Behind them, the dozen or so spies from the Affairs Bureau now lay silently sprawled across the rotting deck.
Their eyes were glazed over—soulless.
One glance was enough to tell: their minds had collapsed into deep, irreversible confusion.
From the ghastly pallor of their faces, it seemed that even if someone walked over and stabbed them through the chest, they still wouldn’t stir.
And as for the more than a hundred tourists who had boarded the ship earlier, every single one of them had vanished without a trace.
“…Strange. Where are we? When did we even get on this wreck of a ship?”
Surrounded by eerie silence and decay, the siblings instinctively moved back-to-back, scanning their surroundings with wary eyes.
Confusion, and something close to fear, lingered in their gazes.
That was when a crisp, almost cheerful male voice echoed through the empty space:
“You’ve got it all wrong, I’m afraid.”
They whipped around toward the sound.
On the other side of the shattered deck, dozens of meters away, a tall, slender young man had appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
He wore gold-rimmed glasses and had a distant, chilly air about him.
He stood with his head slightly lowered, looking at them with a faint, sardonic smile.
“In truth, you never left the ship. You’re still on board.”
“It just... hasn’t aged gracefully. That’s all.”
Auron’s eyes narrowed. He caught on quickly.
“So what we saw before, it was all an illusion! And—”
His voice rose sharply as he glared at the young man. “What the hell did you use to get past the latest toxin detection systems?!”
“Tsk,”
Lucian tilted his head mockingly.
“You really don’t listen, do you? I just told you. I don’t use poison. That kind of crude trick is beneath me.”
He adjusted his glasses with a glint of contempt.
“All I did was create a dream. A carefully prepared illusion.”
“In that lovely dream, I knocked on your door, issued a polite little suggestion. You accepted it. You opened the door. And just like that, the outermost shell of your mind's defenses peeled away.”
He smiled, voice soft but cutting.
“As for the food tasting so good... simple. I just gave your brain’s taste and appetite centers a deep, soothing massage. And then…”
His expression turned sharp, eyes narrowing behind the glasses.
“You know what the most delicious thing in the world is, don’t you?”
He paused.
“It’s your mother’s cooking, back when you were a child. Simple. Honest. Overflowing with love.”
“All I had to do was amplify that memory, saturate your minds with the longing for it, stack that emotion into a mountain, and you willingly climbed it.”
“That was the second command, cleverly disguised: the one that dismantled your mental defenses completely, and opened the door straight into the core of your minds.”
He gave a satisfied clap.
BANG!
“And from there? If I so much as think about it... I could switch off your senses, lock your consciousness in a cage, or just boil your brains until you're nothing but husks.”
When the echo of his words faded, cold sweat was already trickling down the backs of the two siblings.
They had seen Lucian’s name in the files, just a name, a few vague entries.
They had not expected this: a man so terrifyingly manipulative, so effortlessly cruel.
Auron’s hands were trembling. His thoughts were racing.
But beside him, Selene suddenly stepped forward.
She raised her chin and stared Lucian down, voice steady and cold:
“So everything from the start... this was your trap.”
“You lured us here. Deliberately.”
Lucian’s smile widened.
“Very astute, Madam Selene.”
“Did you really think we didn’t know you’ve been sniffing around the organization’s trail these past few days?”
He laughed, softly, mockingly.
“Come now. That kind of na?veté doesn’t suit someone like you.”
Auron drew in a sharp breath, his voice cold and steady: “So, what exactly do you want?”
Beside him, Selene clenched her ivory-white teeth, her skin beginning to shimmer with a metallic sheen.
She was ready to strike.
Despite the overwhelming pressure radiating from their opponent, she understood that fear was useless now.
All she could do was bet everything on a desperate fight.
Lucian gave a casual shrug, his tone detached: “Oh, I don’t intend to do anything myself. I’m merely here to deliver a little message to that so-called heir of yours.”
He smiled faintly, his voice turning almost mocking: “Do you know why I went through so much trouble to set this whole trap? Out of kindness, I could’ve let you both die peacefully, in your sleep.”
As he spoke, he gestured toward the nearby bodies of the Affairs Bureau agents strewn across the deck.
Auron and Selene remained silent, their expressions grim and unreadable.
