Chapter 76

Li Qun asked anxiously, "What about those people?"
His trusted underling looked puzzled. "Don't know. We didn't see them."
"At a time like this, with people about to arrive, where have they run off to?" Li Qun paced in panic, then steadied himself and reconsidered the plan.
He'd had men lying in wait all around; Zhou Yan was waiting in the back. But the ambushers were his own people, elite as they were, he had no confidence they'd stand up to Ye Xiao, who once subdued dozens with what seemed like a flick of a finger. As for Zhou Yan, the guy claimed to be a three-ability user, but that's just window-dressing, he's basically a neurotic.
That little mustached man told him to stall for time, what trick did he still have up his sleeve?
Li Qun never intended to kill Ye Xiao; he only wanted them to get out of his way and stop making things difficult. But it was no longer a matter of what he wanted. Once he'd taken this step, of course he hoped he could finish Ye Xiao off in one stroke.
He only hoped those few people would hold up their end.
He didn't know that the men he considered the main force of this banquet set with ill intent had long since abandoned him and gone to ambush elsewhere, and had come up empty, and were now bitterly regretting it.
Meanwhile, Ye Xiao had already arrived at the gate.
He openly brought a squad: Lin Tantan, Xu Li, Mei Baisheng who could control the field, Fan Fang who could freeze her surroundings, and three other ability-users, one with lightning, one with x-ray vision, and one with spatial powers.
Naturally, everyone but him was stopped.
But Ye Xiao ignored them; with a wave of his hand gusts pushed aside the blockers, the muzzles of their guns were pressed down in unison, and he walked into Li Qun's main camp with his people.
Li Qun's territory was impressive: wide flat land, rows of buildings, drill grounds, and tens of thousands of soldiers stationed there. Of course the numbers were padded, only a portion were real professional troops, many were recruits Li Qun had brought in later. Even so, those tens of thousands were his core force, his greatest reliance.
Normally Li Qun felt secure surrounded by that army, which was the main reason he agreed to cooperate. But when Ye Xiao strode in brazenly with seven people, he still felt a chill of panic.
He swallowed and forced a smile. "Come in, have a seat."
To buy time he had even had food prepared, putting on an awkward pretense of hospitality, then told Ye Xiao he was heading to the capital and that most of his men and his whole operation would likely go to Ye Xiao, they'd turn swords into plowshares and so on.
His desperate, rummaging-for-words act made those watching anxious for him.
Ye Xiao didn't want to dance around it. "You called me here to ambush me, didn't you? You don't have many powerful ability-users under you, there's this Zhou Yan now, but surely it's not just him. How many hired hands did you bring? Call them out. Stop stalling; let's get it over with."
Li Qun stared at him.
Ye Xiao smiled and reached out; Li Qun involuntarily lurched toward him and was pushed into a chair. Mei Baisheng produced a length of rope and bound him tight, and hung a dark object around his neck.
Mei Baisheng sneered, "It's remote-controlled. Misbehave and, boom!, we'll blast you to bone fragments."
Li Qun was dumbstruck. Several of his aides inside couldn't react in time. The ones who had stayed close as bodyguards did manage to move, but after taking only a step they were tripped by an unseen force, thrown to the ground and immobilized.
Ye Xiao said coolly, "Have the unrelated personnel step back. This is a personal matter; there's no need to create unnecessary cannon fodder."
Li Qun still couldn't find his voice.
Mei Baisheng pressed on his hands. A sizzling sound rang out and an indescribable pain shot into his mind. Li Qun screamed and looked down to see his hands being eaten away by some corrosive liquid, flesh bubbling and blackening with a sizzle.
He shouted, "Back off! Everyone get back! Plan canceled!" Damn it, ambush my foot, these guys aren't even human!
"Fall back five hundred meters," Ye Xiao said.
"Five hundred meters! Back off five hundred meters!" Li Qun cursed at the few hesitant aides who hadn't moved. "Get out of here, what are you still standing around for!" The flesh on his hands was nearly rotted down to the bone!
He turned to Ye Xiao. "It's a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding. I don't want to pick a fight with you, I'm being forced!"
Ye Xiao tilted his head slightly and sent the lightning-user and the x-ray seer to check. They returned saying the handlers and ambushers outside had indeed pulled back; there were no other people upstairs either, only one remained.
The x-ray seer looked up at the ceiling. "There's someone whose head is half severed, he's directly above."
Ye Xiao raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Only one, Zhou Yan. Where are the others?"
"They ran. All of them ran. Damn it! I'm not lying, those men were screwing me over. They said they'd been tasked to come kill you and that Min Yande approved it; they told me I had to cooperate, and even said that if I didn't, if I'm seen mixed up with Zhou Yan now you wouldn't spare me. I'm being forced!" Li Qun wailed. He couldn't understand how it had come to this. He knew his people were useless, otherwise he wouldn't always just threaten Ye Xiao with words and never follow through, but he hadn't expected them to be this pathetic.
