Chapter 191: Encounter
3 hours before Risa’s Awakening
The Eastern Continent was supposed to be a barren, desolate wasteland of craggy mountains and endless salt flats. Yet, as Ren Sihue darted across the twilight landscape, his boots barely making a sound against the earth, he found himself surrounded by a strangely rich flora.
Tall, stubbornly resilient trees with thick, twisted trunks dotted the rocky plains. The foliage was dense enough to cast long, confusing shadows under the fading sunlight, but sparse enough that it couldn’t quite be classified as a proper forest. It was an eerie, unnatural biome.
Ren moved like a phantom. As the reigning master of the Sihue assassin clan, his agility and stealth were honed to an absolute, terrifying peak. He leaped over a jagged boulder, his dark cloak billowing silently behind him, his icy blue eyes locked onto the horizon.
He hadn’t run into a single guard. There were no perimeter drones, no Exterminator patrols, and no signs of government employees. Considering where he was, the sheer isolation was deeply unsettling.
Looming in the far distance, piercing the darkening sky, were the massive structures he had been seeking. Eight colossal, hyper-futuristic watchtowers rose from the earth, arranged in a perfect, imposing octagon. They stood like silent, unblinking sentinels marking the end of the Eastern Continent.
But Ren knew the truth.
The actual, geographical landmass of the Eastern Continent had already ended twenty kilometers back. The earth he was currently running on—the rocks, the soil, and the strange, stubborn trees—was entirely artificial.
It was a staggering feat of secret engineering, a man-made topographical lid built directly over a colossal, world-government reservoir. And beneath those eight watchtowers, submerged deep within the dark, freezing waters of ocean, lay a highly classified biological laboratory.
He only knew this much because his father had told him.
Before the old patriarch had boarded that private airbus weeks ago, he had summoned Ren and spoken of this place in hushed, guarded tones. The old man had refused to elaborate on what actually happened inside the underwater facility, only stating that an ’anomaly’ had escaped.
Now, that legendary old man was dead. Mysteriously, quietly, and completely erased from the world in a way that defied all logic. A peak-tier powerhouse of his father’s caliber didn’t just quietly pass away. Ren could not keep himself from coming to this land to check it out for himself. He needed to know what kind of nightmare was capable of killing the monster who had raised him.
But as Ren sprinted through the quiet, artificial plains, the silence of the perimeter gnawed at his instincts. Why was it completely abandoned?
Despite the looming threat of the watchtowers, Ren’s mind violently drifted away from the mission, violently pulled back across the ocean to the grim, smog-choked streets of Area 17. He thought of his daughter. He thought of Risa. And Enji.
Just one day, Ren thought, a heavy, suffocating ache tightening his chest.
There was only exactly one day left in the three-month deal he had struck with that silver-haired kid, Hide Volter.
Ren closed his eyes for a fraction of a second as he vaulted over a fallen tree trunk. He hoped—he truly, desperately hoped to whatever cruel gods governed this world—that Hide had actually found the cure. He hoped that Risa would wake up. Because if she died while he was miles away chasing ghosts, he knew he would never, ever be able to get the crushing weight of it off his chest.
For decades, Ren had played the part of the cold, unfeeling assassin patriarch flawlessly. But the truth was a jagged pill he swallowed every single day. He thought about his own mother. She had been a harsh, bitter woman who had always looked at Ren with unveiled hatred and disappointment. And yet, despite her disdain for him, Ren had still spent more time with her during his youth than he had allowed his own children to spend with their mother.
His wife had been a kind, radiant woman who had loved Enji and Risa with every fiber of her being. But because of the clan’s archaic, ruthless traditions, and his father’s suffocating control, Ren had kept the children isolated from her. He only allowed them to visit her sickbed once a month. He had robbed his own children of a mother’s love just to harden them into weapons.
Was it even right for me to come here? Ren wondered, his breath hitching slightly as his boots hit the rocky soil.
He had left them behind again. If something had effortlessly killed his father—a legendary warrior whose presence could crush buildings—it could very well kill him too.
