"Xiao Wu can handle herself. Even tricked, her raw power buys her time." Ethan hauled Heng Zhang to his feet. "We move."They stepped out of the Landlord Space. A massive vine uncoiled from the ground and whipped toward them. Ethan dragged Heng Zhang sideways, broke a teleport talisman, and was already fading when the vine's tip grazed his back. A line of fire ran across his shoulder blade. He cursed and jumped again.He didn't land beside Heng Zhang. The talisman spat him out where the locator on Qingwu Feng had pinned her, which was what he'd wanted, except that the instant he materialized he was throwing himself flat on top of Heng Zhang as another vine cracked the air where their heads had been. The thing was everywhere now. It didn't have a body so much as a network — roots and shoots woven through the whole clearing, patient as a net left to soak. Ethan dragged the scout toward cover behind a fallen wall of rock, fed him another pill through the gap in his lips, and risked one l

"Should be clear for now."After a handful of teleports, Ethan stepped into a place he'd never seen. It was quiet in a way the battlefield never was. No monsters. No humans. No corpses. No blood in the air.Qingwu Feng looked around, frowning. "No battle here? That's wrong. The whole front should be war. Either this is a special pocket, or it's a monster's nest."Ethan nodded. She wasn't wrong.The battlefield itself had been carved by ancestors, but the pocket beneath was older. A hundred years of war had stretched it wider, and the Aberrations tore new tears in it to feed more of themselves through. Like the random rifts, the front spawned mystery pockets full of danger and luck. Lunguo had pulled a body-tempering manual out of one once, and that single find had lifted the whole country. Without it, they wouldn't have held this long. The country had teeth when its back was to the wall."First thing." Ethan sat cross-legged, face set. "I need to w

"Are we going back to Earth now?"Qingwu Feng watched him, her gaze clear and unreadable. She couldn't bring herself to kill him—he had given her a second life, after all—but if he had truly been taken, if something foreign was wearing his face, she would spend her own without a second thought. She would drag him down with her.Earth could not afford a single mistake."Not yet." Ethan Su shook his head. "The battlefield isn't stable. We stay until we fix what's here."If they ran for Earth now and the front collapsed, the aberrations pouring through would flood the home world. Earth couldn't hold that."What do we do, then?" She looked at him, waiting.Ethan thought it over. "First, back to Central Command. We seal every channel that leads to Earth. Nothing gets through. Once that's done, we go home."He happened to have a handful of formation disks on him, plus the high-purity crystals he'd looted from the battlefield poc

"Even with the full defense set, we plan for the worst." Tang's voice was heavy. "If the monster army does break through and we can't hold, we still leave a last spark for Earth. As long as something lives, there's hope. We have to save a generation of young people. We have to let hope survive.""So we built the Seed Fire Plan. If Earth truly can't be held, we send a group of the most promising young people—and a cohort of the Federation's children—off-planet ahead of time, to find somewhere new to live."His face was grave. He'd already steeled himself for the worst case.Ethan opened his mouth, then closed it. If that day came, preserving a spark was the right call.In recent years, Earth's military power had exploded. So had its technology. Scientists were a Class too, and the Federation had plenty of them—some SSS-rank. The research institutes they'd built had already produced interstellar ships. They'd run scout missions decades ago.No habitable planet had turned up in nearby sy

"You know that." The man went still. "Impossible. The Tang twins were a state secret. How—? The academy couldn't possibly—" He cut himself off. His face darkened.Ethan let it sit. "Does that surprise you? Your existence is a known hazard to the Federation. The Tang family can hide you from most people, but not everyone. Someone has always known how to erase you without hurting Tang. As it happens, that person left the method at the academy." He smiled. "And I happen to read. It cost me a lot of credits, but who cares—I'm rich. I've read nearly every book in the academy library.""Guohua Tang. Did I get it right? What are you actually here for?"He watched the man across the table, steady.Guohua's face was ugly. "You know too much. So what if you have a method? You're weak. You think you can kill me?" He almost laughed. "I shouldn't have talked this much. One of my underlings keeps telling me villains die because they talk too much. I thought he was just timid. Turns out he's got a p