The rain continued to fall in the rainforest north of Bangkok. But instead of being red, the rain was now a viscous black liquid with a rusty smell.
Inside an abandoned chemical plant, which was completely covered in vines, a dark green culture medium could be heard gurgling softly. The walls were covered in yellowing experimental data, all bearing the same taboo title: 'The Truth Cult: Life Reconstruction Project'.
'Two thousand five hundred failures, consuming the "raw materials" of an entire police squad... Finally, under the divine decree of the "Black Dragon King", the most perfect work of slaughter art has been born.' A Truth Cult priest wearing a purple robe and a bone mask stared fanatically at the central culture tank.
[Life fluctuations detected: extremely strong] [Ability polarity: extremely malevolent] [Codename: 009 Shadow Assassin].
The tempered glass of the culture tank suddenly shattered with a crisp crack.
A pale, slender hand covered in intricate black veins slowly pressed against the crack. A cracking sound was followed by a deafening roar.
The massive culture tank shattered completely, spilling dark green liquid across the floor. From within the smoke, a slender young man slowly rose. Unlike ordinary zombies, he didn't roar like a beast; he remained calm and wore a form-fitting black nanotech combat suit. His eyes weren't rolled back, but displayed an eerie deep purple colour with double pupils.
Most chillingly of all, three 'bone short swords' formed from supernatural energy floated behind him, pulsating rhythmically with his breathing.
'I... I'm hungry,' he said in a cold voice, like a block of ice that never melts.
'Number 009! Your first task is to eliminate the variable with zero combat power: A-Zhan!' The priest excitedly waved his staff.
The young man turned his head, his double pupils narrowing slightly.
[Combat Power Index fluctuates in real time: 5000... 12,000... 25,000...]
[Warning! Combat Power Index locked at 38,000.]
[System assessment: self-aware intelligent bioweapon, danger level SSS.]
'Ah Zhan?' Number 009 looked down at his palm, a cruel smile flashing across his face. 'Sounds like he's an opponent I can "have a good meal" with.'
Before he had finished speaking, his body had turned into a wisp of black smoke and vanished from the spot.
The next second, a very thin red line appeared on the neck of the priest who had been shouting, and his entire head slid off. The cut was so clean that there wasn't even time for a spurt of blood.
Meanwhile, Ah Zhan was squatting by the roadside, holding a half-eaten Thai kebab. Marlene was sitting on a discarded tyre beside him, painfully repairing her broken headphones.
'Uncle, can you feel the air getting thicker?' Marlene stopped repairing them, a blinding red light flashing on her spiritual glasses.
Azhan didn't speak. He slowly put down the skewer, chewed the last piece of meat in his mouth and swallowed. His eyes, which had once been calm, now reflected the rapidly flashing black dots on the distant rooftops.
'Finally here?' Azhan stood up, his black trench coat fluttering in the wind. The black bandage on his right hand seemed to sense its nemesis, emitting a low hum.
'Marlene, step back.' Azhan took a step forward and the ground beneath his feet cracked instantly.
'This time, it's not the kind of trash that just barks.'
'Heh heh, "Zero" senior, nice to meet you.' A blur of motion sliced through the rain, stopping ten metres in front of Azhan. Number 009 was hovering in mid-air, three bone swords spreading out behind him like a peacock's tail.
'Your combat power index is indeed zero.' Number 009 tilted his head, his double pupils filled with curiosity and greed. 'But in my perception, you're like a black hole that devours light. This feeling... is truly amazing.' A-Zhan's eyes were cold and his right hand slowly rested on the hilt of the large cleaver behind him. 'Senior, do the Truth Cult members play this kinship trick so clumsily?'
'No, we share the same "demon blood".' Number 009 licked his lips and supernatural black flames erupted around him, instantly evaporating the rain around him.
[Combat Power Index Suppressed Madly: 38,000]!
'Today, I will extract the "zero-value domain" from your body to nourish my evolution.' The bone sword behind Number 009 shot out instantly, drawing three black arcs.
A-Zhan's eyes turned cold as he unsheathed his large cleaver half an inch, its blade flashing. "Want to eat me? Are your teeth hard enough?"
