Chapter Sixty-Six: Prelude to the End Times

He wanted to hate, but did not know whom to hate.

He only wished to live as an ordinary man, to care for his mother and support his family, yet fate played a cruel joke on him, severing him completely from the path of humanity.

He had lost everything—what in this world was still worth lingering for? What was left for him to pursue?

Lin Jicang gazed at the mother walking past the street corner, holding her child's hand, and his eyes turned moist once more.

He could muster the strength to scald his body with hot oil in resistance to his own mutation, yet he could not shield himself from the loneliness and sorrow that welled up from the depths of his heart.

That dream returned to him again—the faces pale as death, three hundred million identical versions of himself. Lin Jicang vaguely sensed the meaning behind the dream; perhaps it was the very reason he appeared in this world.

He stood and clenched his fists.

I must live—for myself!

Just then, Lin Jicang’s ears twitched as he heard a steady tapping, and from afar the shrill blast of a horn.

He turned his head—at the street corner, a blind woman was about to cross, her cane tapping the ground. A taxi rounding the corner had not noticed her in time.

Before thought could catch up, Lin Jicang’s body surged forward. In an instant, his right eye was flooded with purple, muscles bulging across his body, his legs tensed like a frog’s, preparing to rush the blind woman out of harm’s way.

Yet just as he leapt, the seemingly frail blind woman stopped abruptly, avoiding the taxi’s path by a hair's breadth.

Her ears twitched again, and she shifted sideways by an inch, miraculously evading Lin Jicang’s charge as well.

Lin Jicang, mid-air, was stunned, and crashed comically into the wall at the roadside.

Shaken and battered, he was about to rise when the blind woman stepped before him, towering above as she looked down.

Awkwardly, he said, “Miss, are you all right?”

The blind woman’s voice was cold and stern: “Take me to find Adonsa.”

Lin Jicang instinctively realized the monster she named was the one he knew. Brushing the dust from his clothes, he stood, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

She nodded, and as Lin Jicang was about to leave, she said, “Then I’ll force you to speak.”

She struck his chest with her palm, and a mighty force surged through his body, sending him flying through the wall behind, collapsing a row of containers, and landing in a gold shop.

The shop, closed due to recent unrest, erupted in alarm as someone crashed inside.

“What are you doing!” Even Lin Jicang, known for his good temper, was shocked and furious. He grabbed at shards of glass, only to find gold necklaces and rings, which he hurriedly tossed aside.

The blind woman stepped through the hole into the shop, her cane lightly tapping: “My name is Qi Qiuchan. I’m here to find Adonsa.”

Lin Jicang cursed, “You crazy woman! If you have the guts, go find it yourself! Its shadow is everywhere in the streets!”

Qi Qiuchan said, “No, you’re different. I can see you’re not like the other monsters. If I kill you, Adonsa should truly appear.”

An excuse.

A sudden thought rose in Lin Jicang’s mind: Qi Qiuchan had come here deliberately to provoke him!

She truly intended to kill Lin Jicang to enrage Adonsa!

Just as he managed to stand, Qi Qiuchan stepped in with a powerful punch, knocking him through another wall and into another storefront.

Lin Jicang struggled desperately, frantically strengthening his muscles, but still could not match the peak prowess of a pulse wielder.

Finally realizing that oversized muscles only made him a bigger target, Lin Jicang instinctively switched to a more refined enhancement.

After being hurled countless times, Lin Jicang’s strength finally surpassed Qi Qiuchan’s.

His massive frame, over two meters tall, stood firm, catching her deceptively gentle yet forceful punch. The compressed proteins in his body were now transformed into high-density muscle fibers.

Lin Jicang grabbed Qi Qiuchan’s cane, crushed it into a ball, and threw it aside, growling, “Have you caused enough trouble? I told you, I don’t know!”

Qi Qiuchan stretched out her delicate hand, suddenly tensing with dark veins like iron pincers, twisting Lin Jicang’s thick arms with unimaginable force and skill, dispersing all his resistance, then flinging him to the ground as if tossing noodles.

She lifted him, flung him, lifted him, flung him—again and again, a round of merciless torment.

With each toss, the blind girl mapped out all of Lin Jicang’s power, scattering it with a tremor, using a series of soft throws to seize control of the fight.

Lin Jicang, having lost the initiative, was toyed with, battered from side to side, utterly disarrayed, his mind a blur.

Each time he tried to act, he was slammed to the floor, his accumulated strength draining away like water from a broken vessel. If not for his enhanced body, he would have died with every bone dislocated.

Suddenly, Qi Qiuchan’s hand slipped, and Lin Jicang was flung free.

Qi Qiuchan glanced at her palm, noticing a slick film of liquid—she immediately realized it was secreted by Lin Jicang in an attempt to escape.

Lin Jicang struggled to rise amid the wreckage, his bones displaced and even broken, now pulled back into place by injured muscles, the sharp crackling made teeth ache—the sound of bones resetting.

The agony sent shudders through him, yet his suppressed anger opened the gates of evolution.

During his ordeal, he at last began to consciously direct his own transformation—muscles contracting further, fibers compressed into bundles, trembling like taut rubber bands, immense power ready to burst forth.

Qi Qiuchan watched Lin Jicang’s metamorphosis, and slowly approached. Silently, she discarded her sunglasses and donned a delicate, inverted triangular mask.

With her right hand, she reached behind her, pulling forth a meter-long mace as if from thin air. The iron bead at its handle pulsed with a haunting dragon’s song.

The tip dragged across the ground, slicing through concrete, pulverizing everything it touched.

No longer caring for restraint, Lin Jicang, furious, leapt with legs bent like a frog, stamping a radial web of cracks into the earth, and in an instant, he was before Qi Qiuchan.

The mace snapped up, lashing out like a fierce fighting dragon toward Lin Jicang. In that instant, both chose the most daring moves.

Would the dragon mace shatter Lin Jicang’s nervous system, or would his vitality endure the blow and tear Qi Qiuchan to pieces?

At the final moment, Lin Jicang hesitated—he had no wish to kill over such a trivial matter, but the situation had reached a point of no return.

Suddenly, time stopped.

The air, struck by their swift movements, rippled in waves. A tall figure blocked the light, inserting himself between the two locked in mortal combat, his broad arms separating them.

His right hand, gentle as a cow’s tongue nibbling grass, deftly dodged the dragon mace’s strongest force. His five fingers vibrated in harmony, neutralizing its power bit by bit within a hair’s breadth.

As for Lin Jicang, he was pressed down by a large hand on his chest, his body flipping and crashing to the ground.

Weng Dongqi shouted sternly, “Qi Qiuchan, have you forgotten your mission?”

The newcomer was Weng Dongqi.