Chapter 11: The Unwelcome Specter
Zhao Wan'er's fingers trembled against the auction house's brass deadbolt when the ambush came—a phantom materializing from twilight's pedestrian stream.
"Gods—!"
The impact struck her scapula like a blacksmith's hammer. Her shriek fractured the evening calm, scattering pigeons from nearby eaves. The keychain slipped from nerveless fingers, dangling precariously in its steel womb.
She whirled, auburn hair fanning like a battle standard, only to confront a moon-faced imposter. "Zhao Bao'er!" Wan'er hissed through adrenaline-clenched teeth, palm pressed to her galloping heart. "Must you reenact penny dreadfuls in broad daylight?"
The younger sibling's Cheshire grin widened. "Merely testing your vigilance, dear sister!"
"Vigilance?" Wan'er's jade-green nail flicked Bao'er's forehead with practised precision. "I'll have you know hysterics aren't included in my benefits package."
Rubbing the assaulted brow, Bao'er deployed her signature pout. "Can't a devoted sister escort her overworked kin home?"
Waner's arms crossed in a defensive X. "Your invoice typically arrives attached. Name your extortion."
"Four Seasons' Wagyu tasting menu," came the shameless counter. "Compensation for parental steakhouse gluttony."
As they approached the Audi's sleek silhouette, Wan'er's nape prickled—that serpentine sensation of watched prey. Her sudden pivot revealed only empty pavement, though shadows seemed to ripple at the periphery.
"More theatrics?" Bao'er groaned, clutching imaginary pearls.
"Merely... verifying coordinates." Wan'er's thumb hovered over Chen Liang's contact—a digital lifeline glowing seductively. *Phantom fears,* she chided herself, sliding into the driver's leather embrace.
Unseen, beneath July's swelter and surgical mask, obsidian eyes tracked the departing vehicle. A gloved hand tightened around the switchblade's haft.
---
**The Arena of Omniscience**
Chen Liang's gaming throne cradled him like a tech-priest's altar. Before him, Ashe's ultimate clairvoyance pulsed—a Promethean fire stolen from digital Olympus.
The system's arctic tones reverberated.
*"Skill Ascension: Hawk Shot (Transcendent Tier)"
"Mastery: Apotheosis"
"Vision I: X-Ray Penetration (5m spectral range)"
"Vision II: Tactical Overwatch (500m sphere of influence)"
"Sanction: Omnipotence Protocol engaged. Resource taxation nullified."
"Biological Tax: 1 vitality unit/minute (100u circadian restoration)"*
His smirk mirrored Loki's mischief. Unlimited godhood—yet the cost manifested in leaden eyelids and cottonmouth. The draft screen bloomed, its chronometer blinking 00:01 in bloody numerals.
Through his ocular upgrade, he witnessed opponents' digital fingerprints—a quivering cursor caressing Kennen's avatar, frantic rune adjustments betraying AD top-lane desperation. Intelligence flooded his synapses: enemy Flash cooldowns crystallized into countdown timers, vision wards pulsed like sonar beacons, and even the bot lane's crumbling partnership unfolded as a tragicomedy.
At 3:47, dual disconnect notifications flashed—the support's final "jungle diff" rant preserved in chat log amber. Chen's barked laughter echoed through vacant training halls, a mad prophet's revelation.
"Pandora's matchmaking unleashed," he murmured to empty ergonomic chairs, mechanical keystrokes composing digital requiems.
---
**Binary Vigil**
Xu Jianing's ritual commenced with RGB-lit devotion—boot sequence incantations and driver updates like sacramental hymns. Her dawn now revolved around a singular liturgy: awaiting the notification chime that heralded his digital resurrection.
Providence's Blind Strike
"Hunger for triumph courses through our veins—this homeland World Championship, our nation's seven-year Sisyphean torment, festers in the marrow of every patriot's bones." The coach's timbre dropped to funereal depths, the streaming interface's chat log freezing like mourners at a wake.
Xu Jianing's jade-white knuckles blanched against her celadon teacup, its rising steam ghosting the anguish of seasons lost. Annual prophecies of "our destined year" had curdled into ash, scattering legions of devotees into digital exodus before glory's dawn.
The analyst's blade fell: "Yet this prodigy's mechanical aberrations reveal profound discordance."
The chat detonated into pixelated anarchy as he continued: "Mark the absence of virtuoso champions, the stilted pathing through jungle cathedrals. These aren't the movements of a consecrated jungler—yet he's ascended the celestial ladder with Atlas' nonchalance."
Xu's trachea constricted. *Jungle impostor?* Her thumb quivered above Su Qingge's digital effigy before retreating. Devotion anchored her—she'd not profane her paragon with a baseless inquisition.
