The smell of ozone and burnt flesh hung heavy in the night air. Moments later, a scream tore through the mansion.
"Dad! Dad, are you okay?" Ren Tingting cried out. The thunderous explosion had jolted the entire Ren household from their sleep.
When she heard the crack of lightning, she had bolted upright in bed. Fearing the worst, she threw on a robe and ran toward her father's chambers, only to find the courtyard in chaos. In the center of the yard lay a smoldering, man-shaped piece of charcoal, still smoking faintly. She didn't recognize it as her grandfather, and a wave of panic washed over her.
"I'm fine, my dear girl!" Ren Fa called back from inside his room, his voice trembling. "Master Gustave, could you please stop Tingting for a moment? I need to… change my trousers."
He pleaded awkwardly, mortified at the thought of his daughter seeing that he had been frightened into soiling himself.
"Of course, Master Ren," Gustave sighed. He stepped out of Ren Fa's room and gently blocked the frantic young woman's path.
"Miss Ren, please calm down. Your father is safe," he said, his voice a steady anchor in the confusion.
"Master Gustave?" Ren Tingting stopped, startled to find him here. "What are you doing in my house?"
"I was saving your father," Gustave answered simply. "He'll be out in a moment. Don't worry."
"Oh… okay," she stammered, nodding. Though he rarely paid her much mind, she found herself trusting his calm authority completely. After a tense silence, her curiosity got the better of her. "But why are you here?"
Just as she was about to bombard him with more questions, Ren Fa emerged, having hastily changed his pants.
"Father!" Ren Tingting cried, rushing into his arms.
"My dear daughter, I'm alright," Ren Fa sobbed, clutching her tightly. The terror of the night was still fresh in his mind. His father, dead for twenty years, had come back to kill him. Seeing his daughter again after surviving the ordeal filled him with overwhelming relief.
"Dad, what happened?" she asked, pulling back. "I heard the doors and windows shatter, and then that terrible thunder. I thought you were…"
Ren Fa took a shuddering breath. "My dear, your grandfather… he came back as a zombie. He came for me. If Master Gustave hadn't arrived when he did, I would be dead."
"What? Grandpa turned into a zombie?" Ren Tingting had studied abroad for years and was a firm believer in science. She had always dismissed such supernatural tales as folklore, but hearing it from her own father shook her to the core.
"That… that is your grandfather," Ren Fa said, pointing a trembling finger at the blackened corpse in the yard.
Ren Tingting hesitantly approached the charred remains. The visibility was poor in the dead of night, and Gustave's attack had been so devastatingly thorough that she couldn't make out any features at all. The putrid smell in the air was nauseating, and she fanned the air in front of her face. "But Dad, how did he end up like this?"
"That was Master Gustave's doing!" Ren Fa explained, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and awe. "Just as your grandfather was about to finish me, Master Gustave descended from the sky and kicked him away! Then, he just waved his hand, and a bolt of lightning as thick as a pillar crashed down from the heavens. Your grandfather was instantly turned into… that."
"Lightning from the sky?" Ren Tingting stared at him. "Dad, are you sure you weren't seeing things? How could a person summon lightning?" In her world, only the gods from legends possessed such power.
Just as she was beginning to wonder if the fright had addled her father's mind, a voice called out from above.
"Gustave!"
Zhang Zhiwei descended gracefully from the night sky, landing silently in the courtyard. Ren Fa and Ren Tingting stared, their mouths agape, words failing them.
"Master Zhang," Gustave greeted him, his expression calm. "Is Wen Cai alright?"
"Don't worry, he's fine," Zhang Zhiwei reported. "He was only scratched by the zombie. Brother Lin Jiu and I forced the corpse poison from his system. He'll just need a few days of rest."
"That's a relief," Gustave nodded. Wen Cai might be timid and a poor student of Taoism, but he had shown true courage when it mattered.
"What about Old Master Ren? Did you find him?" Zhang Zhiwei asked, his gaze sweeping the courtyard. A creature like that on the loose would be a catastrophe for Renjia Town.
Gustave gestured toward the human-shaped charcoal. "Old Master Ren is no longer a threat. However, when I dealt with him, I realized he was being controlled. There's a puppeteer behind this."
He paused, his eyes narrowing. "The man behind it was hit by my lightning. He fled, but I can still feel the electrical signature I left on him. Now that you're here, Master Zhang, please protect this family. I'm going to track down the mastermind." With Zhang Zhiwei present, Gustave no longer had to worry about leaving the Ren family undefended.
"No problem at all," Zhang Zhiwei agreed, accepting the duty.
"Master Gustave, you're leaving?" Ren Fa cried out, his newfound sense of security vanishing.
"Don't worry, Master Ren," Gustave said, sensing his panic. "Master Zhang is far more powerful than I am. With him here, no demon or ghost would dare approach."
"Oh, thank you, Master Gustave! Thank you, Master Zhang!" Hearing this, Ren Fa relaxed slightly. After all, Zhang Zhiwei looked every bit the part of a celestial immortal, and his flying entrance had already convinced Ren Fa of his power.
"I'm going after our culprit," Gustave said to Zhang Zhiwei.
"Be safe, Gustave."
With a final nod, a flicker of lightning enveloped Gustave. He vanished with a deafening crack of thunder, leaving Ren Fa and Ren Tingting staring at the empty space where he had stood. Ren Fa was merely awed, but for Ren Tingting, watching a man fly and another transform into lightning in the span of minutes, her entire scientific worldview had been shattered.
Far away, a figure cloaked in black was fleeing through the dense mountain forest. His speed was inhuman, a blurry shadow darting between ancient trees. Suddenly, a deafening thunderclap echoed directly overhead, and he skidded to a halt.
Boom!
"You're quite fast," a calm voice stated. Gustave's form coalesced from the crackling electricity in the air, standing directly in the man's path. "But you can't outrun lightning."
"I have no quarrel with you," the man in black rasped, his voice strained. He knew he was hopelessly outmatched. Anyone capable of commanding the heavens' thunder was a master beyond his comprehension. "Why must you press this matter?"
"We have no personal grudge, it's true," Gustave replied coolly. "But we do need to have a word about you controlling a corpse to injure my junior brother's disciple."
The man's logic was sound. In Lin Jiu's absence, Gustave and he were martial brothers of the same generation, making Wen Cai his responsibility.
"Injuring your… disciple was indeed my fault," the man admitted, thinking quickly. "But it was an accident. My true target was Ren Fa, to avenge a past wrong."
"Revenge?" Gustave scoffed. "With your abilities, killing a mortal like Ren Fa would be trivial. Do you take me for a child?"
The man had survived a direct hit from his lightning and had fled over a hundred kilometers in minutes. For someone like that, killing a defenseless merchant would be easier than swatting a fly.
"Manipulating a corpse to do it seems an unnecessarily convoluted plan, don't you think?"
"Yes, well, the reason I manipulated Old Master Ren was because…" the man in black said, following Gustave's lead. Seeing his words weren't working, he secretly palmed a hidden weapon as he prepared his next sentence.