Chapter 23: Judgment Light
At 3 AM, beneath a moonless sky and a screaming wind, utter silence blanketed the wasteland.
A thousand meters from the Michael Hotel, inside a crumbling high-rise, two furtive shadows were hauling something heavy.
In the pitch-black night, they quickly set up a cylindrical black launcher. Its massive pointed warhead loomed in the darkness, carrying a silent menace.
“Target locked?” one whispered.
“Locked on. Radiant Path’s ‘Judgment Light’ high-explosive rocket. Kinda a shame to waste it on some outsider.”
“No shame at all. I heard that outsider blew up one of our branches and slaughtered every last brother inside! The Judgment Light’s loaded with special material from the Heaven-sent Objects—works wonders on mutants. It’ll definitely take him out!”
...
Inside the hotel room, Finn lay on the bed with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. On the single bed beside him, Jimmy snored softly, lost in deep, peaceful slumber.
Ever since he began cultivating the Fire Profound Divine Art, Finn barely needed sleep anymore. But the night still dragged on like torture.
There was no warm, soft beauty curled up beside him under the blankets, and his phone couldn’t connect to the cross-world Myriad Realms Network. Stuck in this alien world, there wasn’t much to keep him entertained. Even though the phone held 12.8 TB of storage, he had already finished every novel on it, and the music tracks had been played on endless repeat until he was sick of them all.
In his storage space sat a ThinkPad workstation laptop, but he had already burned through every game and movie on it ages ago. Bottom line: being a modern guy without internet sucked.
More than anything, Finn still clung to his old human habits. At night he liked to lie down and rest. There was something strangely comforting about a solid night’s sleep.
He had once played a game called Don’t Starve, where you played as some poor bastard trying to survive in the wilderness. Every single second was spent scrambling just to stay alive. Even at night you had to keep a torch burning bright so the monsters wouldn’t tear you apart.
The only way to safely get through the night was to build a little wooden shelter, crawl inside, and sleep. Then the brutal darkness would just… pass.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing whistle shattered the silence and yanked Finn out of his thoughts.
His eyes snapped open. He was just about to roll out of bed when a deafening explosion ripped through the room right beside his ear. Blinding flames roared in, swallowing everything in a storm of savage heat…
…
“Damn… the Judgment Light packs more punch than I thought…”
“Holy Radiance above, a whole bunch of poor bastards just got buried with him.” Up on the high-rise, the two shadows whispered to each other, grinning with glee.
The scene before them was total devastation. Not just the Michael Hotel— the entire block had been flattened. Everyone caught in the blast had died horribly. In that split second of detonation, the whole street lit up brighter than noon, like the sun itself had exploded overhead.
After the blast, nothing remained but wreckage. Every wall and building had been erased. Everything the shockwave touched had been wiped clean. Only raging flames still danced across the ruins, painting the night in a cold, miserable glow.
The two shadows frantically packed up the launcher, then rappelled down the crumbling high-rise on ropes and sprinted straight toward the blast site on the ground.
“Hurry up and check if he’s actually dead! Move it! A blast this big is gonna bring the Security Force running any second!”
“How the hell do we check? Guy’s gotta be vaporized!”
“Just make sure so we can report back to the boss.”
Crimson flames roared across the ruins, lighting up the two sneaky black figures. Both were dressed in dark clothes, hoods pulled low, faces wrapped in scarves.
“Holy shit, what a monster fire! Wait—there’s someone inside the flames!” one hooded man yelped.
From the churning sea of red-hot fire, a sword-wielding silhouette slowly emerged. His solid boots crushed the burning earth with every step, leaving behind a trail of flaming footprints.
Under the raging inferno, his face was cold and hard as steel. Flames surged and danced across his entire body, while his longsword glowed with a magnificent, heroic light. Who else could it be but Finn?
“MONSTER!”
The two hooded men shrieked and spun around, bolting for their lives. Anyone who could walk out of a blast that brutal had to be some kind of monster.
Fury burned in Finn’s eyes. He stomped the ground and shot forward like an arrow from a bow. In a flash he caught up to one hooded man. The Skybearer Sword came down in a savage chop, slicing the guy clean in half at the waist.
The other hooded man didn’t even dare glance back. He ignored his buddy’s dying screams, pumping his legs harder, desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and this nightmare.
Finn exploded into motion, charging forward. His longsword swept up, and a raging torrent of flames burst from the blade, swallowing the man in an instant and turning him into a living torch.
It was pure hellfire. The man screamed and thrashed inside the blaze, his howls quickly dying down as he burned into a blackened husk.
The other hooded man had already been cut clean in two. His upper half dragged itself across the burning ground, smearing a long trail of vivid red blood behind him.
Finn strode over to the half-man, drove the Skybearer Sword into the dirt right in front of his face, and spoke in an ice-cold voice. “Who sent you?”
“I won’t say a word…” The hooded man bit down hard on his lip.
Finn ripped the hood off his head and found a completely bald scalp underneath—smooth and shiny, like it had been freshly shaved.
He flipped the man onto his back, reached into storage space, and pulled out a small bottle of veritaserum—the magic potion that forced complete honesty and made anyone answer every single question.
Even though he wasn’t sure the magic potion would even work in this world, Finn poured it straight down the hooded man’s throat. The man swallowed with two weak gurgles, and in an instant his eyes went dull and unfocused.
“You’ve already lost too much blood. You don’t have much time left, so skip the lies with your dying words.” Finn stared down at the half-man and asked again, “Who sent you?”
The hooded man’s lips trembled. He opened them just enough to whisper, “Demon Gang’s leader… Simpson Browne.”
The moment the words left his mouth, his head slumped to the side and he stopped breathing for good.
“Just like I figured—it really was the Demon Gang. Bold move, I’ll give them that.” Finn let out a cold laugh, turning to survey the sea of ruins around him. The entire block had been wiped out in the explosion. Everyone was dead, including the hotel owner Michael and the whole Jackson family…
Even Jimmy had been caught in the blast. Finn had thrown up a Profound Energy shield for him at the last second, but all it managed to save was the kid’s head—nothing below the neck.
Finn stepped into the roaring flames and stared down at the severed head, its eyes still wide with terror. “You died that easily? I didn’t even get to see your ability, Laser Rain.”
He reached into his storage space, pulled out a Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill, pried open Jimmy’s shriveled lips, and shoved the pill inside.
The Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill was a divine elixir capable of rebuilding ruined bodies, reviving the dead, and restoring damaged meridians. Bringing back Jimmy when all that remained was a head was still well within its power.
Blood vessels and bones sprouted like fresh buds, rapidly extending from the stump of Jimmy’s neck. They wove together into a heart, lungs, every internal organ… then skin, more blood vessels, arms, legs, and feet.
“What the hell kind of magic is this?!” a woman’s voice cried out in shock from nearby.
Finn looked up and saw Olivia standing there, hair wild and messy, still wearing nothing but her pajamas.
She gripped a submachine gun tightly, her shoelaces dangling loose. She had clearly heard the explosion and rushed straight over without even taking the time to get properly dressed.