The air in the old warehouse suddenly solidified.
It became so heavy that one could almost hear the sound of dust particles crushing under the pressure. The remaining pursuers retreated simultaneously into the shadows of the rusted shelves, driven by the instinct of those standing on the boundary between witnessing and being consumed. They were smart enough to realize that the stage had changed its protagonist. The small fry had left. The one remaining was the true terror.
At the center of the dim red light, two entities faced each other amidst the ruins and pools of blood.
Tian Cang, his body interlaced with glowing red fissures, his breath heaving like a furnace burning past its capacity. And the Collector—his dark clothes unstained by a single drop of blood throughout everything that had transpired—his hands hanging naturally, in the posture of one observing an interesting phenomenon in a laboratory.
"...You just lost partial control." The Collector spoke, his voice steady and soulless in a professional sense—not cold, but scientifically detached. "Heart rate skyrocketing, pupils fully dilated, aggressive behavior exceeding necessity. Your deviation does not follow any hierarchical rules I have ever recorded."
He tilted his head, instinctively raising a notepad before remembering he was standing in the middle of a battlefield.
"Truly fascinating."
Tian Cang did not respond with words. In his mind, the roar of KILL was no longer a separate command but had merged with his heartbeat, becoming a part of his respiration, of every pulse of blood through his arteries. He walked slowly, each step leaving a deep crimson smear on the cold stone floor behind him like a shadow.
"Alright... kill."
The ten-yard gap was erased in the blink of an eye.
Tian Cang lunged like a bolt of dark-red lightning, a direct punch aimed straight at the opponent's throat—a pure finishing blow, no probing, no warning. But the Collector shifted his center of gravity with minimal effort, gliding half a step perpendicular to the attack's momentum, like water parting before the bow of a ship without collision.
Tian Cang's punch tore through empty air.
In that exact moment of error, one of the Collector's fingers reached out, lightly touching Tian Cang's chest at a precise angle.
CLICK.
A high-voltage surge ran straight to his heart. His pulse skipped a beat, his lungs seized, and his entire respiratory system was paralyzed in an instant—like a machine someone had powered down with an invisible button.
"Biological weak point," the Collector muttered, his eyes sparkling with pure curiosity—the curiosity of one who never viewed combat as emotion, but only as data. "You strike with great force, but your own body is what you understand least. Every biological machine has nodes. I just pressed one."
Tian Cang retreated, his glowing red eyes narrowing. The wound was small but more dangerous than any blade because it told him the man before him understood the human body deeper than the one inhabiting it.
He began to circle, observing.
The Collector stood there, hands hanging loose, weight evenly distributed—the posture of one ready to respond from any direction without preparation. This was the most terrifying state in a duel: a man who doesn't build tension or leak killing intent, because he can turn any movement into an attack.
Tian Cang intentionally shifted his weight to the right, exposing a flaw on his left flank. A crude trap. But sometimes crude traps are the most effective against those collecting data, because data demands verification.
The Collector moved, fast as an arrow. His finger aimed straight for the opening.
Tian Cang pivoted sharply, unleashing an upward elbow strike.
BOOM!
A dull explosion rang out. The Collector was knocked back half a step, forced to retreat for the first time in the fight. A small trail of blood ran down his cheek.
He touched the wound, looked at the bright red drop on his fingertip, and then looked up at Tian Cang with a smile so radiant it was almost grotesque in this setting.
"You feigned an opening to lure me in." He nodded, his voice carrying the genuine acknowledgment of one who had found what they had long sought. "You are learning even as you kill. A magnificent specimen."
The speed of the duel escalated to a new level.
The Collector no longer moved in the conventional sense; he eliminated all redundant motion until his body appeared only where necessary, with exactly the right force and not a gram more. It was the combat style of one who had studied the human body to the point of knowing exactly where the least effort caused the most damage.
SHLIK! A touch to the left shoulder, and Tian Cang's entire arm went numb instantly.
SHLIK! A touch to the thigh, and his tendons lost power; he nearly buckled.
Tian Cang roared, counterattacking repeatedly, but his hands only struck the void just abandoned. The Collector read him completely—reading every muscle twitch before a strike formed, reading every shift in gravity before a footstep landed.
CRACK!
A finger stabbed directly into the gap between his ribs. The sound of breaking bone was sickening. Tian Cang sank to one knee, blood surging from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes remained glared at his opponent—steadfast in the sense of something that refused to go down by pure will.
The Collector stepped forward, his shadow stretching long over Tian Cang.
"You are strong, No. 17-46." His voice carried something unfamiliar—not exactly pity, but close to a professional regret, like a researcher standing before a rare artifact about to shatter. "But this body is still insufficient to contain that brutal soul. You were born too early."
Tian Cang gasped for air, his vision blurring behind a crimson haze from within his mind.
And in his psyche, that ancient voice changed.