---
Elsewhere, Chen Liang's digital odyssey ruptured by Mo Siyu's crystalline wrath: "Does our covenant mean less than gamers' ephemera?" Her vowels cut like honed jade. "One Han Dynasty relic purchased, then oblivion?"
He started upright—Level 5 prescience's narcotic allure had erased temporal awareness. Phantasmal observers materialised behind him: starting roster, benchwarmers, even the head coach stood in awestruck paralysis, having witnessed jungle divinity made flesh.
Su Qingge's countenance twisted like Laocoön grappling serpents. "To bury such Olympian jungle mastery beneath ADC mundanity..." His strangled whisper carried the grief of Icarus watching Phoebus outshine his waxen wings. "This... this is heresy against the jungle pantheon."
The training chamber's atmosphere electrified with silent insurrection—a deity walked incognito among mortals, his casual apotheosis rewriting esports' sacred texts in real time.
The Alchemist's Compact
Mo Chuanhe's visage maintained the serenity of a Song Dynasty scholar's inkstone. "Doctor Ye's insinuations require substantiation."
Chen Liang's gaze sharpened—this serpent in white coats had nearly cost him both divine artefact and transcendent vision yesterday.
"The whelp's diagnostic theatrics reek of plagiarism!" Ye's accusation slithered forth. "Either he's pilfered case studies like a grave robber, or..." The pause resonated with the guillotine's descent.
Carrion crows flocked to feast.
"Farce! Sixty-second consultations belong to three-card monte hustlers!"
"Preposterous! He conjured a diagnosis sans stethoscope or scalpel!"
"Orchestrated this mummery through prior surveillance!"
Mo's brow rippled like a drought-cracked riverbed. The physician cabal's chorus swelled—their gilded perches threatened by this phoenix rising. Even Mo Siyu's midnight gaze darkened, recalling Chen's adamantine demand for the war bow as a diagnostic key.
He Feng's grip on his black leather medical bag turned necrotic. These adders forgot yesterday's Lazarus miracle—Chen's intervention staying Death's scythe above Mo's allergic pyre. Yet discretion anchored his silence; better they dismiss the youth as a carnival trickster than vivisect his preternatural gifts.
"Cease." Mo Siyu's permafrost decree stilled the menagerie. "Commence the examination. Your privileges remain inviolate."
The physicians' vulpine grins curdled Chen's resolve. He Feng's magma-core fury erupted: "We exit this charade!"
Mo Siyu materialised before the mahogany doors, a snow fox guarding an icebound den. "Honour your blood oath, He-laoshi."
"Oath?" He Feng's words fell like trepanning drills. "Since when do healers wear Mo-family collars?"
Revelation struck—Chen's fingers tracing phantom bowstring vibrations. He Feng's eyes dilated in kensho. "You drank from her golden chalice?"
Chen's nod carried Prometheus' resignation.
"So be it." He Feng's exhalation carried dust from Alexandria's burnt libraries. "Where shall this dark mass convene?"
"All depart." Chen's edict tolerated no apostasy. "Yourself included, Mo-xiaojie."
As bronze door seals hissed shut, the chamber transformed into Paracelsus' laboratory—solitary adept, insoluble enigma, and the war bow's spectral vigil over impending transfiguration.
The Anatomist's Revelation
Mo Chuanhe's pupils dilated with the fascination of a Song Dynasty alchemist observing mercury transmutation. Chen Liang's fingertips hovered above his radial artery like divining rods seeking subterranean truths.
"Pulse necromancy?" the patriarch mused internally, recalling wizened sages who'd charted his qi channels with jade-calibrated needles. That this digital-age shaman dared resurrect such arcana intrigued more than offended.
Chen Liang's eyelids lowered like theatre curtains, neural pathways crackling with esoteric commands:
*"Clairvoyance Engaged: Ashe's Ocular Ascendancy (Apotheosis Grade)"
"Biological Overlay: Hepatobiliary System (18μ resolution)"
"Vitality Reserve: 21/100 units (0.83 units/sec depletion)"*
His retinas projected kaleidoscopic viscera—crimson plasma rivers, leukocyte sentinels patrolling capillary borders, and necrotic hepatic terrain where carcinogenic barbarians pillaged healthy parenchyma. The war bow's etheric presence hummed approval from its spectral armoury.
"Regeneration protocols show 14% efficacy," Chen intoned, fingertips mapping invisible meridians. His ocular drill penetrated Glisson's capsule, exposing metastatic tendrils that even PET-CTs might miss—malignant ivy strangling portal triads in ultraviolet clarity.
He Feng's Montblanc Meisterstück clattered like a fallen ceremonial dagger. "Primary hepatocellular carcinoma", the verdict echoed through sterile air, heavier than Ming Dynasty burial jades.
Detonation followed:
- Mo Siyu's knees liquefied, Chanel tweed jacket grazing Chen's threadbare hoodie in accidental chiaroscuro.
