Lord Shenyan stood quietly, gazing at the Blue-Faced Man lying on the ground. He said nothing, a faint smile in his eyes. The area around his heart bulged, and from the cracks in the mask above his mouth, black blood seeped out from time to time.
I could barely hear the violent, pounding heartbeat from before; now, only a faint throb would come after a long interval.
"How did you manage to get here?"
Lord Shenyan asked, but the Blue-Faced Man lying on the ground remained silent. His breath was extremely weak—Perry Min’s blow had completely crippled his bodily functions. It seemed they knew the weakness of these Immortality Society agents was their hearts.
Damage elsewhere could be healed, but the heart was different. Once it was destroyed, the masked agents of the Immortality Society were helpless. With a swift gesture, Lord Shenyan waved his hand, drawing everyone’s attention. The Blue-Faced Man’s mask was removed, revealing a cheek already burned by flames. No matter how many times I saw it, that face always sent chills down my spine.
"Looks like he won’t talk, Lord Shenyan."
Leo Yali spoke, raising his sword to strike. At that moment, the Blue-Faced Man began to laugh.
"Products that can no longer keep up with the times will come to an end."
My eyes widened as the Blue-Faced Man suddenly thrust a hand into his own chest with a wet, tearing sound. With a squelch, his black heart exploded entirely. Lying on the ground, he flashed a bizarre smile and then breathed his last.
A streak of black energy shot out from his body—a Wraith. I immediately released a surge of baleful energy, trying to capture it. Strangely, the Wraith slipped through my energy with ease, slowly vanishing into the air.
For now, the incident had come to an end. The Blue-Faced Man’s sudden attack just now had turned a crowd of Whitecoat Wraiths and Grayshade Wraiths into drifting ash. As the chaos settled, many low-level ghosts gathered, some sobbing and whimpering in distress.
Lord Shenyan stood off to the side, silent. Yet I could see the anger seeping through his face, held in check only by sheer force of will. If not for that, his fury would have devoured everything.
"Maybe you’ve been marked."
At that moment, Leo Yali spoke, and Lord Shenyan stared at them in a daze.
"What do you mean?"
"At the exact moment you returned, the Immortality Society attacked. There must be something behind this."
All the swordsmen looked at me and Lord Shenyan.
Only a handful knew about Ethan Zhang and my return, and we hadn’t encountered any Immortality Society agents or even a trace of human presence along the way.
I stared quietly at the Blue-Faced Man’s corpse, eyes wide, a strange smile frozen on his face. Xu Fu’s image gradually surfaced in my mind. Thoughts tangled and churned in my head, but inside, I felt neither grief nor rage—those things that once plucked at my heartstrings simply didn’t exist in me anymore. I felt like an outsider to it all.
In the past, when the Immortality Society did this in front of me—dragging the innocent into their schemes—I would be furious, burning with anger. But now, that anger is only a fleeting flash of red in my mind. To me, rage has become a luxury.