Just as Zun thought she got the upper hand in the fight with King Cobra, the demon seized her movement and began to reveal his final true form. Amid this struggle, captain Koi and his team jumped out of the shadows and ambushed both of them.

  “I have been preparing for this moment. This is it! This GLORY is mine!!” The captain remarked triumphantly, not withholding any hint of smugness.

  Once I deliver these elite demons to the heaven’s door, all my karma will be cleansed, all my sins will be forgiven!! Be gone! Die with my pain! At this point, Koi only got one priority in his mind and nothing else matter.

  Without a lingering moment, the group of Angels started to recite a holy spell at speed with their palms pressing against each other to assume a praying position, while lip syncing in fierce group precision. The Lord symbol appeared below the two demons; its ravaging wings spread out in tint of pure gold, bringing out a flash of radiant energy in full panoramic display. The demons’ eyesight was instantly blinded as a net, possessing a gigantic holy energy, expanded over their heads, bringing down a compressed density of pressure that bound their demonic presence to the will of the heaven. As the pressure deepened, their body started rupturing. Even King Cobra’s ongoing attacks were disabled.

  This is the Eye of Heaven spell, a touch of heaven on earth. Zun had never witnessed the Eye of Heaven spell in action. This ancient spell was prided as one of the deadliest and hardest spells to master and synchronise by a group. The casters were divided into two groups, each playing a distinct role. One group would channel the divine energy from the sky, and another from the Earth, to feed into the life stream of the spell. The captain alone held the central role of channelling energy from both planes.

  For centuries, the Exorcist organisation had handpicked its most elite mages, devoting them to decades of spellcraft under their captain’s guidance to expand and align their energy capacity. A single wrong chant could pierce the caster’s energetic core and drain away their power.

  Rumours said that the spell script contained the original writing of Lord Father before he attained enlightenment and ascended to the world beyond, roughly a thousand years ago. The earliest exorcist group retrieved this divine text 300 years ago, but nobody had ever fully executed it to its fullest potential.

  From the outside, this divine spell arced across the sky like a dome of polished diamond, dancing in the brilliant hue of iridescent colours. In contrast, the inside of the spell dome overflowed with a surging wave of vibration that crush every cell and bend every bone inward until they distorted into a crystalised form.

  Zun couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why something felt extremely off with how a spell of this level was cast out of the blue. But for now, it was her least concern. She was forced to her knees by a tide-tearing friction that was compressing her alive. Both of her arms were straightened down like iron rods against the floor, yet despite her best effort to resist, she felt her body squeezed as the pressure rang loudly in her ears.

  The demonic energy within her stirred irresistibly hot and cracked open every pore of her skin like an eruption, releasing a dark stream of blood-like fluid down toward the reckoning of the heaven’s force. Each drop crystallised upon touching the spell circle beneath them.

  Zun screamed her lungs out. The pain sizzled through her skin and tore every single line of veins on her skin. Like dosages of drugs hitting high notes against the warning of explosion, her head steamed up in blind speed, blurring all her senses.

  It felt like a divine punishment inflicted upon her soul, delivered under the bare eyes of Lord Father.

  Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong?!!

  Tears soaked her vision. Am I really the problem all along that even you have to look down on me like this, Lord Father? Why am I the one who is getting punished all the time? Mom, please comfort me. I need your comfort. Please take this pain away from me!

  Suddenly the demonic energy inside her forcefully ripped itself out of her energetic core. A gaping void opened up in her chest, and from it a ghostly figure emerged, head to toe in black. His gaze weighed down as he moved with a forward-bending posture, locked on strained shoulders. His sleek black hair slanted to the front, deliberately shielding his face from view. Through the torn fabric of his robes, a pair of wasted limps chained by a fractured cuff was exposed.

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  This figure, undeterred by all his abnormalities, carried a quiet sorrow, as if he had never learned to let go of a suffering that now entrenched in his soul. It was unmistakable. He is that man from Zun’s dream and this seemed to be his most human form.

  All the demonic features had now receded from her body, leaving Zun in shock.

  That man tried to push her out of the spell radius with an energetic force amplified by the divine spell, which had also started rejecting her.

  But an instinct spoke to her and she immediately clung onto his arm with every bit of her remaining strength.