Lucian sighed, almost theatrically: “You know, there’s one thing I hate more than anything else: traitors.”
“You two are new humans, yet here you are, risking your lives for the old ones. That’s betrayal.”
“Sure, Gongsun Huo and Wang Xiao might be incompetent fools, but they’re still our PsyBro people. We don’t just let things like this slide.”
His voice dropped lower, colder.
“So, let’s use your deaths… to remind Her Highness exactly how passionate the PsyBro Syndicate can be.”
“What are you talking about?!”
Auron’s voice dropped an octave, his face darkening.
The temperature around them plummeted instantly.
But Lucian, standing casually on the distant wooden deck in nothing more than a thin shirt, didn’t so much as flinch. He remained utterly composed.
Auron’s eyes narrowed.
A realization struck him like lightning.
“You’re not real… You’re an illusion!” he snapped.
Lucian chuckled, a relaxed smile on his lips. “Mr. Auron, very sharp. You guessed it. This is only a projection.”
“If I were really here, do you think I’d waste time talking? The moment you saw me, your minds would’ve shattered. You would’ve fallen into a mental abyss from which you’d never return.”
He exhaled softly.
“Unfortunately, I have other matters to attend to. So I’ve only allocated a sliver of my consciousness to deal with you two.”
“Otherwise, death would’ve been the kindest outcome.”
His tone sharpened.
“Oh, and I’ve lifted the sensory seal on you both. You should be able to smell it by now.”
“What…?”
Auron’s nose twitched involuntarily, and then it hit him.
A sickening, rancid odor flooded his senses. The stench of heavy oil, raw and choking.
Selene covered her mouth and nose, eyes narrowing as she fought off the wave of nausea.
Lucian’s voice dropped to a chilling whisper:
“In the ship’s lower hull, over 300 tons of crude oil. Mixed in with a hundred kilograms of industrial-grade explosives.”
“In precisely ten seconds…”
“…they’ll all go off.”
His gaze twisted. His voice turned serpentine, laced with venom:
“I want you both to be conscious when it happens. To feel the despair clawing at your throats.”
“I want you to watch death creeping closer with every heartbeat.”
“I want to see you burn yourselves out fighting to live, only to fail.”
“Hahaha… HAHAHAHAHA!!”
Lucian trembled with laughter, hysterical, mad, like a lunatic basking in his own cruelty.
And just like that, he vanished.
Leaving behind nothing but silence and doom.
Auron’s voice broke through the void, hoarse and hollow:
“…It’s over. We’re going to die.”
Selene deactivated her metalization and instantly collapsed onto the ground. Lifting her head with difficulty, she stared blankly at her older brother. The sheer terror of death crushed her thoughts in an instant: her mind overwhelmed by panic and helplessness.
Auron’s eyes widened. Without hesitation, he grabbed her, slung her over his shoulder, and sprinted toward the edge of the crumbling ship. At the same time, he barked out in fury, “metalize! Now!”
“Huh?”
Still slumped across his shoulder, Selene flinched in surprise, but obeyed instinctively. In the next second, her entire form shimmered, transforming into silver metal.
“1!
2!
3!”
In his heart, Auron counted—each number like a ticking bomb—as he dashed forward. His entire body began emitting waves of cold, instantly freezing the ruined deck beneath his feet into solid slabs of ice.
“4!
5!
6!”
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
Selene, still on his back, began to frost over rapidly: her metal body encased in a shell of freezing air, turning into a block of steel-hard ice.
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
Layer upon layer of bone-chilling frost blanketed her, the block thickening and hardening with every step he took. And then, he reached the edge.
“7!”
Auron’s entire frame erupted in deep blue radiance. He pushed his cryogenic powers to their very limits, channeling every last reserve of cold energy he possessed, freezing Selene even further—without restraint, without mercy.
And the price came fast.
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
His exposed skin began to turn translucent. Through the transparent layer, the twitching muscles beneath were faintly visible, and deeper still: the pale, glimmering outlines of his bones. He was being frozen alive, from the outside in.
“8!”
But Auron didn’t stop. His eyes were wide, unblinking. Every muscle in his body bulged from strain. His skin began splitting open like shattered glass, shards of frozen flesh cracking off, as slivers of icy blood oozed and trailed down his arms.
