Smiling Face didn’t give him any more time to process it. He pulled something out of his pocket.
A small knife. The same one from last time.
Smiling Face held it out, handle first, in a perfectly polite manner.
This time there was no Han Junhao to intervene. Director Cui took the knife against his own will.
The fear had already begun.
His mind was struggling, but the dread building in his chest was growing faster than he could fight it.
Smiling Face turned around and faced the two agents from the Eye of God Bureau.
Ivy stared at him with a blank expression, her gaze sweeping across his face before flicking to Director Cui, who was trembling behind him.
“The Eye of God Bureau’s order is the full restructuring of the Superpowered Youth Corps.”
Her words came out rapid-fire, as if she were reading an official decree.
“From this moment on, you are the new Director. And the new Demon Witch.”
And with that, she turned and left. Not a single second to spare.
William didn’t follow. His job was to stay here.
Outside, more than a dozen bodies lay scattered across the ground, all of them from the Command Center.
The scent of blood hung heavy in the mountain air.
The Eye of God Bureau hadn’t come for the serum from the very beginning. Nor had they come for the Demon Witch.
They had long since assessed the Demon Witch’s combat capability. Impressive, but not strong enough to warrant their intervention. Not a threat that demanded direct action.
The serum wasn’t the focal point, either.
The real reason the Eye of God Bureau made its move was simple:
The dog wasn’t obeying anymore.
That dog wanted to bare its teeth at its master.
They made their move entirely because Director Cui and the Shouxin Association had been harboring rebellious intentions toward Old Glory and the Eye of God Bureau.
That was why they had shown up here today.
Not for the Demon Witch. Not for the serum.
Those were nothing but smoke screens.
What they wanted was the dog. And when the dog misbehaves, you give it a beating. Of course, dog stew was out of the question—that served no purpose.
So the serum could go to the Superpowered Youth Corps. The Demon Witch could stay. But Director Cui had to die.
And then the dog would go back to being the same dog as before.
Smiling Face looked at William and gave a slight nod. "Alright, I am the Demon Witch now! What comes next is the purge!"
He flipped the helmet over and examined the connectors on the inside.
Behind him, Director Cui was still fighting his last battle.
"Impossible. You can't become the Demon Witch."
Director Cui’s voice had gone completely off-key. The blade in his hand trembled violently, but he never let go.
"The helmet requires genetic verification to link to the vessel... You haven’t been registered... You can’t connect to it."
Smiling Face slowly lowered the helmet onto his head.
"Director Cui, you have a problem. You always assume everyone else is as stupid as you."
He adjusted the helmet into position, and the straps clicked into their slots.
"If I hadn’t prepared for even this step, why would I rebel? The genetic data was taken care of three months ago. While you weren’t around, I wasn’t exactly twiddling my thumbs."
His hand gripped the activation lever.
"Goodbye, Director Cui. Thank you for bringing me out of the orphanage all those years ago. For that kindness, I’ll make sure you keep your body in one piece."
The lever was pulled.
Smiling Face’s consciousness flooded into that mindless, powerful vessel.
Connection successful.
And in the chair, Director Cui had already pressed the tip of the knife against his own throat.
His eyes were wide open, bloodshot and bulging. His lips trembled violently, trying to scream but no sound came out.
Fear had devoured every shred of his sanity. The only thing left in his mind was a single voice:
End it.
If it ends, there’s nothing left to be afraid of.
The blade cut deep across his skin, slashing through his throat and severing his artery.
Blood poured down along the wound. Director Cui’s eyes were still open, but the light in them had already gone out.
On the other side of the battlefield, everything seemed to hit pause.
The Demon Witch hovered in midair, completely motionless. Her arms hung slack at her sides, her head tilted slightly downward, like a puppet with its strings cut.
Neither Eric nor Sam attempted to press the advantage and attack.
Not because they didn’t want to—but because there was no point.
The other members of the Superpowered Youth Corps held their ground as well.
Instinct told them something was off about the Demon Witch.
When an SSS-rank superhuman suddenly loses control in the middle of a battlefield, whatever the reason, charging in blindly is not a smart move.
Everything felt wrong.
Even Song Junhe found himself frowning.
“How is this happening? It shouldn’t be like this.”
“What shouldn’t?” Lin Mo’s clone glanced over.
“The Demon Witch shouldn’t be behaving this way. Something’s severed the connection. Damn it, what the hell is going on.”
As he spoke, his eyes darted across the battlefield.
It was obvious—he knew far more than he was letting on.
The situation on the field was worse than he’d anticipated.
The Superpowered Youth Corps had taken heavy losses in this fight. Many A-rank and pseudo-A-rank supers were either maimed or on the verge of death, and the casualties among B-ranks were nothing short of catastrophic.
Bodies lay scattered across the ruins, some of them with faces far too young—barely eighteen or nineteen—staring into nothing with unclosed eyes.
Still, all of this fell within Song Junhe’s threshold of acceptance.
He’d seen plenty of dead people in his time.
As long as they got the serum, the Superpowered Youth Corps still had a chance to turn things around.
New A-ranks. New S-ranks. All of them could be manufactured with the serum.
The key was the Demon Witch.
He kept his eyes locked on the figure above, muttering under his breath: “Director Cui. Don’t screw this up now of all times.”
Every pair of eyes on the battlefield was fixed on that silhouette hovering in the sky.
Finally, the Demon Witch above began to move.
First, the fingers. Five fingers slowly curled into a fist, then released, as if testing out the state of this body.
Then came the rotation of the neck.
Then a full range of motion.
As awareness settled in, the Demon Witch—now under Smiling Face’s control—took in his position and the power surging through this vessel. He couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
In the distance, Han Junhao looked up. He saw the smile on the Demon Witch’s face and couldn’t stop his brow from furrowing. There was something about that expression that made his skin crawl.
And at that very moment, the Demon Witch’s gaze swept over everyone around.
“All members of the Superpowered Youth Corps—stand down, now!”
The voice wasn’t loud, but it reached everyone’s ears with total clarity, as if it bypassed the air entirely and went straight into their minds.
Everyone froze for a moment.
Though the fighting had already stopped, this was an explicit order to cease.
But the Demon Witch’s reputation carried weight. The A-ranks quickly moved away from the dragon.
They could stop themselves, sure, but who knew if the other side would hold back?
Still, their eyes were full of confusion.
What?
We were in the middle of a fight, and now we just stop?
The other S-ranks also halted what they were doing.
Unlike the ordinary A-ranks, the S-ranks were privy to at least some inside information.
They all knew the Demon Witch was essentially an empty vessel. But this Demon Witch standing before them—there was something in the way they carried themselves that was completely different from Director Cui.
This Demon Witch was smiling.
Smiling widely.
It was the kind of joy that came from the depths of one’s soul—the elation of finally getting what you’ve been after.
That was definitely not Director Cui.
The three S-ranks exchanged wary glances.
Meanwhile, Han Junhao could sense something deeply wrong with the Demon Witch in front of him. Especially since he hadn’t been able to spot Smiling Face anywhere since moments ago.
He had a sinking feeling he already knew what was happening.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
