Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Inside the front-line command vehicle, there was a deathly silence.

No one spoke, no one moved.

Even the sound of breathing was suppressed to the extreme.

Everyone seemed frozen in place, staring blankly at the empty ruins on the screen, at the lone brooch.

They didn't know exactly what had just happened.

I just had a vague feeling that something was wrong.

Someone subconsciously looked down at their hands.

Those hands that were just clapping for "successful capture"

He suddenly felt a bit of blindness.

What was he so happy about just now?

How could a man seeking revenge for his wife be driven to the brink of despair?

The thought flashed through my mind like a needle piercing my heart.

He frowned, dismissing the strange thought—he was "abnormal," what was wrong with him?

But that slight stinging sensation lingered there, refusing to dissipate.

The feeling was so subtle that it was almost imperceptible unless one consciously tried to perceive it.

But it was there, like a silent reminder, gently ringing out every time he tried to convince himself that "something was wrong."

Do you really think this is right?

Gu Heng remained motionless, his hands still resting on the command platform.

His pupils were fixedly reflected in the empty floor-to-ceiling window.

He should have given the order.

The medical team should be on standby, the technical team should review the data, and everyone should immediately move to the next stage—that's the rhythm he's used to.

But he opened his mouth.

The words were stuck in my throat, and I couldn't say them.

Because—in that instant, he suddenly loathed himself.

I loathe the person I was just moments ago, who was so excited about the "live specimen."

I loathe the version of myself that didn't hesitate to order my teammates to their deaths.

I despise the part of myself that uses other people's lives as stepping stones.

This aversion was so intense, so foreign, as if another person stood deep within his soul, coldly scrutinizing him.

"……wrong."

Gu Heng clenched his fist tightly, his nails digging into his palm.

He is Gu Heng.

He was recommended by the third committee member of the province.

He is good at weighing options, good at scheming, and good at treating everyone and everything as pawns—that's who he is.

What is this inexplicable self-loathing?!

But no matter how much he struggled, that scrutinizing gaze never left him.

It's there.

Quietly lying dormant.

We await his next moment, when he faces a choice between good and evil.

Outside the window, the cold night wind howled across the top floor of the Cloud Palace, stirring up wisps of ashes that scattered across the sleeping city.

The operation to hunt down Li Rui has come to an end.

But the fire called "judgment" has only just begun to burn in the hearts of millions of people in this city.

……

About 800 meters southeast of Yunxiao Mansion, on the top floor of a tenement building, Liu Zhen saw Li Rui's self-immolation through binoculars.

Dark red lights, like a bursting dam, poured down from the floor-to-ceiling windows hundreds of meters above the ground, making the entire building's outline resemble a burning tombstone.

The points of light did not fall, but rather, as if possessing some kind of spirituality, spread in the wind and eventually gently disappeared into every soul that witnessed this scene.

A point of light drifted down along the trajectory observed by Liu Zhen.

In that instant, Liu Zhen suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest.

There, his source of power—the Seed of the Soul—was trembling wildly at an unprecedented frequency.

"Don't look directly at those spots of light."

A hoarse voice came from beside me.

Standing next to Liu Zhen was a man around forty years old.

He wore a pair of slightly stiff black-rimmed glasses, exuding an air of refined elegance born from years of immersion in official documents, but a closer look revealed a gloomy undercurrent hidden behind the lenses.

He was wearing a large, dark trench coat with the collar turned up, obscuring half of his face.

At that moment, another point of light was drifting down toward him.

The moment the light touched the two people's skin, it did not instantly merge in as it did when it invaded the Special Investigations Bureau members. Instead, it seemed to hit a force field full of repulsive force.

A faint glow with azure arcs of electricity appeared on Liu Zhen's body; while on the man's body, a faint glow with a dark green, thorny appearance appeared.

That was the defensive instinct of the seed within him.

The point of light flickered briefly in the dim light before disappearing into the biting cold wind.

Liu Zhen's eyes were filled with regret: "Such a powerful man... he actually immolated himself?"

The refined companion pushed up his glasses, and behind the lenses, his pupils reflected the gradually fading red glow above Yunxiao Mansion.

"To be precise, it wasn't self-immolation, it was 'sowing seeds'," his companion said. "Li Rui was using his own soul as fuel, forcibly etching the will of 'judgment' into the depths of every observer's soul."

"From now on, deep within the souls of those people, there will be a fire that could ignite at any moment. As long as evil continues to occur in this city, that fire will burn in their souls until they are burned into people like Li Rui."

"This can be described as a kind of spiritual pollution, fundamentally rewriting a person's will. Fortunately, we both had the protection of the Seed of Souls, otherwise we would have been transformed as well."

Liu Zhen fell silent, but the scene of brushing past Li Rui in the alley involuntarily surfaced in his mind.

At that time, he was just a suspect fleeing in panic, and had not yet awakened the Seed of Soul, while that man was already a arbiter wandering in the darkness. He could clearly feel Li Rui's power and killing intent.

He had thought Li Rui would kill him, but the other party let him go.

At that time, he didn't understand why, he just fled in panic.

Later, after awakening his abilities and recalling that scene, he vaguely understood—

Li Rui didn't spare him, but rather another person driven to despair by the world.

"He is using his own death to make everyone in this city become him." Liu Zhen's voice was soft, but it carried a suffocating heaviness.

"What a pity." His companion sighed softly. "We were hoping to make contact with him tonight. We are all avengers driven to desperation, and his power could have been our strongest support. But he left too quickly and too decisively... He didn't want to join any organization; he only wanted to be the rules themselves."

Liu Zhen leaned against the rusty iron railing, feeling the cold touch on his back.

Below the Cloud Mansion in the distance, armored vehicles from the Special Investigation Bureau were withdrawing, and the intermittent sirens of ambulances sounded noisy and chaotic.

"The police... have surrounded the area like an iron barrel." Liu Zhen clenched his fists, his tone revealing a deep sense of powerlessness. "Even if I had the power of the Seed of Souls, I probably wouldn't last a minute against that kind of saturation firepower. Compared to the state's violent machinery, we are still too weak."