Freeze! Two terrifying forces, one black and one purple, collided violently in the air. In that instant, Khao San Road was transformed into a chessboard for a battle between gods and demons.
Boom!
Three bone short swords, like jet-black meteors, traced eerie arcs through the air. These weren't just flying devices; they were constantly replicating themselves in mid-air and transforming into hundreds of tiny bone blades. They formed a hail of bone blades that covered every inch of space around A-Zhan.
"Before wisdom, violence is merely a low-level instinct," said Number 009 with a cold laugh, his fingers moving nimbly in the air like a puppeteer's.
[Combat Power Monitoring: 38000 → 42000 (Brain Overclocking Mode)!]
A-Zhan remained expressionless, but his body reacted inhumanely in the fraction of a second between the falling blades.
Freeze-frame perspective 1: A-Zhan didn't draw his sword. He touched the ground with his toes, his figure becoming blurry and transparent. The bone blades, powerful enough to slice through a tank, pierced his body, shattering only a series of black afterimages. [Physical Skill: Zero Instant]!
"Detected." Number 009's double pupils suddenly converged.
Freeze-frame perspective 2: Number 009 predicted Zhan's landing point. His right hand transformed into a massive black spear and thrust fiercely into the void behind him. With a soft thud, the spear pierced a solid object, but not Zhan's body. Instead, it was a thick steel plate that Zhan had shifted instantly.
'In my domain, your "prediction" is merely a script I've written.' Zhan's voice came from directly above Number 009's head. He finally gripped his greatsword. At that moment, the air around him stopped flowing and began to collapse inwards. The combat power value, which was originally displayed as [0] under the monitoring of Number 009's double pupils, exhibited an extremely bizarre jump:
[WARNING! Numerical Disorder:
0 -> -1 -> 0 -> 99999 -> 0.
'How is this possible? The value is undergoing a reverse collapse from positive to negative.' Number 009 revealed a look of terror for the first time. In Frozen Frame 3, A-Zhan wields his sword in one hand and delivers a powerful downward slash — his ultimate move, Zero Style: Sever — without any fancy charging.
The black blade of light seemed to slice through space. The three bone swords in front of 009 instantly merged into one in an attempt to withstand the attack head-on. With a deafening crash, a massive shockwave swept across the entire street, causing the already crumbling buildings on both sides to collapse.
009 was slammed into the ground like a cannonball, creating a crater five metres in diameter in the hard asphalt. Purple blood trickled from his tattered nanotech combat suit and flowed from his mouth. He stared incredulously at the scene before him, his eyes filled with madness. 'Heh...hahahaha!'
009 staggered to his feet amidst the ruins, twisting his fractured neck. 'As expected of Zero... this feeling of being enveloped in pure darkness... it makes me want to devour you!'
He ripped open his combat suit to reveal a mechanical heart radiating a ghostly purple light. 'Activate the Life-Eating Program!'
[Warning! Forbidden Life Furnace detected! 009 is forcibly extracting energy from plants, insects and residual demonic energy within a one-kilometre radius of the ruins! Combat power index skyrockets: 45,000... 52,000... 60,000!'
]
009's body began to swell. His once handsome face became ferocious and black armour resembling dragon scales sprouted from his skin. The three bone swords on his back melted and transformed into a pair of bony wings blotting out the sky.
"Now, senior…" Number 009 flapped its wings, creating a corrosive hurricane.
"What do you have to fight me with?" A-Zhan asked, looking at the monster before him. It was now devoid of human form, and a faint sorrow flashed in A-Zhan's eyes — a lament for his own fate and pity for the victims of the Truth Cult.
He slowly unwrapped the last bandage on his right arm. At that moment, the demonic markings at the corners of his eyes ceased twitching and, like living things, moved to his fist, coalescing into a strange black hole.
'You're right; wisdom is indeed superior to violence. But there is a power that transcends both wisdom and violence: despair.' A-Zhan walked on air, each step landing on a point of weightless gravity.
[Combat Power Index Reset: 0.000000]
[Status Switch: Dark Realm – Unforgivable]
Marlene clutched the zither in terror from a distance. She felt that, the moment A-Zhan unwrapped the bandages, her spiritual glasses had turned to ashes. "Uncle, stop! You'll disappear from that state!'
