Chapter 10: The Calculus of Humiliation
The steel pipe's final *clang* resonated like a funeral bell. Xia Yu recoiled, phantom pain lancing through her skull at the imagined blow. Meng Chen's fingers clawed at his bleeding crown, crimson trails mapping his descent from predator to prey across ashen features.
"Again!" He snarled through shattered bravado, the aristocrat's roar reduced to a wounded beast's whimper. "Dare you—!"
Chen obliged.
The strike landed with metronomic precision. Meng's world dissolved into vertiginous haze, Xia Yu's gasp threading through tinnitus' choir.
"Enough!" The heir's surrender emerged blood-flecked. "Quarter… I beg quarter!"
Chen surveyed trembling palms—adrenaline's retreat exposing marrow-deep depletion. "Mark this," he murmured, discarding the pipe like a spent cartridge, "next impertinence costs more than dignity."
His retreat faltered—knees betraying the charade. Forty prostrate mercenaries watched, blind to their conqueror's strength hanging by a silken thread.
---
**Transaction of Shame**
Meng's pupils dilated as Chen turned. "W-what further indignity?"
The extortion unfolded as a grotesque ballet. Chen's raised digits—three fingers signalling modest restitution—met Meng's strangled cry: "Three *million*? Highwayman's ransom!"
Truth crystallized in the charged air—huntsman stumbling upon the dragon's hoard.
"Three hundred thousand," Meng parleyed, the merchant prince resurfacing through agony. "Final covenant".
Chen's shrug veiled seismic triumph. "Transmit ere the moon's phase wanes."
"Or?" The heir's bravado flickered.
Chen's smile frosted vitrified air. "Your automotive disgrace awaits thirty million witnesses."
---
**Domestic Epilogue**
The Audi TT bore fading adrenaline and a fragile truce. Zhao Wan'er's grip whitened on the wheel, stolen glances tracing Chen's alabaster pallor.
"Desist your scrutiny," he jested, voice fraying at edges. "Vanity's mirror cracks under such a gaze."
"Your countenance rivals grease-stained vellum," she riposted, relief honing wit's blade.
Their repartee died at the penthouse threshold. Tang Mengru's glacial presence awaited—a matriarch carved from polar monoliths. The couple's entwined fingers ignited frost in her gaze.
Unseen diagnostics flickered:
**[VITAL RECUPERATION: 17%]**
**[NEXT ARCANUM UNSEALING: 41.7 HOURS]**
Elsewhere, Meng Chen's bloodied fingers danced across encrypted transfers. Xia Yu contemplated abandoned stilettos; her social ascension lay in ruins.
The chessboard quivered—pawns awakening to the endgame's inexorable tide.
No Scraps for Hounds
The penthouse air crackled with glacial tension. Tang Mengru, Zhao Bao'er, and Zhao Yi sat enthroned on the sofa, their synchronized scowls forming a tribunal of disdain.
Zhao Wan'er brandished the takeaway containers like peace offerings. "Feast! Wagyu from Four Seasons—Chen Liang's tribute!"
Chen's exhaustion-slurred protest died at her subtle wrist squeeze.
"Filial duty requires no applause," Tang sniffed, examining the congealed steak through opera glasses of prejudice.
Zhao Bao'er's gagging theatrics commenced—a morsel spat into a linen napkin. "Foetid and frigid! Is this slop for alley cats?"
"We delivered to Chen's family first," Zhao Wan'er explained, unwittingly detonating the matriarch's pride.
"So we're afterthoughts?" Tang's voice dropped to subzero. "Discarded scraps?"
Chen's fingers twitched toward the trash bin. "Declined? Then let the receptacle feast."
"Insolence!" Zhao Yi thundered. "Know your station!"
Chen's glacial stare resurrected balcony-leap memories. Tang's protest died unborn.
---
**Midnight Masquerade**
In their chamber, Chen collapsed across the bedspread—heroic façade crumbling. Zhao Wan'er's hesitant fingers undid buttons, peeled socks, and dabbed rosewater on the fevered brow.
A stolen kiss ghosted across his forehead. She captured the moment—crimson lipstick smudge immortalized then erased—a digital memento of thawing frost.
---
**Dawn's Arena**
Sunrise found them at the esports compound. Teammates gaped at Zhao Wan'er's ethereal beauty.
"Bro!" The jungler elbowed Chen. "Any clone sisters?"
"Only a succubus sibling," Chen muttered, visions of Zhao Bao'er's antics chilling his marrow.
---
**Courtside Pursuit**
Post-match, Xu Jiani's predatory gaze tracked the MVP jungler. Zhao Wan'er hauled her from the stadium.
"Release me!" Xu writhed. "My soulmate awaits!"
"Your 'soulmate' requires restraining orders, not courtship," Zhao Wan'er retorted, shoving her into the Audi TT.
The licence plate halted Xu's protest—numbers matching her abandoned dating app handle. Destiny's joke left her speechless.
**[SYSTEM ALERT: ROMANCE SUBPLOT ACTIVATED – "STALKER'S PARADOX"]**
**[TEAM MORALE BOOST: +15%]**
Chen's reflection grinned in the rearview. The game, it seemed, extended beyond digital arenas.
Gentlemen and Their Steeds: Non-Negotiable Assets
Xu Jiani circled the Audi TT with the reverence of a gemologist appraising the Hope Diamond. Her eyes brightened as her knuckles rapped the driver's window—a percussive summons demanding attention.
Zhao Wan'er lowered the glass, anticipating the inquisition. "Your chariot?" Xu pronounced, already breaching the vehicle's sanctum.
