A flicker of surprise crossed her eyes.
But she reacted quickly—the trajectory of her finger blade aimed at Chu You’s heart shifted slightly, changing from a stab to a slap.
At the same time, her neck bent backward with a flexibility that seemed almost breakable.
Bang!
The dark palm stamped onto the old wound on Chu You’s left shoulder.
The already severe wound burst open, and the sound of shattering bones was clearly audible!
With terrifying force carrying all-eroding energy, Chu You was sent flying like a cannonball!
Swish!
The tip of the blade grazed the skin of Ayane Hanyu’s raised neck, cutting off a few strands of flying black hair.
It left an extremely thin red line on her pale neck, from which a single drop of strange black blood seeped.
Ayane Hanyu steadied herself.
She raised a hand to touch the tiny wound on her neck and looked at the drop of black blood on her fingertip that was not human.
Her smile vanished completely for the first time, replaced by a cold, offended anger.
“Heh… Little wildcat, pretty sharp claws.”
Several dozen meters away, Chu You slammed heavily onto the hard scorched earth and rolled more than ten times before stopping.
The short blade flew from her hand and stuck obliquely in the distance.
She lay on her back, her left shoulder a mess of blood and flesh, with glimpses of white bone.
Dark red blood mixed with gray decaying erosion energy kept pouring out.
Her chest rose and fell violently, each breath carrying bloody foam.
Her face was ashen, her aura extremely weak; even moving a finger was incredibly difficult.
Her cold eyes were still open, staring at the dark red, despairing sky, but the light within them was rapidly dimming, like a flickering candle in the wind.
Click, click, click… The crisp sound of wooden clogs came from far to near, unhurried, especially clear in this dead silent space.
Ayane Hanyu slowly walked to Chu You’s side, stopped, and looked down at the girl who resembled a broken doll on the ground.
The anger on her face had dissipated, replaced by that sweet smile that chilled one to the bone.
“Miss Chu,” her voice was gentle, as if comforting a frightened child.
“Don’t look at me like that. In Mr. Jin’s theatrical play, you’re not complete yet… So don’t worry, I won’t kill you.”
She crouched down, extending a finger with bright red nail polish, as if to touch Chu You’s blood-stained cheek, but stopped before contact.
Instead, she looked with great interest at the faint light in Chu You’s eyes that had not completely extinguished even on the verge of death.
After saying that, she seemed to remember something interesting, and her smile brightened even more.
She straightened up and waved her hand lightly.
With her gesture, the space not far from Chu You’s side twisted and writhed violently like water ripples.
The image of scorched earth and dark red sky was forcibly pushed aside, and a mirror with irregular edges and a surface smooth as black crystal materialized out of thin air, standing there.
What the mirror reflected was not the reflection of Chu You or Ayane Hanyu, but a completely different scene.
It was a pure, boundless void, with no colors or sounds, only two figures.
One stood upright, wearing an immaculate black tailcoat and a pure white mask with no holes, his posture elegant and composed, as if just attending a high-society banquet.
It was Jin.
The other was lying prostrate on the ground, covered in blood, his combat suit in tatters.
He struggled to get up but fell back due to violent coughing, vomiting blood continuously.
It was Lin Mo.
“Look,” Ayane Hanyu turned sideways and pointed at the Abyssal Mirror, her tone as light as if sharing gossip with a close friend.
“Your little lover… seems to be in a bit of trouble too~”
The scene in the mirror was silent, but it clearly conveyed a suffocating despair.
Lin Mo’s condition was at its worst.
His face was deathly pale, his mouth and chest covered in blood.
His eyes were still sharp as blades, but deep within, a layer of profound fatigue and helplessness had inevitably settled.
His attacks, no matter how swift, cunning, or unexpected, would always miss due to various unbelievable “accidents”—his foot would suddenly slip, his wrist would cramp inexplicably, his vision would be disturbed by a speck of dust from nowhere, or Jin would just barely dodge by turning, lowering his head, or shifting his feet by a tiny margin that defied physics.
He was like fighting a ghost shrouded in an aura of misfortune that could predict all attack trajectories.
His stamina, spirit, and especially the energy driving his special ability—Oracle—were nearly exhausted in this completely unequal war of attrition.
Even more terrifying was that from beginning to end, he had never even touched Jin’s clothes!
Jin, on the other hand, was as leisurely as if taking a stroll.
He rarely attacked, most of the time simply standing still, waiting for Lin Mo to launch one futile attack after another.
Then, at the moment when Lin Mo’s attack missed, his force had spent, and his opening was largest, Jin would casually and lazily clench his fist and throw a punch.
That fist looked soft and weak, even a bit careless.
