CHAPTER 380: CHAPTER 380; MOMMA

"Momma." Twilight’s voice was soft. "You okay?"

Tang Fei blinked, and something human returned to her eyes. "Yeah, baby girl. I’m okay." I hope I didn’t scare you... She had totally lost it.

" Okay.... " They guided the women and boys out of that place, but she suddenly heard heavy footsteps echoing.

She raised her weapon, but it was Huo Ting Cheng who burst into view.

He stopped dead, taking in the scene. The bodies littering the corridor. The blood painted the walls. Tang Fei is standing in the center of it all like a warrior queen, her gun raised, her eyes cold and lethal.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Tang Fei didn’t know what to do or say!

Then Huo Ting Cheng moved, crossing to her in three long strides. He grabbed her face, his hands shaking slightly as he checked her for injuries.

"Whose blood?" he demanded. He could see blood all over her face up to her neck.

Huo Ting Cheng moved then, closing the distance between them in three explosive strides. He grabbed her face with both hands, his fingers trembling as they traced her blood-soaked skin, searching desperately for wounds.

"Whose blood is this?" His voice was a low, dangerously raspy. Blood covered her face in a grotesque mask, streaking down her throat like war paint.

"Not mine." She muttered nonchalantly.

"Tang Fei..." His voice cracked, the sound sharp and jagged in the suffocating silence. "What did you do?"

And just like that, everything changed.

The cold, lethal killer, the woman who had moved through trained operatives like death incarnate, vanished as if she’d never existed. Her eyes went wide, glassy, unfocused. The gun in her hand began to tremble, violent tremors running through her entire arm.

"I... I don’t..." Her voice came out fractured, small, utterly lost. She looked down at the weapon clutched in her bloodied fingers as if seeing it for the first time, then at the gore covering her hands, her clothes, her skin. "What... what is this?"

The gun slipped from her nerveless fingers and hit the concrete with a metallic clatter that echoed like a gunshot in the death-heavy corridor.

"No, no, no..." She stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a corpse. Her hands came up before her face, trembling violently as she stared at them in absolute horror. "This isn’t... I didn’t..."

"Tang Fei?" Huo Ting Cheng reached for her, his confusion evident as he watched her unravel before his eyes.

"THE BLOOD!"

Her scream tore through the corridor, raw, primal, genuine terror that raised the hairs on every witness’s neck.

"Why is there so much blood?!" She whirled on him, her eyes wild, feral with panic. "Ting Cheng, what happened? What did I..."

Her gaze swept across the carnage, bodies sprawled in impossible positions, blood pooling across concrete, the acrid stench of death thick in the air, and a broken sob ripped from her throat.

"Are they dead? Did I..." The words died as her legs buckled beneath her.

"Auntie!" Twilight rushed forward, her performance flawless. The young girl’s face had drained all the color, her eyes wide with what looked like genuine shock. "Auntie Tang, you, you went crazy! I tried to stop you but you wouldn’t listen!" Her voice climbed higher, breaking on the edge of hysteria. "There was so much blood and you just kept going and going! I’ve never, I’ve never seen anything like it!"

"I don’t remember."

Tang Fei’s whisper cut through the chaos like a blade. Her entire body convulsed with tremors now, violent shudders that made her look fragile, broken. When she looked at Huo Ting Cheng, her eyes held nothing but confusion and mounting horror.

"Ting Cheng, I don’t remember any of this." Her voice cracked. "We came down here and then, then everything went red and I can’t, I can’t remember—"

Her hand drifted to her waist, fingers brushing against something. She looked down slowly, as if afraid of what she’d find.

A combat knife. Sheathed. The handle was slick with crimson.

The sound she made when she pulled it free was inhuman, a keening wail of pure revulsion. She stared at the blade, at the blood dried in the grooves, at her own reflection distorted in the steel.

"No, no, I don’t use knives!" She flung it away with a violent jerk. The weapon skittered across the floor, leaving a smear of red in its wake. "I don’t know how to, I would never...."

Her breathing was coming in rapid, shallow gasps now, the sound harsh and painful.

"I’m not this person. I’m not..."

"Tang Fei, breathe..." Huo Ting Cheng lunged forward, reaching for her hands, but she recoiled as if he’d struck her.

"Don’t touch me!"

She held her hands away from her body, staring at her blood-soaked palms like they belonged to a monster. The fluorescent lights caught every detail, the blood dried black under her nails, the spatters across her wrists, the way it had soaked into the lines of her palms.

"I’m covered in... I can’t...I’m going to be sick..."

She doubled over violently, her whole body convulsing. Retching sounds echoed off the concrete walls. When she straightened, tears carved clean tracks through the blood on her face, and her eyes had gone glassy with shock.

Her body swayed dangerously.

"Auntie..." Twilight stretched out her hands, but Huo Ting Cheng was faster.

He caught Tang Fei as she fell, sweeping her into his arms. For just a fraction of a second, so brief that only Twilight caught it, Tang Fei’s eye flickered open and she shot the girl a playful, conspiratorial wink.

Then her head lolled against Huo Ting Cheng’s chest, the picture of traumatized unconsciousness.

Huo Wu stood frozen in the corridor, knowing with absolute certainty that he would be punished for his failure. But of all the days for things to go catastrophically wrong, today he had genuinely tried his best.

"Take care of this."

Huo Ting Cheng’s voice cut through the stunned silence like a guillotine blade, cold, sharp, absolute.