustice.
There was nothing left inside him except a black hole of despair so deep it swallowed even the pain.
He heard every word.
He felt every second of the emptiness.
There was nothing left inside him except a black hole of despair so deep it swallowed even the pain.
Until one stormy night, when the machines beeped their usual rhythm and heavy rain battered the windows while flashes of lightning lit the room, painting brief pale lines across his useless legs…
[Scanning host…]
A cold, genderless voice suddenly spoke directly into his mind.
[Host detected: K.I. Kai. Emotional state: Peak Despair. Highest recorded on this planet.]
[System fully activated.]
[Because your suffering is so pure, so complete, so utterly abandoned by the very people you tried to protect… you are granted an initial gift.]
[Core Rule: You can use any material to create life. Whether it is physical matter, or abstract concepts like pain, hatred, and human souls.]
[Initial Reward: 1,000 Creation Points.]
[Scanning available materials within Host's vicinity and soul space...]
[Abstract Materials Detected:]
Host's Emotion: Peak Despair & Endless Hatred
[Physical Materials Detected:]
Item: Paring Knife (Status: Dull, lightly stained with fruit juice)
A dark, velvet whisper followed, warm like a devil's breath against his ear:
"Look at what you have left, Kai. The girl you saved framed you to the police. They filmed your sister's last moments. They let your parents burn. The memory of it, the agony of it... These are your materials now. Go on… Use your gift. Create something that will make every single one of them scream. Make them regret every second they chose to look away. The world deserves the monster it ignored."
Kai's eyes—red, bloodshot, the only part of him that could still move—stared at the glowing system pane
For the first time in weeks, something other than emptiness stirred in his chest.
Revenge.
"System… fuse it all." Kai's internal voice roared with an earth-shattering rage. "Take my despair. Take every ounce of hatred in this broken body! Combine it with that knife. Create my first vessel!"
[Consuming 1,000 Creation Points… Fusion initiated!]
The panel flashed blood-red.
Miles away, in a dark corner of the city, the air tore open for three seconds.
From the rift stepped a 2.2-meter-tall nightmare.
Tattered black raincoat dripping with shadow. A rusted machete dragged behind it, the blade scraping against the wall and throwing off sparks. The hood of the raincoat hung low, covering most of the face, leaving only the lower jaw visible. The mouth was sewn shut with thick black thread. The aura around it was pure, suffocating malice. The air around it felt heavy and wrong, as if something that should not exist had stepped into the world.
The puppet's eyes glowed faint crimson.
It received its first command from the paralyzed boy who could only move his eyes:
"Find the Li Family's young master, Li Xuan. Make him feel exactly what my sister felt. Then his father. Then that girl who lied. Then everyone who ever looked away instead of helping."
The machete rose slowly.
In the hospital bed, Kai's cracked lips twitched—the tiniest, agonizing movement, but it was there.
A smile.
The first in a very long time.