Quickly! Layla, prepare the high-pressure sealing chamber and every alchemy repair material you can mobilize!"
Corvus staggered through the heavy, mottled iron door ofNo. 6 Crowmist Street. Behind him, the secret tunnel exit closed silently in the shadows, sealing off the outside world.
Long Qianqian supported his collapsing body with all her strength. Though her face was deathly pale, the icy blue brilliance from the forced activation of their contract still flickered in her eyes.
A few survivors—failed experiments who had narrowly escaped the "Abyss of the Abandoned"—cowered in the corner of the foyer, staring in horror at the underground detective agency crammed with ancient tomes, potion vials, and precision gears.
When Layla rushed out of the basement, she was still clutching a heavy wrench covered in grease.
She had intended to berate Corvus for breaking another expensive magitech device, but the moment she saw his mangled left shoulder spattering electric sparks, the reprimand choked in her throat, dissolving into a trembling, sharp intake of breath.
"Damn it... an injury caused by a high-tier monster again!" Layla’s expression darkened to the core. Wasting no time on pointless chatter, she forced Corvus down onto the metal frame beside the workbench. "Qianqian, press down hard on his shoulder neural plexus! Don't let his internal magic wildly erupt from the excruciating pain!"
The deafening screech of interlocking gears echoed through the agency, and the air grew thick with the bitter stench of high-potency anti-rejection medicine.
Layla’s movements were as fast as lightning and precise as a battle-hardened surgeon. She expertly injected several vials of concentrated alchemical fluid into Corvus’s torn shoulder, while using a spare metal frame grabbed on the fly to quickly build an emergency support structure for him.
"This is to keep the demonic ember from completely eroding your central nervous system... It's going to hurt like hell, so bite down and endure it!" Layla gritted her teeth, cold sweat dripping from her forehead.
Corvus bit down hard on a rolled-up piece of thick burlap. The tearing pain in his left shoulder brought out cold sweat, but his right eye—a blue crystal ocular—remained as calm as still water, reflecting Layla’s frantic figure and the anxious, guilt-ridden Long Qianqian standing beside her.
"Layla... about the 'Abyss of the Abandoned'..." Corvus’s voice was hoarse, his consciousness drifting uncontrollably under the heavy dose of strong sedatives. "The inner ranks of the Exorcist Public Security... have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated."
Layla’s wrench froze mid-air. Slowly straightening her back, her gaze swept across the room of terrified survivors, finally landing on Long Qianqian. The girl had no visible physical wounds, yet the magic fluctuations emanating from the depths of her soul were bizarre to the extreme.
Only at this moment did Layla finally understand why Corvus—a man usually so cold and rational—would risk everything to bring back a group of "dangerous garbage" that could draw lethal heat from Public Security at any second.
"As long as there's a single breath left in No. 6 Crowmist Street, we will never hand over a client," Layla spoke softly, her tone carrying an unquestionable resolve. She turned back toward the furnace stacked with metal parts. "As for that ruined arm..."
"My parents were magitech smiths in life. Influenced by them, I know a thing or two about weapon recast techniques," said Cosette, one of the survivors who had made it all the way from the Abyss of the Abandoned. Looking at the damage, a glint of confidence flashed in his eyes. "I can fix damage of this degree. If we combine it with your alchemical technology, I'm confident we can make it function even better than before."
Yet deep within the endless darkness, Corvus found no peace.
In that shattered wasteland of his mind, the magical resonance created during the contract's formation turned into a rusty, cruel key, forcibly prying open the long-sealed forbidden memories of Long Qianqian.
This was no longer his own nightmare, but the vivid, agonizing reality of another soul struggling through hell.
He "saw" a young girl wearing a patched, coarse cotton dress, standing alone at the door of an icy-cold office reeking of disinfectant.
Her biological parents—whose names he had once seen on Public Security’s internal records—were bowing servilely, bargaining in hushed, desperate tones with a man in a pristine white uniform bearing the "Exorcist Public Security" badge.
"If it gets us enough rations and covers next season's security tax, do whatever you want with the child... We know she has an extremely high compatibility with that 'thing'..."
The voice floated lightly, as if bargaining away a piece of cheap, worthless cargo.
The little girl timidly tried to tug at her mother’s skirt, only to be shoved away with disgust.
Helplessly, she raised her head; the last things reflected in her once-pure eyes were cold steel bars and merciless data gauges.
The scene shattered abruptly, plunging into even deeper darkness.