But A-Zhan had already thrown a punch. There was no sound or light effect, only extreme darkness that could swallow moonlight whole, silently advancing towards the bio-weapon with a combat power of 60,000.
As expected, there was no earth-shattering event, nor any heart-wrenching screams.
When A-Zhan's fist, surrounded by intense black energy, hit 009's chest, the sound of rain on Khao San Road disappeared. His black armour, which could withstand missiles, melted and collapsed silently the moment it touched the 'Dark Realm', as though sugar had been dropped into concentrated sulphuric acid.
'This... this is impossible...' 009's ferocious/hideous face trembled. His 60,000 combat points were like foam hitting a reef in the face of that black shadow. A-Zhan's eyes were as cold as an unmelting ice sculpture. He embedded his fist in 009's mechanical heart, and black demonic runes flowed back into 009's veins.
'Your wisdom tells you that the side with the larger number will win, but it didn't tell you that when 0 appears in the denominator, the logic of the entire world collapses.' Ah Zhan lowered his head, his voice ringing in Number 009's ear.
Boom!
A black beam of light shot into the sky, instantly disintegrating Number 009's massive bio-engineered body into a flurry of purple dust.
In the final moment of his collapse, his previously scattered double pupils suddenly and strangely converged, reflecting a man seated on a golden throne deep within them.
'Ah Zhan... my dear child.' The voice didn't travel through the air, but exploded directly in Ah Zhan's mind.
Ah Zhan's body froze and his pupils contracted sharply — it was the Black Dragon King.
'Your "Zero-Value Domain" has evolved rapidly, even more perfectly than I anticipated.' The Black Dragon King stared at Ah Zhan through the void via Number 009's remaining optic nerve; his gaze was filled with twisted fanaticism.
'Number 009 was just a taster of what I can do. The stronger your killing intent, the more brilliantly the 'Demon Seed' within you will bloom. Kill!' Destroy Bangkok; destroy everything until you are completely lost in the darkness. After that, I will come and retrieve my 'ultimate masterpiece' personally."
'Get out of my head!' Azhan roared, exerting tremendous force with his right hand and crushing the last remaining trace of purple crystalline dust in the air into nothingness.
With the fall of 009, the supernatural magnetic field of the entire Khao San Road area began to fluctuate violently. Discovering that their strongest weapon had been destroyed instantly, the henchmen of the Truth Cult screamed in terror and began frantically dropping self-destruct bombs.
'Uncle! Run! This area is collapsing!' Marlene staggered over, her spiritual glasses shattered, yet she could still sense the thousands of supernatural bombs underground counting down clearly.
Azhan stood still, his right hand bleeding from overusing 'zero value'. Demonic patterns appeared on his skin like greedy snakes trying to crawl up his neck.
'Marlene, stay away from me.' His voice was incredibly hoarse as he struggled to suppress the murderous urge surging within him. "I... I can't control it anymore."
'You idiot! What nonsense are you spouting?' Marlene didn't back down. Instead, she opened her arms and embraced Ah Zhan's cold body tightly. 'You're neither a masterpiece nor a monster. You're just the uncle who protects my headphones during fights!'
[Divine Wave – Heartstring Resonance]
The golden spiritual energy within Marlene flowed continuously into Ah Zhan's body. The previously raging black energy miraculously calmed down upon contact with this warm spiritual energy. 'Bang! Bang! Bang!" "
The ruins of Khao San Road were completely buried in a series of explosions.
Before the explosions lit up the scene, two figures leapt out of a broken sewer opening under the cover of night and disappeared into the edge of the dense rainforest.
An hour later, the former experimental site had been reduced to scorched earth.
Exhausted once again, Ah Zhan carried the unconscious Marin across the desolate outskirts of Bangkok. He looked up at the lingering purple vortex in the sky, then down at his right hand, which was now re-bandaged.
'Black Dragon King...' he murmured, his eyes no longer filled with confusion but with utter indifference.
'Since you want to see me completely insane, then I'll show you. But before that, I'll dismantle your throne first.'