"Whose else would it be?"
"The stench of falsehood clings to you!" Xu's fingertips glided over the Nappa leather with sacrilegious ardour. "Confess—did you ensnare some sugar daddy's midlife crisis toy? Or has that corpulent tycoon finally—"
Zhao Wan'er brandished the certificate, its papery proof quelling the heresy. Xu's intake of breath drained the cabin of oxygen.
"Chen *Liang*?!" Her crimson-tipped finger trembled above the ownership script. "Since when does that pixel-wielding warrior command six-figure alchemy? Black-market organs?!"
"His entire gladiator's earnings," Zhao Wan'er murmured, pride and perplexity intertwined like a DNA helix.
Xu's mental gears churned. "Surrender this steed! I'll have that e-sports Adonis penning sonnets by dusk!"
"Steeds and paramours are not for loaning." Zhao Wan'er engaged the engine, leaving her confidante stranded in pedestrian limbo.
The license plate's numerals—a cryptic echo of Xu's abandoned Tinder cypher—escaped her notice. Destiny's quantum machinery hummed within the poetry of carbon monoxide.
**[SYSTEM ORACLE: MECHANIZED FATE ACHIEVED]**
**[NARRATIVE STRENGTH: +25% ALLURE POTENCY]**
Westward the Audi purred, its combustion rhythm syncing with Zhao Wan'er's enigmatic smile. Elsewhere in the datasphere, Chen Liang's dormant HUD flickered—phylogenetic skill matrices blooming toward uncharted trajectories.
Romance Forged in Defeat
Dr He Feng's index finger hovered above the smartphone screen like a falcon uncertain of its strike. The device illuminated his perplexity with cold blue light, frozen on an image of Chen Liang—sweat-sheened and mid-blunder during the League of Legends Pro League match.
"Decipher this hieroglyph!" he barked at the quivering medical intern.
"That's... esports, sir," stammered the intern, adjusting his crooked glasses. "The player—callsign Dreamer—washed-up veteran clinging to relevance..."
The screen erupted as commentators' voices sliced the sterile hospital air: *"A hair's breadth from triumph! Had Dreamer's Void-damned positioning—"*
Dr. He's stethoscope clattered to the linoleum unnoticed. "Chronicle his biological metrics! Circadian rhythms! Neural response intervals!"
The intern blinked owlishly. "You're... stanning an ADC?"
---
**Post-Battle Requiem**
In the competitors' sanctum, jungler Su Qingge lay prostrate across his mechanical keyboard, tears refracting rainbow LEDs into prismatic shame. Chen Liang's palm descended—not as a captain's rebuke, but as war-forged camaraderie. "Map control wins campaigns, not skirmishes."
Zhao Wan'er observed from the VIP gallery, her vermilion nails carving lunar crescents into her palms. Beside her, Xu Jiani vibrated with indignant energy, a hummingbird trapped in human form. "Judicial robbery! Your husband's squad was pillaged!"
---
**Culinary Intervention**
The trio occupied a private dining alcove where Xu Jiani's fork conducted symphonies of destruction upon her carbonara. "You *ingest* amid catastrophe?" She glared at Chen's methodical noodle twirling. "Qingge's psyche lies in tatters!"
Chen blotted chilli oil from his lips. "Shall I enact hunger strike protocol to validate your theatrics?"
Zhao Wan'er's stiletto connected with his tibia beneath the tablecloth. *Mercy*, her ocular semaphore insisted.
Xu brandished her phone—a paparazzi-grade capture of Su's tear-glazed interview close-up. "He requires solace! Mentorship! A... strategic confidant!"
Chen's eyebrow ascended millimetre by calculated millimetre. "My jungler's psychological resilience concerns you?"
"Transparently!" Crimson tides surged across Xu's décolletage. "I'm... invested in roster synergy!"
**[SYSTEM ORACLE: AMATORY ALGORITHMS ENGAGED]**
**[TEAM COHESION BUFF: +35% RESILIENCE]**
Chen extended his phone with funereal solemnity. "One conclave. You fracture his focus; I dismantle your French tips."
Xu's victory shriek drowned the restaurant's jazz quartet. Across the neon-drenched metropolis, Su Qingge's smartphone chimed—the dulcet tone of kismet's summons.
The Alchemist's Bargain
Xu Jiani's sip transmuted into aqueous rebellion, crystalline droplets anointing Chen Liang's face in accidental sacrilege. The ensuing hush congealed until her trembling napkins performed absolution upon his drenched visage.
"Ballistic hydration," she stammered, aurora blooming across her cheekbones. "Your verbal ordnance breached emotional fortifications."
Chen blotted his brow with sacerdotal gravitas. "Had I anticipated truth's ballistic trajectory..."
Zhao Wan'er's ocular stilettos sheathed further jests. "Provoke chaos, reap whirlwinds," she censured, though mirth pirouetted at her lips' periphery.
---
**The Cypher's Ransom**
Chen's phone irradiated the dimming bistro. Su Qingge's holographic spectre materialised—digital exhaustion etched in RGB hieroglyphs. "The rift between gank timings and social obligations demands bridgework tonight."
Xu's cutlery clanged a martial cadence. "The cypher! His private frequency! Immediate extraction!"
Chen capitulated numerical runes under siege, observing Xu's triumphant digits executing cryptographic ballet. Across the metropolis' quantum sprawl, Su Qingge's device vibrated—an encrypted hailing from destiny's switchboard.
