The Reckoning
The researcher's confidence wavered as he clutched his injured ribs, but his voice remained steady. "You're Yue Lan, right? I figured, with all that rage. Smart girl. I set a trigger—if I don't check in every thirty minutes, our people come running. That guy you crushed mocked me for it. Joke's on him. Timer's almost up. Hand me my phone—and walk away."
Yue Lan remained motionless, her muscles coiled like a predator's. She and Hye Won both turned their attention to what appeared to be empty air—where Han Chen stood, invisible to mortal eyes.
A low chuckle escaped the researcher's lips. "You think I'm bluffing?"
From the void came a voice, calm as still water: "It's the contact saved as Izzaw bro." Han Chen had evolved beyond the need for crude Qi techniques to extract thoughts—subliminal whispers were as clear to him as spoken words.
Blood drained from Shan Yue's face. "How—?"
"What's the password?" Hye Won demanded, her tone brooking no argument.
The researcher's mouth opened to lie, but again that ethereal voice cut through his deception: "1244ShanYue."
"No...! What sorcery is this..." Yue Lan snatched the device, her fingers flying across the screen. She found the outgoing message and deleted it before transmission completed. With their window of safety secured, they rendered the researcher unconscious with surgical precision.
Han Chen's work was far from finished. Like a phantom surgeon, he excised memories from every mind present—the kidnapping, the torture, even the existence of the would-be martial artists who had dared threaten Yue Lan. But his justice was more creative than mere amnesia.
Upon the two ringleaders, he wove curses like invisible chains. They would know confusion where once they had clarity, misfortune where once they had success. Their days were numbered, though they would never know why the world suddenly turned against them.
"You don't hate him more than this?" Han Chen's voice carried an edge of curiosity. "After all I told you about your past, how many times this family sabotaged you? When I peered into his memory just now, he didn't simply plan to extract secrets—he meant to torment you with his underlings and use that suffering against you later."
Yue Lan's jaw tightened. "I wish to kill him, but kill him now? Do you know how much trouble that would bring? We already called the police when you weren't available, saying Sophia was kidnapped. That's enough suspicion if we harm him now."
Han Chen's sigh carried the weight of reluctant understanding. "Then I'll scatter them. Better they don't all wake up in the same place."
What happened next would have tested the sanity of any witness. The kidnappers and torturers simply... ceased. Not in flame or violence, but in the quiet dissolution of atoms returning to cosmic dust. Yue Lan and Hye Won had already stepped outside, unable to bear witness to such absolute judgment.
With surgical precision, Han Chen redistributed the remaining unconscious figures across the city like pieces on a vast chessboard. Yue Ming and the eccentric researcher found themselves deposited in locations that would support the false memories he had crafted. A gentle touch upon their souls, and both awakened to resume their daily routines, unaware that their world had fundamentally shifted.
The entire operation concluded within ten minutes.
"I get to fly?" Yue Lan's face lit up with childlike wonder as wind tugged at her clothes during their ascent. The joy in her voice was infectious.
The four of them—Han Chen, Yue Lan, Hye Won, and the unconscious Sophia—cut through the air like arrows of light. Their descent to the building was swift and silent, Han Chen having already mended Sophia's injuries during flight.
In the emergency ward, they laid Sophia upon a bed with the tenderness of placing a flower in still water. Alarms pierced the air moments later as medical personnel flooded in, their trained eyes quickly assessing her condition and beginning detoxification protocols.
Yue Lan handled the authorities with practiced efficiency, reporting Sophia's mysterious appearance while carefully planting evidence to support their cover story. Meanwhile, Han Chen performed more delicate surgery—this time upon memory itself. Like an artist removing unwanted brushstrokes, he erased Sophia's recollections of pain, terror, and any thread that might lead back to Yue Ming.
That man would soon face his own reckoning.
Slipping back into the city like morning mist, Han Chen resumed his civilian facade as if nothing had transpired.
Five days crawled by like wounded animals. For Yue Ming, each hour brought fresh catastrophe. Memory became unreliable, paranoia his constant companion. Violent outbursts destroyed crucial business relationships. After two particularly damaging altercations with key investors, his father forced him into temporary exile from leadership.
Meanwhile, Dr. Shan Yue's descent was even more dramatic. The once-respected researcher began reporting nightmares of being experimented upon. His violent lashing out at team members sent one colleague to the hospital. Complaints mounted. A night in jail followed. And when he was released, it was Yue Ming who came to collect him—neither man aware of the invisible puppeteer orchestrating their doom.
The drive began in tense silence, but Yue Ming's corrupted mind conjured phantom terrors. Fear seized him like icy claws, and he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The vehicle careened through traffic before striking the divider and guard rail at precisely the angle needed for maximum devastation. Physics and malevolent fate conspired as the car flipped, metal screaming against asphalt.
Han Chen materialized at the crash site before emergency responders could arrive, his boots hovering above the expanding pool of Dr. Shan Yue's blood. With a thought, he obliterated the man's departing soul—no afterlife escape would be permitted.
Yue Ming groaned in the wreckage, his martial cultivation keeping him conscious despite grievous wounds. But Han Chen had not come as a rescuer—he had come to settle ancient debts.
With surgical precision, he severed and extracted Yue Ming's soul, stripping away secrets, wealth, and power like peeling fruit. "Your karma is not with me," he murmured with deadly calm. "But your sins are... I am just returning the favor of another lifetime."
Into Yue Ming's very essence, Han Chen carved a curse of exquisite cruelty: Nightmare Soul Corrosion. The soul was returned to its body before anyone could detect the spiritual surgery, but the true horror was just beginning. Yue Ming's cultivation was severed—apparently by the crash—but the curse would ensure his mind fractured completely. Betrayals by trusted allies would replay endlessly. False hopes of survival would torment him. Memory, sanity, and self would corrode to nothing within a year, leaving only a hollow, screaming shell until even that dissolved.
