Bengtie, I'm really not a villain!

She pressed the face of the Houmu doll to her chest, sobbing softly, her nose stinging. "If it really gets taken away... I... I won't even be able to say my blessing..."

Meanwhile, Raiden Mei's bedroom had become a battlefield ruin.

The wardrobe, split in two, leaned crookedly against the wall, its pages fluttering like white snowflakes. The scorch marks left by the combat boots rubbing against the metal floor resembled a menacing spiderweb, shattering the entire room into pieces.

Sweat dripped down her jawline, pooling into thin streams at her collarbone. Her soaked combat uniform clung tightly to her body, and the bandages on her lower back were already drenched in blood, the spreading bloodstains widening with each heavy breath.

"Come again!"

Raiden Mei jerked her head away, shaking off the wet hair sticking to her eyes, and twirled her katana in her palm with a beautiful flourish.

The sharp sound of the blade slicing through the air intertwined with the crackling of electricity emanating from Jing Ye's fingertips, and sparks flew as they landed on the scattered pages, instantly igniting several clusters of eerie blue flames.

No matter how fierce her Iaijutsu was, her opponent could always deflect it from an unbelievable angle. That calm smile was like a thorn, making her temples throb.

Raiden Mei's mind flashed back to Himeko-sensei's blood-stained hair, and to Furibas's sobbing yet still encouraging her when Keiya used him as a fighting ring.

"Why... why is it still not working!"

Her roar caused the glass shards suspended in the air to tremble slightly, and the katana transformed into black lightning, thrusting straight towards Jing Ye's throat.

However, her excessive impatience made her steps unsteady. Jingye's eyes flashed with cold light. As he dodged the attack, he twisted his wrist slightly, and Raiden Mei felt a numbness in her waist, causing her to fall backward uncontrollably.

The moment my back slammed against the wall, excruciating pain exploded from my tailbone.

With a clang as the katana slipped from her hand, she gazed at Jing Ye's towering figure, recalling similar scenes.

She was kneeling on the rubble in the same disheveled state, looking at the other person's indifferent face.

Resentment and anger surged into her heart like a tidal wave. Raiden Mei struggled to get up, but Jingye pressed her shoulders down, his warm breath brushing against her ear.

The dull pain from her back hitting the wall caused Raiden Mei to groan, but she stared intently at Jing Ye's slightly heaving chest, her nails digging deeply into her palms.

Back in Izumo, she understood that the price of becoming stronger was to crush and rebuild one's soul.

"Not enough." She licked the blood from the corner of her lips, her whole body burning hot like a red-hot iron.

Memories surge like a tide over the dam of reason.

In the dark alley, she was chained to Jing Ye's ankle, a metal collar digging deeply into his neck.

Jingye mercilessly crushed the hand holding the iaido sword over hers. Further away, her mother, Himeko, and Furibas were also bound by chains, their desperate and angry eyes piercing her heart more than the blade.

And the moments when he and his loved ones died on the desperate battlefield, those moments that broke her down, were the opportunities that made her stronger.

"Come again!"

Raiden Mei suddenly sprang up and grabbed Jingye's wrist with her bare hands.

The moment the fingernail pierced the skin, the taste of blood exploded between my teeth.

She recalled that unforgettable arena battle. The moonlight was obscured, and Jing Ye pressed her face against the rough wooden planks of the arena, looking down at her.

Himeko's roars, her mother's sobs, and Furibas's struggles became the background noise of her nightmares every night.

The thunderstorm in Jingye's palm suddenly exploded, electric current shooting into her heart like venomous snakes. Raiden Mei's mind flashed back to the image of herself being treated like a "pet" and paraded through public places—each ring of the bell on her collar accompanied by the pointing fingers and piercing laughter of demons. Her body writhed in excruciating pain.

She kept her bloodshot eyes wide open, letting the memories drag her into deeper darkness.

"Why isn't that enough!"

Sweat streamed down her face, blurring her vision.

"How far must things be trampled before..."

Her words abruptly stopped as Jing Ye's hand suddenly gripped the back of her neck. His warm breath brushed against her ear, sending chills down her spine.

The metal bookshelf groaned in its death thud, and warm beads of sweat trickled down her brow and into her eyes. Raiden Mei's world seemed filtered through a lens.

Jingye's silhouette and the feeling of restraint coming from the back of his neck grew heavier, as if he had returned to the moment when he was bound by iron chains.

Her fingernails dug deep into her palms, and her combat boots unconsciously ground the shards of glass on the ground into finer powder, the soft sound like an accompaniment to this desperate struggle.

"How exactly does it take for someone to break down?"

She screamed hysterically in her heart; the despair of being humiliated back then was still etched into her very bones.

The pain of watching her loved ones suffer while being powerless to help gnawed at her heart like a venomous snake.