He held the ice-encased Selene tightly, his sister sealed within that block of dense blue crystal. And then, he let out a hoarse, broken roar and hurled her with all his might off the side of the ship.
“GO!!!”
SNAP!
BANG!!
That single throw exhausted every last ounce of his strength. His nearly frozen shoulders ruptured from the force: muscle and sinew tearing apart, spewing jets of blood and ice shards into the air.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“9!”
Staggering, barely standing, Auron watched as Selene’s frozen body soared through the sky, crashed into the distant ocean, and instantly froze a massive portion of the sea on impact—sealing herself beneath even more layers of impenetrable ice.
He raised his head to the heavens, and with trembling breath, whispered:
“That's… all I can give you, Selene… May you… live on.”
“10!”
Deep within the lower hull of the ship, a black box—no bigger than a satchel—quietly reached the final second of its countdown. It was wired to a dense cluster of explosives, their forms bulging under pressure. Below them sat more than a hundred tons of raw, volatile crude oil, shifting lazily with the sway of the ship.
Tick…
Silence.
And then—
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
More than a hundred kilos of military-grade explosives detonated at once. The sudden blast vaporized the surrounding hull, instantly boiling the crude oil below. The confined vapors ignited like dry tinder.
Explosives.
Combustible gas.
Crude oil...
The ship went up like a firework from hell.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! RUM RUM RUM RUM!!!
The cruise ship was annihilated in the blink of an eye, shredded into a thousand burning fragments. Bodies—those of the Affairs Bureau spies, and Auron—were obliterated, scattered into a rain of flesh and blood that splattered across the surrounding ocean for miles.
The thunderous shockwave shattered the calm of the sea, stirring it into violent, endless ripples.
...
Hours later.
A boat arrived at the wreckage.
It belonged to the Affairs Bureau.
They scanned the scene, hoping to find any survivors. But there was nothing. Only the vast ocean stretching toward the horizon, scattered with slick patches of burning crude oil that hissed and popped on the water’s surface.
Nothing else moved.
Half an hour passed. Under the light of the rising sun, something floated up through the waves. A burnt human figure, part flesh and part metal, lay half-submerged in the debris.
“So stubborn…” A muscular young man gasped in awe. “Blasted into this… and still breathing.”
The middle-aged agent at the helm turned his head. He saw the survivor, nearly reduced to charcoal. Her limbs were mangled and incomplete. Strange, charred metallic patterns were etched across her scorched skin. But in a few of the less-damaged areas, her chest still rose and fell—just barely.
Proof of life.
“Ahh...” The older man exhaled slowly, a flicker of emotion in his voice. “Bring her aboard. I hope… Her Highness can still save her.”
...
One day later.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—SCREEECH!
RUMBLE!!! RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!!!
The skies over Ashara, Emberlight were swallowed in an ocean of stormclouds: thick, heavy, pitch-black. A savage wind screamed through the heavens, weaving together with bolts of thunder and arcs of lightning.
Torrents of raw electricity snaked and flared within the layered stormbanks, tearing jagged paths through the gloom, each one trailing a thunderclap that could shatter glass. It felt like the very sky was ripping apart. It was so heavy and dark that it was hard to breathe, as if heaven itself were enraged.
Suddenly—
BOOOOOM!!!
An earth-splitting explosion roared out from the heavens. The sheer force of the thunderstrike made eardrums ache and buildings tremble.
And then—
The sky broke open. A torrential downpour slammed down, rain mixed with violent gales, hammering the streets with pea-sized drops that struck like needles. The storm was so fierce that people couldn’t even open their eyes against it. The entire heavens seemed on the verge of collapsing.
Pedestrians screamed and scattered through the flood-soaked streets. But no one noticed what was hiding above.
High in the boiling stormclouds, covering more than half of Ashara, floated over a hundred identical figures. They were beautiful, youthful, and deathly still. Each one was cloaked in blazing arcs of thunder and lightning. Each one was wrapped in ornate, pitch-black robes embroidered with celestial patterns.
Eyes closed, expressionless. Their bodies shimmered faintly as they drank in the fury of the storm. These were not ordinary beings; they were all Seraphine's clones.