Dr. Shan Yue was declared dead at the scene. Yue Ming, though physically intact, was committed to an institution, his mind already lost to relentless delusions.
Han Chen's patience for games had reached its absolute limit. Kidnapping Yue Lan and torturing Dr. Sophia had crossed a line written in blood and starfire. No camera had caught even a glimpse of his presence.
Justice was complete.
Methodically, he sorted through Yue Ming's stolen memories like a librarian cataloging sins: blackmail, bribery, political corruption, corporate sabotage. Every filthy tactic employed by the Yue family dynasty. He fed this intelligence to his AI system, programming it to dismantle their empire with surgical precision over the coming months—all in absolute secrecy.
When he finally returned, a rare stillness settled in his bones. He walked into Yue Lan's office and collapsed onto the couch as if it were his own bed. For the first time in ages, he felt soul-deep exhaustion paired with genuine peace.
The days following his warp experiment had provided morbid entertainment. News outlets spiraled into hysteria while experts scrambled for explanations. Meteorite explosions, UFO encounters, radiation surges, the opening moves of covert warfare—theories multiplied like viral infections. One particularly dramatic estimate claimed the blast equaled two hundred nuclear detonations, though the mathematics never quite aligned. Gravitational wave recordings and the shadow of a human figure on military sensors only fueled wilder speculation about alien technology.
"You treat global panic like a cooking show," Hye Won had remarked with an eye roll. "Why did you do that?"
"I wasn't fighting anyone," he had replied without looking up. "In simple terms, I tested a new movement technique. It was really, really fast—fast enough to cause radiation."
While Yue Lan managed company affairs and assisted Dr. Sophia's recovery, Han Chen alternated between teasing Hye Won at work and watching the world flail helplessly before a power it couldn't comprehend. He waited until Yue Ming was not just defeated, but utterly irrelevant.
He awoke hours later to find both women studying him with intense curiosity—one amused, the other quietly contemplative. A news anchor's voice provided background narration: "The young business tycoon of Yue Group remains in critical condition. Sources confirm he's barely clinging to life."
Yue Lan spoke first, her voice carefully controlled. "Han Chen... did you kill him?"
He sat up slowly, his voice carrying the weight of distant thunder. "He's not dead. Not physically. It was his own doing." A pause stretched between them. "Though... I may have nudged it along."
Silence filled the room like held breath.
Hye Won lowered herself beside him, cradling his head in her lap with infinite tenderness. "Aside from that, your soul screams exhaustion. I can feel it through our connection. Are you okay?"
A half-smile played across his lips. "Your soul's grown strong to notice that." He exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Something shifted after what I did to Yue Ming."
Yue Lan folded her arms, her expression unreadable as ancient stone. "You saved me. Saved Sophia. Before that, you helped me escape certain death, then helped me stand on my own. And now... he's gone. My greatest burden is lifted. So why do you still seem burdened? Are your regrets finally over?"
Han Chen met her gaze for a long moment before shaking his head. "Maybe. One weight's gone. But the karmic relationship... it's still here. I don't know if I meant to keep it or not."
His attention shifted to Hye Won, the woman who had never wavered in her loyalty. The silence stretched until she broke it with gentle frustration.
"Han Chen, I've known you for years. You keep saying you've done so much for her. So why does it still hurt? Are you staying with her because you like her—or out of guilt? Because it doesn't feel like love, and you're not really trying. It feels like you're waiting for something that won't come."
He leaned deeper into her lap, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. "You know what cultivators crave most?"
Yue Lan raised an eyebrow. "Power? Wealth?"
"Lifespan? Loyalty? Relationship?" Hye Won's voice carried infinite softness.
Han Chen nodded slowly. "Exactly—all of them, just like mortals. But mortals burn through their years quickly. We, those who transcend mortality, burn through emotions instead. Over time, they don't linger. They're scorched away by the passage of centuries. What remains are echoes and regrets. Memories. Duty."
His gaze found Yue Lan again. "Maybe that's what I've been clinging to. Not love. The memory of my unhappy life and the one tied to me..."
Hye Won's fingers moved gently through his hair. "Then let us carry it too. If you're staying, let us stay with you. Don't shoulder everything alone."
He sighed, a sound like wind through autumn leaves. "There's something I need to tell you both. Something... happening now, inside my mind."
Awkwardness flickered across his features as Hye Won studied him, but he pressed forward. "My exhaustion... it comes from more than Yue Ming. I never told you how I truly died in my past life."
Hye Won's arms folded with familiar exasperation. "Of course you didn't. Because why would Han Chen ever tell us everything?"
He offered a sheepish look but didn't argue. "I was betrayed—back-stabbed by the one person I trusted above all others. It wasn't just physical death. The betrayal destroyed part of me... a heart demon I had refined and merged with to cultivate power. Normally, I could have handled it. But I was already dying, still fighting. And in its final moment, that heart demon consumed part of my consciousness—my memories, emotions, including what I felt for Yue Lan."
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "My soul was wiped clean, but consciousness remained. In this new life, my astral soul is fresh and free from corruption. But the previous damage remained and warped my perception. It changed how I felt. Minds are like those learning models people built on Earth—strip out the right connections, and what remains behaves differently."
He turned toward Yue Lan, his voice gaining certainty. "But as I've grown in this life—remade myself—those corrupted fragments are dissolving. The remnants of that corruption are healing and disappearing. And when they're gone... I'll see you again—not as someone who owes me a debt, but as someone I truly care about. Like I care for Hye Won."
A half-smile tugged at his lips as he glanced at Hye Won. "So... when this transformation finishes, I might come off like a bit of a douchebag."