What he didn't realize was that it wasn't that his men were weak, but that the woman in charge was. Once that central figure was controlled and issued the order to withdraw, not even tens of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands, could do anything but meekly fall back.
Ye Xiao had counted on him being easily frightened yet clinging to life, and first cleared the unrelated people from the battlefield.
He hadn't expected that the only real killer waiting for him would be just one man, Zhou Yan.
After confirming there were no others nearby, Ye Xiao didn't rush to interrogate Li Qun. He looked at the ceiling, motioned for people to spread out, and then four wind blades shot out, swish, swish, swish, swish, carving four lines into the ceiling. A massive square slab of concrete fell, and a man tumbled down with it, landing squarely on a table piled with food.
As he fell an invisible wind-net tried to wrap him, but he suddenly erupted with a huge fireball that shattered the net and hurled him at Ye Xiao with astonishing speed, reaching him in an instant.
At that moment a ring of black substance enshrouded him, making him move as if wading through treacly syrup; his speed slowed, his skin began to sizzle and corrode, and a white layer of ice crept up from his feet, coating him so that each step his joints scraped and crackled.
Both Mei Baisheng and Fan Fang struck at once.
The lightning held by the lightning users crackled, ready to be unleashed at any moment.
The clairvoyant and the space ability user, along with Lin Tantan, Xu Li, and Li Qun, were all outside the combat ring, in a safe place.
So when Zhou Yan stepped up to Ye Xiao, reaching from the black domain with a corroded hand to grab Ye Xiao’s collar and fixing his single eye on him, Ye Xiao did not react immediately.
Instead, he stared straight into that eye.
Zhou Yan seemed oblivious to the pain; as if he had seized Ye Xiao’s weakness, he triumphantly kept asking, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”
Ye Xiao’s gaze flickered between blankness and focus. When vacant it was like sinking into a bottomless abyss, the depths of his eyes full of resistance and struggle; when it snapped back it was startlingly bright, razor-sharp.
He kept switching between those two states.
Lin Tantan watched in alarm. What was he doing?
“What's happening?” someone beside her whispered.
Lin Tantan realized that Ye Xiao was resisting the effect of Zhou Yan’s ability. She was almost speechless, was he milking Zhou Yan for one last advantage? Or still nursing a grudge from the last time?
No, Ye Xiao’s state was less about fighting Zhou Yan’s power and more about wrestling with the question itself.
She could clearly see a trace of suppressed pain in his eyes.
“Who are you?” Is there anything wrong with that question?
Normally, anyone asked that wouldn’t have trouble answering, right?
Before she could sort it out, Ye Xiao closed his eyes, then reached out and grabbed Zhou Yan’s hand. Everyone saw a glowing-red fire spike clutched in Zhou Yan’s palm. Ye Xiao tore his hand away and with a gentle shove sent Zhou Yan flying to the ground. Zhou Yan cried out and tried to rise, when a wind blade suddenly sliced through more than half his forehead.
His body went rigid and he fell to the floor, motionless.
Blood gushed out.
Lin Tantan moved to Ye Xiao’s side. He still had his eyes closed; only after a deep breath did he open them slowly. Bloodshot veins streaked his eyes, yet his gaze remained clear and his expression calm and resolute, as if nothing at all had happened.
To everyone else it looked as if he’d simply put more effort into resisting Zhou Yan’s power; Lin Tantan felt a pang of sorrow for him.
Had he just gone through some inner struggle?
She couldn’t help gripping his arm. Ye Xiao squeezed the back of her hand and told the others, “Be careful, don’t get close to him.”
He looked at Zhou Yan on the ground, this time he wanted to see exactly how Zhou Yan kept coming back to life.
After about three minutes, just when everyone was wondering why they were still waiting, Zhou Yan’s body suddenly twitched and he shot his eyes open. After a moment of dazed confusion he fixed his stare on Ye Xiao: “You! You killed me! You killed me again!”
With that he lunged at Ye Xiao once more, more unhinged than before.
The others gaped in shock. Ye Xiao merely waved his hand, and another wind blade sent Zhou Yan to his death, this time through the heart.
Three minutes later Zhou Yan woke again and then died once more; this time his throat was cut, and he convulsed on the ground for a long time.
As he convulsed, Ye Xiao hesitated and whispered to Lin Tantan, “If you’re afraid, don’t watch. I want to see what the limits of his ability are.”
Lin Tantan shook her head. “I’m not afraid.”
Another woman present, Fan Fang, had gone especially pale, and Li Qun was nearly slumping in his chair. What on earth was going on!