- The physician cabal's synchronized gasp created momentary atmospheric vacuum.
- Ye's accusation erupted viper-quick: "Sorcerer! Present your biopsy slides! Your AFP markers!"
Mo Chuanhe's chuckle carried dust from Terracotta Army tombs. "So the Go master's stones face inevitable capture." His liver-spotted hand—once signing billion-yuan acquisitions—now trembled against his granddaughter's heaving shoulders.
Chen's ocular HUD flickered terminal countdowns: "Stage III-B. 87-day median survival." The clinical poetry of it burned—90-day prognosis rendered through gaming UI aesthetics, mortality quantified like ranked match statistics.
He Feng's resurrected pen danced across parchment. "This...this is Vesalian dissection through sheer will!" he breathed, imagining Grey's Anatomy volumes spontaneously combusting in libraries worldwide.
Amidst the diagnostic maelstrom, Chen's consciousness bifurcated—ADC muscle memory calculating tumour growth rates, Ashe's frost arrows freezing metastasizing cells in theoretical combat scenarios. The war bow's ghostly string thrummed counterpoint to cardiac monitors.
As Siyu's tear-choked protests clashed with Ye's biochemical inquisition, the ward transformed into a Hippocratic battleground—pulse-taking shaman versus lab coat inquisitors, life's fragility suspended between Five Element theory and oncogenic pathways.
Chen's ultimate pronouncement severed the bedlam: "Three moons unshielded. Six beneath chemical siege. Nine..." His gaze locked onto the war bow's nocked arrow silhouette against crash cart steel, "...should we rewrite physiology's codex?"
The ensuing silence wasn't mere quietude but the cosmic hush before quantum superposition collapses—a healer poised as demiurge holding Schrödinger's malignancy in palms still smelling of gaming peripherals and antiseptic gel.
The Physician's Paradox
The VIP suite's atmosphere congealed into surgical theatre solemnity. Chen Liang weathered the medical tribunal's scrutiny with the equanimity of a Zen master weathering monsoons.
Dr. Ye's pince-nez gleamed with cold fury as he unsheathed verbal scalpels. "Your diagnostic temerity mocks Hippocratic principles! Even autopsy novices comprehend the labyrinthine protocols for..."
His diatribe crescendoed into a forensic indictment:
"180 seconds! No histopathology! No CA19-9 panels! Do you fathom the iatrogenic catastrophe your hubris invites?"
The condemnation ricocheted off pharmaceutical cabinets, rattling saline drips and professional egos. The physician cohort metastasized into a jeering gallery:
"Diagnostic heresy!"
"Malignant incompetence!"
"Mo-laoshi merits science, not sorcery!"
He Feng's soul bifurcated—rational mind acknowledging procedural flaws, cellular intuition screaming Chen's clairvoyance transcended mortal medicine.
Mo Siyu's boardroom poise fractured—war bow's ancestral whispers warring with Sloan-Kettering protocols. Even Mo Chuanhe's stoic acceptance wavered, his mortality momentarily eclipsed by this epistemological insurrection.
"Cat got your tongue, mountebank?" Ye sneered victoriously.
Chen's laughter carried frost from Howling Abyss. "Needing tutorials on basic oncology? Did your medical licences arrive via cereal boxes?"
The insult detonated thermite rage. He Feng marvelled at Chen's alchemy—esports trash-talk transmuted into Hippocratic rebuke.
Mo Siyu's vermilion nails drew blood-moon crescents in palms. The War Bow's transaction haunted her—had she traded an heirloom for holographic snake oil?
As physicians erupted into Latin-spiced denunciations, Chen turned toward the antiseptic horizon. "My covenant's fulfilled, Mo-zong. The epilogue..." His shrug dismissed millennia of Galenic tradition.
At the liminal threshold, he paused—backlit by corridor fluorescents like a noir oracle delivering a final prophecy. "Resect now, and you orchestrate his requiem. The carcinoma's..." His fingers sketched malignant calligraphy, "...poetically precise."
Dr. Ye's stethoscope writhed like a garrotted viper. "Defiler! We'll expose..."
But Chen had dissolved into hospital catacombs, leaving epistemological wreckage.
He Feng's departing glare channelled the Yellow Emperor's wrath: "You deem qi meridians superstition because your MRI coils can't capture the soul's resonance."
In the aftermath, Mo Siyu's quant-trained mind computed probabilities:
1. 89.7% - Digital augury reveals occult pathobiology
2. 9.3% - Elaborate grift exploiting geriatric vulnerability
3. 0.97% - Singularity event in diagnostic paradigms
The war bow's ghostly vibration hummed beneath cardiac monitors—ancestral wisdom harmonising with chromosomal entropy. Between TCM's Five Phases and the Warburg effect, a magnate's destiny is balanced on an oncological tightrope.
