The red light violently strangled everything.
The connection between Zan En and the mechanical spine worm was completely severed.
The blue light in his eyes vanished, and his forehead bulged with veins from the forced disconnection, beads of cold sweat oozing out.
After a long while, the empty room finally echoed with sounds again.
Zan En slowly stood up, the luxurious fabric on his body cascading down with his movement, the rustling sound like a venomous snake slowly slithering by.
He hissed coldly: “Butcher, one day I will completely destroy you.”
At that moment, the sound of a noisy crowd came from outside, and it sounded like quite a few people.
A brown-haired man blocked the front, looking flustered: “Everyone, Young Master Zan En isn’t feeling well and is still resting.”
None of the people standing before him were anyone he could provoke.
“This matter is extremely important.”
“What kind of time is this to still be resting?”
“This is serious. Let us in to see him!”
The usually reclusive members of the MF Group’s Board of Directors had all come today.
Their overbearing stance was as if they already held an imperial edict in their hands, confident of victory.
Seeing that the brown-haired man was about to be overwhelmed, the tightly shut office door suddenly swung open!
The dazzling floodlights blinded everyone’s faces, forcing the board members to close their eyes and shield them with their hands.
“I didn’t expect all of you to care so much about my health, coming here together to visit me.
” Zan En’s cold voice rang out, his aristocratic tone dripping with unmasked sarcasm.
The hallway was so silent you could hear a pin drop.
The once domineering board members all forced polite smiles onto their faces.
Zan En no longer bore the feral cunning from before; now he was precise to the point of perfection.
In the end, the board members still could not step into Zan En’s office.
Everyone swarmed into the conference room and convened an emergency board meeting.
There is no wall in the world without cracks, and news that Jiang Huaying—MF Group’s other heir—was still alive had inevitably reached these old men.
Like a pack of hyenas smelling blood, they began calculating their own schemes.
Since Zan En took over managing the MF Group while Old Mr. Monteford was recuperating, the board members had been continuously suppressed, their power gradually stripped away and financial channels cut off almost completely.
If Zan En truly became the head of the group, where would they have any room to survive?
Fortunately, fate had not abandoned them.
They found the Monteford Young Lady!
“God bless the Monteford family. The Monteford Young Lady is not dead; she’s alive and well!”
“If Old Mr. Monteford knew this, he would surely be very happy.”
“Since the Young Lady’s identity is confirmed, we can’t let her continue wandering outside.”
“We must bring her back as soon as possible!”
One sentence followed another as they united to pressure Zan En.
Zan En knew exactly what these old foxes were scheming—they just wanted his good little sister to come back and replace him, becoming their obedient puppet emperor.
Where in the world could there be a perfect solution for all?
Once she returned, those undead old men could finally enjoy their twilight years.
“My sister, of course, must be brought back.” Zan En’s straightforwardness caught everyone off guard.
No one in the room spoke, waiting for his “but.”
But Zan En didn’t give one. His serpent-like green eyes scanned each board member’s face, and he raised a smile that could only be described as delighted.
“If there’s nothing else, this meeting is adjourned.”
The crowd exchanged bewildered glances before gradually leaving the conference room.
Some stayed behind, eager to show their loyalty.
Naturally, some on the board were Zan En’s men, aligned with him and tied to his interests.
These people wouldn’t be foolish enough to stay behind on their own and be exposed.
A middle-aged man, a fence-sitting opportunist wanting to switch sides, eagerly approached Zan En with a sly smile: “Young Master Zan En, those old undead creatures are ungrateful enough, yet they dare oppose you! Don’t worry, I recently acquired something very useful.”
Zan En paused in his steps, as if intrigued, finally granting him a glance: “Oh? Do tell.”
The middle-aged man beamed with joy and hurriedly explained.
“… I can guarantee it will make that wild girl die without a trace outside. Then no one will ever threaten your position again.”
After listening, Zan En’s expression flickered subtly.