The humiliation of being treated like a "pet" and walked around the streets is etched into my heart like a brand.

All these past experiences now became the driving force behind her actions. She deliberately exposed an opening, allowing Jing Ye's lightning blade to tear through her combat uniform.

The charred wound spread across her abdomen, and the intense pain made her vision blur, but she still gritted her teeth, her fingernails almost digging holes in her palms.

"Why isn't it enough?!" she kept asking herself, her heart filled with resentment and impatience almost bursting out of her chest.

Kneeling amidst the mess, no matter how she tried, the ice hidden deep in her heart remained unmoved. She was like a prisoner trapped in a dark labyrinth, unable to find a way out.

Raiden Mei raised her head, looking at Jing Ye with a mocking gaze, more like admiring a toy struggling in vain, and suddenly laughed silently.

That smile was full of self-mockery and despair, and tears streamed down uncontrollably, dripping onto the blood-stained clothes and spreading into poignant flowers.

"Even collapse has become an unattainable luxury."

Raiden Mei tilted her head back, meeting Jing Ye's eyes directly in the mocking glint of his gaze. That look was like a poisoned silver needle, piercing her temples and making her throat throb with a rusty bitterness. The chill of the metallic floor crept up her knees inch by inch.

As she climbed, her combat boots, already torn from the fierce struggle, gleamed with a chilling sensation that seeped through the damaged leather, gradually overlapping with the sharp pain of pebbles piercing her flesh, a memory she vividly recalled.

She was kept in the dark at the time, and unexpectedly touched the dawn of power in the abyss of despair.

At this moment, even though he knows that collapse is the key to unlocking the door to power, he can't find the right angle to unlock it no matter what he does.

She knew it all along... she knew that breaking down would make her stronger, but now...

The fingernails dug deep into the scabbed wound on the palm, tearing open the dried scab and allowing fresh blood to slowly seep out along the lines.

A profound sense of humiliation almost overwhelmed her. She realized that every true burst of power stemmed from the moment she was caught completely off guard and cruelly pushed into the abyss by fate.

Jing Ye's lips curled into that familiar smile, like a hunter watching a trapped beast struggle.

He seemed to be silently acknowledging her suspicions. Raiden Mei suddenly coughed violently, the vibrations in her chest pulling at the wound in her abdomen, causing blood to seep out.

In a daze, her thoughts drifted to that burning sky.

The image of Teacher Himeko falling gradually overlapped with the image of Keiya in front of her.

Only now did she truly understand that the terror of actively overcoming fear and stepping into that bottomless abyss of darkness was far less than the ferocity of being unexpectedly pushed in by others.

"So that's why you..."

She braced herself against the floor with trembling hands, trying to get up but swaying due to the excruciating pain from her wounds.

"They deliberately withheld the truth from me, leaving me to struggle repeatedly between hope and despair, and to be burned time and again by my own obsession."

The heart pounded wildly inside, but could no longer stir up the raging waves of the past.

It's like knowing the tragic ending beforehand; no matter how hard you try to act it out, you can't recreate that initial, heart-wrenching shock.

At some point, only the sound of their intertwined breaths echoed in the silence.

Raiden Mei looked down at her palm, where countless marks from gripping and swinging the sword bore witness to the hardships she had endured along the way.

The memories flashed before her eyes like a revolving lantern. They were like a poisoned branding iron, each recollection leaving a new bloodstain on her heart.

"Do you really want to watch your loved ones get crushed this time?"

The words stuck in her throat, making her eardrums ache. But as Jing Ye slowly approached, the sound of his boots crushing glass shards was clearer than her question.

Jing Ye's eyes seemed to whisper, "Not enough, far from enough," his voice like a venomous snake's tongue flicking past my ear.

She suddenly realized that the nightmare she was desperately trying to escape was nothing more than an appetizer in his eyes.

The moment the illusory chains of lightning wrapped around her wrist, the excruciating pain jolted her back to reality.

It turns out she had never escaped that abyss; every struggle only led her deeper into darkness.

Kiana's smiling face, Bronya's tactical goggles, Himeko's silhouette as she corrects homework, Theresa's sneaky snacking and playing around...

The clearer these images became, the tighter her heart clenched.

Is it really necessary to watch my mother, Furibas, and Himeko be humiliated or even killed, just like I did back then, to watch them wither away before my eyes in order to gain so-called "power"?

She heard her teeth chattering. Drops of blood seeped from her palms and fell onto her combat boots, spreading into tiny red blushes.

How could she dare? How could she bear to do it? But if she didn't do it, those tragedies hidden deep in her memory might really be repeated.

The thought pierced her heart like an ice pick, sending chills down Raiden Mei's spine. Kiana's radiant smile involuntarily flashed before her eyes.

That girl who always shouted "Mei is the best in the world", that silly girl who would turn around and block attacks for her even when she was about to fall on the battlefield.

