It was eleven at night on Christmas Eve, December 24th, in the year 2375, North American Standard Time, on Manhattan Island, the largest financial district in the Northern Hemisphere. (Read the full text novel at Shiliu Literature Net)
The pitch-black storm clouds seemed to weigh down upon the tops of the skyscrapers, and a chilling, howling wind clawed its way to the ground through gaps in the clouds. Snowflakes the size of a child’s palm struck the curtain walls of the buildings with a sharp pat-pat sound.
On Christmas Eve, nearly half of New York had flocked to Jiusan Square downtown to celebrate the coming of the New Year, leaving Manhattan Island virtually deserted. All the buildings were shrouded in thick, clinging shadows. A mournful, cutting wind threaded its way between the towers, and the black clouds appeared to press ever lower.
The Gu Tower was the tallest structure in Manhattan, perhaps even all of North America. Reaching a height of nine hundred and ninety-nine meters, the Gu Tower stood like a razor-sharp saber planted on the waterfront edge of Manhattan Island. Occasionally, searchlights from distant ships sweeping across the ocean would catch the facade of the Gu Tower, dimly revealing a colossal ink-dragon, a hundred meters high, treading upon the clouds. The menacing dragon’s front claws held a blood-red Dragon Pearl and a longsword, respectively. When the light hit the demon dragon’s head, the two eyes, inlaid with minute sapphires, glittered, and a suffocating, malevolent aura faintly coiled around the massive serpentine body.
The Gu Tower was the headquarters of the Gu Corporation.
The Gu Corporation: a colossal entity that controlled the largest share of the Earth Federation’s arms market.
Suddenly, as the fierce wind whipped the dark clouds into a frenzy, the sky seemed to momentarily halt. A massive bolt of purple lightning, accompanied by a deafening CRACK-RUMBLE, ripped the inky heavens apart. Like an enraged dragon, the pillar of lightning tore through the clouds and shot straight toward the ground, narrowly grazing the apex of the Gu Tower before slamming into the dark ocean surface.
Amidst the thunder, a burst of fire erupted from a point over four hundred meters up the Gu Tower. A massive hole, more than thirty meters in diameter, was blown into the building’s structure, and a dark silhouette leaped out amidst the flames. Dozens of shadowy figures shouted something indistinct from the edge of the gaping rupture, showering the silhouette leaping from the tower with a hail of various light and heavy weaponry.
The cold wind, swirling with snow, obscured the figure that flew out of the building, and the gunmen above quickly lost their target.
Gu Xiechen spread his arms, gliding through the night sky. He glanced back at the gunmen currently firing at him, a fleeting, almost imperceptible wicked smile touching his handsome features.
The descent from over four hundred meters was instantaneous. Gu Xiechen landed heavily on the ground with both feet. The concrete pavement cracked into a spiderweb pattern beneath him. Gu Xiechen executed a light forward roll, absorbing the momentum of the fall. Swish-swish-swish—a dozen heavy greatswords slammed into the ground right beside his rolling body. Wisps of sword energy whistled past, tearing gashes in the concrete. A dozen nearby cars were cleaved cleanly in half by the sharp energy, exploding as metal fragments sprayed everywhere, plunging the area into chaos.
The Zhenqi within him erupted like a bomb. Gu Xiechen’s long hair flowed behind his head as he slashed forward fiercely with both claws, his ten fingers enveloped in a faint, almost invisible layer of white Gang Jin (Force Energy). Two hulking men clad in medieval heavy knight armor rushed out of the darkness, swinging massive, three-meter-long flails overhead. Their heavy, labored breathing filled the air as they lunged for Gu Xiechen. The human-head-sized steel balls on the flails spun rapidly, their piercing whine threatening to drive one mad.
Gu Xiechen’s claws struck the falling steel balls head-on. His seemingly delicate, pale hands brutally sank into the heavy spheres. Gu Xiechen took a deep breath, a flash of blue light erupting from his eyes. Violent Gang Qi spewed forth from his claws. The flails, forged from special alloy steel, disintegrated inch by inch. Gu Xiechen grinned wickedly as he swept past the two large men, his sharp claws, having just shattered the flails, savagely raked across their lower abdomens.