---
**Sanctum of Vital Flux**
Dr. He Feng manifested in Chen Liguo's sterile chamber like Thanatos' envoy. "Your progeny's arcane perception is requisitioned," he intoned, bypassing Confucian decorum. "A patriarch's essence ebbs toward stygian shores."
Chen Liang suspended his spring roll mid-ascent—a culinary pendulum between filial duty and cosmic jest. "My therapeutic credentials terminate at adhesive bandages."
Cardiac monitors pulsed Morse-code gravitas. "The Mo Dynasty's cornerstone haemorrhages chronovital essence. Your... unconventional diagnostics..."
Beyond antiseptic walls, black SUVs disgorged Mo Siyu's panicked retinue. ER doors exploded beneath her Delphi cry: "The seer beyond radiography—where resides he?"
**[SYSTEM ORACLE: BLOODLINE GAMBIT INITIATED]**
**[PRESTIGE UNLOCKED: "OBSCURA MEDICUS"]**
Chen's chopsticks descended. Between virtual glory and ancestral obligation, the Fates' loom wove new tapestries in shadowed threads.
Crucible of Arrogance
Chen Liang's perplexity mirrored the suspended animation gripping Zhao Wan'er and Chen Liguo as Dr. He Feng's entreaty hung like an anaesthetic fog in the antiseptic atmosphere. "Lend your arcane sight to preserve a waning flame," the physician implored, his stethoscope coiling like a chastened serpent.
"Since when do I traffic in Hippocratic mysteries?" Chen parried, syllables edged with celestial sarcasm.
The doctor's mandible hardened. "This enigma laughs at our scanners' binary logic. Your… *particular perspicacity*—"
Zhao Wan'er interposed, her tone a lancet of pragmatism. "Where mortality's scales tremble, observe—but let wisdom temper valour." Her gaze channelled generations of matriarchal prudence, alchemised into ocular semaphore.
---
**Confluence of Karmic Currents**
Beyond sterile walls, Meng Chen's Lamborghini Aventador—vermilion Leviathan of combustion hubris—screeched through hospital gates, its polished flanks scarred by Mo Siyu's armoured Mercedes.
"Ocular-deficient troglodyte!" Meng thundered, storming forth until recognition glacialized his arteries. Mo Siyu's arctic stare transmuted his wrath to cosmic dust.
"Restitution?" she crooned, shredding a cheque scribed with eight nulls. "The Mo Dynasty favours… *holistic remediation."
Her obsidian-clad retinue descended, transmuting the hypercar into kinetic sculpture via sledgehammer sonata. Meng folded beside his snivelling paramour, scorched carbon fragrance mingling with shame's acrid perfume.
---
**Labyrinth of Misapprehension**
Within ER chaos, Mo Siyu misattributed Zhou Wei, starched intern clutching clipboard carapace, as Chen Liang. "Dissect this riddle!" she commanded, thrusting her grandfather's ashen corpse forward.
Zhou's diagnostic theatre collapsed when a nurse's sibilant truth pierced the drama: "Dr. He invoked the *other* hierophant—he who perceives where machinery gropes blindly."
Mo's nephrite eyes narrowed to daggers. Somewhere beyond the sterile bedlam, Chen Liang advanced—unaware his lineage's slumbering diagnostics prepared to redraft triage dogmas.
**[SYSTEM ORACLE: HEMATOLOGICAL RECALIBRATION CONFIRMED]**
**[CLINICAL INTUITION ASCENDED: ÆTHERIC TIER III]**
Destiny's capacitor hummed as paradigms collided—algorithmic medicine's cold calculus versus ancestral scrying glowing in Chen's pupils. Overhead fluorescents stuttered, sensing reality's tectonic shift.
The Charlatan's Delusion
Zhou Wei's mandible clenched beneath Mo Siyu's ocular dissection. The nurse's revelation dangled like Damocles' blade above his charade, yet his pride, tempered in crucibles of academic conquest, remained unyielding.
"Preposterous," he hissed through veneered civility. "That alleyway mountebank lacks even rudimentary licensure. I am He Feng's anointed successor!"
Mo's nephrite gaze sharpened. Behind her, Meng Chen performed grotesque marionette motions, his bandaged cranium oscillating. "Paternal insistence compels me to seek your thaumaturge," he simpered, desperation oozing like suppurating wounds. "Though celestial MO priorities naturally eclipse my mortal concerns!"
Zhou commandeered the distraction. "Arm the helical tomography array," he barked at cowering orderlies, saline pearls burgeoning at his hairline. "Third sanctum diagnostics shall illuminate all mysteries."
The retinue of physicians exchanged Cassandra glances. "The patriarch's humoral balance cannot sustain—"
"Silence!" Zhou's vocal cords vibrated with whipcrack authority. "Do I not wear He Feng's mantle?"
As the procession ascended, Nurse Liu breached emergency portals. She discovered Dr. He and Chen Liang mid-cadence, their silhouettes stretched into gothic proportions by clinical luminescence.
"Zhou plays Erysichthon with Mo's vitality!" she keened. "His scans reap what flesh cannot endure!"
Chen was petrified. From unseen heights, monitors ululated—not mechanical alerts, but banshee wails of ancestral wraiths sensing sacrilege.
**[SYSTEM PROPHECY: VITAL FLUX CRISIS IMMINENT]**
**[HEMATOLOGICAL HERESY DETECTED: 99.7%]**
Mo Siyu's scream ricocheted through the ventilation catacombs as Zhou confronted the CT readouts—not diagnostic glyphs, but chthonic sigils searing through the screen. The scanner's maw emitted rubicund hellglow, its drone descending to Stygian registers.
