Chapter 55: A Flower Dedicated to Ashes and Conscience

“Is… it over?”

The can of cola was crushed with a crack, piercing the oppressive silence of the break room.

A man with a checkered past abruptly stood, his eyes darting around with anxiety, his voice trembling:

“I’m saying, how much longer are we supposed to stay in this godforsaken place?!”

“Shut up. We wait for word from upstairs… to clean things up.”

Another person cut in.

His next words died in his throat.

“Damn it… if I’d known this online crap would come back to haunt us, I never would have—”

The man didn’t finish his sentence.

The rest was swallowed back down, leaving only silence in its wake.

In the room, some hugged their knees in silence, others fidgeted with their phones.

No one dared meet anyone else’s eyes.

The muted curses, the taken-out-of-context snippets, the names nailed down in the online world—it all seemed to pin their fate on the word “death,” making the very air feel heavy.

Among this group, the most compromised was a frail, black-haired boy curled up in a sleeping bag in the corner.

He was practically swallowed by the fabric, only a pair of weary eyes visible.

He was one of the first to leak Chen Yuan’s personal information en masse.

“Got carried away.”

That’s how he explained it himself.

As for whether it was true, no one bothered to dig deeper, but his fear of death was genuine enough.

After contacting the culprit behind the “doxing,” he was the first to scramble and hide inside this Patrol Bright Sanctuary.

“How can people be driven into this hell?!”

The others in the room would cast contemptuous glances his way.

After all, if not for people like him, those of them who just followed along, threw a few kicks, and hurled a few insults wouldn’t have ended up here either.

But in his heart, he was cursing them too.

Just like he had cursed Chen Yuan.

Outside the window, the night was deep.

A few scattered windows were still lit.

The clamor of the day had long since died down.

The streets were empty of pedestrians, leaving only the circles of dim yellow light beneath the streetlamps and the silhouettes of distant residential buildings.

Now, only two patrolmen stood guard at the entrance of the sanctuary.

“Report status.”

The building’s internal comms crackled with the operator’s voice.

“Periphery of the sanctuary is clear. Target not sighted.”

The patrolman’s voice was steady through his faceplate.

“Copy. Maintain vigilance.”

The comms went silent, and only the sound of wind remained.

But shortly after the communication ended, the anomaly began.

The streetlights, one by one, started to go out, starting from the far end.

Noise echoed through the silent street.

Then, from the display window of a nearby electronics shop, dozens of television screens crackled to life simultaneously with black-and-white static.

Amidst the piercing noise, a headless, legless torso with its left arm completely severed appeared silently in the middle of the street, its remaining right arm dangling limp.

The pale figure made the two patrolmen tense up instantly.

Through the special vision built into their helmets, they immediately noticed something in the center of the torso’s chest and abdomen—

Within a gaping fissure running vertically across its core, a single, massive, bloodshot eye stared unblinkingly, fixed on the direction of the sanctuary.

“It’s here! Notify Miss Xia Xinglian!”

“Understood!”

The operator responded immediately, linking the distress signal and all prepared measures to the Lingxun who was already on standby.

In the next instant, the pale figure vanished from the middle of the street.

When it reappeared, it was less than twenty meters from the sanctuary’s main gate!

“Open fire!”

But the bullets passed through nothing but pale white smoke.

“Fall back! Get inside! Leave it to the Lingxun!”

The two patrolmen didn’t hesitate.

Following their orders, they retreated behind the heavy alloy doors, which slammed shut with a bang.

The entity outside didn’t pursue.

It just slowly raised its only remaining right hand, reaching for the air surrounding the sanctuary.

The moment its fingertip touched, faint golden ripples began to emanate in the air.

The Patrol Bright Sanctuary itself was a large-scale “Xianyi.”

But unlike the typical Xianyi used to restrict entities and solidify the Inner World, this one possessed a repulsive force field powerful enough to isolate most lower-tier Gate Entities.

Of course, if a sufficiently powerful being was willing to pay the price to assault it relentlessly, this membrane could still be torn open.

It just needed time.

And time was enough for the Association’s blade to arrive.

In recent days, this Gate Entity that specifically targeted cyberbullies had been extremely elusive, drifting between the cracks of reality and the Inner World like a phantom.

Even Xia Xinglian, who was tasked with hunting it, had been repeatedly foiled.

So, the branch and the sanctuary made a bold decision:

Temporarily weaken the sanctuary’s protective force field, using it as bait to lure the entity out.

And now—

The pale Gate Entity’s right hand plunged into the center of the faint golden ripples, slowly pulling to one side.

The invisible barrier seemed to gain substance, stretching into a dense, shimmering web of cracks.

The sanctuary’s control room tried to boost the field’s intensity to delay the collapse, but the pale hand seemed welded to the barrier.

The cracks were still slowly expanding.

Just as the force field was about to shatter—

BOOM!!!

The entire street shook violently, centered on the intersection.

A gigantic tentacle, deep purple in color, covered in suckers and slimy mucus, tore through the road surface without warning, soaring into the sky!

With a wet, squelching impact, the ground shuddered.

