Chapter 627: Falling Shadows and Fractured Fates

From the angle, Lu Xin and Dracula, who had just crawled out of the window, collided head-on with the Black Box Ability Users who were chasing along the building face. Clearly, Lu Xin and Dracula were rattled, and the opponents wasted no time with any chatter.

In particular, the Puppet-type Ability User at the forefront, upon sighting Lu Xin and Dracula, immediately launched a Psychic Thread. Though they dodged it, in the meantime his body bounced erratically in mid-air, closing the distance. As he floated, he flung his arms wide open, his fingers spreading out as much as possible…

“Whoosh” “Whoosh” “Whoosh”

Countless delicate threads floated through the air, slicing through it as they raced straight toward Lu Xin and Dracula.

In their line of sight, they saw nothing.

But within their senses, it felt as if innumerable sharp blades were pressing against their skin.

The blades were so keen that it seemed the next moment they would carve their bodies into neat chunks of flesh and blood.

Startled, they simultaneously bounced off the wall, leaping high into the air.

Seizing the leap, they hurriedly retreated, trying to escape the invisible slicing net.

Meanwhile, Dracula, in a fit of anger, hurled a half-disassembled Case at his opponent’s face.

With a few quick, slicing sounds, the Case was silently shredded into irregular pieces and fell to the ground.

At the same moment that Lu Xin and Dracula recoiled, they stretched their bodies as widely as possible.

Once they left the wall, they lost their leverage.

Caught in the gap between two buildings, their motion jolted before gravity took over, sending them plummeting rapidly.

However, even as they bounced off the wall, they had already calculated the proper angle.

Using the momentum, they fell in an arc, descending about forty to fifty meters before landing on the opposite building facade.

……

……

“Spider-type…”

But as the Puppet-type Ability User’s Psychic Thread missed its mark, two figures in Black Cloaks from the building behind rushed forward. Watching Lu Xin and Dracula, who were free-falling, and creating distance from them, the pair simultaneously lunged ahead. With a high leap, each cleared a gap of three to four meters to reach the rooftop of another building.

The figure on the left sprinted rapidly, his gaze fixed on Dracula, maintaining a level alignment with her.

While running and calculating, he suddenly somersaulted forward.

He ran three strides chasing Dracula, and within those steps, their heartbeats synchronized completely.

Out of the blue, with one swift flip, Dracula’s mid-air body curled up tightly into a ball.

That flip landed him on a lower rooftop.

But as Dracula, already in free fall in the lifeless mid-air, was suddenly affected, even the Spider-type ability user lost control of his body and plummeted onto the concrete ground below, seemingly about to shatter into a mush of flesh.

Following Lu Xin’s move, the other quickly matched his speed, lifting both hands simultaneously.

Mimicking the shape of an ‘8’, his fingers pointed alternately toward Lu Xin.

Accompanied by the sound of “pa-pa-pa” from his mouth.

High in the air, Lu Xin’s heart skipped a beat as he turned to look.

Although the opponent’s gesture resembled that of a child playfully pointing at him with both hands, his senses felt as if powerful Psychic Bullets were striking his body concurrently. He even experienced a brief moment of blankness in his thoughts.

Psychic Bullets.

For such a child-like trick, the sheer force was astonishing.

With each pointed gesture, his thoughts stuttered, leaving him briefly dazed.

Under normal circumstances it might not matter, but here in mid-air…

Seeing his body starting to lose control, Lu Xin grimaced, abruptly turning around. The first couple of Psychic Bullets affected him, making his body nearly unmanageable, yet his immense Mental Impact quickly diluted the subsequent bullets. Seizing the opportunity, Lu Xin produced his Revolver and took aim at the figure on the rooftop who was making the “pa-pa-pa” gesture.

The opponent, still forming an ‘8’ with his hands, fired back at him, locking eyes with Lu Xin for a moment of stunned silence.

Partly out of curiosity—how could his own shot barely faze the opponent?

And secondly, because his two ‘guns’ were clearly outmatched by the enemy’s force!

“Bang bang…”

In the next instant, Lu Xin fired at him directly.

The superiority of real bullets over Psychic Bullets became evident immediately. With a howl, the opponent crumpled to the ground, too stunned to peek out.

Lu Xin himself, propelled by the recoil of his Mental Impact, bounced onto the opposite building. He then scrambled up the wall toward the rooftop. After a few quick steps, he saw Dracula slap against the wall and clamber upward with a flurry of sounds.

In that same instant, she had broken free from the control of the enemy Ability Users. The red cloak at her back unfurled dramatically under the influence of a Distorted Force Field generated by her Mental Power, inadvertently providing her with an upward thrust that propelled her above Lu Xin.

Then, like Lu Xin, she chose to climb upward without looking back, desperate to reach the rooftop and escape.

……

“None of them are Spider-type…”

At the same time, the Black Box Ability Users nearby were taken aback.

They had maintained a certain distance from Lu Xin and Dracula, and as they watched them escape toward a building across the street, about to reach its rooftop, they furrowed their brows. The opponents’ countermeasures had led them to a conclusion.