Chen's footfalls earthquaked through concrete ascents, his ocular spheres bleeding auric fire. Certain arcane truths, he apprehended, demanded violent revelation.
Masquerade Unmasked
Chen Liang contemplated the cosmic absurdity of his doppelgänger—an erudite physician parroting a schoolyard dropout's guise. The paradox hung denser than surgical sterilization fumes.
Zhao Wan'er's porcelain brow creased. "What celestial jest…" Her query dissolved like incense smoke, leaving existential dust motes dancing in fluorescence.
Dr. He Feng's carotid arteries pulsed vermilion. Without preamble or protocol, he ascended toward the triage sanctum, professional disgrace radiating from his starch-stiffened collar like gamma waves.
---
**Amphitheater of Retribution**
The CT chamber portals parted with pneumatic judgment, revealing Zhou Wei's operatic downfall. Mo Chuanhe thrashed amidst electrocardiographic ruins, monitor tracings shattering like vitrified fates. Mo Siyu's jade-carved composure fissured, dynastic hauteur devolving into primal wrath.
"You swore oaths of competence!" Her lacquered talons constricted Zhou's windpipe. "Where lies this vaunted erudition?"
Zhou's academic edifice crumbled. "The apparatus… unforeseen variables…"
"Apparatus?" Dr. His timbre quaked the sterile air. "You indict machinery for Icarus' folly?"
Chen advanced, aureate luminescence bleeding through his peripheries. To mortal witnesses, merely fluorescence's dance. To ancestral watchers murmuring through air ducts—a bloodline's reawakening.
**[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: LINEAGE COGNIZANCE ACTIVATED]**
Mo Siyu crystallized mid-tirade. The interloper's sudden metamorphosis—alleyway vagrant merged with forgotten healing archon—momentarily stilled her typhoon.
"Evacuate this mausoleum," Chen decreed, palms already tracing sigils above Mo Chuanhe's convulsing corpus. "None remain save the fading patriarch."
Dr. He marshalled the exodus. Zhou lunged for redemption's crumbs. "Permit me to—"
"Your permit expired at Revelation's threshold." Chen's verdict brooked no appeal. As portals sealed, cardiac monitors flatlined in macabre concert with Zhou's career.
Beyond sterile walls, Meng Chen vibrated with epiphany. "The charlatan who fractured my cranium…" His hyena laughter ricocheted through clinical corridors. "…now salvages aristocracy's linchpin!"
Cosmic scales shuddered, undecided where to apportion karmic mockery's weight.
Final Covenant of Salvation
Mo Siyu's alabaster brow fissured like Song-dynasty porcelain as she barred Chen Liang's advance. Behind her, Mo Chuanhe's faltering respiration rasped like ancestral relics shifting in ceremonial urns.
"Credentials", she demanded, her diction glacially precise enough to embalm the physicians' dangling stethoscopes. "What forbidden arts do you practise sans licensure?"
Chen's grip tightened around Zhao Wan'er's hand—his lodestar amidst the maelstrom of distrust. "I brandish neither scalpel nor spectrometer," he countered, auric halos bleeding through his periphery. "Only ancestral whispers in the haematological tide."
The medical retinue erupted like affronted rooks:
"Mountebank!"
"Desecrator of Hippocratic sanctity!"
"Should the patriarch's qi extinguish—"
He Feng's basso profundo cleaved the clamour. "You cawing jackdaws!" The venerable physician's digit stabbed toward convulsive EKG tracings. "His life's thread frays swifter than your evaporating relevance!"
Mo Siyu vacillated between filial piety and modernist doubt. Her grandfather's sudden haemorrhagic expulsion—crimson deluge defiling her Hermès sleeves—catalyzed resolution. "Proceed," she decreed, dynastic composure fracturing like Jingdezhen celadon. "But mark this—"
**[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: HEMATOLOGICAL RECONSTITUTION AT 99.8%]**
Chen's palms hovered above Mo's xiphoid process as monitors shrieked dissonant requiems. Not machinery's lament, but the ululation of roused lineage sentinels. Fluorescents dimmed, supplanted by chrysoprase tendrils threading through the patriarch's jingluo channels.
Zhou Wei's retreating imprecations haunted the air ducts—"Perish in conflagration, gutter alchemist!"—as Chen's consciousness plunged into the sanguineous labyrinth of Mo's compromised vital essence.
Mo Siyu's breath caught. Where tomography revealed necrosis, Chen's inner sight exposed chthonic symbiotes—centuries-old familial hexes masquerading as amyloid deposits. His digits choreographed a proscribed diagnostic pavane, each motion eroding the physicians' complacent certitude.
"Preposterous…" stammered a silver-maned cardiologist, witnessing calcified vasculature dissolve like rock candy in oolong. "This transgresses all—"
"Still your tongue!" He Feng's edict carried trepanning sharpness. "You witness renaissance incarnate and dare brand it heresy?"
The auric luminescence intensified. Mo Chuanhe's eyelids fluttered—not with geriatric tremor, but the stirrings of a slumbering lung dragon.
**[CLAN COVENANT: HEMATOLOGICAL PURIFICATION ACHIEVED]**
As the final spectral parasite desiccated, Chen crumpled against the clinical linoleum. Mo Siyu's stiletto arrested millimetres from his jugular. "Should this prove artifice—"
"Palpate… his taiyin pulse…" Chen gasped, ancestral diagnostics leaching him paler than autopsy marble.
