"Yea…so what were you saying again?" Shuren asked.

  She was still entangled with Kinzau's threads but as always she displayed a normal Shuren reaction. Which was straight boredom or someone who doesn't care the slightest.

  On the other side of the room, Zheng Yan froze, he did not move a muscle after witnessing the defeat of his abomination. The same creature in which he forged by using literal human body parts to make this monster. All of that progress of kidnapping innocent humans, whether it was man, woman or child. All of that progress went down the drain. Just like that.

  But for some reason he did not experience any anger nor any disappointment. None of that, instead he felt some joy and intensity. Zheng Yan started to laugh maniacally, which made both Shuren and Kinzau disoriented for a bit. This type of action would resemble a psychotic person in the normal eye.

  "I should have known better than to let those words slip. Doubting the two children waiting outside in the dark…that doubt alone was enough to make my monster falter and fall.How foolish… how utterly predictable.But this is the will of the Clan of Sin.They delight in victories seasoned with the irony of our own sins!"

  The name startled Shuren for a moment.

  The Clan Of Sin.

  Who would have thought that Zheng Yan was part of that group? But what could his relation to them be? Was he perhaps one of the core members, or just a candidate?

  Shuren needed more information, and that meant she had to get out of these threads. She slowly took a deep breath and quietly muttered the words, "Muteki no kurōn."

  Nothing happened at first and that was exactly what Shuren wanted. While Zheng Yan laughed like an absolute psychopath, losing himself in the process, the thread user Kinzau was staring at him. That made the moment perfect for an escape.

  The threads binding her slowly began to tear apart. Every time one snapped, Shuren had to glance in Kinzau's direction in case he sensed something wrong with his threads or worse, realized what was happening. That would create a far more dangerous scenario.

  Every thread was getting torn apart bit by bit by her invisible, undetectable clones.

  One of them quietly brought out a new gun.

  It was a brutal, oversized handgun, heavy and angular, with a reinforced revolving cylinder that locked into place before each shot. Power was inside it, coiled and waiting.

  Shuren took it with her liberated left hand.

  "Always wanted to try this one," she whispered. "Guess now's the time."

  Kinzau's eyes remained fixed on Zheng Yan's screaming figure, the insane laughter rasping against the air like shattered glass. Then something flickered

  Not in the lunatic but in him.

  A tiny shudder passed through his pinkie, the one that had spun the finest thread, the one he relied on most to hold without protest. It trembled once, then again. He merely shifted his gaze ahead, allowing the picture to rebuild itself in his mind: the threads, invisible to the naked eye, vibrating in the dim light like the veins of frost in the room.

  One of them... was off.

  In his mind's eye, Shuren was immobile and bound by his threads.

  Kinzau slowly released his breath, the movement hardly disturbing the dancing dust motes between them. He merely began descending the stairs, one measured step at a time, closing in with the detachment of one who had already weighed the chances and found them unacceptable.

  He would check for himself.

  The threads were still there, but Shuren could sense the pressure of them, a faint but palpable presence, like the ghost of hands around her throat and wrists.

  But Kinzau was no fool, halting three paces away. Golden eyes ranged over Shuren, slow and deliberate, not on her face but on the space around her.

  One thread trembled.

  His fingers twitched.

  That was all the warning Shuren received.

  She fired.

  The noise was not a shot but a thunderclap, condensed violence bursting the air apart. The cylinder locked, the recoil slammed back into her arm, and the bullet distorted the space between them. The threads vanished in an instant, no recoil, no snap, just gone as if they had never been there.

  Kinzau reacted on instinct.

  His body turned aside, threads bursting out from his free hand like a spiderweb flung in desperation. The bullet ripped through the space where his head had been a split second before and blasted into the far wall, reducing marble to shrapnel.

  Zheng Yan's laughter was cut off in mid-breath.

  "..."

  Shuren was already in motion.

  She rolled forward as more threads shot out, slicing through the air where she had been standing. One caught her shoulder, and blood burst forth instantly, but she didn't falter. Another clone appeared and disintegrated under the force of a thread aimed at her spine.

  Kinzau backed off half a step, his eyes wide now not with fear, but calculation.

  "So my speculations were correct. Somewhat you were escaping from the threads without moving, which only meant that you had some clones in your mist." Kinzau explained.

  "Wow you're a fast adapter, my clones don't even make the slightest bit of sound yet you felt them. Which means that you're not a Qi user, am I correct?" Shuren asked.

  Kinzau fell silent.

  For one breath, it was as if the mansion itself paused with him. Then his mouth twisted, not wide or cruel, but sharp. A smile for one who had finally been noticed.

  "And what if I am? Does that mean your technique can only be spotted by Sionels?" he said with a grin.

  Shuren laughed, soft and content.

  "Congratulations, your absolutely correct." She said.

  "…What?" He looked between them. "What are you talking about?"

  Shuren tilted her head toward Kinzau, almost in play.

  "That means your precious personal guard lied to you." she continued,

  Zheng Yan snapped his gaze to Kinzau. "Lied? You told me you were a Qi user. Threads are a Qi technique."

  Kinzau didn't deny it. Instead, he laughed. Shuren joined in, their laughter overlapping just enough to make Zheng Yan's skin crawl.

  "Wow, you really are blind." Shuren said, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye.

  Zheng Yan's jaw clenched. "Blind to what?"

  Shuren lifted her chin toward the air between them.

  "The threads," she said simply. "Look properly."

  The threads were there, faint but present, humming in the air like lines of tension. He had always known Qi techniques. He had always known the signs. The aura. The color.

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  Qi was blue.

