The guards stepped forward, their boots clicking against the sterile floor. Wenzhi didn’t move, his body limp and seemingly broken by the days of starvation, but his dull grey eyes were hyper-focused, instinctively locking onto the weapons strapped to their vests.

The moment the first guard reached down and roughly yanked him to his feet by his collar, Wenzhi unleashed the entirety of his remaining adrenaline.

He drove his elbow back, slamming it directly into the first guard’s gut. The man gasped, his air cutting out instantly, and in that second Wenzhi snatched the heavy gun clean out of the guard’s holster.

Before the second guard could even react, Wenzhi spun.

BANG.

The point-blank blast echoed deafeningly in the cramped metal cell. The round tore straight through the guard’s skull, shattering it instantly and spraying blood and brain matter across the pristine white wall.

Without breaking a breath, Wenzhi moved back to the first guard who was still wheezing from the elbow strike. Wenzhi pressed the barrel directly against the man’s chest plate and pulled the trigger.

BANG.

The force blew a gaping, smoking hole right through the center of the guard’s torso. The man staggered back a single, bloody step before collapsing into a lifeless heap.

Wenzhi didn’t waste a heartbeat. His trembling, dehydrated hands swung the gun around, aiming directly between Wu Youran’s eyes, and fired.

BANG.

A dense, swirling vortex of grey mist erupted from her body, forming a shield.

Before Wenzhi could adjust his aim, a tendril of her grey mist lashed out like a striking viper. It wrapped around his right wrist with a crushing, bone-snapping force.

Wenzhi let out a sharp grunt of pain, his fingers involuntarily opening but instead of letting the weapon drop, he purposefully released it, catching the falling gun with his left hand.

He didn’t get the chance to fire. Youran’s expression hardened, and a massive wave of grey mist flooded the cell, wrapping tightly around his entire torso and pinning his arms to his sides.

She slammed him harshly against the reinforced metal wall. A separate strand of mist coiled around the pistol, ripping it entirely out of his left hand and tossing it into the cell.

A deep, furious frown settled onto Youran’s face as she stared at the two dead guards and the blood painting her pristine cell.

"Why the hell can’t you just cooperate?" she snapped, her voice vibrating with annoyance.

Wenzhi scoffed, a ragged, breathless laugh tearing from his throat. His chest heaved against the constricting mist, his vision already swimming from the sudden exertion on an empty stomach.

"Are you... are you actually listening to yourself right now? You bastards are literally trying to murder me. Do you honestly expect me to just stand still and let it happen?"

"You’re already trying to kill yourself anyway since you aren’t eating or drinking," she retorted, looking down at him with cold disdain. "But who am I to judge? You’re going to die either way."

She dropped the mist, letting Wenzhi collapse in a weak heap onto the floor. Youran turned on her heel and stormed out of the blood-splattered room.

The heavy door slid closed behind her.

Instantly, a faint, hissing sound echoed from the overhead vents. A completely transparent, odorless smoke began to rapidly sip into the tight cell. Wenzhi tried to cover his mouth with his sleeve, but his starved lungs were already demanding oxygen.

He let out a sharp cough as the toxic gas bypassed his weak defenses instantly.

Within seconds, the lights began to blur, the red stains on the wall fading into shadows, and Wenzhi’s world instantly turned pitch black.

~

"I thought you said he was a B-rank guide?"

"He is a B-rank."

"Then... what are you seeing on the monitor?"

"I... it is incredibly rare for a Guide’s rank to move upward. It happens, yes, but it is... well, rare."

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"I mean his energy signature just broke the upper threshold. He is an S-rank Guide, not a B-rank."

Wenzhi drifted awake to the sharp voices echoing directly above him. The words penetrated his foggy mind, shocking him, but his body was too exhausted and heavily drugged to even twitch a finger or force his eyelids open.

"What do you mean he’s an S-rank Guide? That’s not..." The second speaker cut himself off abruptly.

A heavy, furious breath rattled in the man’s chest, signaling a desperate attempt to rein in his rising frustration.

When he spoke again, his voice was dangerously calm. "Does this development change our plans?"

"No. It doesn’t," the voice replied.

As the sedative slowly began to recede, the haze in Wenzhi’s ears cleared. The voice was crisp, authoritative, and sickeningly familiar.

He fought with every ounce of his remaining willpower, trying over and over to drag his eyes open.

"It seems our patient is waking up," the familiar voice noted coolly.