The chief physician's fingers alighted on revitalized meridians. "By Zhang Zhongjing's scrolls… The channels… they resonate!"
Dawn's inaugural rays lanced through observation panes as Mo Chuanhe surged upright, bellowing for congee. The medical coterie gaped—high priests of allopathy beholding a phoenix resurrection.
He Feng pressed a tremulous palm to Chen's sodden brow. "Tonight you redrafted Galen's canon."
"Merely… exhumed neglected… ancestral codices," Chen rasped, Zhao Wan'er's embrace his sole bulwark against oblivion's tide.
Beyond sterile walls, Meng Chen's vulpine cachinnation reverberated. "The cranium-cracking rogue just resuscitated the aristocracy's phoenix!"
Destiny's balance, finally and irrevocably, tilted.
Sovereign's Decree
Mo Siyu's jade-carved countenance rippled with imperceptible turbulence as Chen Liang met her ultimatum with glacial equipoise. Zhao Wan'er's grasp became an anchor chain of silent supplication, her knuckles blanching like temple marble.
"Should remedies dwell within your grasp?" She entreated, voice quivering like silk strands in a tempest.
Chen remained a monolith, weathering rhetorical monsoons. His silence exacted tribute—not capitulation, but reparation for He Feng's besmirched integrity.
---
**The Compact**
Mo Siyu's epicanthic contours sharpened. "The Mo dynasty elevates to empyrean heights or consigns to oblivion," she proclaimed, dynastic hauteur reforged into Valyrian steel. "Your diagnostic rites—no mechanized auguries permitted."
"Unconditionally refused." Chen's rebuttal cleaved the antiseptic atmosphere.
Compromise emerged through gritted molars: "He Feng bears witness. One transgression, and your bloodline settles the debt."
The physician's presence became both arbiter and manacle. As they propelled Mo Chuanhe's pallet inward, monitors keened electronic dirges.
---
**Retribution's Stage**
Beyond the sanctum, Meng Chen presented Zhou Wei as a sacrificial offering. "This mountebank sought a coward's escape!"
Mo's gaze crystallized into lethal obsidian shards. "Complicit silence shares guilt's burden." Her nod unchained obsidian-clad Furies. Zhou's whimpers dissolved into ventilation catacombs—prelude to dynastic reckoning.
Meng's triumphant rictus curdled as Mo's wrath refocused. "Your belated confession reeks of conspiratorial miasma."
"N-never! The concubine—"
His taloned grip on Xia Yu's tresses became a grotesque pantomime. "Your negligence—"
"Terminate this mummery!" Mo's edict petrified accuser and pawn alike. "Your theatrics profane ancestral adjudication."
---
**Sanctum of Epiphany**
Within the sealed chamber, He Feng's stylus hovered above vellum purity. "Guide my hand."
Chen's digits phantasmagoria across Mo Chuanhe's meridian cartography. "Transcribe the waltz of corrupted shen."
The elder physician's respiration faltered. Where mortal sight perceived cyanotic flesh, Chen's touch unveiled chthonic symbiotes—millennial lineage hexes undulating beneath epidermal parchment.
**[SYSTEM ANNUNCIATION: GENERATIONAL MALEDICTION MANIFESTATION – TIER IX]**
He Feng's calligraphic flow fractured as auric tendrils erupted from Chen's phalanges, embroidering Mo's corporeal tapestry with redemption's golden thread.
"Inconceivable…" The physician's exhalation trembled with hierophantic awe. "This transcends diagnosis—you conduct an exorcism!"
Chen's pallor deepened to necropolitan alabaster. "Merely… reconciling ledgers… betwixt quick and ancestral debts."
Mo Chuanhe's sudden inhalation resonated like a temple bell's renaissance. The monitors' electronic cacophony stilled—not deathly silence, but the hush of cosmic revelation.
**[BLOODLINE EQUILIBRIUM ATTAINED]**
Beyond the portal, Mo Siyu's ancestral jade pectoral shattered—an omen etched in dynastic star charts millennia past.
The Covenant's Toll
He Feng's faith in Chen Liang remained unshakeable, yet his clinician's intellect rebelled against the unfolding impossibility. The physician's stylus hovered above diagnostic scrolls like a necromancer's rod awaiting otherworldly dictation.
Chen's fingertips grazed Mo Chuanhe's vellum-textured wrist, aureate luminescence seeping through lowered lids. "The patient's sanguineous essence defies mortal taxonomy," he intoned, lexemes thrumming with dynastic imperative.
He Feng's brow corrugated like sacred scripture. Pulse divination unveiling haematological rarities? This blasphemed against Galen's canon.
**[SYSTEM COVENANT: HEMATOLOGICAL DEVIATION REVEALED]**
"Dermal matrices unravel at the stratum germinativum," Chen continued, his cadence echoing through the antiseptic nave. "Hepatic putrefaction manifests as…"
The prognosis fractured mid-syllable. Through auric scrying, Chen perceived chthonic filaments asphyxiating the hepatic sanctum—neither carcinoma nor fibrosis, but older, darker.
He Feng's stylus snapped. "You falter before the fulcrum."
Chen's muteness resonated louder than monastic bells. The physician swept forth, returning with vials of histamine suppressants that scarcely veiled his eroding orthodoxy.
---
**Amphitheater of Disillusion**
Beyond the sanctum, Mo Siyu's nephrite gaze dissected the pharmacological cypher. "These palliatives merely mute the symphony of decay!"