  Always had been. But these threads, they weren't blue. They shimmered not with glow, not with flame, but with something colder. Something more refined. A thin, razor-sharp silver, like moonlight drawn into wire.

  Zheng Yan's pupils contracted.

  "…That's not Qi," he whispered.

  Kinzau took a slow breath, the grin never wavering on his face.

  "No, it isn't."

  No reaction came from Zheng Yan, but confusion was still shown on his face and his words.

  The very man who he believed stood next to him and supported him all these years just simply lied to him. For what reason did he lie to him? Did he hold a grudge against him? Or was there something else?

  Zheng Yan looked down, face darkened and a possibility of a spike of anger slowly rising to take control and do something unpredictable. The room was quiet, no one spoke, all eyes were on Zheng Yan alone. Yet he didn’t say a word and just stood still.

  All of a sudden a small chuckle was heard. Both Kinzau and Shuren gaze at the direction of the chuckle and to their surprise it was Zheng Yan. His chuckle slowly started to grow louder. The moment felt uncomfortable for the two of them.

  A smile steadily grew on Zheng Yan’s face, he did not care about him being lied to, he did not care about him already staring at death's door even if no injuries and he also did not care about the repercussions of his actions.

  “Ah…Kinzau, to be honest with you I am still disappointed with the fact that you lied to me. But that is the least of my worries as now, I don’t even care anymore because as of right now I’ll just offer my life to the god of the Clan Of Sin, the prince of funerals, the lord of reason. My wish of becoming a core member will be long gone, but my sacrifice will continue more to their plans into the future.”

  Shuren tilted her head in confusion, why would someone sacrifice their own life? But what Zheng Yan did next made her eyes widen.

  He went inside of his shirt and took out a necklace with a grey moon and let it swing around for a while.

  “So I was right, you do have The Necklace Of Pestilence.” Shuren said.

  Zheng Yan did not answer and only smiled. He then bit his finger and the blood hit the grey moon necklace. The necklace glowed in grey energy and it blinded Kinzau and Shuren. The light was so bright it even reflected from the outside.

  Taura and Assad saw the bright light and were also blinded as well.

  Mya who was still outside saw Assad and Taura covering their eyes almost as if they were being blinded.

  Mya hesitated at the gate.

  The blinding light had already faded, but the air beyond it felt wrong, heavy, suffocating, as if the space itself was warning her not to enter. Still confused, still searching for answers, she stepped forward.

  The moment her foot crossed the threshold, a voice reached her.

  “Mya…run away…now…out of here."

  Mya's eyes widened.

  “O–Onee-chan?” she whispered, panic instantly flooding her chest.

  The voice trembled.

  “Mya…please…run…”

  Her heart started to pound violently. She took another step forward instead.

  “Where are you?Why...why are you telling me to run?” she asked, her voice shaking

  The pressure in the air intensified, pressing against her ears, her lungs. The gate behind her creaked softly, as if urging her to turn back.

  “Where's Nui? What's happening?!” Mya cried

  Back inside the mansion, the grey light started to clear.

  It didn’t clear immediately; it seemed to be pulled back into nothingness. Shuren and Kinzau were still blind for a few more seconds, their eyes burning and watering as the last of the light disappeared. Their eyes could open again.

  Shuren stood still.

  Her breathing caught in her throat, her body stiffening as if her mind could not process what it was seeing. The mansion was different. The marble floors, the grand halls, the expansive staircases everything was covered in a layer of something. There were bodies everywhere.

  Merfolk.

  Mermen and mermaids were strewn across the floor, against the walls, in the corners, on the furniture as if they had simply fallen where they stood. Their dead eyes looked blankly into space, their faces twisted in fear, pain, or shock.

  The air was thick with the stench of death. Shuren’s stomach rebelled in revolt.

  “…What…?” she whispered, the words barely audible.

  Her threads responded at once, trembling, recoiling, curling inward in a desperate attempt to protect her from the horror she saw. Her chest constricted, breathing in short, ragged gasps as fear crawled up the back of her spine.

  “This many…lives." she breathed, her eyes trembling as she tried to scan the room.

  Kinzau stood beside her, unflinching. His face was a picture of shock, true, but not shock at what he saw. Shock at what he knew. His jaw was clenched tight, fists slowly bunching at his sides.

  “So it’s already been done…” he said softly.

  Shuren turned to face him, a look of accusation in her voice.

  "So you knew about this?"

  Kinzau didn’t look away from the bodies.

  “Yes, I was accompanying him when he went to kidnap all of these merfolk from the sacred purified ocean. All of them were taken and dissected brutally. Me and some of the other guards, especially that maid Mischa who you killed, just stood there as he smiled and laughed like a maniac.” Kinzau explained.

  Shuren stared at Zheng Yan and could only mutter one thing,”monster.”

  The air changed.

  A pressure, slow and deliberate, spread through the mansion, causing the bodies to shift slightly, as if answering some call.

  Zheng Yan stepped forward.

  His body appeared undamaged, yet something about him was fundamentally wrong, something that distorted the space around him, causing the shadows he cast to be wrong in relation to the light.

  He raised his arms, palms open, as if offering the scene around him.

  “My dear lord, here are your sacrifices.” he said reverently.

  The bodies around him seemed to sink slightly into the floor, as if the mansion itself were swallowing them.

  “And here…is my life as well.” Zheng Yan continued, putting a bloody hand over his chest.

  “If I cannot become a core member then use my life for your plans and if you truly wish for me to join you, then I beg of you…make me a core member.”he whispered, bowing his head,

  Shuren looked up, her eyes wide with horror.