Two geysers of blood sprayed over fifteen meters away. Gu Xiechen’s claws had shredded the armor on the two men, ripping out their internal organs and grinding them to pulp with the violent force of his strike. Large chunks of flesh and blood danced and cooled in the dark night wind.
“He’s here! Kill him!”
Shrieks echoed from all directions. Over twenty burly men, clad in knightly armor and wielding massive two-handed executioner swords, burst forth from the shadows, panting heavily. The heavy sound of blades cleaving the air tore through the night wind, smashing everything in their path into dust. Streetlights, tree trunks, public benches—all were pulverized. The swords were laced with crisscrossing Gang Qi, sending countless fragments soaring high into the sky amid the thunderous roar of the crushing force.
“Come on!”
With a sharp cry, Gu Xiechen straightened abruptly, raising both hands high above his head. His pale claws shimmered with an almost imperceptible white light in the darkness. A thin trickle of blood slid slowly from his fingertips as an ominous, sinister energy soared toward the sky. Over twenty executioner swords, each weighing two hundred kilograms, formed an impenetrable net closing in overhead. Gu Xiechen began to spin rapidly, and his pale claw prints, imbued with a chilling cold, aggressively met the heavy blades. He fearlessly smashed his bare hands against the cumbersome swords.
Swords shattered. Armor pulverized. The bodies of over twenty men were ripped to shreds. Claws of energy shot out several feet, the sharp impact grinding everything around into dust.
Blood splashed onto Gu Xiechen’s handsome face. He was drenched in the hot, fresh blood. Gu Xiechen let out a few chuckling sounds, then suddenly shrieked towards the heavens: “Gu Juechen! Killing me won’t be so easy! I, Gu Xiechen, will return! You just wait! Wait for me!”
Hundreds of figures poured out of the Gu Tower, armed with various firearms. The dull roar of gunfire shattered the black night wind, and the spray of bullets, carrying intense heat, melted countless snowflakes into warm slush.
Gu Xiechen swept his hands in the air in a circular arc resembling a Taiji symbol, finally grasping them together in front of his lower abdomen, forming a sphere about the size of a human head.
Nearly ten thousand incoming projectiles froze three feet in front of Gu Xiechen. Gu Xiechen offered a thin, tight smile to the terrified gunmen, then thrust both hands forward fiercely.
The nearly ten thousand bullets shot back at a speed three times faster than they arrived. Hundreds of gunmen convulsed wildly in the rain of lead; their bodies were pierced, and blood painted the plaza before the Gu Tower.
Gu Xiechen looked up, as if perceiving certain figures standing on the highest floor of the Gu Tower.
Another lightning bolt struck down from the sky, and a terrifying surge of force pressed down from above.
Gu Xiechen turned and walked away without a sound. Dozens of fireballs, each about a meter in diameter, roared down from the height. The crimson spheres exploded with resounding impact, engulfing everything within several hundred meters in raging flames. Gu Xiechen’s slender frame was swallowed by the firelight, but he burst through the blaze in an instant, still trailing smoke and sparks, vanishing into the pitch-black night.
The Zhenqi condensed like mercury flowed joyfully through his meridians. Gu Xiechen poured all his strength into his desperate flight. The ocean surface was a hundred meters ahead—his only hope for escape.
The fireballs from moments ago had severely wounded Gu Xiechen. Three of them had exploded less than three meters from him. Each fireball possessed the destructive power of a heavy aerial bomb. Had it not been for his profound cultivation and the constant operation of his protective Gang Qi, he would have been atomized in the explosions. Even though he recognized the danger and fled in time, his outer skin was scorched, and several of his meridians had been ruptured. As the Zhenqi circulated within him, his body convulsed in agony, as if a dozen small knives were stabbing and hacking randomly inside him.
The lights inside the Gu Tower suddenly switched on simultaneously, and dozens of high-powered searchlights illuminated the scene from the roof.
A dozen figures leaped down from the very top floor of the Gu Tower. Among them, a handsome young man holding a crimson wooden staff aimed his right palm remotely at the fleeing Gu Xiechen while still mid-air. A fiery red ring materialized in the center of his palm; a faint red glow flickered within the ring. Nearly a hundred crimson fireballs, each about a meter in diameter, materialized out of thin air beside the young man. With a gentle wave of his staff, these fireballs immediately shot toward Gu Xiechen with a heavy sound of tearing air.
