Part D – Golden Eyes in the Dark
The echo of Gu Kuangren's laughter chased her long after she slipped from the fighter's hall.
Zhu Zhuqing moved through the shadowed passages of the Arena like a ghost. Her breathing was shallow, controlled, though her heart refused to calm. Her claws had left shallow grooves in the stone where she had clung, desperate not to lose a single word of that conversation.
Now she replayed every one of them in her mind.
Loyalty is a leash.Blood has no rules.Alive only in blood.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. She had known killers before, merciless fighters who treated the Arena as slaughter. But they were predictable in their cruelty — bullies of the weak, slaves to coin or fear.
Kuangren was different.
He believed in it.
And that belief terrified her.
She emerged into a quieter corridor, where the sound of muffled cheers and wagers filtered faintly through the stone from above. Other fighters shouted, guards laughed, dice clattered. But to Zhu Zhuqing, all of it seemed distant, unreal.
She leaned against the wall, lowering her hood. Her golden eyes glowed faintly in the dim light.
"He's mad," she whispered to herself.
The word felt brittle on her tongue.
Madness should repel. It should disgust. And yet…
She exhaled sharply, nails biting into her palms.
Then why can't I look away?
Images of him came unbidden: towering, drenched in blood, crimson eyes blazing like fire, the curve of his smile when he said he would never wear chains. He had spoken those words not as defiance, but as truth.
He was the truth he claimed.
And she, despite everything she had learned — about discipline, restraint, the importance of caution — found herself pulled into his gravity.
Like prey circling too close to a predator.
Her thoughts shifted, darker.
Tang San.
She had heard that name whispered among certain circles, the blue-haired prodigy, the disciple of the Seven Kill Douluo. The one others already placed on a path to greatness.
But if Tang San was the path… then Gu Kuangren was the abyss beside it.
And for reasons she could not yet name, the abyss felt more honest.
Zhu Zhuqing pushed herself off the wall, tugging her hood back up.
Enough. She had indulged her thoughts too long. She had her own mission, her own path to walk. She could not afford distractions, especially not dangerous ones.
Yet even as she walked away, her ears still rang with the sound of his laughter.
It wasn't a sound she could ever forget.