The sky completely darkened.
“Boom!”
Thunder roared. Lightning flashed between the ominous clouds. For an instant, the unknown man’s blood red eyes and his irreverent smirk were illuminated.
The rain chilled him to his core. A cold feeling spread from Yi Ming’s hands up to his head.
“Did you kill him?”
Pain radiated from his already hoarse throat. It was in better shape than his heart, which felt ready to explode any moment now.
The irises as blue as a clear sky were trembling. “Did you kill Li?”
“If you’re talking about this,” The unknown man gestured casually to his feet. “then yes. I did that.”
The ability users crushed beneath the bronze ruins. The fissured road leading here. The irreverent attitude of someone who happened to crush a few weeds underfoot along the way.
Was it him? Did he destroy Tarnished Bronze, track Li down, and kill that fragile young man?
It was him.
This man who held a callous disregard for the lives of others.
“Why?!” The brunet teen’s baby fat-lined face contorted with pain and rage like a wounded cub. “Li had nothing to do with Tarnished Bronze! He wouldn’t have done anything to you!”
Crystal beads slipped down his cheek. Even he couldn’t tell if they were raindrops or tears. “He wasn’t strong at all. He was no threat to you! Why did you do this to him?!”
“Why did you kill him?!” He screamed until his voice cracked. The rainwater trickling down his throat burned like magma.
Yet Yi Ming was none the wiser.
His vision narrowed to solely the person in front of him and the corpse of the young man who should have teasingly called him ‘Little Corgi’ once more.
The fantasy of their life after escaping Tarnished Bronze lay beyond a cracked pane of glass. He watched as the Yi Ming on the other side protested, saying he still preferred huskies.
Then, they would rent a house in the Floating City and live together as a family.
Just him, Li and Tang.
Yi Ming watched the young man expressionlessly disregard all his complaints before ruffling his soft hair.
After that? The young man might literally bring home a willful little husky one day. He had always been like that. Saying unpleasant things while committing their words to memory.
The cracks began to spread.
He would pet the husky’s head while loudly declaring: ‘You’re the best, Big Brother!’
The young man’s response would be somewhat dazed. After a moment, he would belatedly comment how: ‘You really are a silly little corgi.’
Yi Ming heard the glass shatter.
Fragments rained down, marking a clear divide between even these versions of them, gradually disfiguring their appearances in unseemingly ways.
Until nothing remained.
What lay beyond that window pane was not the warm family he had fantasized about, but Li heading into an all-consuming darkness.
It was the bloodstained corpse laying on the scarred ground that would never wake again.
“Why?!” Yi Ming screamed.
Because he fled? Because he betrayed his convictions? Because he followed Buyan’s teachings?
Because he left him here all alone?
The red-eyed stranger just looked down at him in the face of this exclamation of grief and despair. He was untouched by a single drop of rain.
“What do you mean, why?” He lightly huffed.
He didn’t care at all, did he?
Metal coated Yi Ming’s arms at once. His already overloaded left arm shifted into a longsword, the sharp point stabbing towards the unknown man.
Even the raindrops that came into contact with the edge were split in two. Reflected in their distorted, elongated surfaces was the twisted expression of the brunet teen.
Yet that man just stood there. An arrogant, irreverent look in his crimson eyes.
He allowed the sword to approach his throat unimpeded.
Yi Ming’s expression contorted in pain moments later. His arm twitched, causing the blade to skim past the man’s neck.
The air stirred as the blade came to an abrupt halt. A barely visible trace of blood appeared on that pallid neck.
“Did you get angry?” The man was still smiling. The smile that rubbed Yi Ming in all the wrong ways remained on his partially masked face.
He raised a hand. Yi Ming quickly withdrew the blade before the man could touch it.
Yi Ming immediately swung the longsword around to hit the unknown man’s waist. Yet the attack was blocked by an identical longsword that manifested in the man’s hand. The blades sung in unison as they clashed.
“I gave you a chance, but you squandered it.” He said. Then Yi Ming’s blade, along with where it connected to his body, disappeared altogether.
There was no pain.
Yi Ming stared down at his limbless right shoulder, unable to come to terms with what happened right away.
Rain continued to fall on the earth. The scent of petrichor intensified.
The unknown man’s crimson eyes casually glanced over as the blade of his longsword pressed to the underside of Yi Ming’s chin.
Yi Ming was just a step away from death.
Yet the man stopped for some reason.
He said, “You can’t kill anyone in this state.”
Yi Ming pursed his lips as the blade alighted with his Adam’s apple. He couldn’t tell if he was trembling or not at this point.
He realized letting his anger get the better of him and then committing murder fueled by wrath was not right.
He couldn’t avenge Li’s death.
The realization cut deeper than a blade ever could.