"Your patriarch's affliction transcends mortal apothecaries' craft," He Feng riposted, gesturing toward Chen's trance-enshrouded form. "What he beholds…"
Monitors chose that moment to ululate. Mo Chuanhe's frame arched like a recurve bow at full draw, stygian effluvium oozing from every somatic aperture.
**[SYSTEM PROPHECY: BLOODLINE HEX MANIFESTATION IMMINENT]**
Chen's palms erupted in chrysoprase conflagration. "The canker gnaws at the ancestral rootstock!" His timbre acquired metallic harmonics, lineage sentinels vocalising through him. "This mandates…"
Mo Siyu's stiletto heel fissured linoleum. "Articulate your tithe, hierophant!"
The auric blaze dimmed. Chen met her scrutiny; mortality reasserted. "A compact etched in haematite and joss smoke."
He Feng's parchment spiralled groundward, its terminal glyphs smouldering with interdicted sigils:
*Diagnosis: Generational Malediction*
*Prescription: Ancestral Exorcism*
The hospital's Tesla coils surged as archaic covenants stirred beneath foundation stones. Somewhere in the neon labyrinth, Zhou Wei's final shriek harmonized with interrogation room echoes—his destiny now irrevocably bound to forces eluding Hippocrates' grasp.
Debt of Fealty
Mo Siyu's unflinching candour arrested Chen Liang's thoughts mid-flight, her gaze sharper than obsidian scalpels. In the antiseptic nave's liminal gloaming, their silhouettes stretched like ancestral wraiths locked in ritual combat.
"Articulate your tribute," she decreed, dynastic hauteur tempered into Damascus steel.
Chen's pulse quickened—a hummingbird beneath the xiphoid bone. "The celestial artefact from Jiaxing's reliquary."
Silence crystallized between them, fractured solely by distant defibrillator cadences. Mo's vermilion nails drummed a Morse code against her crocodile-skin portfolio—a chronometer quantifying imperial pragmatism against mortal temerity.
"For ancestral salvation?" Her mirth carried permafrost's bite. "A diagnostician extorting sacred armaments?"
"Haematological imperative," Chen riposted, auric glimmers flickering beneath veiled lids. The falsehood burned like sacramental incense—bloodline sentinels denouncing his sacrilege.
**[BLOODLINE ORACLE: CELESTIAL ARTIFACT SYMBIOSIS 78.3%]**
Mo's jade talisman flared in harmonic resonance, its phoenix relief undulating against the sudden golden radiance. "Manifest remediation", she hissed, "or that artefact becomes your mausoleum stele."
---
**Theater of Atonement**
Within the sanctum of judgement, Zhou Wei's supplications escalated into lupine ululations. "Clemency, Mo-gūniang! I served Asclepius' sacred—"
He Feng's palm descended like an executioner's blade. "Still your tongue! You profaned the Hippocratic litany!" The slap's resonance lingered—spectral censure.
Chen's ingress suspended the rite. Zhou's ocular spheres protruded—venom and entreaty fused.
"Prostrate", He Feng's voice thundered, "before your absolution's architect!"
Zhou's genuflection unfolded in marionette spasms, frontal bone impacting linoleum in tripartite devotion. "Homage… Archmage Chen…" Each lexeme distilled alchemical gall.
**[BLOODLINE PROPHECY: RESENTMENT VIRULENCY 92.4%]**
Chen's auric scrying unveiled chthonic filaments constricting Zhou's meridians—generational hexes glutting on vocational ignominy.
---
**Pact of Shadows**
As vespertine hues bled through clinical fenestration, Mo pressed a lacquered reliquary into Chen's grasp. The war bow's qi lashed against his palm, its draconian limbs thrumming with entombed dynastic chronicles.
"Seven solar cycles," she prophesied. "Fail, and your lineage becomes marginalia in Mo genealogies."
The artefact's awakening surge staggered Chen. Chrysoprase filaments erupted from his irises, embroidering the bow's ancient striations—bloodline resonance transcribing cellular memoria.
**[CELESTIAL SYMBIOSIS ACHIEVED]**
In the charnel sanctum below, Mo Chuanhe's biosensor leads disengaged autonomously, coiling into tantric mandalas. Somewhere in the neon labyrinth, a jade phoenix effigy wept vitriolic tears.
Karmic Collisions
Zhou Wei stood transfixed, ocular flames smouldering with academic indignation. His whitened knuckles pulsed like trapped lightning—alternately clenching and recoiling in rhythm with wounded hubris.
"Gratitude... Master Chen..." The coerced homage curdled upon his tongue like rancid ambrosia.
He Feng's disillusionment permeated the air, thicker than anaesthetic vapours, sharper than bone saws. "When shall you transcend this intellectual myopia?" The elder physician's murmur carried aeons of pedagogical anguish. "That 'fortuitous conjecture' salvaged your vocational existence!"
Zhou's leather soles echoed through abandoned passageways. Nurses' stifled mirth pursued him like Erinyes, their muffled cachinnations crystallising into perpetual professional spectres.
---
**Confluence of Fates**
Meng Chen's rictus grin resembled rigor mortis incarnate. "What... improbable synchronicity..."
"Cosmic jest indeed." Chen's smile glinted like sterilized trepanning tools. "Three hundred thousand yuan's worth of karmic alignment."
The debt suspended between them—unsettled calculus of cranial trauma and dynastic disgrace. Meng's Patek Philippe-clad wrist spasmed toward his Bottega Veneta billfold before arresting mid-tremor.
"Phased remittance?" The entreaty emerged strangled.
Chen's chuckle resonated with ancestral derision. "Usury accrues diurnally." His valedictory palm upon Meng's deltoid imprinted phantom fractures in blue-blooded pride.
