Thuong Sinh placed his palm against the door. He did not use a keycard. He closed his eyes; toxic internal force began to seep into the molecular structure of the electronic lock, corroding the physical deadbolts from within.
Click.
The heavy door slid to both sides, revealing a dark space. In the center of the room, a youth was shackled tightly to a metallic chair, his head slumped, his breath dying away. Surrounding him were bizarre medical devices that were continuously embedding needles into his temples.
Thuong Sinh stepped inside, his purple eyes narrowing.
"Specimen 001?"
Thuong Sinh advanced toward the metallic chair. The sound of his boot soles hitting the floor echoed in the terrifyingly silent room. The machines around were still beeping rhythmically, representing the fragile life of the one being shackled.
He reached out a slender, cold hand to lift the youth's chin.
Thuong Sinh suddenly froze. His pupils contracted; his breathing, which had been suppressed, suddenly became agitated.
Before his eyes was no longer a normal human face. The entire facial skin of Subject 001 had been deeply burned, the flesh mottled with protruding and recessed scars, raw red and completely deformed due to the effects of chemicals or extreme heat. There was no longer a nose; the charred lips were shriveled, revealing pale white teeth, and one eye had been filled with opaque white scar tissue.
"Do you know who Thuong Vu is?"
The youth suddenly convulsed violently. As Thuong Sinh finished speaking, he seemed to have been touched on some painful nerve; he began to shake his head frantically, the chains on his body clashing against each other with a clatter.
"No... no... don't ask me... don't ask about the data..."
He moaned, the sound emitted from his ravaged throat could no longer be heard as a normal human voice. He cringed on the metallic chair, his eyes looking at Thuong Sinh with absolute horror—not the fear of someone facing an enemy, but the panic of a beast whose will had been completely broken.
Thuong Sinh looked at the frantic man before him and sighed; he turned to leave. This man had gone insane; no information about his brother could be gathered from him.
The search for clues through prisoners had reached a dead end. In this place where humans were regarded as components, the most authentic information could only reside in the head of the one holding the highest power.
The Speaker.
The one operating Iron City, the one who ordered these cruel experiments, surely knew the whereabouts of every special specimen, including Thuong Vu. Instead of wasting time rummaging through the ruins of destroyed brains, he decided to use the most direct and bloody method.
Raid the Speaker's Office at the highest Top Floor.
He silently walked out and pushed the door, mobilizing "Phantom Steps" to the limit. Thuong Sinh's entire figure blurred; the deep purple black aura enveloping his body no longer radiated outward but contracted, hugging tight to the skin's surface, helping him merge completely into the darkness.
He glided along the hallway like a ghost. Bypassing the final security layer, Thuong Sinh slipped through a gap and fell gently onto the deep red carpet of the highest floor. In contrast to the parched, machine-filled lower floors, this place was eerily quiet.
At the end of the hallway was a double door made of high black wood, carved with intricate mechanical patterns. That was the Speaker's Office.
Thuong Sinh did not approach through the main door. He slipped into the shadows behind the rows of massive pillars, gently approaching from the side hallway. He sensed two presences inside the room.
He pressed his ear against the wall.
Thuong Sinh held his breath; toxic internal force circulated gently through his ten fingertips, helping him cling to the wall like a ghost hiding and waiting for an opportunity. Through a small gap in the air filtration system, he carefully observed every movement of the old Speaker and the mechanical guard.
The Super-class guard suddenly whipped his head around; his sharp sound sensors seemed to have just caught an abnormal vibration. He took a step forward, shielding the Speaker, his metallic hand hissing as the joints rotated, ready to activate integrated laser weapons.
"Is something wrong?" The Speaker frowned, his voice hoarse and mixed with the static of an electronic voice synthesizer.
The moment the old man's attention was focused on the stack of documents, Thuong Sinh acted.
He did not break the wall but slipped through the narrow exhaust vent as flexibly as if he had no bones. His figure blurred in mid-air, turning into a long purple-black streak. The Super-class Guard immediately raised his mechanical arm, a glowing red energy accumulating in his palm. But Thuong Sinh was faster. He did not draw his sword but unleashed a palm strike wrapped in black aura directly at the iron monster's optical sensor.
The surge of toxic internal force carrying terrifying corrosive power caused an explosion. The robot lost its orientation, frantically throwing thousand-kilogram punches into the air, smashing the surrounding stone walls.
The Speaker pushed his chair back in panic, intending to press the alarm button under the desk, but a deep black blade had already stabbed down right next to his fingers, deep into the precious wood all the way to the hilt.
