CHAPTER 133: ANOTHER WAR IS IN THE WAY

The atmosphere inside the International Institute, once marked by silence—the kind of silence broken only by the steady hum of machines and the low, murmured exchanges between researchers—had fractured into raw chaos. Alarms shrieked in every corridor, their sharp wails bouncing off sterile metal walls until the sound seemed to claw at the ears. Crimson warning lights pulsed in jagged rhythm, painting the glass partitions and steel doors in stuttering waves of blood-red illumination. Each flare announced, again and again, the undeniable presence of danger.

For years, the Institute had been a place where death and discovery were separated only by procedure, where experiments on the edge of morality unfolded with the discipline of ritual. Now that the ritual was broken. White-coated researchers ran across the polished floors, shoes squealing against linoleum, their eyes darting to the overhead panels where surveillance feeds flickered in stark monochrome. The cameras captured everything: Siān’s arrival, his confrontation, the growing storm in his expression.

Even the smallest words spoken in the heat of the moment were transmitted, archived, and replayed. Nothing could be hidden. That was the purpose of the Institute’s design—observation without end, vigilance without pause.

And beyond the panicked researchers were others watching: men of far higher authority than the chief researcher whom Siān had attacked. These were figures who rarely dirtied their hands in the mess of fieldwork, who moved in silence behind locked offices and spoke in whispers at the edge of classified meetings. Their faces, grim behind tinted glass, betrayed neither shock nor pity. Only calculation.

Among them, one had once looked upon Siān not as a subject or a threat, but with an obsession bordering on worship. That look had returned the moment Siān revealed the depth of his fury.

---

Ten Minutes Earlier

Director Dōng Fāng stood in the Institute’s central surveillance chamber, a room that resembled the control hub of a battleship. Dozens of screens lined the curved wall before him, each one casting its cold glow across his tired face.

Dōng Fāng was not an imposing man. His build was small, his frame almost delicate, his figure swallowed by the oversized coat he wore. Yet appearances deceived. This unassuming man was not only the director of the International Institute but also one of its most formidable researchers. Years of unrelenting thought and crushing responsibility had bleached streaks of gray into his hair, so much so that he seemed older than his age. The pressure of his position weighed heavily, bending his posture, etching fatigue into the lines around his eyes.

Yet his mind was sharp. Always sharp.

The director rewound the footage again, replaying the moment Siān had stepped into the facility. He scrutinized every movement, every glance. Then he paused at the feed from inside the child’s room. The boy—fragile, restrained, treated as less than human. The truth was laid bare. And so was Siān’s rage.

Dōng Fāng could not claim ignorance. He had known of the neglect. He had known of the cruelty. But in the storm of reports, experiments, and politics, he had chosen to avert his gaze. The Institute demanded results; the welfare of a single child had seemed insignificant.

Now, with Siān standing in judgment, the director felt the weight of that negligence.

When he heard Siān’s words—condemnation sharp as a blade—he found nothing within himself to deny them. And yet, responsibility pressed upon him in another form: he could not allow the man to slaughter his staff, not within these walls.

Everyone had reached the same conclusion. Siān was capable of killing. Worse, he intended it. His name was not foreign to them; whispers of him had circulated for years. Survivors from the "Cursed Island" had passed through their hands—broken, traumatized, some bearing strange mutations. Those who spoke of Siān did so with conflicting tones of fear and reverence. He had fought for them. Protected them. And the zombie child... the bond there was undeniable. When the boy had been taken, he had resisted with unnatural strength until Siān’s promise calmed him: I’ll come see you soon.

It was not the language of a stranger. It was the vow of someone the child trusted with his very existence.

Siān’s fame did not arise from the adoration of crowds but from chaos. Blood, disaster, inexplicable strength—his presence had become a legend stitched into every catastrophic report. To those who believed in chance, he was a coincidence. To those who believed in fate, he was inevitability.

And now, inevitability stood in their halls.

Dōng Fāng exhaled, slow and thin, as he reached his conclusion. They could not subdue Siān. They could not sway him. With Colonel Lán Qǐshēng standing at his side, resistance was not merely futile—it was suicidal.

So he made the call. Straight to the military.