---
**Sanctum of Obfuscation**
Zhao Wan'er's intuition thrummed like positron emission tomography. "That man's gaze harboured... familiar malice."
"Mere ludic wagers." Chen's prevarication flowed smoother than Ringer's solution.
He Feng observed from diagnostic shadows, clinical intellect dissecting the mendacity. The physician's digits traced invisible meridian cartographies—divining truths no MRI could unveil.
---
**Digital Pantheon**
Returning to his cathode-ray sanctum, Chen's gaming rig pulsated to unholy life. The login interface blazed with auguries—197 unread missives from the Celestial Kingdom's premier chordate virtuoso.
Xu Jianing's livestream viewer metric ascended stratospherically, her digital avatar simpering with algorithmic coquetry. As the witching hour tolled, queued adversaries materialised—pixelated gladiators thirsting for sanguinary sport.
**[BLOODLINE ORACLE: LEGACY QUEST ASCENDANCY – "PATH OF THE UNDEFEATED"]**
Chen's phalanges danced across mechanical sigils, auric luminescence bleeding into monitor radiance. Somewhere in the concrete labyrinth, the war bow vibrated within its lacquered reliquary, patient as a stalking tiger awaiting celestial dawn.
The Unyielding Covenant
Aurora's nascent glow found Chen Liang's cellular device vibrating with preternatural insistence, rousing his devoted adjunct from somnolent reveries. The screen's cryptic "Unknown" identifier shimmered like a digital sphinx awaiting decryption.
"Dawn's envoy, Lady Mo?" Chen's smirk resonated with ancestral prescience. Through the receiver, he discerned the restrained exultation in her respiration—the subtle staccato of an aristocratic scion cornered.
The war bow's imminent advent electrified his neural conduits. Quintessential clairvoyance glimmered at cognition's periphery—a gilded horizon pledging diagnostic omnipotence.
---
**Pantheon of Disclosures**
Mo Siyu's onyx Maybach whispered into the cybernetic coliseum, its tinted fenestration mirroring the players' somnolent bewilderment. The security portcullis' metallic lament transmuted into fanfare heralding dynastic adjudication.
"Your... professional demesne?" Her vermilion talon traced the gaming altar's contours, jadeite optics dissecting the neon-illuminated sanctum. Behind her, the obsidian-clad acolyte cradled the lacquered reliquary like a sacramental vestment.
The ensemble's neophyte—nineteen winters old and endocrinally valiant—executed a pantomime genuflection. "Salutations, celestial sibling of spousal affinity! I am—"
"Terminate this mummery!" Chen's interjection harmonized amusement and exigency. "Mere vocational association."
Mo's brow ascended—a damask blade of decapitation. "Virtual gladiatorial virtuoso? This elucidates your... polymathic proclivities."
---
**Pact of Adamant**
The reliquary's ormolu fastenings disengaged with sepulchral finality. Within carmine plush reposed the war bow—its reflexed limbs murmuring ancestral battlefield liturgies.
"Reaffirm our compact." Mo's digit suspended the transference mid-ritual. "Deficiency begets repossession."
Chen's palms hovered above the artefact, auric filaments already pirouetting at his periphery. "Diagnostic certitude demands—"
"—manifestations, not sophistry." Her interruption bore the mass of jade mortuary tablets. "The Mo lineage eschews speculative commerce."
**[BLOODLINE ORACLE: ARTIFACT SYMBIOSIS COMMENCED]**
---
**Defiant Prophecy**
As the acolyte relinquished the reliquary, chronal distortions rippled through the arena. Chen's pupils expanded into chrysoprase maelstroms—ancestral diagnostics recomposing cellular scripture.
"You postulate invulnerability." Chen's timbre acquired metallic resonance. "Yet destiny's loom weaves capricious tapestries."
Mo's valedictory laughter crystallized atmospherically. "Paltry thaumaturge—the Mo dynasty genuflects to no seer!" Her stilettos percussed toward egress, each cadence a glyph in their discordant duel.
Chen's grasp closed upon the bow's haft. The artefact thrummed—not mechanical oscillation, but the visceral purr of a slumbering bellicose deity.
"Chronicle this epoch," he murmured to the deserted vestibule. "Your certitude's epitaph shall be graven in nephrite."
**[BLOODLINE COVENANT: QUINTESSENTIAL CLAIRVOYANCE UNSEALED]**
Beyond, the Maybach's engine roared vivified. Somewhere in the metropolis' medical ziggurats, Mo Chuanhe's monitors experienced momentary thanatopsis before resurrecting in auric harmonics.
Covenants Carved in Permafrost
Mo Siyu's valedictory smile suspended temporal flow—a lethal curvature of lips that petrified the stairwell's spectators. To the cyber-athletes, this transcended mere aesthetics, their thoracic cages constricting as though pierced by glacial projectiles.
"Serpent of duplicity!" jested the team's neophyte, forearm slung across Chen's shoulders like a heraldic accusation. "Our chaste sister Zhao awaits, yet you woo nephrite phoenixes!"
Guffaws erupted—raucous yet ephemeral, veiling their unspoken veneration of Chen's inexplicable allure. Formerly fractured by competitive friction, their camaraderie now coalesced into this liturgy of irreverence. Chen's mock-glare dispersed the pack, their retreating jests reverberating through neon-illuminated aisles.
---
**Sanctum of Epiphany**
In solitude's embrace, Chen's digits quivered above the lacquered reliquary. The war bow manifested—its patina murmuring of antediluvian battlefields. A cryogenic aura permeated the chamber, rime blossoming across monitors as ancestral qi duelled silicon circuitry.