Where the tentacle crashed down, a pit was left behind, bubbling with purple-black slime.

A pungent, acidic stench filled the air as concrete rapidly bubbled, as if corroded by strong acid.

Yet, beneath the tentacle, there was nothing.

The pale figure had vanished.

On the edge of a rooftop across from the sanctuary, a tall, slender figure slowly stood up.

“Trying to catch me while hiding?”

A flippant female voice drifted down from above.

The night wind howled, rustling her dark twin-tails and the hem of her oversized coat.

She adjusted the sunglasses on her nose slightly.

After a moment, a pair of purple eyes, glowing with a faint violet light, scanned every shadow in the streets and alleys below with excitement and a hint of madness.

“Found you.”

She smirked, took a step forward, stepped off the edge of the rooftop, and leaped down.

The fierce wind rushed up, enveloping her entirely.

The thrill of the fall, the boundary so close to death, only made the light in her eyes burn brighter.

Just a moment before colliding with the ground, another, even thicker purple-black tentacle materialized out of thin air beneath her, precisely catching her mid-descent.

At the same time, the air twisted again.

The pale figure had barely solidified and hadn’t even had a chance to launch a second assault on the force field before Xia Xinglian’s figure was in front of it.

In her right hand, she still held the highly corrosive liquid.

But at that very moment, a flash of white light passed.

An intense spatial pull swept over them.

“Tch. Dragging me into your Inner World?”

Xia Xinglian steadied herself, pushed her crooked sunglasses back into place, and looked around.

This place looked exactly like where she had just been.

But the pervasive gray-white color, and the twisted shadows staring at her from the depths of the gloom, all marked the difference from reality.

“Trying to kill a bystander like me while you’re at it? Or do you just find me annoying?”

She muttered to herself, her fingers tapping absently on her outer thigh.

“Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter either way.”

The eyes behind the sunglasses narrowed slightly.

Then she raised her right hand and snapped her fingers with a crisp sound.

“Inner Worlds… aren’t exclusive to you Gate Entities.”

Snap!

With her feet as the epicenter, a viscous, living violet liquid erupted violently!

It surged across the ground like a sentient thing, climbed walls, and covered streets and alleys, swallowing everything in its path.

The slime intertwined and writhed, dyeing the entire space into a writhing, pulsing deep purple.

Thick liquid dripped from the gaps in the tentacles, like rain in this newborn world.

In just a few breaths, the Inner World expanded by the Gate Entity had been completely overrun and replaced by Xia Xinglian’s.

She snapped her fingers again.

Abruptly.

The entire world, along with those terrifying tentacles and slime, began to collapse like a bubble.

It eventually dissipated into drifting purple-black motes of light, vanishing completely into the air.

***

Reality.

The pale Gate Entity had just pressed its hand back onto the sanctuary’s force field, tearing open a new rift.

At that moment, it seemed to sense something, pausing its movement slightly, and slowly turned around.

The massive eye in the center of its chest met Xia Xinglian’s gaze.

It didn’t know how Xia Xinglian had returned to reality.

It didn’t care.

Its goal was, from start to finish, only one.

It turned back towards the Patrol Bright Sanctuary.

Just as its hook-like right hand was about to plunge in, several purple-black crystalline spears materialized abruptly, piercing its pale body completely!

No scream.

No wail.

Only large clouds of gray-white, ash-like dust burst from the wounds, scattering like snow under the streetlights.

Xia Xinglian slowly lowered the hand that had guided the attack.

But the purple-black crystalline spears didn’t stop.

They spread and grew inside its body, pinning it in mid-air.

At the same time, the corrosive purple substance on the surface of the spears began to spread wildly, climbing up its broken form.

Wherever it touched, the pale “skin” rapidly turned black, carbonized, and peeled away, emitting wisps of blue smoke.

Beyond that, this corrosive mucus also suppressed its Nether Breath.

This reduced a “Gift-grade” Gate Entity’s available power to even less than a tenth of its original strength.

Even so, its remaining right arm still reached, inch by inch, towards the rift in the distant force field.

Xia Xinglian sighed softly.

She raised her hand.

Another, relatively slender tentacle swept in from the side, sending it flying with a thwack, crashing heavily into a distant street and kicking up a large cloud of dust.

She walked over slowly.

Finally, she stopped a few meters in front of the Gate Entity.

She bent slightly, her gaze behind the sunglasses falling on the broken, almost skeletal body, her expression softening somewhat.

“Hey, I heard about your situation.”

Her voice carried across the silent street, calmer now.

“I admit, what happened to you was pretty rough. But those people, even if they were guilty, they didn’t deserve to die for it. If judgment is needed, it should be left to the law.”

She knew these words were meaningless.

It couldn’t understand.

Or it could, but didn’t care.

She said them because she wanted to.

That was all.

Having said her piece, she straightened up and lifted her finger slightly.

A colossal tentacle, its diameter comparable to a building and towering into the sky, unfurled slowly.

The terrifying body, covered in suckers and fang-like patterns, paused in mid-air, mucus dripping like rain, corroding small pits into the ground below.