The guilt tasted like ash in the back of his throat. If something happened to him on this artificial landmass tonight, he would never be able to see Risa again. He would never get to apologize. And Enji... he questioned if it was a catastrophic mistake to leave his son with such a monumental burden. Enji was a weak child. He masked it with arrogance and cruelty, but Ren knew his son’s heart was too fragile for the underworld.
Enji wasn’t cut out to lead a syndicate of vipers, and Ren was the only one to be blamed for that failure. He had broken the boy’s spirit trying to mold him into something he wasn’t.
Ren violently shook his head, forcing his oceanic blue eyes to snap back into focus.
Stop it, he scolded himself internally. Thinking about these things won’t change the past. It only makes me want to turn around and go back. Maybe... if he survived this. If he could just find the truth and make it back to Area 17 alive, he could see Risa’s smile just one more time. He could finally be a father instead of a master.
Lost deeply in the labyrinth of his own regrets, Ren had completely lost count of the distance he had covered. His body had been operating on pure autopilot, eating up the miles at a superhuman pace.
Suddenly, his enhanced perception screamed.
Ren violently dug his heels into the dirt, his body skidding to an abrupt, jarring halt. Dust and loose rocks kicked up around his boots as he froze.
He was standing exactly two inches away from a colossal wall of translucent, pulsing violet energy.
Ren slowly tilted his head up. The barrier was immense. It shot straight up into the darkening clouds, piercing the sky itself, and elongated infinitely to his left and right, completely cordoning off the territory leading to the eight watchtowers. The mana radiating from it wasn’t wild or chaotic like a gate; it was perfectly woven, humming with a frequency.
Driven by an assassin’s innate curiosity to test a perimeter, Ren slowly raised his right hand. He extended his fingers, gently pressing them against the shimmering violet surface.
There was no resistance. His hand slipped smoothly through the translucent energy, the air on the other side feeling noticeably colder.
But the moment his skin made contact with the mana matrix, a violent jolt of recognition struck Ren’s brain. His pupils shrank to pinpricks. The unique density, the specific elemental signature, the chilling, methodical weave of the energy... he knew exactly who this belonged to. He could never forget this mana signature, not even after he was dead and buried.
"This... it’s his talent," Ren thought, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck. "What is he doing here? Damn it."
Realizing the catastrophic implications of who was guarding this facility, Ren immediately tensed his shoulder muscles, fully intending to swiftly withdraw his hand from the barrier and retreat into the tree line.
But right as his muscles twitched to pull back, his survival instincts—honed by forty years of dodging death—violently screamed at him to freeze.
Ren obeyed his instincts. He stopped dead, leaving his right arm submerged up to the elbow inside the violet light, his body locked as rigidly as a stone statue.
"Good instincts... fitting for an assassin."
The voice came from directly behind him. It was incredibly old, withered, and entirely unimpressed. It carried the raspy, dry weight of a man who had lived far too long and seen far too much.
Ren’s heart hammered against his ribs, but he did not dare move his arm.
"This barrier is made specially," the old, withered voice breathed, the sound of a wooden cane softly tapping against the rocky earth echoing in the quiet twilight. "It is a spatial lock. Once anything goes in, it cannot come out. Not even me... If you had ignored your instincts and pulled your arm back just now, you would only have a bleeding elbow left to take home."
Ren swallowed hard, the chilling reality of the trap settling into his bones. Carefully, meticulously, he pivoted his torso, keeping his right arm perfectly level and anchored inside the violet energy wall as he turned to face the speaker.
Standing ten feet away in the sparse, rocky clearing was an old man.
He was dressed in a pristine, pure white robe with massive, flowing sleeves that brushed against the dirt. He stood heavily hunched over, supporting his frail-looking weight with a thick, gnarled wooden stick. His head was completely bald, but a massive, flowing white beard cascaded down his chest, so long it almost touched the ground beneath his sandals.
He looked ancient. He looked fragile. But the suffocating density of the mana pooling lazily around his feet told an entirely different story.
Ren stared at the old man, his jaw tightening into a grim, fatalistic line.
Of course it was him, Ren thought bitterly.
It was the father of his late wife.
Risa and Enji’s maternal grandfather.