"If you want to keep the half of your life that is still human, you had better keep your hands where I can see them." Thuong Sinh's bone-chilling voice rang out right by his ear.
The Speaker froze, cold sweat rolling down the remaining patches of flesh. He slowly raised his head, seeing a pair of deep purple eyes looking at him as if looking at a corpse.
Thuong Sinh pressed down on the old man's shoulder with one hand; with the other, he pulled the Marsh-Blood Sword out of the desk, the blade shimmering with black light as it was placed gently against the machinery on the man's neck.
"I will only ask once. Where is Thuong Vu?"
"Ha... ha, I know now... you are his younger brother, aren't you!"
The Speaker sneered, the laughter emitted from the voice filter sounding like metal rubbing against metal. Despite the blade at his neck, his mechanical eyes still flashed with a spark of craftiness and mockery.
"Don't use that tone to speak of my brother." Thuong Sinh snarled, his cold killing intent causing the temperature in the room to drop to the point of freezing. "Speak. Where is he?"
Thuong Sinh did not let him finish the second sentence. A black streak tore through; the Marsh-Blood Sword swung in a cold arc.
Rip—!
The man's arm—the rare remaining patch of flesh—was severed from the shoulder. Bright red blood splattered onto the desk. The old man let out a roar of pain, the voice filter crackling with piercing interference.
"You think I came here to negotiate?" Thuong Sinh asked coldly.
The sword tip moved down to the man's knee joint. "I have no patience."
Puk!
The sword pierced through his left knee; purple-black extreme poison from the blade began to corrode into the blood vessels and bone marrow. Terrifying pain surged, causing the old man to collapse onto the floor, his entire body convulsing violently.
"Speak!"
The old Speaker trembled, his mechanical eyes rotating chaotically, his voice weak like a failing machine. "Stop... stop... he is right beneath your feet... the basement." "Special Interrogation Room No. 1... Specimen 001 is him."
Thuong Sinh stood frozen, the sword in his hand trembling slightly. The image of the burned-faced, insane man from earlier appeared in his mind—the one cringing in fear, the one he had coldly abandoned because he thought no information could be extracted...
It was his brother.
The surge of toxic internal force inside Thuong Sinh's dantian suddenly lost control, exploding outward like a purple storm. The floor around him began to melt, black veins rose all over his body, his sclera had turned red, and the killing intent radiating from him was so dense it made the surrounding air difficult to breathe.
"What... have you done?"
Thuong Sinh spoke slowly, his voice no longer possessing its usual calm but carrying the roar of a demon. He grabbed the Speaker's collar, lifting the armless and legless old man up, his eyes pressed close to the man's sensors. The old Speaker trembled violently, the electronic synthesizer emitting piercing static as Thuong Sinh's internal force was choking the microcircuit system. He looked into Thuong Sinh's blood-shot eyes, feeling for the first time in his heart the presence of a true god of death.
"I... I only followed... the plan. The city needs energy... his brain is the most perfect memory core..." he gasped, blood mixed with oil flowing from the corner of his mouth.
"The most perfect?" Thuong Sinh laughed, a distorted smile filled with ultimate hatred. "He spent his whole life inventing, building... and you used him as waste?"
He pressed his face close to the Speaker's sensors, his voice dropping low but heavy as if thousands of tons of steel were pressing down: "Do you know pain?" "You replaced flesh with metal to escape human suffering..." "Then today, I will teach you what the pain of a soul feels like."
The Speaker's eyes widened; he intended to plead, but Thuong Sinh no longer wanted to hear another sound from that rotten mouth.
"You like machines? Then become one with them."
Thuong Sinh did not use his sword; he placed his hand, which was burning with black aura, on top of the old man's head. A surge of toxic internal force billowed into the man's brain. He did not kill him instantly but forced the internal force to penetrate every nerve cell, burning them bit by bit. "Ah... AH... NO... STOP!"
The man screamed in agony as the mechanical parts on his face and chest began to heat up to a glowing red, incinerating the remaining flesh from the inside. Thuong Sinh looked coldly as the man was burned within his own shell. Then, he swung his arm hard, tossing the burning old man out of the shattered glass window.
The Speaker's body fell freely from the height of thousands of meters from the Top Floor, turning into a dying spark of Iron City before shattering into a hundred pieces on the ground.
Thuong Sinh stood in the middle of the ruined office, his black hair flying wildly in the gale. He did not turn back to look at the wreckage behind him. He gripped the sword hilt, his red-shot eyes looking down at the ground where his brother was imprisoned.
"Brother, wait for me."
He launched himself down into the abyss, the Marsh-Blood Sword turning into a pitch-black streak leading the way, tearing straight down toward the B4 basement.