She was roughly shoved into the legendary Underground Level 3, where a prototype demonic core was forcibly implanted into her tender body.
It was no blessing of power, but a torture akin to pouring scalding liquid iron directly into her bone marrow.
She heard the researchers' cold, robotic recording: "Subject Long Qianqian, demonic core adaptability ninety-eight percent. Initial monsterification process commencing..."
"AAAAAHHHH—!"
The girl’s agonizing shrieks and wails reverberated through the dreamscape, each sound striking Corvus's soul like a poisoned needle.
He watched helplessly as she twitched and mutated again and again on the freezing operating table, watching her naive eyes get consumed inch by inch by bloodthirsty crimson under the core's corruption.
She was dissected, stitched back together, and forcefully brainwashed with countless killing instincts—until that innocent little girl died completely, leaving behind nothing but an exquisite killing weapon known to the organization as "Long Qianqian."
"Why... why did you abandon me? Why did you sell me?"
The phantom girl stood in a boundless pool of blood, staring at Corvus with empty, desperate eyes.
She was not questioning her parents, but crying out in blood and tears against this twisted, cruel world.
"Because they needed a pawn to survive, and the weak don't even have the right to choose how they die."
Corvus snapped his eyes open in the darkness.
Cold sweat had soaked his shirt. He panted heavily, his chest heaving violently.
Beside the bed, Layla was intently welding a new magene tube. In the dim corner, Long Qianqian curled helplessly into a ball, hugging her knees tightly. Her eyes were as hollow as a delicate porcelain doll devoid of a soul.
Dead silence hung over the agency, broken only by the low, exhausted hum of the basement exhaust fan, like the labored breathing of this decaying city.
Long Qianqian's body trembled continuously under the extreme mental strain.
Her clear eyes, still lingering with blood-red demonic magic, could not focus as the horrific memories of her nightmare tore against reality.
Just then, she felt a sudden warmth—Corvus’s dry, firm hand gently covering her cold fingertips with undeniable strength.
It was a human warmth she had never felt since the day her parents sold her into that living hell.
"Who... who am I really?" She let out a frail sob, like a dying small animal. Burning tears spilled from her eyes, splashing onto Corvus's bandage-wrapped hand. "The killing monster inside me was cut down by you... But what about what's left? What is this hollow soul? I don't even know who I am anymore..."
During that long, dark torment, in order to survive the endless experiments, she had exerted everything to forcibly rend her mind and magic apart—tearing the tyrannical memories of the Demonic Dragon away from the fragile fragments of her original, pure soul.
She had thought that by erasing those memories, she could become a normal girl again. Yet once the Demonic Dragon’s original body was completely destroyed, all that remained was a broken, lost consciousness drifting helplessly in the void.
Gazing into her utterly desperate eyes, the icy coldness in Corvus's heart—frozen by thoughts of revenge—was instantly shattered by a heavy, iron-like pain. He recalled the blood-soaked night ten years ago, his parents lying cold in a pool of blood, and his own despair when forced onto the operating table for his mechanical prosthetics.
At their core, both of them were merely disposable victims crushed under the wheels of an endless monster war and power exposition.
Without hesitation, he tightened his grip, wrapping her cold, slender, trembling fingers firmly within his palm, his movement steady and unwavering.
"You are not anyone's demonic vessel, nor are you a disposable experiment," Corvus said, his voice low and raspy, every word ringing out like a pledge hammered into the cold stone floor of the agency.
He leaned forward slightly, his blue crystal eye looking straight into her broken, bewildered gaze. His tone bore an undeniable oath of protection:
"From this day on, you are my family. I am your brother. No matter what that hell stole from you in the past, or who abandoned you without mercy... as long as I have a breath left in me, I am your brother."
Long Qianqian froze. In her desolate field of vision, tears blurred Corvus's scarred yet resolute face.
In that single instant, she clearly felt the massive, torn fissure deep within her soul gently smoothed and slowly stitched together by a coarse yet tender warmth.
The overwhelming "emptiness" that had nearly consumed her was finally filled by a heavy, grounded word: family.
"Brother..."
She murmured the unfamiliar yet incomparably warm word. Her once cold, rigid fingertips finally squeezed back, holding Corvus's hand tightly.
It was no longer a magic connection maintained for a contract, but an anchor to prove to the world that she had finally found a true place to belong amidst the ruins of fog and blood.19Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0juqaNvF4I
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