**[ORACLE: TIER V CLAIRVOYANCE ENGAGED]**
The artefact's true visage unveiled: onyx limbs etched with obliterated dynastic sigils, a bowstring oscillating at frequencies beyond mortal audition. Chen's drawing attempts proved futile—the armament rejecting all but its predestined champion.
"*Lineage resonance inadequate,*" intoned the cranial metallic chorus. "*Awaiting hematological imprimatur.*"
---
**Digital Apotheosis**
The bow dematerialized into cerulean quanta, absorbed into transdimensional archives. Chen's vision fragmented into holographic codices:
- **Hawkshot Supremacy (Tier V)**: Ballistic algorithms overwriting optic neural pathways
- **Cryogenic Armory Unsealed**: Stasis projectiles capable of suspending cellular chronometry.
- **Honor Bourse**: 10,000:1 alchemical ratio for fiat currency to "Gloria Points"
A phantasmal agora materialized—corridors of nebulous armaments guarded by jade golems. The war bow radiated atop an obsidian dais, its price sigil fluctuating: *10,000 GP/min*. Chen's residual aureus—solitary golden sentinel—mocked from the interface's periphery.
---
**Stratagem's Loom**
The system's ultimatum pulsed crimson: *Elect secondary aptitude for apotheosis.* Chen's cognition cascaded through permutations—diagnostic scrying for Mo Chuanhe's malady? Combative prescience against Meng's bravos? Each selection wove divergent fate-tapestries.
Externally, mirth echoed as comrades analysed match records. Unseen, Chen's irises momentarily crystallized into fractal ice glyphs—the Frost Huntress's bequest testing its nascent vessel.
"*You question my indispensability, Mo Siyu?*" he whispered, phalanges tracing ectoplasmic bowstring indentations. "*Yet your dynasty's redemption dwells not in opulence, but in permafrost-preserved blood oaths.*"
**[BLOODLINE SYNCHRONIZATION: 39.7%]**
In the metropolis's fiscal quarter, Mo's jade pectoral fissured along its phoenix relief—a capillary fracture exuding auric luminescence. The war bow's absence commenced reality's recoding.
Retribution
"System Notification: Soraka's Astral Infusion skill acquired!"
"Tier: Novice (Level 1)"
"Proficiency: 0/100"
"Primary Effect: Vitality Transfusion"
"Current Capacity: Ephemeral mending of superficial wounds through stamina expenditure."
"Secondary Effect: Sustenance Augmentation"
"Current Capacity: Imbuing comestibles with basic therapeutic properties."
"Warning: Skill activation accelerates fatigue. Proficiency progression enables automatic ascension."
"Tip: Gold reserves may accelerate stamina recovery and skill mastery."
Chen Liang stared at the holographic interface, its cerulean glow reflecting in his widened eyes. This newfound power differed from Ashe's Hawk Shot, where that ability had sharpened his perception; this pulsed with paradoxical duality.
*If sustenance becomes salve...
His breath hitched. The implications cascaded through his mind like dominoes – Ashe's ocular mastery had proven invaluable against Song's machinations. What alchemical wonders might this celestial mending unveil?
A cold smirk twisted his lips. Let Mo Siyu posture with her medical consortiums and diagnostic arrays. While her father's physicians floundered with symptomatic treatments, he'd cultivate this embryonic power. Soon enough, the Ice Princess herself would kneel before his threshold, supplicant to his growing arsenal.
---
**Guanglan Residences**
Zhao Wan'er's hand lingered on the Audi TT's door handle, her gaze drawn to the empty sidewalk. Two years of synchronized footsteps were silenced. The custom license plate – [CH♡WAN] – gleamed accusingly beneath parking lot fluorescents.
The engine's purr couldn't drown memory's whispers: Chen Liang materializing like a wrathful guardian against blade-wielding loan sharks, his foolish grin when presenting this extravagant gift, the way he'd carried her mother from that abandoned warehouse, bloodied but unbowed.
Her manicured nails bit into palms. *He offered his entirety, while I clutched parental lies like armour.* The admission soured like curdled milk beneath her breastbone.
---
**Jiaxin Auction Gallery**
The showroom's marble floors amplified conspiratorial murmurs. Colleagues clustered like carrion birds, their feigned concern poorly veiling ghoulish fascination.
"Darling Wan!" A saccharine voice pierced the din – Lina, the junior appraiser who'd once mistaken Chen's Audi for her sugar daddy's arrival. "Zhou Li's been... *altered."
Zhao arched an ebony eyebrow. "The terminated embezzler?"
Lina's whisper slithered forth: "Facial reconstruction via boyfriend's switchblade. Rumour claims she's compiling ledgers of grievance."
The coven erupted.
"Always said that man had felonious eyes!"
"You mooned over his Maserati last autumn!"
As vulturine banter escalated, Lina's talon-like grip detained Zhao's wrist. "They say you're her ledger's crimson entry."
Gallery lights flickered.
Zhao's laughter rang like shattering crystal. "Let the ledger swell. Truth remains my bulwark."
Yet twilight found her lingering at the authentication desk, paranoia coiling like smoke.
*Perhaps Chen's presence would...
---
**Nightfall**
Moonlight bled through vaulted windows as Zhao secured the gallery. Her Louboutins echoed through deserted corridors.
The final deadbolt clicked.
Silence.
Then – the whisper of leather soles on marble.
Shadows congealed.
To be continuous…