Why is his holy light red?

The old incandescent light bulb overhead swayed slightly, casting eerie and distorted shadows in the cramped interrogation room.

Mercury sat in a cold, hard metal interrogation chair, his hands cuffed.

The ergonomically designed chair back caused a sharp pain in the spine, but that was exactly the effect they wanted—to use physical discomfort to break down the suspect's psychological defenses.

A fairly common interrogation technique.

Mercury just couldn't understand why he was being treated as a criminal when he was clearly acting in self-defense.

Across the table, two federal agents, one fat and one thin, were putting on a classic good cop/bad cop act.

The skinny man's name was Smith, a typical old-school white detective with a severely receding hairline.

At this moment, his face was flushed red with excessive excitement, and spittle was almost flying across the table: "You've committed a serious crime! You think you can get away with it by pretending to be a minor? I guarantee you'll rot in a high-security prison for at least twenty years! Tell me! Are you on drugs? Or are you drunk and don't know what's wrong with you?!"

The overweight Black detective named Morgan, standing nearby, had a kind and gentle expression and soothed the child with a deep, magnetic voice like a news anchor: "Child, don't be afraid. As long as you tell the truth here, God will forgive your wrongdoing."

Mercury leaned back in his chair, expressionless, and watched the two perform silently until they had nothing more to say. Then he slowly said, "According to federal law, a minor must have a guardian or lawyer present when being questioned."

"Stop trying to act like an expert with those online legal statutes. This is reality, not some legal drama!" Smith scoffed, leaning closer with his hands on the table. "I've seen plenty of troublemakers like you. You deserve to rot in jail for life! You should be thinking about what you can use to get a reduced sentence, not reciting legal statutes to me!"

Mercury ignored his roar, his gaze coldly sweeping over the security camera in the corner: "So, that thing wasn't even turned on, right?"

Smith flew into a rage, suddenly swung around the table, grabbed Mercury by the collar, and raised his right fist high.

"Bang!" Morgan rushed forward, shoving his enraged companion aside. He then turned to Mercury, his voice heavy with sorrow, "My partner certainly has a bad temper, but he wasn't lying. Kid, do you know how badly the person you attacked is in? His entire skeleton is shattered, his internal organs are extensively ruptured, and he'll never be able to stand again. Have you ever considered that he's someone else's child, someone's father?"

"He's already married?" Mercury asked, somewhat surprised.

Morgan noticed this change in expression and thought the boy's defenses had finally cracked a little. He immediately pressed his advantage: "Of course. He has a wife who loves him deeply and two lovely children. But because of you, he will never be able to hug them again in his life."

"And all of this is caused by you, you piece of trash!" Smith roared from behind at the opportune moment.

"You...you're not lying to me, are you?" Mercury's voice even trembled slightly.

Smith sneered, grabbed the brown paper bag from the table, and slammed it down in front of Mercury. Several color photographs slid out, the one in the very center being a picture of the shapeshifter with his wife and children on the lawn.

"Open your eyes and see what you've destroyed!"

Mercury lowered his head, his gaze fixed on the photograph, carefully scanning the faces of his wife and two children, as if trying to memorize them all.

After a long while, he finally looked up and said to the two agents, "Thanks."

Morgan's heart skipped a beat. His years of experience in solving cases told him that something was wrong; the boy's reaction didn't seem like remorse at all.

"What... are you thanking me for?"

"Thank you for letting me know that he has a family." Mercury's tone remained calm. "Kidnapping, extortion, pointing a gun at my head... I'm struggling to repay the threats he inflicted on my family. Now, I have the opportunity to let his wife and children experience that as well, so that he can truly understand my anger at the time."

Morgan took a half-step back in horror, staring at the boy as if he were a monster. The man had already been beaten into a permanent cripple, and this madman was going to punish his wife and children as well?!

The two agents simply couldn't comprehend the obsession of a time traveler.

Mercury was transported to this world and became a helpless infant. His sense of alienation was ingrained in his blood from birth.

His father was always busy with his chivalrous deeds and didn't have much time to accompany Mercury as he grew up.

His mother did not blame him for his unusual behavior at all; on the contrary, she always tolerated his abnormal "precocity".

There's also Mercury's sister Sylvia, a little life that Mercury watched grow up, spending half her life in his arms.

Mercury's family is the only treasure he cares about, and he will destroy anything that threatens his family without hesitation.