The man didn’t know if he had been accepted or rejected, and his once excited heart began to falter.
Just as he thought he’d said the wrong thing, Zan En raised his hand and lightly patted his shoulder.
Footsteps sounded again, and Zan En’s voice floated back softly: “What happened today stays between us. Don’t let anyone else know.”
“Ok… okay! I promise to keep it secret, Young Master Zan En!” The man’s face flushed with excitement.
Neither Zan En nor the brown-haired man behind him noticed the latter’s faint look of pity.
Two hours later, a sudden car accident was broadcast on the Fast News channel.
The deceased was a member of the MF Group’s Board of Directors.
The lion cat quieted down completely in the Butcher’s hands.
Jiang Huaying jumped off the sofa and hurried over, fluffing her hands toward the Butcher, wanting to take the cat—but was avoided.
“Dangerous.” The Butcher raised a hand, instantly lifting the cat out of Jiang Huaying’s reach.
Jiang Huaying glanced, not in the slightest panic, but somehow adorable: “… Where’s the danger?”
The cat had already fainted, now a white, unconscious bundle.
The Butcher said nothing, lifting the hand higher.
Feeling provoked, Jiang Huaying angrily kicked his calf: “Just because you’re tall doesn’t mean you’re impressive!”
【 Black Mist Density -1 】
The Butcher relaxed his towering figure and used his cold, pale, alien head to gently nuzzle her hair and cheek like a spoiled big dog: “I’ll be back soon, don’t move.”
Jiang Huaying: “Woof.”
After the lion cat’s commotion, the room became messy again.
Seeing the chaos, the inexperienced Monteford Young Lady awkwardly clasped her hands behind her back, deciding not to touch anything.
“Creak—”
Unfortunately, the Butcher’s room door couldn’t hold any longer, groaning its final lament as it slammed heavily onto the floor.
A cloud of dust swirled, spinning under the sunlight.
The scene inside was suddenly exposed to Jiang Huaying’s eyes.
More a workshop than a bedroom.
No bed in sight, only a huge workbench neatly lined with various mechanical parts, weapons, and knives.
But none of those were the most eye-catching.
Jiang Huaying avoided the broken door halves and walked further inside.
On the cold, hard workbench, right in the center, lay many soft fabrics.
Light-colored cotton fabrics piled together like loose clouds, completely at odds with the surrounding cold machinery.
Yet the room’s owner had placed them with utmost reverence in the middle.
A bold thought popped into Jiang Huaying’s mind. Instinctively, she felt it couldn’t be true, but reality was right before her.
The closer to the workbench she moved, the more a certain voice repeated incessantly.
Until she picked up the half-finished garment on the table, identical to the one she was currently wearing in size and stitching.
Jiang Huaying dropped it as if shocked, the lingering touch sending a tingling sensation through her fingers.
She unconsciously rubbed her reddened fingertips, her gaze darting across the table.
The Butcher’s hands were not conventionally beautiful—long and coarse finger bones, calloused palms, blue veins snaking across the backs of his hands, the lion cat’s pulse thrumming there.
Those hands could easily tear flesh, crush mechanical monsters’ necks, and wield massive axes with ease.
Yet these very hands patiently and delicately crafted his owner’s intimate clothing at the workbench.
Jiang Huaying felt an inexplicable heat radiate from her whole body.
The soft fabric pressed against her skin suddenly felt rough and scorching, as if a pair of dry, rough hands were tracing her curves with coarse palm lines measuring every inch of her waist.
From day one, every piece of her clothing, inside and out, had been handmade by him.
And after the blizzard came, the temperature plummeted—she had thought the Butcher hadn’t found enough supplies, but now…
Her tender skin beneath the clothes flushed crimson from the surging heat. Panicked, Jiang Huaying retreated, fleeing toward the exit.
Another string of “klang” sounds rang out.
She accidentally bumped into a cabinet, causing everything inside to fall out.