  At that very moment, a feeling unspoken before trembled inside her. Everything paled to insignificance, leaving the two of them in the spotlights. Time seemed to have zoned in and slowed down just for the two of them – just for this moment.

  “Let go, you will die.” His voice knocked on her gently.

  That man, as vividly as she recalled in all her nightmares, wore a numb yet tender expression. Like a closed-off child stripped off his innocence, he looked lonely and unguarded against the backdrop of this cruel spell.

  “No! I’m not going without you!”

  “It’s because of me you are in pain.”

  “This has nothing to do with you! There must be a mistake! Let’s get out of this together, we are a team!”

  Zun insisted. That innocent plea gleamed so pure in her dark emerald irises, almost revealing a deeper yearning hidden beneath her conscious desire.

  She tugged him toward her with all her might, enduring the waves of shiver that kicked in with each contraction of muscles.

  It was futile. Like a black hole, the Eye of Heaven suck him closer towards the centre of the spell, where it pulsed with the highest energetic frequency. Her grip slid from his arm as she got pushed further outward, but she caught his hand just in time once again.

  He was taken aback. “Why are you so persistent?”

  “Because…” Her voice started to crack. “…because…I feel close to you.”

  His eyebrows raised subtly, but he returned no response.

  “Maybe I’m selfish, maybe I’m dumb, yes! But I find solace in your presence, in the way your pain speaks to me and how we fill each other’s void.”

  Upon this confession, they suddenly locked eyes, and a physical pressure hit her in the chest. The resolve was already hardened on his face; he didn’t seem to budge a bit.

  Agitated, she pressed on, “What is this all about? Don’t you dare give up on yourself now! I thought you made a promise with Tin!” Her mind glitched for a second, and all the previous fight scenes with King Cobra raced into her mind.

  A glint of light trembled in his eyes. “That was…a long time ago.” These few words escaped his mouth.

  “So, are you ready to give up already?” Her tears broke free and stretched into a glittering trail by the clashing friction swirling around them. They swelled like clear pearls, beautiful and fragile to his eyes.

  The magnetic force enhanced and pulled the nameless demon even closer toward the centre of the vibration, all the while pushing Zun further out. She tightened her grip, but his hand was slipping away quickly.

  “Are you really willing to give up?! Answer me!”

  Silence followed.

  A conflicted expression flickered across every fibre of her face. From her heart to her lungs and across the canvas of her skin, her growing emotions electrified her senses and drilled her despair deeper into every cell of her being.

  “You are the one who saved me from the very beginning. You let me in! You are the only person I can be honest with, who I feel safe with. So why are you leaving now? Why are you backing out? WHY?!”

  “No.” He finally spoke again. At that very moment, she caught a glimpse of a tainted sorrow in his eyes. “From the very beginning, it’s you who let me in, do you forget?”

  A faint smile relieved from his stiff lips. “You talked to me every morning every night, told me stories about your days, about the faith in your heart. You never judge my past and make me feel good about myself. You are the only one who knows the real me, someone this world has never missed.”

  A flood of emotion washed up on the dry shore of Zun’s memory. Her heart nervously skipped a beat. She didn’t recognise much of what he said, but something within told her none of this was a lie.

  “You are my salvation.” As he let out those words, his hand broke free from her grasp.

  “No…, please don’t leave. Please don’t let go. I beg you. I cannot lose you.” She shook her head, but no matter how strong her will was, it couldn’t counter the strength of Heaven’s Eye.

  As numb as the demon looked, a soothing whisper eventually parted from his lips.

  “It’s okay.”

  With that final word, he got dragged into the heart of the spell circle where the divine energy stirred with an absolute frequency. Sparing no limbs and bones, his entire body writhed and folded inwards, until nothing remained but a crystalised husk of what he once was.

  Zun was rejected by the spell and thrown out of the heavenly plane.

  All the sounds and pressure were left behind, and together with them, a piece of herself that she would never recover. Dumbfounded, she gathered her feet and drove herself around for help, but her knees kept failing her and eventually she found herself crawling on the ground, pushing through the muddy water. But like heartless predators, all the Angels continued to chant their spells in confusing rhymes that sounded like rumbling noises, aggressively chewing into her consciousness.

  Her vision slowly blurred, as that man’s words repeated in her mind.

  You are my salvation…salvation. Why, why do you say that? What is salvation? Oh, wait, I think I know. Salvation is—

  Zun blacked out.