Who is your 'Lord', and where is He

"I'll talk! I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!"

The middle-aged man's psychological defenses crumbled completely under the sight of that mangled flesh and the pungent stench of blood.

Tears and snot streamed down his face as he babbled incoherently.

"This isn't our only hideout—there's a backup contact point in the industrial district west of the city! The 'Master's' envoy usually goes there at night to issue missions!"

Su Qi's expression remained unchanged, his calm gaze fixed on the man.

That very calmness was more terrifying than any torture.

"Envoy?"

"Y-yes... We call him the 'Star Envoy.' He's the one who contacts us and assigns tasks!"

The middle-aged man clung to this lifeline, vomiting out everything he knew like beans spilling from a bamboo tube.

"Today's operation... it was his doing too."

"But after giving the key instructions, he had other urgent matters to attend to and left."

All he had done was follow orders—to gather all available information on a girl named Liu Yuan and then find a way to abduct her.

Su Qi nodded.

He raised a single finger.

At its tip, an almost imperceptible wisp of pure soul energy condensed into a pinpoint.

It touched the man's forehead.

The man shuddered violently, his eyes flickering with one last moment of confusion and relief before his body went limp, as if all his bones had been yanked out. He collapsed, lifeless.

Su Qi burned the file on Liu Yuan without a second glance.

Then he turned and walked out of the basement.

He didn’t bother cleaning up the scene—there was no need.

Soon enough, specialized personnel would arrive to dispose of the "garbage."

When he returned upstairs, the employee door leading to the basement had already closed silently, as if nothing had happened.

The dance floor was still a writhing mass of bodies, glasses clinking at the bar. No one noticed that just meters beneath their feet, death had visited multiple times.

Su Qi moved through the thick, clamoring crowd like a ghost, drawing no attention.

Outside "Dream Paris," the late-night snack stall at the alley entrance had already packed up. The owner rode off on his cart, humming a tuneless melody, his back disappearing around the street corner.

The transition from revelry to desolation always came too quickly.

Su Qi stood at the mouth of the alley, glancing up at the city-lit sky tinged crimson, then pulled out his small phone.

He dialed Elder Feng.

The call connected instantly, without the slightest delay.

"Me."

"Sent you the address." Su Qi's tone was as casual as notifying someone about a delivered package. "I killed someone."

"You—" Elder Feng seemed to want to ask something but didn’t know where to start.

"Send someone to clean it up."

Without waiting for a response, Su Qi hung up.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket.

Then, without hesitation, he melted into the city’s night.

He disliked trouble.

But if trouble came knocking,

the only solution was to eliminate its source.

---

Meanwhile, in a heavily guarded secret conference room within the Great Xia Military Headquarters...

Elder Feng’s usually refined face was now etched with frost.

"Any leads?" His voice could have frozen hell.

"The target’s counter-surveillance skills are top-tier. All communication traces lead overseas, routed through at least seventeen relay nodes. Tracking the source is impossible."

Elder Feng slammed a palm onto the table, the sturdy alloy surface groaning under the impact. "Our most classified intel is being handed out like party favors, and you’re telling me you can’t even identify who’s behind it?"

No one dared rebut.

This was, undeniably, their failure.

Just then, Elder Feng’s terminal beeped—Su Qi’s call.

Before he could utter a full sentence, the line went dead.

Su Qi was supposed to be in the Source Realm.

If he’d suddenly resurfaced to report a killing,

it could only mean he’d found a lead.

Elder Feng felt a bitter irony.

His elite intelligence division had turned up nothing after hours of work.

Yet Su Qi had slapped the answer in his face within minutes.

"Lock down 'Dream Paris' immediately. Dispatch our most reliable team to sanitize the scene—quietly, without alerting anyone!"

A flurry of orders followed, setting the nation’s covert machinery into motion under the cover of night.

"Understood!" A subordinate acknowledged, turning to leave.

"Wait." Elder Feng stopped him.

The man paused, looking back.

"Tell me," Elder Feng’s voice carried a deep weariness, "have I truly become obsolete?"

The subordinate hesitated, then shook his head solemnly.

A faint light rekindled in Elder Feng’s eyes.

"Perhaps... I just need to adapt to a newer way of operating."

---

West City Industrial District.

The edge of the metropolis. By day, a cacophony of machinery; by night, a graveyard of silence, save for the occasional flicker of streetlamps casting sickly halos on the barren roads.

Su Qi had taken a rideshare, disembarking a kilometer shy of the industrial zone.

He strolled leisurely toward the sprawling complex, like an ordinary man on an evening walk.

The area was desolate, overgrown with weeds, long abandoned.

A rusted rolling shutter door bore a glaring red spray-painted "DEMO" in bold strokes.

Su Qi didn’t approach. He lingered in the shadows, observing.

Waiting.

For the so-called "Star Envoy" to appear.

Minutes ticked by, the only sounds the whisper of wind and distant yowls of stray cats.

Just as Su Qi began to suspect the night would yield nothing, a black van glided into view, headlights off—a specter in the dark.

It halted at the industrial park’s entrance.

The door opened, and out stepped a man in a crisp suit, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

He looked every bit the refined academic or corporate elite.

The man stood before the shutter, motionless.

Then, as if by magic, the massive door rolled up soundlessly, revealing a maw of darkness.

Adjusting his tie, he stepped inside.

A ghost of a smile touched Su Qi’s lips.

The fish had bitten.

He waited, patient.

Ten minutes later, muffled voices rose from within—an argument, sharp then abruptly silenced.

Another few minutes passed before the bespectacled man reemerged, scowling, his pace brisk as he headed for his car.

Just as he pulled the door open—

A figure materialized behind him, silent as death.

"Care to chat?"