Those two appeared to be Spider-type, yet their methods didn’t resemble that of Spider-type users.

Given their speed, once they reached the rooftop, they would likely vanish into the city in no time.

“Messenger.”

Realizing this, they all glanced backward.

From the Black Box side, five Ability Users were in pursuit. The Puppet-type at the front and the two on the sides had already made their moves.

Only the last two had not yet acted.

At that moment, all eyes turned to the very last one.

He was the slowest, still struggling to catch up.

He glanced up at Lu Xin and Dracula, who were barely a hundred meters away, and gave a slight nod.

While sprinting forward, he quickly raised his right hand, pointing at his forehead, then tracing a curved line downward until it landed on his heart—resembling a devout believer praying as he ran.

Just as his prayer gesture ended, Lu Xin and Dracula had reached the rooftop, disappearing from view the very next second.

The one known as the Messenger abruptly halted, then thrust out his left hand.

Crack…

Suddenly, a sound like shattering glass echoed through the air.

Layer upon layer, as if some colossal force had shattered sheet after sheet of glass to breach into reality.

Startled, Lu Xin, who was charging onto the opposite rooftop alongside Dracula, froze in fear.

Turning his head, he saw a vast, pale hand stretching out fiercely from the top of a building across the street.

In his view, the hand was enormous and ghostly white.

Its skin, alarmingly pallid, was etched with intricate and terrifying mental patterns.

One translucent, ring-like band encircled the arm after another, each decorated with cracked glass-like veins, extending layer upon layer toward some mysterious, unknown realm. It was as if this giant hand didn’t belong to this world at all—summoned from another realm, it had shattered through multiple barriers to seize hold of reality.

The hand was aimed directly at Dracula. She seemed to sense something and tried to turn around in a rush.

But before she could even form the thought of turning, that pale hand plunged into her back. In a heartbeat, the hand retracted, and in its palm, a blood-soaked, still-beating heart could be seen.

“No good…”

Lu Xin immediately became alert, a surge of intense apprehension flooding his mind.

Barely having time to think, he quickly raised his hand and hurled his Revolver forward.

At the same time, he clamped a black Playing Card between his teeth. The card flashed with an eerie glow as it passed by.

In the next instant, the Revolver he had thrown vanished without a trace.

Instead, a bloodied heart suddenly appeared in front of him, pulsating in mid-air.

Lu Xin snatched the heart and pressed it forward.

“Ssshh!”

He forced the heart into Dracula’s body, and both of them lunged forward simultaneously.

“What’s wrong?”

Dracula’s voice trembled with astonishment.

Lu Xin didn’t reply; instead, he abruptly turned to stare toward the building across the street.

At that moment, the black particles in his eyes flickered slightly as he sensed something, a barely perceptible surge of impulse.

But by the time he registered it again, everything had vanished.

The pale hand had disappeared, along with the glass-like barriers it had shattered.

It was gone completely, leaving no trace behind.

Behind them, the sound of a helicopter’s rotors buzzed as it swiftly gathered overhead.

“It’s nothing…”

The black particles in Lu Xin’s eyes dispersed instantly. Regaining his composure, he muttered and darted forward.

Dracula, after a brief moment of shock, quickly checked herself to find no apparent injuries, and hurriedly followed him.

The pair, one following the other, dashed across the rooftop of the building before vanishing into the darkness.

……

……

“What happened?”

The Black Box Ability Users on the other side also felt puzzled. Unable to pursue immediately, they turned back.

All they could see was their ‘Messenger’ now half-kneeling on the ground, his withered hand trembling faintly.

Clutched in his hand was an old, worn Revolver.

His entire body trembled as if all his Mental Power had been drained, shivering uncontrollably.

Tears streamed from his cloudy eyes as he writhed in unbearable agony.

“Failed to steal?”

Everyone, including that Puppet-type user from earlier, cried out in disbelief and anger.

How could someone with the Messenger’s ability only manage to snatch an old revolver after attacking?

To them, it was utterly illogical.

But the true horror was yet to come.

They watched as the Messenger’s trembling grew worse instead of subsiding.

His quivering escalated to an extreme. His emaciated body convulsed abnormally, his bones creaking as if some unseen force were dissolving his flesh and even the very structure of his being, piece by piece.

“Messenger, you… what are you doing…”

The Ability Users, voices shaking in terror, asked in unison.

“God…”

The Messenger suddenly lifted his head. His entire figure had withered into an empty shell, his eyes filled with sheer terror. As his very flesh and blood neared complete dissolution, he collapsed, uttering one final phrase: “God. God is afraid…”

……

The surrounding Ability Users stood dumbfounded, long silent.

The Messenger was dead—only a shriveled skin remained.

They couldn’t fathom what had just transpired, nor comprehend his final words.

How did the Messenger die?

And what did his last words mean?

No one could answer. Only the Red Moon hung silently in the sky above, watching over the city.