If it weren't for the need to uncover the mastermind, that shapeshifter would have been torn to shreds long ago. Now that their weakness has been found, getting this man to talk is no longer a difficult task.

"I knew it! You're a freakish monster at heart!" Smith roared, snatching the photo back in a fit of rage, veins bulging on his forehead. "You'll be sitting here for the rest of your life!"

This time, Morgan, who should have been the one to give the stern warning, remained expressionless and did not stop his companion's nearly out-of-control actions.

The atmosphere was tense and confrontational, with swords drawn in the confined space.

"I initially thought you were just going through the motions of coercion to extract some other information from me, but now it seems..." Mercury completely ignored the threat above him, slowly straightening his back, "It's more like you've locked in the outcome from the very beginning, forcing me to confess."

As he stood up, a dark red holy light wrapped around his handcuffed wrists.

"You ignored procedures, cut off surveillance, and even went so far as to detain me alone in this dilapidated cubicle. Who are you working for, so eager to find fault with me? There aren't many forces in Aru Tree City that can command federal agents. Could it be Immortal Technology?"

Amidst the ear-piercing crack of metal twisting, the sturdy steel handcuffs crumbled into pieces like crumpled biscuits.

"What do you want to do?!" Smith exclaimed in shock, drawing his sidearm abruptly and pointing the dark muzzle directly at Mercury's forehead.

Mercury didn't even glance at the toy-like gun. Even armor-piercing discarding sabot rounds posed no threat to him; a small-caliber pistol was nothing but a joke.

He simply stared at Morgan quietly: "Since you didn't swear just now, tell me the name of the mastermind, and you can walk out of a door alive."

The two agents were shocked and furious. In this heavily guarded federal precinct, how dare a detained suspect openly threaten them? Did he really think he was invincible?

Mercury certainly didn't consider himself invincible, but the one who was invincible was his beloved father.

He simply felt that he was the victim, and that the two people in front of him didn't even care about procedural justice, so there was nothing wrong with him using his fists to reason with them.

The crimson holy light began to expand violently in the narrow interrogation room, almost completely engulfing the two men.

"Clang—!"

Just as the crimson light was about to engulf the entire space, the heavy iron door was violently pushed open from the outside.

A tall, imposing figure stormed into the room in anger.

The man glanced at Mercury, who had broken free of his restraints, and then, without any hesitation, strode forward and used his body to shield the gun barrel.

"Who gave you the right to point a gun at my son?!"

Al, the usually bespectacled and refined newspaper reporter, was now pointing his finger at Smith and yelling, "Illegally interrogating a minor without a guardian present! Tell your supervisor to come see me! Now! Immediately! Otherwise, I guarantee this scandal will be on tomorrow's headlines!"

Smith was forced to retreat repeatedly by this terrifying aura. Even though he was so angry that the veins on his forehead were about to burst, his finger on the trigger was so stiff that he dared not move at all.

Finally, under the man's angry glare, the two agents reluctantly put away their sidearms and stormed out, slamming the door behind them.

As the door slammed shut, the violent rage instantly vanished from El's body. He turned around, carefully examining Mercury from head to toe, his eyes filled with worry and concern: "Are you hurt anywhere?"

This rare display of concern caused Mercury to pause for a moment in surprise: "Father, what brings you here?"

Al frowned deeply. "My son's been arrested and taken to the investigation bureau. Am I supposed to sit on the sofa drinking coffee and waiting for a call?"

"Where are Mother and Sylvia?" Mercury asked almost instinctively. What danger could he possibly be in? But if his father had come here, wouldn't that mean the family's defenses were compromised?

"Don't worry, they're safe. The Holy Light Angels are protecting them." El patted his shoulder firmly to reassure him.

Mercury: ...

The Holy Light Angel is at home? Then who are you?

Mercury did not expose this clumsy lie. He believed that his father would not joke about the safety of his family and must have made other arrangements.

But Mercury remained unconvinced. He warned, "Father, something's not right. This trap is definitely aimed at our family. That shapeshifter transformed into your colleague. If I hadn't noticed something was amiss, I would have been tricked into getting in the car long ago. That shapeshifter's identity is definitely questionable; those two agents were practically berserking, trying to force me to confess..."

"Your intuition is spot on." Al interrupted him, his eyes turning completely cold. "The shapeshifter you severely injured is named Ian Wolfe—he's also a registered federal agent. That's why they went to such lengths to get you to confess before I arrived."