Her true body remained seated in the boundless void above Earth, cross-legged in deep meditation. She was absorbing the blazing essence of the Great Sun, probing the frontiers of martial arts, and unraveling the mysteries of Ether.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!!!
Within the depths of the rolling clouds, arcs of purple lightning—by the hundreds of thousands—exploded like wildfire, spreading outward in a colossal, tangled web. A web of destruction. It looked as if the storm was trying to rip the sky to shreds.
Amid this chaos, Seraphine’s clones remained hidden, motionless in the electric maelstrom. Their bodies pulsed with bursts of raw thunder and crackling plasma. Each one absorbed the stellar essence of lightning.
Inside them, her cultivation method ran at full tilt, gathering and condensing streams of Skyveil Lightning. Each clone could refine 50,000 streaks of true thunder, enough to create a single Stormlight Devastator. With a hundred clones at work, that meant a hundred thunderous Big Ivans.
Even now, the lightning technique that had evolved from Palm-Heart Lightning had reached terrifying new heights. It no longer relied purely on storm energy; just a flicker of thunder and static was enough to ignite the method. From there, it would draw in limitless Ether from the world around her, refining it, tempering it, and transforming it into the deadly Skyveil Lightning.
If this weren’t the case, even during a thunderstorm like this, the skies over Ashara would’ve already been bled dry of their storm energy. It still wouldn’t be enough to produce so much Skyveil Lightning.
And yet, this was only a fraction. Seraphine’s clones weren’t just in Ashara.
Elsewhere—
In Cloud City, at the Sapphire Life Science Research Institute…
In a spacious, brightly-lit lab, one clone flipped through a thick stack of experiment reports, jotting down notes and formulas. Nearby, another clone stood before a complex control panel, operating precision instruments and silently analyzing strings of live data.
Eight or nine meters away, five more clones surrounded a grotesquely mutated subject strapped to a surgical table, twitching. Ten hands worked in perfect coordination. Scalpels, syringes, electric saws, and various surgical tools flickered in and out of motion: cutting, dissecting, measuring, tapping, recording. Their hands moved with lightning speed, leaving behind streaks of blurred afterimages with every motion.
Not far from this operating table, similar ones were spaced just a few meters apart. A quick count revealed around twelve such tables. And scattered across the spacious laboratory, there were no fewer than seventy or eighty clones of Seraphine, all busily at work.
This was just one facility. Within the institute, there were six other laboratories like it, each fully operated and managed by Seraphine’s clones. Every lab served a different purpose.
The seven facilities respectively focused on: materials science, physiology, Ether exploration, cultivation method experimentation, nuclear energy, superpower gene research, and other advanced scientific studies.
All the clones worked in total silence, their faces devoid of expression. Aside from the occasional clatter of equipment or the soft shuffle of moving test subjects, the labs were eerily quiet—oppressively so.
Of course, that made sense. After all, no matter how many clones there were, they all shared the same consciousness: Seraphine’s. And what reason would she have to talk to herself?
At present, the Sapphire Research Institute had long outgrown its original label of 【Life Sciences】. It had become a comprehensive mega-institute, conducting multidisciplinary research across nearly every known frontier of knowledge. The cutting-edge technologies developed here made the upper echelons of the Emberlight Empire, who had managed to catch wind of certain internal details, secretly drool with envy.
But even so, none dared attempt to seize the institute’s secrets.
Why? Because Seraphine existed. Her name alone was enough to halt even the boldest plots in their tracks. Those who had clawed their way into power weren't fools. They knew that provoking her might one day result in a Stormlight Devastator descending from the sky, blowing their heads clean off in front of their staff and subordinates.
And no one would laugh.
Naturally, Seraphine had anticipated such risks. That’s why every researcher within the Sapphire Research Institute, including Serena herself, had long since been subjected to a deep-rooted, near-soul-level Spiritual Suggestion.
【No information may be leaked—not a single detail】
This mental seal, imposed through Seraphine’s immense spiritual power, had been etched into the very structure of each subject’s thought process and core behavior patterns. Unless someone appeared with spiritual power greater than hers, that Suggestion could not be undone.