“I’m nothing like you.” The brunet stated. The anger on his face had yet to dissipate as he insisted, “I won’t take anyone’s life.”
The tip of the blade against his throat suddenly trembled.
Yi Ming didn’t notice the minor fluctuation. He only saw the dark-haired man’s smile widen without warning in what seemed to be approval, “Yes, we are nothing alike.”
The powerful ability user was suddenly in the mood to monologue. He raised his tone at Yi Ming, “Yet in this world, only the strong are fit to dictate terms. The only way to reap benefits is to fight evil with evil.”
“Only by becoming strong can you triumph over me.” He said, raising his head slightly. His crimson pupils that were the colour of shed blood glimmered ominously.
“As you are, you can’t even survive after falling into my hands.”
He had not taken a single step in this encounter.
The downpour only intensified. A pale mist began to gather in the air around them.
The teen continued to raise his eyes defiantly in the face of death, glaring with fury at the man before him.
Was he going to die?
Yes.
The disparity in strength was insurmountable. He never stood a chance. His already weary body screamed in pain, yet the agony tearing through his heart was even more unbearable.
Buyan was right. He came back, so he was going to die now.
Yet his teachings were also wrong, and Yi Ming only hated himself for not realising it earlier. Why didn’t he stay by Li’s side from the start?
“That’s an interesting look in your eyes.” The man who was teasing him like a dog suddenly withdrew his blade.
The longsword vanished like it had never existed at all. This person’s ability was as inexplicable and ostentatious as he was.
“I won’t kill you today.” His callous treatment of Yi Ming, like he was nothing more than an amusing toy, only made Yi Ming more resentful. “I’m looking forward to seeing when you’ll break.”
He casually raised a hand.
Declaring lightly to the enraged Yi Ming.
“I am the Dark Principle.”
The rain continued to quietly fall. The man looked up slightly, his crimson eyes both looking at and straight through Yi Ming.
“I’ll be awaiting your arrival…low rank.” Emphasis on the last part.
The brunet teen immediately collapsed into a muddy puddle.
…
Yi Ming’s arm returned to its original appearance as his ability disengaged.
Li Li looked down, touching the wound on her neck with some discomfort.
Today really wasn’t her day.
“Should I leave him here? Or take him somewhere else?” She mulled over it before quickly making a decision.
She tossed Yi Ming back into the ruins of Tarnished Bronze HQ, somewhere sheltered from the air.
A wave of dizziness immediately hit her afterwards.
She felt like her entire body was wound up tighter than a violin string after facing Yue Lan’s chill and Dan’s attack she failed to dodge in time.
She had returned to her usual appearance already. Dark-haired, dark-eyed with a black trenchcoat to boot. The red mark by her eyes lent a touch of colour to her pallid complexion.
Li Li’s pitch black eyes calmly came to rest on the unconscious protagonist.
The white moonlight script? Check.
The overarching villain script? Double check.
She was very happy with the outcome of her arrangements.
She knew from the start that she and Yi Ming were fated to walk different paths. You could call her a meticulously selfish individual, you could say she never took the manhua world seriously.
Even if she needed to play the part of a falsified character for popularity in this world, she would only walk on a path she approved of.
The ability she was using isolated her from the pouring rain.
Casting the manhua’s protagonist aside, she headed towards her own destination.
She, Li Li, would become the sharpest of blades, the most unrestrained powerhouse.
She would leave the deepest of marks on this manhua and become the undisputed number one dark horse.
There was no doubt about it.
…
The rain eventually stopped after a unknown amount of time. The orange-reds of sunset pierced through the gloomy clouds.
Li Li turned from the deserted road she was heading down and narrowed her eyes in discomfort.
The light only grew stronger, refracting across the sky as an ephemeral rainbow.
Li Li swayed. She pressed a hand to her forehead as she tried to get her bearings.
“Are you alright?”
She heard an unfamiliar voice.
Li Li looked up to see a blond teen standing beside her, peering at her with obvious concern in his red eyes.
Blond-haired, red-eyed…obedient and somewhat enthusiastic…
This person was…
Yi Ming’s friend Yu Xiao, who the readers nicknamed Copout Sunfish?
Didn’t he vanish without a trace at the beginning of the Desolate Dragon arc? Why did he suddenly reappear here?
It was at that moment that the long-lost system chimed in.
To her, the last day seemed like an entire lifetime.
The world blurred before her eyes.
[Update target reached.]
[Establishing channel…]
Li Li swiftly grasped Yu Xiao’s arm in this interval. She closed her eyes and slumped to the ground like a litigious con artist.
“Don’t go…”
[Welcome back to reality.]
Into the city.
She wanted to bum some bandages off him without running into Yi Ming, thanks.
