The lighter's flame touched the carbon monoxide-saturated air.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. The chemical reaction needed time to propagate, molecules colliding, ignition spreading, pressure building exponentially—
Then the world exploded.
A GIANT explosion rocked through the boiler room door and erupted downstairs with the force of a bomb detonating. The initial blast was concentrated, focused by the confined space of the mechanical room, creating a shaped charge effect that punched a massive hole through the exterior wall of the fifth floor.
Fire and combustion expanded outward in a rolling wave of superheated air and flame. The hole in the building's side was large, easily twenty feet across, but not quite big enough to fully vent the explosive force.
The remaining energy had nowhere to go but inward.
The wall of fire essentially became a living thing.
It expanded and snaked around each hallway like a predator hunting prey, following the path of least resistance through doorways and corridors.
The flames moved with terrifying speed, fed by oxygen, fueled by the carbon monoxide still venting from the boiler, superheating everything they touched.
The building's structure groaned. Steel support beams twisted under thermal stress. Concrete cracked and crumbled. The architectural integrity that had held this abandoned office building upright for decades suddenly failed all at once.
Some gang members on the first floor had no idea what was happening on the fifth. They'd been lounging around, playing cards, smoking, completely unaware that their boss was fighting someone upstairs or that said someone had just turned the building into a makeshift bomb.
Then they heard the BOOM.
The entire structure shook. The floor beneath their feet buckled. The walls started to crack, visible fissures spreading like spiderwebs across the concrete and drywall.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" one of them screamed.
"EARTHQUAKE?!"
"NO, THAT WAS AN EXPLOSION! RUN!"
They scrambled for the exits, abandoning their posts, their weapons, everything. Pure survival instinct driving them to GET OUT before whatever was happening killed them.
They burst through the front entrance and kept running, not stopping until they were a full block away.
Right as the last gang member cleared the building, the structure gave up.
The side with the hole in it, the fifth floor where the explosion had originated, collapsed first.
The floor couldn't support its own weight anymore, not with half the support structure blown away. It fell into the fourth floor, which immediately buckled under the sudden additional weight and fell into the third floor, which fell into the second, which fell into the first.
A cascading pancake collapse.
Each floor slamming into the one below with increasing force, accumulating mass and momentum.
The sixth, seventh, and eighth floors followed suite. With nothing beneath them to provide support, they simply dropped straight down, adding their weight to the growing avalanche of concrete, steel, furniture, and debris.
The sound was apocalyptic.
The screaming of metal tearing.
The thunderous crashes of each floor impact. The grinding of concrete pulverizing concrete.
Dust exploded outward in a massive cloud that engulfed the entire block, turning day into twilight.
Then silence. Just the settling sounds of debris shifting and the distant wail of car alarms triggered by the shockwave.
The building that had stood for decades was now a pile of rubble barely three stories tall.
Moments later, something moved in the wreckage.
A hand pushed aside a chunk of concrete. Then another hand. A figure rose from the debris like a corpse emerging from a grave.
Tòumíng stood up.
He was covered in fourth-degree burns. His skin was dark red where it still existed, which wasn't many places.
Most of his skin had been burned completely off, leaving only exposed muscle tissue that glistened wetly in the dusty air.
The cold breeze and particulate matter in the air caused sensations as they touched the raw flesh, but it didn't hurt as much as it looked like it should.
The burns were so severe they'd singed off Tòumíng's nerve endings.
No pain receptors left to transmit agony signals. Just… numbness. Awareness of damage without the accompanying suffering.
Half his face was burst open.
The skin that normally covered his teeth was gone, leaving his jaw exposed in a grotesque permanent grin. His left eye socket was visible, the flesh around it charred black.
He looked like Two-Face and Gus from Breaking Bad's death scene had a baby, half-human, half-anatomical diagram.
He was shaking.
Not from pain or fear.
The adrenaline still hadn't worn off completely.
His body was operating on fumes and chemical overrides, moving when it should have been dead.
Tòumíng looked down at his hand, or what was left of it.
His entire left arm was gone.
Completely burned off and cauterized at the shoulder, the flesh sealed by the intense heat into a blackened stump.
The arm that Hǔtān had severed with the guandao had been consumed entirely by the explosion.
Tòumíng tried to sigh but choked instead.
His lungs were filled with dust and what felt like asbestos, the building's insulation materials aerosolized by the explosion and collapse.
Each attempted breath brought sharp, grinding sensations as particulate matter scraped against his bronchial tubes.
He wasn't sure how he was standing.
By all logic, by every medical principle, he should be dead.
Should have died in the explosion.
Should have bled out from the severed arm.
Should have suffocated from the destroyed windpipe and contaminated lungs.
Then four notifications appeared in his vision:
SCHRÖDINGER'S HEART: LEVEL UP → LEVEL 2
New Benefit: Continuous resupply of blood. Quantum superposition now extends to circulatory system. Host is immune to death by blood loss. Blood regenerates at accelerated rate regardless of injury severity.
SECOND GUESS: LEVEL UP
Hesitation duration doubled. Enemy hesitation before lethal attacks now lasts 2 seconds instead of 1 second. Cooldown remains 1 hour.
NAKED GUN: LEVEL UP
Maximum boost increased. Well-timed one-liners combined with appropriate poses and references can now grant up to 4x strength multiplier instead of 2x. Quality assessment expanded to include physical performance elements.
NEW TITLE ACQUIRED: [Data processing…]
Cupid's voice emerged, weak but present. "I think I know why you're not dead."
"Tell me," Tòumíng tried to say, but his ruined throat only produced a wet gurgling sound.
Cupid continued anyway, knowing Tòumíng could hear him.
"When Hǔtān severed your arm, you lost massive amounts of blood. That blood contained all the adrenaline I'd released, the stuff that was going to kill you after 180 seconds. But while you were losing that contaminated blood, Schrödinger's Heart leveled up and started resupplying fresh blood to replace it. The new blood didn't have the lethal adrenaline concentration. It reached your heart just before the old blood could cause cardiac arrest. This was a buzzer-beater save. Milliseconds from death."
Tòumíng couldn't speak, but he silently mouthed the words: "Let's fucking go."
He tried taking a step forward.
His melted flesh,what remained of it on his legs and feet, was actively sticking to the floor as he walked.
The heat had partially fused his tissue to the concrete and metal debris.
Each step required pulling himself free with a wet, tearing sound as cauterized flesh separated from the surface.
He realized he was completely naked. The explosion had incinerated his clothes entirely, leaving him exposed. But he didn't really care at this point.
Bigger worries.
Like surviving the next five minutes. Like figuring out how to get medical attention when he looked like a walking anatomy lesson.
Just as he thought it was finally over, that he'd survived, that Hǔtān was dead in the rubble, that he could escape and somehow recover from this—
A hand reached out from the rubble in the distance.
Not Tòumíng's rubble. Different rubble. Farther away. Near where the door to the boiler room had been.
The hand was massive. Burned. But moving.
Pushing aside concrete chunks with steady, purposeful strength.
No.
No no no no no.
Tòumíng's remaining eye widened as he watched the hand clear debris, revealing an arm, then a shoulder, then—