That said, Seraphine wasn’t overly concerned about the risk of technological leakage. Even if some pieces did escape her grasp, it would not cause her any real harm.
Her philosophy was simple:
“What I give is yours. What I do not give—no one can take.”
In truth...
The moment Seraphine attained the level of Martial Saint, she realized that her martial foundation—everything Earth’s accumulated traditions had to offer—had already been fully consumed.
If martial arts could no longer elevate her, then it was time to pivot to something deeper. That something was science.
The so-called science is a system of knowledge grounded in verifiable explanations and predictive regularity, based on the objective structure and behavior of reality. It is organized, mathematical, and methodical. Above all, it is the most powerful tool humanity has ever devised for understanding the universe.
Once that idea took hold, Seraphine didn’t hesitate. She unleashed her unparalleled executive ability and, in a single day, mobilized all of her clones.
They scattered across the Emberlight Empire, infiltrating every major scientific hub and center of advanced development.
They visited national research institutes, the Royal Academy of Sciences, the National Bureau of Technological Development, the Military Science Research Institute, the Royal Polytechnic University, Emberlight Industrial University, Emberlight Aeronautics Institute, Emberlight Electronic Science and Technology Institute, and countless other cutting-edge facilities and top-tier technical universities.
Each of Seraphine’s clones, empowered by overwhelming mental power, infiltrated the minds of the top scientific elites across various institutions, ruthlessly plundering their knowledge and cramming it into her own consciousness.
Mathematics, Alchemy, Medicine, Mechanical engineering, Computer science, Telecommunications, Material science, Classical and quantum physics, Life sciences, Genetic engineering, Nuclear theory, Astronomy, astrophysics, and the broader architecture of space-time...
An unending torrent of disciplines surged through her mind. Endless formulas, axioms, principles, and raw data surged into her thoughts like a deluge.
For a moment, or perhaps forever, her consciousness became a cauldron of uncontainable brilliance. Sparks of intellect ignited and collided like galaxies crashing, one after another, in a radiant supernova of insight.
Ideas, like agile, silvery fish, darted ceaselessly through the boundless ocean of knowledge inside her mind. Each one churned the tides, bringing wave after wave of intellectual resonance, birthing more and more luminous threads of inspiration.
Inspiration is a force not of logic but of transcendence. It breaks boundaries, reverses fates, and turns the mundane miraculous.
Knowledge is seawater. Amid its currents, disparate fields collide and fuse. From those collisions, under the pressure of deduction, new concepts are born, like fish leaping from the surf, rippling the waves, stirring up yet more cascading collisions. From science comes synthesis; from synthesis, truth.
Every moment, every second, every heartbeat...
The Ocean of Knowledge offers Seraphine an endless current of revelation. Problems she cannot yet solve rise like crescent moons above this sea, hanging high in her mental sky, waiting for the Fish of Inspiration to grow strong enough to leap beyond the Dragon Gate, shatter limits, and rise as full moons: elegant, whole, and final.
Each solution, once achieved, descends once again into the depths, enriching the sea’s volume, broadening its depth, and deepening its mystery.
“When my will surges, no mountain can stand before it. Even if no road lies ahead, I shall carve one to the very ends of existence.”
In the heart of the cosmos, Seraphine’s true body sat cross-legged, motionless. Her gaze was cold, her presence utterly divine—neither god nor demon, but something beyond both. It was the will of heaven, incarnate and wordless, descending upon the universe with silent force, yet crushing gravity.
Suddenly, her pupils flared, divine radiance pouring out like the dawn breaking across the void. The path of evolution, once hidden in fog and uncertainty, was now split open and laid bare by the relentless deluge of thought.
She saw it—clear and whole—extending far into the unknown.
Within moments, the grand structure of the Martial Saint Great Realm materialized in her mind, emerging through layers of deduction. Even the outlines of each sub-stage began forming with startling clarity.
According to her own design:
A Martial Saint, even at the initial stage, could possess strength exceeding tens of thousands of tons. Their speed? Capable of surpassing the Mach barrier dozens of times over. Each punch, each kick, could deliver a force rivaling, or surpassing, a full-scale missile strike.
And their physical durability? So immense that cruise missiles and even MOABs would inflict little more than superficial damage. Nothing on Earth, short of strategic nuclear saturation, could kill such a being.