Confused, Jiang Huaying crouched to pick up the items—old relics left behind before the Adam Zone was sealed.
Humans hadn’t treasured them, but these small creatures had collected and preserved them in the mutation zone.
An old handwritten diary caught her attention.
The paper had yellowed, edges stained with dark, dried blood.
She didn’t know what the owner had gone through.
Jiang Huaying slowly flipped it open and was quickly drawn to the writing.
The diary’s author was a mercenary, part of a formidable Mercenary Squad.
The entries were few—just over twenty in seven years—but fascinating, recounting what the squad had seen and heard during missions.
The squad had eight members, including a supreme, invincible, universe-best, incredibly powerful leader.
The latter was the diarist’s exact words.
It was obvious the author revered this leader greatly.
Jiang Huaying flipped to the next page; the tone noticeably darkened.
[We received an impossible mission—to infiltrate the infected Adam Zone and rescue a certain Dr. Kos. The Adam Zone is… hell on earth now…]
[The people up top say it nicely, but they’re basically sending us to die!]
[The leader rallied us: as long as we come back alive, no brother has to live knife-edge lives anymore! We can move to the Upper City for a better life. Fifth brother can send his sister to school; Third brother can buy toys for his kids and a big house for his wife. I can finally bring my mom to live with me.]
[And the leader, finally, can rest without more wounds.]
[We will all come back alive!]
The diarist regained energy and hope for the future.
Jiang Huaying’s mood lifted, picturing the Mercenary Squad’s efforts.
She kept turning pages.
This time, a long gap followed since the last entry.
[All of us… abandoned the leader to save ourselves.]
At the first sentence, Jiang Huaying’s smile froze.
Black ink dragged a long, deep scratch across the last word, almost tearing the paper.
[I am a coward! We all are cowards!]
[The leader chose to cover our retreat to protect us, but at the last moment, we abandoned him.]
[We… do… not… deserve… this! The one who deserves to die is me… unworthy of everything I have now!!]
The rest of the diary was scrawled and illegible.
Jiang Huaying had already learned from Chanyue what had happened in the Adam Zone.
That leader had almost no chance of survival.
Confirming her suspicions, the diary had long blank stretches.
More than half a year later, the diarist wrote again.
[I think I saw the leader…]
[I must be hallucinating…]
[They told me I wasn’t mistaken. It’s really the leader!!! The leader is the only survivor of the “1707 Cleanup Plan”! He’s alive!]
[No… That’s not the leader, not the leader! That madman, that pathological anti-human—he turned the leader into a monster!]
Several pages after were violently torn out.
Only chaotic doodles and indecipherable symbols remained.
Flipping through many pages, the same pattern emerged.
The diarist seemed trapped in some maddening, painful obsession.
Beyond that, nothing remained to read. Yet Jiang Huaying didn’t stop.
Somehow, an unseen force guided her, page after page, until the very last.
The diarist repeatedly wrote not symbols but a string of numbers.
Numbers Jiang Huaying knew all too well.
When the unscrupulous NPC merchant sold the Butcher to her, he gave her a tin box containing the Butcher’s personal belongings, telling her she could do as she pleased.
In that box was a dog tag engraved with a serial number.
Because the number was easy to remember—the last four digits, 3968, matched the last four of her phone number—she had memorized it.
Jiang Huaying slowly closed the diary, feeling a dry throat and prickling eyes.
Butcher, Yi Cai, 3968—the true name once hers but utterly forgotten.
The squad she trusted had left her alone in the hellish Adam Zone.
Barely surviving, she became the crazy scientist’s test subject, deemed a failure for not meeting requirements.
Finally, bought back home as a pet, only to be discarded again.
Three times, the god had been the one abandoned.
Jiang Huaying’s breath tightened; her chest felt as if filled with salty, biting seawater, suffocating and stabbing ribs with cold pain.
Just as she shoved the diary deep back into the cabinet, footsteps sounded outside.
The Butcher was back.