After turning to stone, the youth sprinted at Tang Coco. Gravel leapt like angry sparks under his boots from the shattered floor.

“Roar!!!”

He bellowed and slammed straight into Tang Coco’s I Field.

“Boom!!!”

The impact boomed like a thunderhead bursting. Even in stone form, he had bite; his charge shoved Tang Coco back.

Tang Coco slid five or six meters, a dust wake trailing like a pale wave. She retracted the I Field and looked at him, cool as winter rain.

The stone-skinned youth stood where she had been, gulping air like a bellows in a furnace. Cracks veined his petrified plates; blood seeped through, red as dawn, proof her defensive field had cut him.

“She can’t defend now! All together!”

The middle-aged lead barked, and they surged at Tang Coco like a rough tide.

“Heh.”

Tang Coco’s mouth hooked, a taunt like a crescent moon. Her boosters flared; she shot forward like a hawk breaking cloud.

“Careful!”

The leader shouted, but the warning came like late thunder.

At that moment, a red Ferrari knifed in, engines howling like wind over steel. It stopped beneath the hotel, blocked by police.

“Miss, it’s dangerous here. Please leave.”

A lanky officer spoke, his voice tight like a drawn bowstring.

Avril stepped out, moonlight on her hair like frost. She handed over a file.

“I have authorization from your superiors. I’m going in.”

Her tone was cool water. Family strings had already tugged the local lines.

“Please wait. I’ll report to my chief.”

The officer ran to a cruiser, paper fluttering like a white bird. He hurried back moments later.

“Miss, you may enter. Please be careful.”

He bowed with respect. Avril walked straight into the hotel, her heels ticking like rain on stone.

Meanwhile, Gu Xin and Meng Yuting combed the rooftop, eyes sifting shadows like nets on a dark river.

“Looks like the opponent is a spatial Abnormal.”

Gu Xin frowned at patches where moonlight shone uneven, like ripples on silver.

“What do we do…”

Meng Yuting’s voice carried quiet worry, a reed bending in wind. Against this kind, unless they show themselves, the hunt turns thorny.

“If it’s Anomaly Power of space, there must be a medium that triggers it.”

Gu Xin spoke low. She had studied ways to counter the spatial kind.

“Mm. Let’s search more carefully.”

Meng Yuting nodded, patience like a cat at a threshold.

They scanned for oddities, breath held like winter ponds. Then—

Crack! Crack!

A peculiar sound snapped beside them, bright as breaking ice.

Glass-shatter, that was the feel. Gu Xin and Meng Yuting snapped their gaze to the rooftop center. In midair, panes appeared and fractured, glasslike shards blooming like frost flowers.

“Yuting, get back!”

Gu Xin called from behind. Meng Yuting slid back, sheltering behind Gu Xin. An ice wall rose before them, clear as river jade.

The wall had barely formed when a colossal break rushed overhead, a storm sound unraveling the air. Energy surged outward from the center like ripples across a lake. Then the rooftop ring flared, a blue energy dome blooming like a lotus. The broken-space surge touched its skin and vanished, swallowed like rain into sand.

“What is this…”

Meng Yuting looked up at the blue, eyes wide as lanterns.

“Seems the old guard from the States has moved. Fine by me. We can stop tiptoeing. Let the officials handle their diplomacy.”

Gu Xin’s voice went steel-cold; frost bloomed along her hair like white plum.

On the roofs of the tall buildings around the hotel stood figures in black robes, silhouettes like crows at dusk. Anomalous Energy glowed in their hands, maintaining the dome that wrapped the hotel. It was a common group-type Anomaly Power: outside, ordinary eyes saw a calm, normal scene; inside, sounds and images stayed caged like thunder in a jar.

When the rooftop stilled, Gu Xin and Meng Yuting finally saw what had unfolded. Shock struck like a bell.

The rooftop was crowded now—delegation members, an olive-green Mech, scattered instruments, and body pieces strewn like broken puppets.

The delegation huddled under the Mech’s protection, faces carved by fear. Even the torn space, night sky peeled open like silk, couldn’t pull their eyes away. They stared at the figure before a rectangular device.

“Is… is that really Coco?”

Li Muyan spoke, disbelief trembling like a candle flame. Inside, she’d met a reaper from hell—swift, unhesitating, a one-sided slaughter. It didn’t match the Tang Coco she once “bullied.”

“Coco!?”

Gu Xin saw her too. The corpse-strewn scene barely moved her or Li Muyan; they had waded such rivers before.

Tang Coco stood beside the device, blade driven down through it like a dark stake. Her face was unreadable as stone while she looked at the boy inside. With the casing shattered, the boy’s true form was laid bare: no limbs, lying in the device, tubes in his flesh like roots in earth—kept alive only to feed out Anomaly Power.