***

An extremely faint, terribly hoarse voice suddenly sounded.

Xia Xinglian’s movement paused, almost imperceptibly.

“M…om…”

The voice came from deep within the Gate Entity’s broken form, slurred and indistinct.

Murky, gray-white liquid seeped slowly from the depths of its eye socket, tracing a path down its pale, carbonized “cheek.”

Its residual body twitched slightly, almost imperceptibly.

The night wind gusted through the streets, echoing like a sob.

“Mom…”

Xia Xinglian’s finger, suspended in mid-air, trembled almost imperceptibly.

The sunglasses hid the complex emotions that flashed through her eyes for a moment.

But in the next second, her gaze returned to calm.

The colossal tentacle hanging in the air fell at last.

BOOM!!!

A deafening roar shook the entire street.

Dust flew high into the air.

No scream.

No struggle.

Only a denser, paler cloud of ash scattered like snow, covering the ground for dozens of meters in every direction.

Then, it dissipated bit by bit in the night breeze…

As if it had never existed.

Xia Xinglian stood still for a long time.

Finally, she lowered her head, crouched down, and pinched something between her fingers on the cold ground.

She picked up a crystal, pure white, no bigger than a fingernail.

Then, she silently tucked it into the inside pocket of her coat.

***

In the break room, cheers finally erupted.

Someone kicked an empty water bottle across the floor, as if it were some kind of trophy.

“Stupid Gate Entity, didn’t the Association clean it up like garbage! Serves it right!”

“Exactly! That whole ‘shockwave’ bullshit should’ve been dead long ago!”

Another voice chimed in, though the face showed a hint of guilt, as if trying to boost their own courage.

In the corner.

The frail boy who had leaked Chen Yuan’s information let out a long, trembling sigh.

It’s over…

Finally over…

There was no joy on his face, only a pale, almost exhausted look.

But more people remained silent.

They sat where they were, staring at the ground or out the window at the still-dark sky.

No cheering.

No screaming.

The Gate Entity’s disappearance didn’t bring the expected relief.

Someone unconsciously rubbed their fingers together.

Someone else lit and turned off their phone screen repeatedly.

The man who had shouted “Serves it right!” gradually fell silent after his last outburst, simply sitting down, staring at his own slightly trembling hands.

Probably fear.

But more than that, a different emotion lodged in their chests, finally turning into a sigh or a weary hug.

However, their “relief” didn’t last long.

The break room door opened again.

But this time, it wasn’t the support staff.

It was fully armed patrolmen, along with several uniformed police officers.

“Li Jie, Xu Mietong, Zhang Rui…”

A patrol captain read out the names from a list one by one.

Along with their detailed online account information and some already-filed records of insulting remarks.

“Pursuant to the relevant clauses of the ‘Supplementary Regulations on the Internet and Gate Entity Incident Response’ and the ‘Public Security Administration Punishments Law,’ you are suspected of using information networks to publicly insult others with severe circumstances, indirectly leading to serious consequences. You are now being legally summoned for investigation. Please cooperate.”

The police flashed their badges and documents, and a dead silence fell over the room.

The recent relief, revelry, and silence all transformed into a different emotion—fear.

“B-but… that monster is already dead, isn’t it?! Case closed, right?!”

One of them tried to struggle.

“The neutralization of the Gate Entity threat doesn’t mean your actions are exempt from legal consequences.”

The patrol captain’s gaze swept across the pale faces.

Finally, it landed on the black-haired boy.

“Especially you, Zhang Ti. Suspected of illegally organizing and disseminating citizens’ personal information with severe circumstances. You will be transferred for further criminal investigation.”

The police began to step forward for identification and initial control.

There was no fierce resistance.

Only futile arguments and stifled sobs.

***

A few days later.

In a quiet cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

There was no grand ceremony.

Only a few relatives with tired faces.

The things Chen Yuan left behind in life, which could be called “mementos,” were pitifully few.

Just a few old clothes and some scattered personal items.

A simple joint tombstone stood there.

No elaborate epitaphs.

Just two names side by side, with their birth and death years.

The autumn wind rustled through the cemetery’s evergreen pines and cypresses, making a soft shushing sound.

Sunlight filtered through the branches and leaves, casting swaying, mottled shadows on the stone monument.

A mother had finally been reunited with her son.

In a way no one could have imagined.

In the days that followed, relatives would come occasionally.

Maybe to bring a bunch of white chrysanthemums, Chen Yuan’s favorite, and clear the fallen leaves around the grave.

Stand there and talk about recent events for a while.

Or simply keep quiet company for a spell.

Until one late autumn afternoon.

An aunt arrived as usual.

Carrying a fresh bouquet of white flowers, she walked expertly along the slightly desolate cemetery path.

But as she got closer to the joint grave, her steps suddenly halted.

A flicker of confusion crossed her face.

In front of the tombstone, it was very clean.

Someone had clearly been there to wipe it recently.

And…

The spot beside the polished stone was not empty.

There, placed quietly, was a small bouquet…

Of already somewhat withered white flowers.