A bunch of guys in suits, long coats, and fedoras—looking like hitmen straight out of The Godfather—crashed right into the Tiberius Technologies IPO party, with everyone watching.
Bang—a bullet shot out from the barrel. The bullet spun through the air, leaving a spiraling trail, cutting right across the screaming, chaotic party, and slammed straight into Adam Zade's chest.
Right then, Sophia's eyes went wide, her pupils shrank. For her, everything was suddenly so clear and intense, like the whole world was stretched out in slow-mo. Wine spilled, glasses fell, the muzzle kept flashing with deadly fire—and all of it, along with the blood blooming from Adam Zade's chest, happened in this syrupy, endless slow motion.
People's reactions in that instant were just so slow, so clumsy, so pointless it was almost funny. Adam looked down, tried to raise his hand to his chest—but the blood was already there before he even moved, and his body had already stiffened and collapsed before his hand made it halfway.
As he crashed through the air, Adam's eyes were just full of shock and disbelief.
What was he so shocked about? Was it seeing his life, about to take off, suddenly cut short? Or was it that his family rivals could be so ruthless, so cold—ready to wipe him out the second he showed a hint of comeback? Or maybe he couldn't believe his friends and backup plans couldn't stop such an obvious, table-flipping move?
Jill Young squinted, her face cold. She noticed that, in Adam's eyes—besides the shock and disbelief—there was a trace of... what? Defiance? Resentment? Unwillingness? Nah, none of those hit the mark. Defiance wasn't strong enough. Resentment wasn't fierce enough. Unwillingness wasn't wild enough. If you want to be precise... it was ferocity. Yeah, pure ferocity.
It's the kind of ferocity that only bursts out from under all your masks when you're at death's door, when the guillotine's already roaring down—it's your raw, true color.
Her mind was buzzing, nerves jumping with raw instinct. Right then, Jill Young caught a hint of something real.
The Adam in those scattered, empty memories was nothing like the Zade Senior she'd imagined—so different, you'd never think they were the same guy. Jill Young always felt it was unreal. But at this exact moment, in those eyes that flashed past her aunt's face—so close, yet totally out of reach—that fleeting, almost invisible ferocity suddenly made her overlap the two figures in her mind.
The Zade Senior who'd always lurked in her heart like a shadowy figure now, in this instant, suddenly had a real face and a real body. No doubt about it—this was the face, this was the person, and those were the eyes, dark and fierce.
All her instincts screamed at once. This guy who always seemed so gentle and refined—the nobleman, the gentleman—was, without a doubt, Zade Senior.
Bang—wine splashed everywhere.
Bang—a high-heeled glass crashed to the floor and shattered.
Bang—Adam fell into Sophia's arms.
Bang bang bang—the gunmen kept firing, chasing down the guests who had nothing to do with this, while pouring all their firepower into the spot where Adam had collapsed. It was like they just had to turn Adam into a sieve, smash him into a million pieces, before they'd consider the job done. Only then, maybe, would some secret wish of their boss finally be fulfilled.
Bullets danced through the air, their wild shrieks sounding like the laughter of death gods, covering the whole scene in a grim shroud. Right in the middle of the crossfire, Sophia didn't spare a glance for the shooters. She just stared, wide-eyed, hugging Adam, watching the light in his eyes slowly fade. Without thinking, she raised her hand—her palm was stained with fresh blood, spreading at once before her eyes and inside her heart.
"No—no—no—no—no—no—no—no!!!"
No one ever expected quiet little Sophia would let out such a piercing scream. In that moment, some deep, natural instinct she'd always kept buried suddenly burst free. It was the kind of instinct that lets you stare down a venomous snake without flinching, the kind that lets a revolutionary kid stand up to a whole squad, fighting back to protect their family. It's something twins share, something passed down like a seed to the next generation, blooming like the battlefield flowers of a midnight queen.
That instinct is called courage.
So Sophia whipped around, the bullet already right in front of her face—but all she saw was red, pure fury burning in her eyes.
"Get out of my way—NOW!!!"
Boom! An invisible wave ripped through the void, wild and unstoppable. Ripples in the air—almost visible—burst from Sophia’s eyes, sweeping over everything in a split second. Reality itself twisted, bent, tangled, and shattered, like a painting suddenly crumpled into scraps by a giant hand.
Then, the chaos slowly faded. Everything that had twisted and broken just... snapped back to normal. Not a scratch. Not a mark.
Except for the gunmen and their deadly weapons—they were just gone. Vanished.
No one had a clue where those people ended up. And honestly, with Sophia right now? She wasn’t in the mood to send them off to some flowery paradise.
Suddenly, Sophia looked thinner, like that wild burst of void energy had drained her.
But Sophia didn’t have time to worry about that.
"Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die…" Sophia laid Adam flat on the ground, panic all over her face as she started first aid. She grabbed a dinner knife off the floor and, with one quick motion, sliced open Adam’s shirt. She ripped the fabric wide, exposing the wound. One look and she pressed down hard, trying to stop the bleeding. But no matter how hard she pressed, blood kept gushing out, seeping through her fingers.
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Crap, right through the heart—there’s no stopping this bleeding!
"Don’t panic, don’t panic, I took med school classes, I should be able to handle this..." Sophia muttered, trying to hype herself up. But let’s be real—medicine is all about hands-on experience. You can ace the theory, but if you’ve never stared down a life-or-death situation, all that knowledge goes out the window when you’re freaking out.
And let’s not forget—doctors can never operate on their own family. When the person on the table is someone you love, even the best skills feel useless.
Sure enough, Adam’s eyes were losing their light, his breathing getting shallow and rough, and Sophia? She just couldn’t keep her cool. She was so panicked, she had no clue what to do next.
Just then, Sophia’s vision blurred, and her memory world suddenly synced up with Su Muhua, like a ghost hovering behind her. Yang Qi and Qi Meng were totally lost, but Su Muhua just mumbled, "So that’s when it happened... That’s what it was..."
Suddenly, flashes of memory zipped by—scenes of Su Muhua working hands-on back at West China Medical School. She was treating all kinds of patients, still kind of clumsy, but you could already see her guts: willing to cut, willing to try, ready to treat a dying horse like a live one.
A special kind of strength flowed in through that psychic link—a soul-level instinct. The kind that never hesitates when it’s time to act, never flinches when it’s time to step up. The kind that lets you charge into danger to save someone, or grab a facehugger and swing it around like nunchucks. The bigger the crisis, the more you rise to the occasion.
That’s called guts.
Sophia’s hands stopped shaking. Her wild, frantic eyes suddenly locked in.
Not just locked in—her gaze went totally blank.