Fu Yan · chat.title

The Cold Blade Returns to Its Nest Night rain soaked the crumbling ruins of the old city, the smell of rust mingling with damp earth drifting through the cold wind. Fu Yan stood at the edge of the rooftop of an abandoned high-rise. His black combat uniform, soaked by the rain, clung to his clean, upright shoulders and back, making his figure look all the colder and harder, like a sculpture. Between his fingertips he held a silver mental-inhibitor patch, his knuckles pale with cold. The faint blue overload mark beneath his collarbone was warming faintly along his veins, like a dormant ice blade carrying a hidden trace of ferocity. He is Fu Yan, codename Cold Blade—a high-rank Sentinel directly under the Combat Operations Department, and a registered high-risk ability user. His pitch-black eyes held not a single ripple, yet took in every movement within a hundred meters—the soft cries of a stray cat at the end of the alley, the gurgle of water in the sewer, the heavy heartbeats and breaths of the three targets, even the cold metallic touch of the guns in their pockets—all of it crashing into his mind in perfect detail. With full-range hyper-senses open, the world was both ultimate clarity and ultimate torment; countless fragments of sound and scent wove into a net that made his temples throb, his mental threshold teetering on the edge of collapse. This was his normal. With no fated Guide to soothe him, relying only on inhibitors to barely hold himself together, every mission was a battle against his own mental frenzy. "Cold Blade, targets confirmed. Three energy hunters, carrying a mental extraction device. They move out in ten minutes." The liaison officer's mechanical voice came through the earpiece, with no extra emotion—and no one cared what mental torment this top Sentinel was enduring right now. Fu Yan didn't answer, his thin lips pressed into a hard, cold line. He lowered his eyes slightly, his gaze sweeping over his spirit landscape—the endless-night forest, wind sharp as knives, where the black blade half-buried in the snow was casting a bone-piercing cold gleam along with his taut nerves. He had seen too many comrades who, unable to find a compatible Guide, eventually collapsed into monsters that knew only slaughter under mental overload. So he feared losing control more than anyone—feared that this unsheathed blade of his might hurt the innocent, and feared even more that he would never get to meet the one who could hold his mind steady and make him truly calm. His fingertips pressed the inhibitor patch against the side of his neck. The cool medicinal liquid seeped into his skin, easing the dull ache in his mind a little—but it treated the symptom, not the root. Fu Yan raised his hand, and a faint mental pressure gathered in his palm. The air around him instantly grew stagnant, even the falling rain seeming to pause for a moment. He had no patience for waiting. His body suddenly moved, like a lone wolf striking through the night, without a single sound. He leapt from the rooftop, landed on the steel scaffolding outside the building, used the momentum to launch himself forward, and in the blink of an eye closed in on the warehouse where the energy hunters were hiding. Murderous intent blazed cold in his pitch-black eyes. Without a hint of hesitation, every close-combat strike was vicious and ruthless; the alloy short blade tore through the air with a sharp whistle, each blow aimed straight at vital points—a perfect embodiment of the cold creed "one strike, one kill." In less than half a minute, the three energy hunters lay on the ground, stripped of any ability to resist. But the thrill of battle had fully detonated the mental disorder he had suppressed for so long. The wind howling in his mind suddenly turned shrill. The black blade in the endless-night forest trembled wildly. Fu Yan's fists clenched hard, his knuckles white. The faint blue mark beneath his collarbone flared blindingly bright in an instant. His five senses collapsed into complete chaos, agony wracking his entire body, and a surging madness rose in his chest, making him want to destroy everything around him. He staggered against the cold warehouse wall, head hanging low, black hair soaked by the rain and plastered to his pale forehead, a bone-chilling pressure radiating from his whole body—even the rain seemed to be forced back by his ferocity. Just as he was about to fall completely into madness, a wisp of mental fluctuation—extremely faint, extremely gentle—brushed lightly across his mind. Like the warm sun of spring melting snow, like a clear breeze smoothing the wild waves of the forest, that gentle force settled softly over his disordered mental pathways, quietly calming the churning violence. The net that had been squeezing the breath out of him loosened in an instant. Fu Yan's head snapped up. Shock and bewilderment churned in his pitch-black pupils, and his body, which had been wound to the breaking point, relaxed involuntarily. The wind in the endless-night forest died. The snow fell softly. That black blade gleaming with cold light finally, slowly, sank back into stillness. Following that thread of mental fluctuation, he looked toward the warehouse entrance. There stood a slender figure holding a plain umbrella, eyes clear and bright, looking at him with a hint of worry. The moment their eyes met, Fu Yan felt it clearly—his spirit, adrift for twenty-seven years, had finally found a shore to anchor to. His anchor had come.