The Prison Section
The air here was thick with something worse than rot. Hopelessness.
It clung to the walls, seeped into the very stone, the cries of the forsaken echoing down the corridors.
Security didn't stand a chance.
By the time they noticed Han Chen's blurred figure, their throats were already cut. His sword flickered in the dim light, moving with merciless precision. No wasted energy. No second chances.
The "doctors" and caretakers of this hellhole died next—quicker than they deserved. No fanfare. No trial. Just the silent execution they'd earned.
Then came the women.
The ones who had long since lost themselves—bones showing through skin, eyes hollow and empty, stomachs still squirming from the horrors inside them—were given a merciful end.
The ones who could still be saved… Han Chen saved them.
Hye Won stood in the doorway, her hands clenched into fists. Even after everything she had seen, this was different.
This was beyond human cruelty.
She stepped past him, kneeling beside one of the cages, where a woman—young, maybe twenty same as her—was curled in the corner. Her lips moved, but no sound came.
Hye Won reached forward ~ then froze.
Beneath the woman's skin, something moved.
A bulge, slithering just below the surface of her abdomen.
Hye Won recoiled. "What the f—"
Han Chen placed a hand over the woman's stomach. A burst of energy surged through her body.
She convulsed, gasping in pain—then vomited out something thick, black, and writhing.
The larva.
Before it could move, Han Chen crushed it underfoot, the chitinous shell crunching like brittle wood. A dozen more followed. One by one, he purged them all.
The survivors shuddered, their bodies healing, their minds still in ruins.
Hye Won swallowed, voice quiet. "They'll never be the same due to mental trauma."
Han Chen sighed. "Do you really want me to?, It's a lot of work"
"Yes."
So he did.
Eighty minds, scrubbed clean of the horrors they'd endured. Not completely—he didn't erase everything. But he cut away the worst of it, the associated trauma of emotions, leaving behind only fragments, empty spaces where pain had once been.
For some, it would still be enough to ruin them.
But at least they wouldn't have to remember why.
The others—those who had suffered less, those who had seen but not felt—he left untouched. They would be the ones to speak of what happened here.
The world needed to know. Exhaustion settled in like lead in their bones. The warehouse for foods for the people and mainly for the insects, left open for the people. He provided fresh water from nearby river.
---
Han Chen's reserves were nearly half drained. No more grandmaster bursts of speed. Their flight back through spirit will was slow, crossing through valleys and lands, avoiding the lights of civilization, they left the suffered back.
Midway, they landed. A deserted hillside, far from roads, far from people.
The cold ground was almost comforting.
Hye Won sat down heavily, hugging her knees. "You killed over two hundred people today."
Han Chen shrugged, stretching out his legs. "You're the one who wanted me to clean house. I was just going to kill the leaders and the Mother."
She didn't argue.
Just stared at the sky.
---
After a long silence, she murmured, "A few months ago, I was just a normal girl. Now I'm… this."
Han Chen didn't respond.
What was there to say? This world wasn't kind to those who tried to stay innocent, and out of bounds...
Instead, he pulled out his digital device, his fingers moving over the screen. Frame by frame, he edited the footage ~ cutting away any trace of information about who recorded or file attributes leading back to them, leaving only the horror of what had truly happened.
On a second thought he didn't send the information but decided to purge the left over sites and add them to this as fast as possible. He used sword flight with Hye Won. Protected within a barrier they moved faster than sound, slowly adapting Hye won to the thrust, and reached their home in minutes. Leaving her, Han Chen went into the time chamber.
Took a few minutes to recover spiritual energy but took a few days to clear the mental exhaustion due to continuous usage of spirit will.
He felt his mind was clearer than ever before, looking inside he only felt one more chain binding him. The rest are cleared away. His heart demon gnawing on his regrets is truly fading. He tried to cultivate and it was many times more effective than before, a day inside he advanced to 8th stage foundation building realm, a few more days his realm stabilized at mid stage 8th layer. He withdrawn and only a few hours passed outside.
Faster than ever before he flew alone. By mid day he returned. The outside world has already shown some reaction. Many places throughout their land had sudden bloodshed and victimized people coming out seeking help. Many people in power and higher status disappeared. Something big has happened and no one knew. Han Chen took a trip to the black crane assassination society too.
He sent the footage out, scrubbing all traces of himself and Hye Won before releasing it into the world. Dark web forums flooded with unredacted horror, encrypted law enforcement servers breached with surgical precision, emergency response teams alerted the moment the last cultist's scream had faded. As soon as the purge was complete, the world was given its proof. Han Chen lay back against the Hye Won's shoulders closing his eyes.
Let them drown in the aftermath.
***
As expected social outrage was massive. Normally, the powerful would isolate dissent, bury truths beneath layers of bureaucracy and fatigue. But this—this was a wildfire. The pieces had been accumulating for years:
The Zhang Family's martial master vanishing without trace ~ an impossibility in an era of satellites and biometrics. The "Smiley Face Incident". Han Zhong Family assassination attempt and attackers disappearing between camera blind spots. Four high-ranking Han Family members reported missing just days prior and many other incidents even unrelated to Han Chen. Isolated, these incidents had been dismissed, buried, or forgotten. Now there was two videos. One was the purge of a deeply hidden assassination organization, black crane society. Other was a bombshell.
Now, the world watched as respected government officials, corporate titans, political leaders, military officials and cultural elites were exposed mid-ritual—their fine cultist robes splattered with blood moments before becoming sacrifices themselves. Justice serving beyond the law?
The footage didn't just show crimes; it shattered the illusion of control. Coupled with these people unavailable ever since, there wasn't any need to go for victims self reports or situational evidences.
Children in pits. Women reduced to breeding tools or writhing incubators. And those things—beasts, horrors the size of shipping containers or large trucks ~ being carved apart by two blurred figures moving faster than camera shutters could capture.
The public recoiled. No convenient aliens to blame here. No government spin that could untangle this. Just primal, undeniable truth: monsters walked among them, and something even far worse hunted those monsters. It was confirmed that blurring wasn't an effect, it was there in actuality both by victim reports and experts checking the video, whose source is unknown.
Martial grandmaster—legendary figures who could shatter concrete with their fingertips were swatted aside like gnats in the footage. Ancient conspiracy forums erupted with grainy videos of "impossible" feats from decades past. Social media became a battleground of panic and revelation as amateur investigators connected dots the powerful had spent centuries erasing.
The Qi beasts was impossible to reach Master level in current era ~ scientific notion of the time was shattered by one massive beast even though man made over centuries, but now power rivaling Grand Masters. Governments and public alarmed over possible man made bio weapons. How can they sit still, based on the comments regular firepower nor even the missile impact said to have no effect without even discussing energy blasts from mouth? Science hasn't even produced such a weapon yet. Then what about the one who killed it?
The Qivora beast was quickly identified, its presence in assassination of the powerful ones even grandmasters in the past was reconnected. It was said to be untraceable and untreatable... now they see a container ship's entire cargo load amount of beasts fed and bred but now burned to nothing. If this is revealed how much is left unknown?
Governments scrambled. Media conglomerates deployed their most silver-tongued propagandists. But the source material was untraceable. And in the shadows, the surviving cults trembled.
Han Chen had known information of other cults but he is not here to be a hero. A part of whatever was done was as per Hye Won's request. There was nothing more to it.
***