But it didn’t end there.
A true Martial Saint radiated a divine aura, an echo of their absolute will, which could manifest phantom visions of blades, weapons, flame, water, and death.
Even before lifting a hand, even without breaking a sweat, a Saint could annihilate thousands of lesser beings through sheer spiritual pressure. Without breaking through this divine aura, one could never hope to touch the body within. And without touching the true body, no harm could ever be done.
Furthermore, the divine aura grants the ability to resist Earth’s gravity, enabling true levitation, even sustained flight. In short, a Martial Saint fully possesses the qualifications to single-handedly shift the tide of an entire large-scale campaign.
So long as they are not directly struck by a nuclear warhead, no conventional weapon can truly kill a Martial Saint.
All of these traits were strikingly similar to Vuron.
In fact, the very abilities and combat patterns displayed by Vuron were what initially inspired Seraphine’s deduction and structural design of the Martial Saint realm.
And in the grand framework of the Martial Saint Great Realm, what she currently referred to as the "initial stage" was merely the beginning. To reach the summit of Martial Saint, one must break open the Nine Heavens' Gates.
According to Seraphine’s deductions, every gate broken represents a leap in life’s very essence. Each breakthrough brings exponential growth to a practitioner’s physical and soul attributes, as well as the capacity and density of their divine aura.
Eventually, when all Nine Heavens' Gates are open, a peak Martial Saint could possess attribute values tens of thousands of times greater than those at the entry stage. By then, a single peak Martial Saint would be enough to suppress all of Earth.
Of course, this was only the theoretical upper limit for standard practitioners. Seraphine had not included herself in that model.
Because even now, at only the initial stage of Martial Saint, her true combat power was already hundreds, perhaps thousands of times greater than that of the predicted peak.
And that disparity was still widening with each passing day. Such is the terror of exponential growth.
Overall, the Martial Saint system, though still a work-in-progress, already had its backbone. The framework of its sub-levels remained rough, the inner structure not yet fully filled out.
But Seraphine had full confidence that it was only a matter of time.
She had tapped into the endless scientific Ocean of Knowledge, where concepts flowed freely like living tides, and from which she could draw insight to complete the system piece by piece.
Key inspirations floated within that ocean:
Aperture. Ether. Space. Mind.
These four words shimmered like embryonic stars in her subconscious sea: unformed, but potent.
Each was a different kind of Inspiration Fish, drifting in the ocean’s deep, awaiting her attention, awaiting their time to soar.
When matured, they would leap skyward, and finally complete the luminous crescent moon called 【Martial Saint】.
Among them, the fish named 【Ether】 had already grown faster and stronger than the rest.
It pulsed with potential and at any moment might fully mature and ascend.
“Space... Mind...”
Seraphine furrowed her brow.
Aperture and Ether were relatively straightforward.
The Mystic Aperture Realm had already been constructed based on the 108 energy points within the body of a martial artist.
If this system was to evolve, it would have to begin from there.
Enhancing the apertures’ interaction with Ether, strengthening their absorption and connectivity. In turn, this would promote the growth of both body and soul, triggering a true qualitative transformation in life itself.
But Space and Mind.
These two concepts were far more abstract, far broader in scope.
Especially Mind.
As the inspiration-fish of 【Mind】 surfaced and stirred, Seraphine sensed ripples, like information sparks across water.
From those ripples, she understood: 【Mind】 did not refer to thought alone, but to the unified structure of sentient consciousness.
To accelerate the growth of 【Mind】, she would need to explore the convergence between sentient thought and spiritual essence.
“I need to find people, events, or phenomena tied to 【Space】 and 【Mind】... to gather knowledge, feed the inspiration, and help it grow, to eventually complete the Great Martial Saint Realm.”
Seraphine knew with crystal clarity:
If she could trace these key concepts to their roots, follow them to their ends, she could fully reconstruct and finalize the 【Martial Saint Great Realm】.
And from there, the path beyond Martial Saint would no longer be uncertain or veiled in fog.
In truth, her being stuck at the initial stage of Martial Saint wasn’t just due to the incomplete system.
There was another, more practical reason:
The external environment did not yet permit it.
Or perhaps...