The fireballs approached so rapidly that Gu Xiechen didn't even have time to dodge. The chain reaction of explosions enveloped the ground around him for several hundred meters.
Everything nearby was pulverized, leaving deep, conical craters three meters deep in the flat ground.
Gu Xiechen felt an intense heat wash over his body. He roared madly toward the heavens. The beating rate of his heart surged from normal speed to over two hundred beats per minute. A shockwave of energy, astonishingly powerful, erupted from his heart. White Gang Qi spewed from every pore of his body, instantly shattering the blast wave of the explosions as it approached. Gu Xiechen’s long hair stood rigidly upright, and fine trickles of blood shot out from his pores. With a series of sharp snapping sounds, the oily, slick hair on his head exploded outward. Gu Xiechen, whose physique had thickened by a measure, turned and struck backward at his broken hair.
Claws like a taut bow, hair like a forceful arrow.
Each slender strand of black hair tore through the air with muffled bang-bang sounds. Each hair, injected with violent energy, seemed ten times thicker than usual. One hundred thousand strands of black hair covered an area spanning a hundred meters, whistling with a sharp, soul-snatching shriek. In an instant, the hundred thousand hairs reached the young man holding the wooden staff.
Several thousand extremely fine black hairs pierced through the young man’s body. With a dull thud, the handsome youth exploded into a cloud of bloody mist mid-air.
The dozen figures pursuing him behind cried out in unison. They abandoned the pursuit of Gu Xiechen, all instinctively scattering and fleeing.
The black hairs shot forward for several hundred meters, pulverizing all the vegetation, streetlights, and benches along the path.
A continuous series of a dozen purple lightning bolts struck the dark surface of the sea. Gu Xiechen had already leaped high into the air, lunging toward the ocean ahead. At this moment, Gu Xiechen’s appearance was utterly ferocious. His entire body was covered in web-like cracks, and pillars of blood spurted from his seven orifices. However, his hands, capable of breaking metal and stone, were charred black—it was clear he had not escaped injury from the preceding explosions.
On the roof of the Gu Tower, a gaunt figure standing in the shadows watched the body of Gu Xiechen, who was leaping toward the sea, from a distance.
He reached out with an empty grasp toward Gu Xiechen. Accompanied by a blurred incantation, a thread-thin beam of green electric light shot down from the storm clouds, striking Gu Xiechen precisely. A cluster of dark green fire wrapped around Gu Xiechen, and his formerly soaring posture plummeted abruptly, like a bird struck mid-flight.
“Gu Juechen… No, Patriarch Gu, Gu Xiechen is certainly dead. No one will be qualified to compete for the Gu family’s authority with you anymore.”
The withered figure let out a dry, cackling laugh that sounded as unpleasant as an owl’s cry.
A tall, dark figure standing in the shadows slowly nodded. The rooftop beneath his feet rippled like flowing water, and he melted silently into the disturbance.
“Farewell, my younger brother! To die under the Soul-Executing Yin Lightning of the Elder of the Three Witch Sects—you should have no regrets in death!”
Heaven seemed to have gone mad; one lightning bolt after another hammered down toward the sea.
Fifty kilometers out to sea from Manhattan Island, a scorched, pitch-black arm suddenly pierced the ocean surface.
The completely blackened Gu Xiechen slowly surfaced. Wisps of black smoke drifted up from his body, and a nauseating smell of roasted meat slowly wafted outward.
Gu Xiechen’s stalled heartbeat gradually recovered, and soon, the rate accelerated, faster and faster.
The heartbeat soared to three hundred beats per minute. Streams of pure, vast energy continuously surged from Gu Xiechen’s heart. Gu Xiechen’s life force had been extinguished by that green yin lightning, but nourished by this energy, the extinguished flame of his life reignited with fierce intensity.
His tightly shut eyes slowly opened, emitting two fathoms of eerie blue light that shot out several feet.
Gu Xiechen let out a sinister, hissing chuckle.
“Gu Juechen, just you wait and see!”
The scorched black skin covering his body suddenly burst open, revealing a layer of newly formed pale skin beneath. Gu Xiechen shot skyward like a monstrous demon.