Chapter Forty-Three: Blood Cocoon

The ghostly doll shrieked with wild abandon, its strands of inky black hair slithering like filth to dissolve everything they touched, weaving unsteadily as it crushed the wailing humans one after another.

Chen Tu clenched his teeth so hard he was on the verge of shattering them, for the path of the ghost doll was leading straight toward the Anxin Orphanage!

“Livida! Livida Kachester! Wake up!” he cried.

Leaping across the rubble, Chen Tu caught up to the ghost doll and shouted at the top of his lungs. Yet the doll’s stride never faltered, and Livida, sunken in its chest, gave no sign of response.

“Damn it!” Chen Tu let out a ragged breath, inhaled deeply, and looked up—every trace of hesitation vanished from his face.

“Livida, forgive me.”

Silvery threads unfurled in all directions. Chen Tu’s hands seemed to grasp a galaxy, a dense web of silver winding around the ghost doll’s body. He dropped his weight, planting his feet like anchors into the earth, and with sheer force, managed to halt the doll’s advance.

The ghost doll turned, its hollow eyes streaming blood, fixing their gaze upon the diminutive Chen Tu. Even Livida, embedded in its chest, stared at him with her sunken sockets.

Chen Tu yelled, “Livida, enough! Stop! Why are you running? Is it to continue the killing, to remain a puppet for others to control?”

Livida clutched her head, gripping her hair, now stained pitch black. “I… I…”

The ghost doll began dragging Chen Tu along, inch by inch. “Livida, didn’t you want to travel? Didn’t you want to see the world? Didn’t you want your freedom?”

Livida quieted, her hand resting on her belly. “I want… to let him see this world…”

A sudden chill washed over Chen Tu, as a wave of unprecedented malevolence surged through him.

A cold, sinister voice whispered in his ear, “Heh heh, I too want to see this world with my own eyes—”

“Demon Fetus!” Chen Tu’s fear and horror collided. The demon, residing within the psychic girl, had been awakened prematurely by the relentless torment.

No, not awakened—this was but a murmur from its sleep.

The demon’s only connection to this world was the unborn child inside Livida; it needed to be born, in a ritual-like descent, to truly arrive.

In other words, before its birth, it was at its weakest.

But even in its weakest state, it was an enemy of the most terrifying kind for those living in this world.

Livida’s body suddenly faded to translucence. Within her womb, a curled infant opened eyes that glowed blood-red.

“I am surprised, human. So there are martial artists here who wield Qi. There shouldn’t be any supernatural power in this world—did I make a mistake?”

Faced with the demon’s question, Chen Tu sneered. He drove his feet deeper into the ground, veins bulging across his body as he strained with all his might to restrain the ghost doll.

He glared fiercely. “Begone, demon!”

The demon fetus cackled, “I will not go. I will be born. I want to see this world!”

Chen Tu roared, “Wake up, Livida!”

Livida moaned in pain, “I want… to let it be born…”

Chen Tu froze. Amid the clash of his Qi and the demon’s power, a surge of profound loneliness welled up from Livida.

A little girl, who by chance possessed great power, had been feared, shunned, isolated—ultimately reduced to a test subject in a secret base, never to see the sun.

She was studied, her blood drawn, shocked with electricity, even dissected. To keep her powers in check, a fragment of her frontal lobe was removed, suppressing her intellect and emotion to their limits.

She numbly allowed herself to be manipulated, yet deep within, an aching loneliness lay dormant.

Loneliness, like bubbles rising from the ocean floor—one day, it breaks the surface, and before you can embrace it, it vanishes into nothingness.

Until one day, she realized she was no longer alone. A new life had come to be, growing day by day within her.

It took on form, even thoughts of its own.

It whispered, “Let’s go out, leave here, see what’s out there.”

So Livida ran away.

For the first time in her lonely life, she had found a hard-won comfort. She did not know how to swear an oath, yet she forged a resolution as steadfast as any vow.

Let it be born. Let it stay with me. Let me stay with it.

Let’s see the world.

Chen Tu roared, “Deceiver! I’ll see you dead!”

The demon fetus screamed with laughter, “Yes, rage—curse me! The more you do, the sooner I’ll be born!”

The doll’s long hair lashed toward Chen Tu. Locked in their deadlock, he found himself unable to dodge.

At that moment, a thunderous roar split the sky. A fighter jet wove perilously through the high-rises, launching two missiles at the ghost doll from afar.

The explosions tore two gaping holes in the doll, scattering fragments that faded into nothingness, only to reappear and reassemble on its body.

In a flash, the jet closed in overhead.

“Shatter it!”

With the demon fetus’s shriek, the ghost doll roared as well, unleashing a torrent of darkness that swallowed the jet. In the next instant, the jet exploded, and a shockwave wreathed in flames cleaved through the tide of darkness.

Like a meteor, a figure fell to earth, flames blooming like flowers to reveal a person at their heart.

At the fore stood a woman clad in a long black dress, her face entirely masked by a delicate, inverted-triangle visor that left only her pale chin exposed. Even the area around her eyes was covered; she was blind.

She supported herself on a heavy mace, its hilt and shaft joined by a free-spinning iron orb the size of a sea urchin, whirring and vibrating within its cage.

Chen Tu called out, “Who are you?”

The blind woman struck the ground with her mace. “Qi Qiuchan, chief of the twenty-eighth enforcement squad of the Tianjing Martial Arts Association.”

“Chief Enforcer?” Chen Tu sensed Qi within her, no less powerful than his own. “Your association truly breeds talent.”

Qi Qiuchan replied coolly, “Mr. Chen Tu, by regulations, you too must register with the association. But for now, we destroy this thing.”

“Destroy it?” Chen Tu hesitated. “No, Livida still has a chance…”

She raised her mace slightly, the iron orb humming with a sound like a dragon’s roar. “Evil must be rooted out, the weed slain to the root. Bloodhand Chen Tu, I am not here to assist you—I’m here to kill it.”

Without another word, Qi Qiuchan kicked the tip of her mace, instantly assuming a battle stance. The fifty-kilogram weapon seemed light as a clothesline in her grasp. In a flash, she was at the ghost doll’s feet, swinging her mace in a wide arc.

Her movements were seamless, the iron orb’s vibration carrying a strange rhythm that seemed to resonate with the moon above, drawing down an overwhelming strength. With one mighty blow, she shattered the ghost doll’s newly restored right leg.

The doll staggered, half-kneeling on the ground. In fury, it raised its intact left leg to crush the little insect before it—only to have the second leg smashed to pieces as well.

The fragments of both legs disintegrated in midair, the stumps slow to heal.

The massive recoil quivered through the mace, but the spinning orb absorbed it, transforming it into a clear, lingering dragon’s cry.

The demon fetus shrieked, “The Wandering Dragon Mace? Impossible! That’s not of this world—you are—”

Qi Qiuchan cut the demon off. “Die.”