The Institute was not a private lab to be shielded by local law. It was a state-backed fortress of secrets. And when secrets were threatened, the army answered.

---

Meanwhile

The tension on Siān’s side of the Institute was a living thing. It pressed against the walls, settled into lungs, crept into veins. The researchers who had once moved like lords in their domain now felt like animals trapped in the gaze of a predator.

Siān stood at the center of it, his aura no longer that of a man but of something darker, something that fed on wrath. This was not mere intimidation. This was the genuine, simmering intent to kill.

He had given them a chance. His words had been a warning, a thin mercy: leave him be. But mercy, when ignored, hardened into judgment.

Few understood the depth of his abilities, the arsenal carved into his soul by a world already lost once. His physical strength was notorious—feral, overwhelming. His healing power was paradoxical—capable of suppressing berserkers, of restoring stability, yet useless on himself. But his third ability... that was the hidden blade.

Mental force.

Not control of minds. Not whispers of telepathy. But raw, unyielding telekinesis.

He had honed it until it answered his will as readily as his own hand. With it, he had torn apart enemies, shielded allies, and crushed weapons mid-flight. And with time, he had stretched it further—into the very air itself.

The memory replayed vividly: the researcher gasping, clawing at nothing, the oxygen stripped from his lungs as Siān willed the air to flee. A cruel demonstration, but necessary.

Imagine, just imagine, the absence of air.

Panic was inevitable. Suffocation, certain.

This was only one fragment of the arsenal he had carried through the apocalypse. He had felt its stirrings again upon arriving in this world, when he clashed with terrorists. At first, the sensations were faint, shadows of what he had once commanded. But they grew stronger, undeniable. The proof came when he attempted to heal Hé Jùnyún. In that moment, he knew: this new vessel was changing, evolving, becoming him again.

Yes. His body was returning to its old state. His powers were not gone; they had been waiting.

Yet for now, they were fragile. Pathetically fragile. What once had cost him nothing—moving air as easily as brushing aside a curtain—now drained him to exhaustion. One exertion, and he felt hollow, incapable of summoning it again until his body mended itself.

Weakness burned like acid in his chest. Rage fed it.

The signs were all too clear. The virus’s reappearance, the surfacing of superpowered beings, the spreading chaos... this world was unraveling exactly as his old one had. He had fought, bled, and nearly lost himself once already. And now, the same nightmare threatened to bloom again before his eyes.

And these wretches had dared to hinder him.

Siān’s face darkened, his amber eyes hooded with fury. The temperature plummeted—not literally, but perceptibly, as though the heat had been sucked from the room. Hearts stuttered. Limbs went cold. Every soul present felt the whisper of mortality, the brush of something skeletal and inevitable.

Even Xiǎo Zǔ, the child who clung so fiercely to him, trembled. The boy’s instincts screamed louder than his trust; the air itself was alive with menace, swirling in invisible eddies around Siān.

The silence cracked when he spoke.

"If you refuse to step aside—"

The words alone froze them, but the pause that followed froze them deeper. His eyes, once gentle in their indifference, shifted. Amber turned molten, feral, monstrous. They glowed with such raw menace that even beasts would have flinched and turned their heads, refusing to meet them from afar.

His lips curved, not into a smile, but into the sharp edge of judgment.

"—then die."

---

And Beyond

The words struck like the toll of a bell.

Around him, the researchers flinched as though the declaration itself were a blade pressed to their throats. Some staggered backward, others froze, too paralyzed to flee. The walls seemed closer. The alarms are louder. The world narrowed into the presence of the man before them, a storm wrapped in human skin.

Far above, in the surveillance chamber, Dōng Fāng’s fingers clenched the edge of the console. He had called the army. Reinforcements would come. But would they come in time?

Already, shadows stirred beyond the gates of the Institute—dark uniforms, heavy boots, weapons prepared. The military was moving.

And Siān knew nothing of it yet.

But when they came, would they stop him? Or would they ignite a fire no force could contain?

---

The air around Siān thickened, the red lights flashing across his face as his words echoed in the trembling chamber. Somewhere in the distance, the thunder of approaching helicopters shook the sky.

The Institute was no longer a sanctuary of science.

It had become a battlefield waiting for its first scream.