If even such vibrant lives are to be sacrificed for her so-called "becoming stronger"...

"Even if I gained the power to fight the Herrscher,"

A bitter taste rose in her throat, and her nails dug deep into her palms.

"But what's the point of this power if we lose even those who are meant to protect us?"

In her memory, the burning passion of Teacher Himeko, the gentle gaze of her mother before her death, and the expectation when Furibas collapsed, all now seemed like heavy shackles, suffocating her.

Jingye's cold gaze pressed down on her like a physical weight, but Raiden Mei suddenly laughed.

The laughter was broken and sorrowful, mixed with suppressed sobs, echoing in the silent cabin. She finally understood that her desperate pursuit of "becoming stronger" might have been misguided from the very beginning.

The power gained at the cost of her dearest loved ones, even if it could save the world, could not fill the void in her heart.

Jingye's laughter, like rusty gears grinding through the cabin, enveloped Raiden Mei in a deep blue shadow.

"Withdraw?" He leaned closer, his warm breath brushing against her bloodstained ear.

"Your companions are already fish on the chopping block. Kiana, Bronya, they already have nooses around their necks."

Raiden Mei's pupils contracted sharply, and a spasm ran through her stomach.

I can still vividly recall Kiana rushing into the kitchen this morning with a donut in her arms. The girl's lips, covered in frosting, were stretched into a wide grin as she said she wanted to save the chocolate filling in the very center for Kiana.

At this moment, however, those images were twisted into sharp blades by Jing Ye's words, each piece gouging out her heart.

Jing Ye suddenly grabbed her wrist, and a blinding spark of electricity erupted the moment they touched.

"And you still dare to think you can stay here?"

He abruptly shook off her hand, and Raiden Mei stumbled, knocking over the storage cabinet behind her. Scattered documents fell like snowflakes, one of which, a group photo, drifted down to her feet.

In the photo, everyone is laughing on the beach, and the sunlight has dyed Kiana's hair a honey color.

"I want you to drag them into the abyss with your own hands."

Jingye's voice suddenly turned icy and chilling. Images uncontrollably flashed before Raiden Mei's eyes.

Kiana was chained to a rusty pillar, her disheveled hair obscuring her bruised face, her once bright eyes now filled with fear and despair.

Himeko was pinned to the gravel ground, her combat uniform tattered, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, yet she still stubbornly raised her head and glared angrily.

These imagined scenes overlapped with her real memories, causing her temples to throb and her nails to dig deeply into her palms, almost drawing blood.

“When they cry out, ‘Why me?’” Jingye slowly picked up the photo from the ground and gently traced Kiana’s smiling face with his fingertips, “you should smile and tell them—this is all to save the world.”

Raiden Mei's pupils contracted violently to the size of pinpoints. Every word Jingye uttered was like a poisoned arrow, precisely piercing through the psychological defenses she had deliberately built.

She heard a muffled thud, like rusting gears, coming from her chest—the groan of her heart under extreme tension, as if it would be crushed into dust by an invisible giant hand at any moment.

The metal floor beneath the combat boots suddenly radiated a scorching heat, the heat wave climbing up the spine from the ankles.

But reason told her that it was just an illusion created by memory and fear in her nerve endings, yet her trembling knees bent slightly uncontrollably.

"enough!"

Her scream tore through the stagnant air, her vocal cords rubbing together in a bloody, hoarse voice. But the upward curve of Jing Ye's lips was like an ice-cold dagger, freezing her resistance deep in her throat.

The salty, metallic taste of iron wafted onto my tongue, suddenly bringing back vivid memories of that rainy night—the suffocating feeling of the iron collar digging into my neck, the despair in my mother's eyes as she was dragged away, and the humiliation of being forced to watch the atrocity while pressed into the mud.

At this moment, Kiana and Himeko's faces cruelly replaced the scene from years ago.

Terrifying hallucinations were constantly being projected onto her retina.

Kiana was suspended by rough iron chains, the metal scraping against her wrist bones with a teeth-grinding sound. Her eyes, once filled with stars, were now brimming with tears of fear.

Himeko's blood-stained long hair fell like a spider web, and the blood seeping from the bandages under her combat uniform was staining the gravel dark red. Her hands, which always inspired everyone, were now pinned to the ground.

These images played on a nauseating loop, like the distorted afterimages of an old-fashioned projector when a tape malfunctions, each flashback tearing at her already fragile sanity.

The heat of her body couldn't melt the frozen fear in her veins; her combat uniform, soaked with cold sweat, clung to her back, and the chill crept up her tailbone to the top of her head.

"Why……"

Her murmurs dissipated in Jingye's deafening laughter. When those fingertips, still warm from the thunderstorm, brushed across her trembling cheek, Raiden Mei instinctively flinched.