Her long blade pierced his heart, the cut clean as winter light.

“Maybe… you should thank me… for ending your pain.”

She slipped the blade free. A thread of blood drew an arc like a crimson crescent. Tang Coco turned, walking toward a corner where the only survivor from the shadowy group lay—the middle-aged leader. His right arm was gone. He sat slumped, breath thin as smoke.

“Who… are you, really?”

He stared at the red-haired girl coming closer, despair settling like dust.

“Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters… is you remember those who died by your hand.”

Her voice was quiet rain.

“Heh.”

The middle-aged man laughed, a dry rasp like twigs snapping.

“You’re strong. No doubt.”

He looked up at Tang Coco, eyes two cold coins.

“But… you haven’t forgotten your purpose, have you? In this fight… I lost. But… you didn’t win.”

Tang Coco said nothing. The silence coiled.

“Do it!”

The man shouted.

“Aah!!!”

A scream knifed out of the delegation—Li Muyan’s voice, sharp as glass. Tang Coco turned. A youth in Huaguo uniform held a steel claw at Li Muyan’s throat, the points kissing skin like frost. Two other uniformed youths lay fallen nearby, ambushed and gone.

Tang Coco’s eyes rested on him, still as a pond under snow.

“What are you doing!? Secure me first! Why grab her!?”

The middle-aged leader, still on the floor, snapped at the soldier, anger smoking like a brand. This wasn’t the plan he’d set.

“Heh. I think… this girl… matters more to her. Am I right?”

The soldier’s voice was husky, like gravel rolled in a drum.

“I was careless.”

Tang Coco murmured, a bitter smile like a thin blade.

“So what? You think with her in your grip… you’ve got hope?”

Her tone turned cold as iron. She lifted her twin blades and walked toward the delegation, steps steady as drumbeats.

“That’s the feeling… yes.”

The youth slid the claw closer to Li Muyan’s tender throat—almost a cut—then stopped, a cat playing with string.

“How about now?”

He smiled, pride like oil on water.

Tang Coco halted, rooted like pine.

“Withdraw, Jinyushen.”

She spoke inward to the system. The heavy olive-green Mech pulled back its shield, then rose and moved aside, a giant shadow stepping from the stage.

“Hahaha! Even the strongest human breaks on the reef of feeling.”

The middle-aged man laughed behind her, the sound harsh as crows.

“Remove your Armor.”

The youth’s command came cold, winter wind through reeds.

Gu Xin and Meng Yuting had reached the side, eyes flicking like blades.

“Yuting, any way to save that girl?”

Gu Xin whispered, sensing how much Tang Coco cared. They still didn’t know what bound Coco and Li Muyan.

“I can’t promise. If it were someone else, I’d be confident. But…”

Meng Yuting’s gaze stayed on the youth, pupils like pinpoints.

“But what?”

Gu Xin asked, brow tight.

“If he’s Shanmao—the Lynx—I don’t have a hundred percent chance…”

Meng Yuting’s voice sank, low thunder under a mountain.

Gu Xin finally studied the youth, having focused on Tang Coco till now.

“Shanmao’s disguise, you know it… and in close combat he’s not weaker than me.”

Meng Yuting frowned, tension like a drawn wire.

“Remove your Armor.”

While they gauged his identity, the youth spoke again to Tang Coco.

Tang Coco stayed silent, waited a breath, then dismissed her Armor.

Purple Armor dissolved into drifting particles, vanishing like fireflies. She stood in shorts, lines of her form honed like a blade.

“Naïve.”

In that instant, the middle-aged man behind her moved. His left hand conjured a flaming drill, a burning horn thrusting at her back.

“Coco!” Gu Xin, Meng Yuting, and Li Muyan shouted together, voices like bells.

The man’s body lunged, closing fast like a hawk’s stoop. Just before the strike, he froze.

“Wha… what…”

Shock cracked his voice. He lowered his gaze to his chest. A black blade had pushed through his heart, cold as midnight.

Behind him, something resolved from air, lines forming like ink in water. Seconds later, all saw it—a jet-black Mech. Its dagger had speared him from behind.

Thud.

The middle-aged man toppled and lay still. Life left him like smoke fading.

“So you did have a hidden hand!”

The uniformed youth barked, eyes flashing like flint.

“You guessed that already, didn’t you?”

Tang Coco’s tone stayed mild. The youth’s place was dead center of the delegation, Li Muyan before him, her guard behind. When he had seen that olive Armor, he’d known she had more pieces on the board.

“I’m curious… why do you feel different to me?”

Tang Coco looked at the soldier, eyes deep as a winter lake.