The bespectacled man’s body stiffened abruptly, his reflexes lightning-fast.

Almost simultaneously with the sound,

a surge of stellar energy erupted from within him, transforming into countless dazzling starlight that sought to devour the person behind him.

Yet, the starlight capable of effortlessly shredding an armored vehicle vanished without a trace the moment it touched Su Qi’s body—absorbed and annihilated as if swallowed by a black hole, leaving not even a ripple.

“You…” The bespectacled man’s face twisted in shock as he whirled around, finally seeing the face of his assailant.

That lazy, disinterested expression.

“It’s you!” he blurted out.

“Seems we really need to have a proper chat,” Su Qi said with a smile, one that struck the bespectacled man as more terrifying than the devil’s.

He staggered backward, trying to wrench open the car door to escape, only to find his limbs weighed down as if filled with lead, immovable.

“W-what do you want?” His voice trembled with fear.

“Nothing much.” Su Qi stepped closer, reaching out to pat his shoulder like an old friend greeting him. “Just thought the gift you sent was too extravagant. I ought to return the favor.”

“After all, it’s impolite not to reciprocate.”

The moment the words fell, the bespectacled man felt an indescribable, horrifying force flood his body.

It was as if he’d been dunked into liquid nitrogen, then tossed into a furnace.

An unspeakable power, transmitted through Su Qi’s hand on his shoulder, coursed violently through his meridians, invading every corner of his being.

His prized “stellar energy” was like a child’s crayon drawing of the sun compared to the real thing—utterly insignificant before this force.

The starlight within him wailed, recoiled, was assimilated, and finally erased entirely.

“How does it feel?” Su Qi’s voice was light, as if asking about dinner.

“W-who… who are you?!” The bespectacled man’s voice was hoarse, each word strained as if dredged from the depths of his soul.

He tried to struggle but found even the slightest twitch of his fingers beyond his control.

He had become a thinking statue, forced to watch helplessly as this languid young man dictated his fate.

“You don’t know who I am?” Su Qi withdrew his hand as if brushing off dust. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to talk to me?”

He took a step back, giving the man some breathing room.

The bespectacled man gasped for air, his expensive suit drenched in sweat, clinging to his back. “You’re not him… Our intel said he couldn’t possibly resist us!”

Any fleeting relief from survival was swiftly drowned by deeper terror.

The other party was toying with him.

Like a cat playing with a mouse before the kill.

“W-we’ll pay any price… Just don’t interfere…”

“Price?” Su Qi chuckled as if hearing a joke. “What makes you think you’re in any position to negotiate?”

He raised a finger and tapped the empty air.

Hum—

Ripples spread before the bespectacled man’s eyes. Countless radiant specks materialized, rapidly coalescing into a miniature, real, and unfathomably deep cosmos.

Each star pulsed with ancient, overwhelming energy, orbiting in esoteric patterns, their gravitational pulls weaving a tapestry of cosmic birth and death.

The bespectacled man stared dumbfounded. The pitiful “stellar energy” in his body was less than dust compared to this vast sea of stars.

The gap was like firefly versus moonlight.

No—firefly versus the entire galaxy.

“You’re…”

His voice was a whisper, his faith crumbling.

“No.” Su Qi shook his head.

His tone shifted, and for the first time, his perpetually drowsy eyes sharpened.

“Tell me. Who leaked the ‘Sourceflow Construct’ to you?”

The bespectacled man shuddered violently, the last trace of color draining from his face.

His lips quivered, eyes brimming with conflict and dread.

“I… I can’t…”

“Oh?” Su Qi arched a brow. “Loyal to your ‘master,’ are we?”

He snapped his fingers.

Click.

The miniature cosmos swallowed the bespectacled man whole.

His consciousness stretched infinitely, torn from his body and cast into an endless dark universe.

Silence. Cold. No time, no space, no sound, no light.

Only eternal solitude.

He tried to scream—no voice.

Tried to move—no limbs.

Thought was all he had left, yet in this void, it became the cruelest torture.

He didn’t know how long it lasted.

A second? An eternity?

Just as his mind neared obliteration, a speck of light appeared in the distance.

He “swam” toward it with all his might.

The light grew brighter, larger.

Until he saw it clearly.

Not light.

An eye.

An indescribable eye, so vast it filled his vision.

Within it, stars were born and died, the universe’s entire existence and demise reflected in its gaze.

When that eye locked onto him—

“AAAGH—!”

A scream unlike anything human tore from his throat.

Back in reality, he convulsed like a fish on land, foaming at the mouth, eyes bulging with terror, veins rupturing.

Seconds later.

“I’ll talk… I’ll talk…” His voice was a feeble whisper, his spirit broken as he collapsed. “It’s… ‘The Gardener’…”

“The Gardener?” Su Qi’s tone was flat.

“Our… mole… codename in Daxia’s upper echelons…” The man’s mind was barely coherent, answering on instinct. “Only… know the codename… provides intel…”

Su Qi listened silently.

The Gardener.

Prunes branches, nurtures flowers, weeds out the unwanted.

“Appearance? Distinguishing traits?” Su Qi pressed.

"I... I don't know..." The man with the gold-rimmed glasses was already losing focus in his eyes. "We’ve never met him... All communication was through encrypted one-way channels... 'The Gardener' only sent us intelligence—we couldn’t contact him..."

It seemed their opponent was cautious.

But it didn’t matter anymore.

With this codename, along with Elder Feng’s earlier reaction, the rest would be Elder Feng’s problem to deal with.

"One last question." Su Qi crouched down, staring at the face twisted with terror. "Who is your 'Master'? Where is he?"

At the mention of the "Master," the man’s unfocused pupils suddenly sharpened with a fanatical gleam.

"My Master is eternal! The one and only truth! He walks among the stars, His will—"