This time, it roared a different word.
EAT.
He closed his eyes for a beat. When he opened them, the previous red glow had vanished entirely, replaced by something darker, deeper—the pitch-black void of one who had left all calculation behind, leaving only a primal hunger that had never been named.
The Collector advanced, delivering a finishing blow, his finger aimed straight at the abdomen.
Tian Cang let it happen.
The strike pierced flesh. The pain was so intense his lungs felt squeezed from the inside. But in that moment, Tian Cang's blood-soaked hand clamped onto the Collector's wrist and squeezed down.
ACTIVATE.
This time, the blood was not sucked from the surface. Tian Cang pulled directly from deep within the opponent's bone marrow, bypassing all intermediate layers, going straight to the source of life. The veins on his neck and shoulders bulged—black and feral like tree roots invading foreign soil.
The Collector froze.
For the first time in the entire battle, the composure on his face shattered completely. His eyes dilated, the curious look vanished, replaced by something he had likely recorded from the other side for years but had never truly felt from this side: terror.
"You... what are you doing?!"
Tian Cang gripped harder. The Collector used his free hand to punch repeatedly into Tian Cang's chest, each strike hitting the biological nodes he had mapped throughout the fight. Every hit was precise, and every hit was useless, because Tian Cang simply refused to receive his body's pain signals in this moment. Ribs creaked. He did not let go.
Black blood from the fissures on his hand began to invade back, flowing into the opponent's body in the opposite direction of the suction, carrying something that even Tian Cang did not yet fully understand.
The skin on the Collector's wrist began to shrivel; his veins bulged and then collapsed as they were drained. He looked into Tian Cang's empty, dark eyes and, for the first time in his data-collecting life, he felt like he was looking into something that existed in no research paper.
"I am... hungry..."
Tian Cang's voice was deep and raspy, no longer the voice of a human in the fullest sense of the word.
He pulled the Collector close to his face, the distance between them closing to mere inches—enough to see every discoloring vein on the opponent's temple. Then he funneled all the power he had just drained into a single punch with his remaining hand. It was the punch of one who was simultaneously depleted and overflowing—contradictory and brutal in a way only the Blood Firmament could create.
BOOM!!!
A shockwave threw both of them in opposite directions. The surrounding shelves rattled, several collapsing under the momentum, metal clashing against metal to create a minor earthquake in the heart of the warehouse.
Silence returned.
Tian Cang knelt in a pool of blood, his body trembling violently with every breath.
His consciousness was teetering on the brink of a very physical collapse, like a building that had lost too many load-bearing pillars and only stood because the remaining pieces were leaning against each other. The red fissures had expanded to his eye sockets, running down the sides of his nose, radiating from the corners of his mouth like the lines of a map to hell. Under the red lights of the warehouse, he looked like something that had long since abandoned the choice to be human.
On the opposite side, the Collector rose slowly.
His dark clothes were in tatters, blood streaming from the corner of his mouth and one eye socket. The skin on his right wrist was shriveled and colorless, drained of something fundamental from within. He stood straight by pure will, but his feet were planted wider than usual to maintain balance—a detail Tian Cang, even in this state, managed to notice.
His gaze fixed on Tian Cang. This time, it was different. The cold curiosity of the researcher had vanished entirely, replaced by true wariness—the wariness of one who had just touched something he had never mapped and did not know what it would do next.
"Change of plans." His voice remained calm, but his speaking rate was a beat slower—the delay of one processing data faster than the speed of pronunciation. He raised his hand high, signaling the magic circle on the ceiling. "Subject exceeds individual control parameters. Transitioning to collective recovery protocol."
The magic circle on the ceiling erupted in a brilliant white light, so blinding that the deep red warehouse suddenly turned white for a split second.
Tian Cang tried to stand. His knees rose a few inches from the ground before buckling again. This Mortal Firmament body had been pushed too far, too fast, and now it was demanding back what it had given. His legs were completely devoid of sensation. Darkness from the edges of his vision began to pour in from all sides, devouring every piece of reality.
"Not... over..."
His voice was a mere whisper, the blood on his lips making every word heavier.
Before his mind completely sank into the void, he caught a glimpse through the closing black shroud—dozens of other silhouettes were grimly entering the warehouse from various directions. Each carried chains glowing with a cold, blue magical light, dragging them across the stone floor to create a rhythmic clanking like the theme music of something inevitable.
The Collector looked down at Tian Cang one last time. His voice returned to professional composure, but this time there was something else underneath—something even he hadn't yet named:
"You are the most interesting thing I have encountered in fifteen years of collection. The laboratory will be very pleased."
He paused for a beat.
"And I hope you are still lucid enough to remain interesting when you wake up."
Darkness devoured Tian Cang.
The hunt was not over. It had only transitioned to a more ruthless phase—the phase where the prey lay still, and the hunters began to carefully place the first chains.