"Yea…so what were you saying again?" Shuren asked.
She was still entangled with Kinzau's threads but as always she displayed a normal Shuren reaction. Which was straight boredom or someone who doesn't care the slightest.
On the other side of the room, Zheng Yan froze, he did not move a muscle after witnessing the defeat of his abomination. The same creature in which he forged by using literal human body parts to make this monster. All of that progress of kidnapping innocent humans, whether it was man, woman or child. All of that progress went down the drain. Just like that.
But for some reason he did not experience any anger nor any disappointment. None of that, instead he felt some joy and intensity. Zheng Yan started to laugh maniacally, which made both Shuren and Kinzau disoriented for a bit. This type of action would resemble a psychotic person in the normal eye.
"I should have known better than to let those words slip. Doubting the two children waiting outside in the dark…that doubt alone was enough to make my monster falter and fall.How foolish… how utterly predictable.But this is the will of the Clan of Sin.They delight in victories seasoned with the irony of our own sins!"
The name startled Shuren for a moment.
The Clan Of Sin.
Who would have thought that Zheng Yan was part of that group? But what could his relation to them be? Was he perhaps one of the core members, or just a candidate?
Shuren needed more information, and that meant she had to get out of these threads. She slowly took a deep breath and quietly muttered the words, "Muteki no kurōn."
Nothing happened at first and that was exactly what Shuren wanted. While Zheng Yan laughed like an absolute psychopath, losing himself in the process, the thread user Kinzau was staring at him. That made the moment perfect for an escape.
The threads binding her slowly began to tear apart. Every time one snapped, Shuren had to glance in Kinzau's direction in case he sensed something wrong with his threads or worse, realized what was happening. That would create a far more dangerous scenario.
Every thread was getting torn apart bit by bit by her invisible, undetectable clones.
One of them quietly brought out a new gun.
It was a brutal, oversized handgun, heavy and angular, with a reinforced revolving cylinder that locked into place before each shot. Power was inside it, coiled and waiting.
Shuren took it with her liberated left hand.
"Always wanted to try this one," she whispered. "Guess now's the time."
Kinzau's eyes remained fixed on Zheng Yan's screaming figure, the insane laughter rasping against the air like shattered glass. Then something flickered
Not in the lunatic but in him.
A tiny shudder passed through his pinkie, the one that had spun the finest thread, the one he relied on most to hold without protest. It trembled once, then again. He merely shifted his gaze ahead, allowing the picture to rebuild itself in his mind: the threads, invisible to the naked eye, vibrating in the dim light like the veins of frost in the room.
One of them... was off.
In his mind's eye, Shuren was immobile and bound by his threads.
Kinzau slowly released his breath, the movement hardly disturbing the dancing dust motes between them. He merely began descending the stairs, one measured step at a time, closing in with the detachment of one who had already weighed the chances and found them unacceptable.
He would check for himself.
The threads were still there, but Shuren could sense the pressure of them, a faint but palpable presence, like the ghost of hands around her throat and wrists.
But Kinzau was no fool, halting three paces away. Golden eyes ranged over Shuren, slow and deliberate, not on her face but on the space around her.
One thread trembled.
His fingers twitched.
That was all the warning Shuren received.
She fired.
The noise was not a shot but a thunderclap, condensed violence bursting the air apart. The cylinder locked, the recoil slammed back into her arm, and the bullet distorted the space between them. The threads vanished in an instant, no recoil, no snap, just gone as if they had never been there.
Kinzau reacted on instinct.
His body turned aside, threads bursting out from his free hand like a spiderweb flung in desperation. The bullet ripped through the space where his head had been a split second before and blasted into the far wall, reducing marble to shrapnel.
Zheng Yan's laughter was cut off in mid-breath.
"..."
Shuren was already in motion.
She rolled forward as more threads shot out, slicing through the air where she had been standing. One caught her shoulder, and blood burst forth instantly, but she didn't falter. Another clone appeared and disintegrated under the force of a thread aimed at her spine.
Kinzau backed off half a step, his eyes wide now not with fear, but calculation.
"So my speculations were correct. Somewhat you were escaping from the threads without moving, which only meant that you had some clones in your mist." Kinzau explained.
"Wow you're a fast adapter, my clones don't even make the slightest bit of sound yet you felt them. Which means that you're not a Qi user, am I correct?" Shuren asked.
Kinzau fell silent.
For one breath, it was as if the mansion itself paused with him. Then his mouth twisted, not wide or cruel, but sharp. A smile for one who had finally been noticed.
"And what if I am? Does that mean your technique can only be spotted by Sionels?" he said with a grin.
Shuren laughed, soft and content.
"Congratulations, your absolutely correct." She said.
"…What?" He looked between them. "What are you talking about?"
Shuren tilted her head toward Kinzau, almost in play.
"That means your precious personal guard lied to you." she continued,
Zheng Yan snapped his gaze to Kinzau. "Lied? You told me you were a Qi user. Threads are a Qi technique."
Kinzau didn't deny it. Instead, he laughed. Shuren joined in, their laughter overlapping just enough to make Zheng Yan's skin crawl.
"Wow, you really are blind." Shuren said, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye.
Zheng Yan's jaw clenched. "Blind to what?"
Shuren lifted her chin toward the air between them.
"The threads," she said simply. "Look properly."
The threads were there, faint but present, humming in the air like lines of tension. He had always known Qi techniques. He had always known the signs. The aura. The color.
Qi was blue.
Always had been. But these threads, they weren't blue. They shimmered not with glow, not with flame, but with something colder. Something more refined. A thin, razor-sharp silver, like moonlight drawn into wire.
Zheng Yan's pupils contracted.
"…That's not Qi," he whispered.
Kinzau took a slow breath, the grin never wavering on his face.
"No, it isn't."