But whenever it made contact with Lin Mo’s body—bang! Lin Mo would be sent flying dozens of meters as if hit head-on by a high-speed train, crashing heavily onto the void ground.
Blood gushed out of his mouth like it cost nothing, and the sound of breaking bones was horrifying.
At this moment, within that boundless space, Jin and Lin Mo faced each other from a distance.
One stood, not a speck of dust on his clothes, his white gloves pristine.
The other lay prostrate, coughing blood, utterly disheveled, like a trapped beast ground into the mud.
Jin lowered his head slightly, raised a hand, and unhurriedly adjusted a nearly invisible wrinkle on the wrist of his right glove.
Then, the smooth eye holes of his mask slowly looked toward Lin Mo, who was struggling to prop himself up.
His flat voice seemed to penetrate the mirror, echoing directly in the Abyssal Corridor and into the ears of the dying Chu You: “Unless necessary, I detest violence and do not approve of killing.”
Jin’s voice had no emotional fluctuation, merely stating a fact.
“The operation of all things in this world should have been overseen by a precise machine, proceeding according to a perfectly seamless predetermined logic—endless, cyclical, without error or accident.”
He paused, as if organizing his words or recalling some distant, unpleasant scene.
“But now… that machine has fallen asleep, and that predetermined logic is gradually blurring and breaking down.”
“The operation of all things is no longer absolutely regular, but has produced a thread of… unpredictable, uncontrollable chaos.”
He raised his hand, pointing toward Lin Mo as if accusing something.
“It is this thread of chaos that brought about the arrival of Oracle, that led to people like you, like Gu Qiancheng, like Chu You, obtaining power that should not belong to mortals, gaining the possibility… to challenge logic.”
Jin lowered his hand, and a trace of barely perceptible… disgust entered his tone.
“Don’t you think all of this… is an error, Mr. Lin Mo? Errors should be corrected.”
He began to pace slowly toward the prostrate Lin Mo.
His steps were steady, carrying the oppressive weight of a judge.
“For this moment… this scene destined to occur, to screw you, this stray bolt, back into the correct position, or… simply discard you.”
Jin’s voice remained calm, but his words sent a bone-chilling cold through the watching Chu You.
“I prayed for favor from that elusive, unpredictable fate, from that not yet fully awakened logic…”
He stopped a few meters in front of Lin Mo and bent slightly.
“A full… one thousand seven hundred sixty-three times.”
This precise number, spoken in such a plain tone, contained a horrifying obsession and terror.
“Mr. Lin Mo, you are outstanding. So your death will cause anyone who knows and values you to feel regret.”
Jin’s tone actually revealed a hint of genuine regret.
“Even I, an enemy destined to carry out the correction procedure, feel the same.”
That trace of regret vanished in an instant, replaced by more absolute rationality.
“But this is fate. It is the most reasonable and inevitable conclusion reached after countless probability calculations and logical verifications.”
He extended a gloved finger and pointed it at Lin Mo’s brow from a distance.
“Your existence is fundamentally a fallacy outside logic. It is a burr that should not have appeared on that precise machine, the last brush that painted the wrong color on that perfect oil painting.”
“So, I am sorry.”
Jin’s voice at this moment was as cold as metal at absolute zero.
“You must accept your own death. This is the demand of logic, the verdict of fate, and also… the final line written for you in this play.”
As the words fell, Jin slowly raised his right hand, his fingers loosely curled as if grasping an invisible authority of correction.
The gaze behind his pure white mask locked onto Lin Mo, with no trace of human emotion, only a purely executive indifference.
In the Abyssal Corridor, Ayane Hanyu watched the final act about to unfold in the mirror, her smile nearly twisted with excitement.
She turned back to look at Chu You, who was on the ground breathing faintly but still staring fixedly at the mirror.
In an almost operatic tone, she said, “Now, let us quietly enjoy together… the final dance… of this person destined for tragedy!”
In the mirror, the loosely curled hand of Yan began to press down slowly.
An indescribable, terrifying force that seemed to strip away “possibility” and freeze “fate” began to converge and crush toward Lin Mo.
Lin Mo, as if having exhausted his last ounce of strength, could only lift his head with difficulty, staring at the approaching death.
The unyielding flame in his eyes, under the absolute difference in power and the strange suppression of probability, inevitably… dimmed bit by bit.
Chu You lay on the ground.
The excruciating pain in her left shoulder and the numbing sensation of her soul being eroded seemed to have faded away.
She could only watch helplessly as the figure that had always been as reliable as a mountain and as sharp as a blade walked toward his destined destruction.
Icy despair, like the deepest cold wave, drowned her remaining consciousness.
Lin Mo… A silent call was swallowed by the dead air of the abyss.
The two stages of despair, the duet of death, seemed about to fall silent together.