The Red Lotus Arena never closes, but at 03:40 it is between rushes. The blood on the floor is still wet.
Liàn Xing walks through the service corridor like he belongs there. No one stops him. The security drones are busy scanning for weapons, and the half-formed spear in his hand is reading as "unknown cosmic anomaly" instead of "weapon." Their threat-assessment subroutines bluescreen and reboot in an endless loop.
Zhenxing perches on his shoulder, legs swinging, eating a holographic candied hawthorn that definitely wasn't there a second ago.
"You sure about this, host? We could just burn the whole ring down and be done with it."
Liàn Xing doesn't answer. His eyes are fixed on the reinforced plasteel door marked LOSERS' LOCKER – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
He kicks it off its hinges.
Inside, eight fighters are splitting tonight's winnings. Razor-Jin sits in the middle, chrome gorilla arms draped over two giggling joy-girls, a mountain of credit chips in front of him. The others are the usual mix: gene-modded thugs, corporate dropouts, one kid with actual qi circuits glowing under his skin—some mid-ring young master slumming it for thrills.
Conversation dies the moment the door hits the far wall.
Razor-Jin's gold-plated skull tilts. Optical sensors cycle from white to red.
"You're dead, trash. I killed you forty-seven seconds ago."
Liàn Xing steps into the light.
The room's cheap neon tubes flicker and die one by one, replaced by the cold silver glow leaking from his skin. Constellations crawl across his cheeks like living tattoos.
"Ninety-eight losses," he says, voice quiet enough that everyone leans forward to hear. "Forty-seven seconds tonight. That's what you took from me."
Razor-Jin stands, servos whining. Eight hundred kilos of military-grade chrome and rage. "I'm gonna take the rest now."
He charges.
The first punch is a hypersonic haymaker that should turn Liàn Xing into red mist.
It stops three centimeters from his face.
Not blocked. Stopped. As if space itself folded around his cheek and refused to let the fist pass.
Razor-Jin's eyes widen behind armored glass.
Liàn Xing looks up at him—really looks—and smiles for the first time in twelve years.
It is not a nice smile.
"Starlight Thrust."
There is no wind-up. No stance. No warning.
The half-formed spear moves.
Reality screams.
Razor-Jin's right arm ceases to exist from the shoulder down. Not cut. Not exploded. Erased. A perfect cylindrical void punched straight through matter, through the wall behind him, through three more walls, and out into the void between rings. Somewhere far away, a cargo drone tumbles end-over-end with a brand-new hole in its fuselage.
The chrome gorilla stares at the cauterized stump, hydraulic fluid jetting in perfect arcs.
Then he starts screaming.
The other seven fighters scramble for weapons, implants, exit doors that suddenly refuse to open.
Zhenxing claps delightedly.
"Host, you're being dramatic. I like it."
Liàn Xing walks forward slowly. The spear drags behind him, carving a molten silver line in the ferrocrete.
"One for every loss," he says.
Forty-seven seconds later it is over.
No one dies. He is careful about that.
Razor-Jin is on his knees, both arms gone, gold skull cracked open like an egg. The others are unconscious heaps—neural links fried, implants slagged, bones powdered without breaking skin. The credit chips are molten slag.
The joy-girls are untouched. They huddle in the corner, staring at Liàn Xing like he's a god that stepped out of the wrong myth.
He crouches in front of Razor-Jin.
"Where's the ledger?" he asks softly.
The cyborg whimpers. A single trembling finger points to a wall safe.
Liàn Xing opens it with one finger. Inside: data chips, black-market pills, and the official Red Lotus fight ledger—a glowing holo-tablet that records every bout, every payout, every fixed bet.
He crushes it in his fist. Sparks and glass rain down like cheap fireworks.
Zhenxing whistles. "That's gonna make some bookies very sad."
Liàn Xing stands. For the first time he notices the security feed in the corner—red light blinking. Recording.
Good.
He looks straight into the camera.
"My name is Liàn Xing," he says to the entire underworld feed. "Ninety-eight losses. Zero wins."
He holds up the ruined ledger.
"Tonight the count resets."
Then he thrusts the spear upward.
The ceiling explodes. Ten floors of cheap housing, noodle shops, and brothels are suddenly open to the sky. Alarms begin to wail across half the ring.
Zhenxing laughs like a child on festival day.
"Time to go, host. You just painted a target the size of a moon on your back."
Liàn Xing leaps.
He clears fifty stories in a single bound, landing on the roof of a moving mag-lev train that wasn't there a heartbeat ago—Zhenxing cheating physics for fun. Wind whips his coat like a war banner. Below, the Red Lotus Arena is already on fire, emergency foam mixing with real starlight leaking from the hole he left behind.
Sirens rise in a howling chorus. Azure Sky interceptors paint the clouds blue. Heavenly Sword gunships paint them gold.
Liàn Xing stands on the train roof, spear resting on one shoulder, silver constellations burning brighter with every heartbeat.
Zhenxing floats in front of him, grinning ear to ear.
"Welcome to the big leagues, idiot host."
He looks up at the fake constellations of the upper rings—dragon, phoenix, crossed swords—and smiles that same not-nice smile.
"Let's go break their sky."
Far away, in Moonlit Ice Palace's highest spire, Lan Shuyin watches the dark-feed replay on infinite loop. The moment the silver light ignites. The moment Razor-Jin's arm ceases to exist.
Her cryo-tubes reverse flow for three full seconds.
Warm.
She reaches for her coat.
In Heavenly Sword Court, Zhao Shentian pauses mid-kata, plasma sword humming in his hand.
He feels it—like a new star being born in the gutter.
He laughs, wild and delighted, and sprints for his hover-bike.
And in the deepest server of the Void Court, the Consort opens eyes that have not seen light in ten thousand years.
"Soon," she whispers to the dark.
Liàn Xing races across the rooftops of Ring 8, a silver comet in human form, bounty counters already ticking into the hundreds of millions.
Ninety-eight losses.
Tonight the winning streak begins.