When Zhou Yan woke a third time, Ye Xiao slit his main artery and watched him die from blood loss.
This time there would be no more resurrection, he thought.
Yet Zhou Yan came back to life again. This time he looked like a desiccated corpse, unsteady on his feet and barely able to speak, as he staggered toward Ye Xiao. “Ye… Xiao…”
Lin Tantan couldn’t help but grip Ye Xiao’s hand tighter.
Ye Xiao covered her eyes with his hand, looked at Zhou Yan and sighed, “A fine ability, pity it ends here.” With that a wind blade flashed and Zhou Yan’s head fell.
As if realizing he was being forced to die, when his head hit the ground Zhou Yan’s face twisted into hysteria, his single eye wide with terror: “No, you can’t kill me! I can’t die! I’m a triability user, I’m immortal, I am the Chosen One! I, I will achieve imperial glory!” he screamed, a howl of bitter, unyielding rage.
Amid that agonized, pitiful wail, Lin Tantan gently pulled her hand away from Ye Xiao, and Zhou Yan suddenly turned his gaze to her: “You! It’s all because of you!”
Ye Xiao frowned, about to do something more to hasten his death, when Zhou Yan’s head finally gave its last breath and froze there, eyes open, refusing to accept it.
He could never come back to life again.
Li Qun trembled all over and his head lolled to the side, he had fainted from sheer fright.
The others wore varying expressions.
Ye Xiao’s face was flat; he told the space-user to fetch some gasoline. He poured it over the body himself and set it alight, burning even the pooled blood on the floor.
As if that were too slow, he had Mei Baisheng summon several fire-type ability users to burn the remains with their powers. The corpse was quickly reduced to ash while the building itself remained largely intact.
Lin Tantan watched the whole scene in cold silence.
Zhou Yan, the first president of the New Century, who had launched a century of Zhou-family glory, fell in the third month of the apocalypse.
She couldn’t name her feelings. She had imagined countless times that if she reached the apocalypse she would kill Zhou Yan first; she truly hated him. Yet now that he was really dead, she felt strangely empty.
He was the president, after all.
On the way back she asked Ye Xiao, “Was he really a Chosen One?”
Ye Xiao was deep in thought and paused at the question, then let out a wry laugh. “He just had an extra ability, and a peculiar one at that. ‘Chosen One’, that was just his own high opinion. Besides, if he truly were a Chosen One, then what does that make me, the one who killed a Chosen One? Why hasn’t heaven struck me with lightning?”
Lin Tantan hurriedly clapped a hand over his mouth and looked up at the sky. There was neither the thunderous roar of a storm nor any sign of a sudden deluge as if the whole world were mourning, Zhou Yan’s death seemed to have had no effect at all.
She finally let out a heavy sigh of relief and shot Ye Xiao a glare. "Don’t say things like that!"
Ye Xiao, his mouth still covered: "…"
Her soft palm pressed against his lips; he didn’t even dare breathe deeply.
Lin Tantan felt a little embarrassed and eased her hand away. Her palm was slightly damp; she wiped it on her clothes and whispered, "You shouldn’t say things like that." Maybe because she’d come from another life, she believed in certain things and was a bit superstitious.
When she imagined Zhou Yan glaring at her with hatred, she wasn’t afraid at all. In fact, she would rather be the one who killed Zhou Yan, let any consequences fall on her.
That thought eased her considerably. If Zhou Yan really was the Chosen One, what was Ye Xiao? A foot soldier clearing the way for the Chosen, only to step aside and die at the right moment?
There weren’t so many neat rights and wrongs in the world, nor so many inescapable fates. All she wanted was for the person she cared about to be okay.
Lin Tantan felt a sudden jolt in her chest: the person she cared about…
She had always known she liked Ye Xiao, but it had been the kind of liking reserved for an idol or a pillar of support. Now…
Under Ye Xiao’s gentle, deep gaze, she could no longer persuade herself otherwise.
She couldn’t convince herself that his care for her was just ordinary consideration.
Nor could she convince herself that she was guiltless in her feelings toward him.
The color drained from her face as she slowly lowered her head.
The warm, soft sensation of his hand seemed to linger and grow clearer, as if her whole hand were burning.
Ye Xiao watched her change in color with concern. "What’s wrong?"
Lin Tantan shook her head. "A little tired."
Ye Xiao habitually smoothed her hair. "Then go rest."
Lin Tantan turned her head aside. "Don’t always pat my head,"
"Hm?"
She looked up and smiled. "I’m not a child. You can’t keep patting my head just because I’m shorter than you."
Ye Xiao looked down at her and felt there was something new in her smile, it wasn’t as light as before.
She seemed a little sad, maybe even on the verge of tears.