Wenzhi finally managed to crack his eyelids. The harsh theater lights flooded his vision, causing his pupils to tremble against the glare, but he refused to close them.

He was laid out flat, his chest, arms, and thighs completely pinned down by thick, reinforced leather restraint straps.

Advanced biometric scanners and IV drips hummed rhythmically around the bed, monitoring his spiked vitals.

Standing directly over him, looking down with a mixture of surprise and a faint, chilling smile, was Doctor Bai Qinian.

Further back in the room, surrounded by a handful of silent research assistants, stood Shao Xinyuan’s father. The older man’s face was twisted in dark, impatient fury by the fact that Wenzhi’s rank had somehow mutated.

Rage flooded Wenzhi seeing Doctor Bai Qinian looking so alive and well indeed.

Xinyuan had actually spared this psycho bitch’s life, and now here she was, standing over his strapped body like a satisfied scientist looking at a prize specimen.

"How do you feel, Lin Wenzhi?" Doctor Bai asked, her voice smooth as silk. "Do you have a headache?"

Wenzhi didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reply. He just glared at her through the drug-induced tremor in his eyes.

"Enough," Xinyuan’s father hissed. "Do not waste your breath trying to converse with him. Administer the sedative again and dump him straight back into the containment cell. We will have Youran handle him. Xinyuan has undoubtedly realized he is missing by now, which means we do not have a single second to waste."

"To see a Guide rising in rank at this rate..." Doctor Bai murmured, completely ignoring the man as she traced a finger along the screen tracking Wenzhi’s wavelength. "It must be a direct reaction to Xinyuan’s rate of corruption. You really should authorize me to run a deep probe to map this out before we actually move to the final phase—"

"No, no, no," the older man snapped, stepping forward with his jaw clenched. "We only brought him out of containment to verify the potency of his current guiding energy, and to extract and duplicate a sample large enough to temporarily tame my son when he arrives. You do not possess the authority to suggest your pet experiments here, Doctor Bai. He is a dangerous nuisance. You were brought into this facility for one purpose. To help us restructure Shao Xinyuan and fix the rifts. Focus on what you are here to do."

Doctor Bai Qinian let out a small, disappointed sigh. "Very well then."

She turned away, reaching for a glass syringe filled with a thick, iridescent fluid. Wenzhi’s eyes narrowed instantly, tracking the movement as she stepped up to his left side and ruthlessly plunged the needle directly into one of his IV lines.

Wenzhi clenched his teeth, feeling the icy chemical burn instantly racing up the veins of his forearm.

"You can’t... fix it," he rasped, his voice a dry, broken whisper. He locked his grey eyes onto Xinyuan’s father. "You’re all... too stupid to see it. You’re only going to... destroy everything."

Doctor Bai Qinian just smiled down at him, her fingers adjusting the flow rate on the drip. "You should really just let the drug take you under, Lin Wenzhi."

A crippling, heavy exhaustion slammed into his consciousness, but this time, the darkness didn’t stay quiet.

When Wenzhi’s mind finally drifted back into awareness, the lights and the smell of antiseptics were entirely gone. He was standing in a vast void. Enormous shards of rocks, shattered concrete structures, and debris floated aimlessly through a pitch-black atmosphere.

He was inside Xinyuan’s mindspace.

"Xinyuan?" Wenzhi let out a sharp, ragged gasp, his chest heaving as if he had just broken the surface after drowning. "Shao Xinyuan!"

The moment the name tore from his throat, a splash of thick, suffocating dark mist erupted right in front of him, and out stepped Xinyuan.

The Esper’s red eyes were wide, glowing with a desperate, manic intensity. Before Wenzhi could even speak, Xinyuan closed the distance and slammed into him, locking his massive arms around Wenzhi’s torso and pulling him into a crushing, desperate embrace.

He held him so tightly it threatened to bruise Wenzhi’s already aching ribs, burying his face directly into the crook of his Guide’s neck.

Feeling the familiar, chaotic warmth of the disaster class Esper, Wenzhi let out a shaky breath. He had actually missed this stupid Esper.

"I couldn’t feel you," Xinyuan breathed heavily, his voice a raw, trembling wreck of emotions. His fingers dug frantically into Wenzhi’s skin, as if verifying that the Guide wasn’t just a hallucination cooked up by his deteriorating state. "The bond went completely dead. I thought... I thought you were dead."

Wenzhi closed his eyes, leaning into the crushing grip for just a second before he forced his voice to steady. "I am going to die soon, actually."