Chen's valedictory warning echoed through the palliative care unit: "Let them dissect. Let them irradiate. Let them bear witness."
The war bow's nocked arrow sang approval. This wasn't mere prognosis—it was ontological chess, and Chen had just sacrificed his queen to expose medicine's checkmate.
You Never Studied Medicine?
**Inpatient Wing, Third Floor.**
Chen Liang paused at the threshold, his gaze softening at the sight of a slender silhouette attending his father's bedside. Recognition required no conscious thought.
A beatific smile graced his features as he approached. "Must you exhaust yourself with daily visits, beloved?" he murmured, fingertips brushing Zhao Wan'er's shoulder. "Your devotion warms my heart, but your well-being takes precedence."
The young woman's jade countenance brightened, chrysanthemum-petal creases forming at her eyes. "Idle hours weigh heavier than duty," she demurred, gesturing toward stainless steel containers. "Bao'er craved Florentine steak – we thought Father might relish proper sustenance after last week's tasteless broth." Her attention shifted to the elder. "Does it please your palate, honoured Father?"
"Ambrosia incarnate!" Chen Liguo's weathered face creased like ancient parchment, laughter lines deepening. "Were you to serve thistles and clay, daughter mine, they'd transform to delicacies through your alchemy!" His chuckle faded into contemplative silence.
*Strange alchemy indeed...
That termagant Tang Mengru – venomous adder that she was – had somehow birthed this paragon of grace.
Zhao Wan'er's brow furrowed suddenly. "Shouldn't you be recuperating at headquarters? Has some exigency arisen?"
"Loose threads from last night's... unconventional consultation," Chen Liang replied, adjusting his cufflinks. "Matters requiring final resolution."
"The venerable patron's condition remains unstable?" Her porcelain fingers tightened imperceptibly around the bed rail.
Chen Liguo's liver-spotted hand trembled against the bedsheet. "Xiao Liang! The whole ward extols your midnight ministrations!" The old man's boastful tone belied the panic in his rheumy eyes.
*Foolish pride!
For three days he'd held court, regaling nurses and visitors alike with embellished tales of his progeny's medical prowess. Even the phlegmatic custodians could now recite Chen Liang's supposed credentials. Yet now, the gravity of his coercion struck like winter's blade – what madness had possessed him to thrust his barely-lettered son into Hippocratic theatrics? One misstep could have forged iron shackles rather than laurels!
"Current..." Chen Liguo's voice fractured as calloused palm met withered cheek in resounding self-reproach. "Current prognosis?"
The sharp crack echoed through the suddenly silent ward. Fellow patients – comrades forged through shared convalescence – materialised like protective spectres around Chen Liguo's bed. Their collective gaze, heavy with unspoken solidarity, shifted between father and son.
Chen Liang's throat constricted at this unexpected brotherhood. "No calamity transpired," he soothed, palms raised in placation. "Merely bureaucratic formalities."
"Formalities, he says!" boomed a sonorous voice from the archway. Dr. He Feng's entrance stilled the room like a conductor's baton. "When the Young Phoenix himself graces our humble aerie!"
The tension dissolved into deferential murmurs. White-coated royalty had entered their domain – a sovereign whose healing touch they'd all known.
"Dr. He?" Chen Liang inclined his head. "To what do we owe—"
The physician's raised hand suspended protocol. "A private colloquy, if you'd indulge me?"
Chapter 22: The Covenant Unkept
Zhou Wei's shadow loomed behind the fire-resistant barrier, each syllable of He Feng's pronouncement etching itself into his psyche like a scalpel carving bone. His manicured grip warped the doorframe's steel as pedagogical betrayal reverberated through the clinical void.
The epiphany struck with the brutality of defibrillator paddles. "This... this *plebeian*?" Zhou's academic regalia constricted his trachea, the crimson piping of his doctoral hood now resembling arterial spray. "Over me?"
He Feng's countenance mirrored Hippocrates' weathered bust – implacable, eternal. "The oath isn't recited, Zhou Wei. It's *lived* through humility's crucible." The professor's tremor betrayed decades of invested hope. "Your opponent was never Chen Liang, but the hydra of your arrogance."
Hysterical mirth ricocheted through the stairwell. "Arrogance?" Zhou's finger stabbed at his alma mater's insignia. "I've harvested stem cells more delicate than your platitudes! Pioneered..."
"Maleficence." The indictment fell like an autopsy scalpel. "Your ministrations to Mr. Mo weren't medicine – they were intellectual vanity parading as Hippocratic virtue."
Chen Liang's silent appraisal documented Zhou's physiological unravelling – the carotid fibrillation, the mydriatic pupils. Textbook catecholamine toxicity.
"You decrepit relic!" Zhou's silk-lined grip tore threads from He Feng's "Pinnacle Practitioner" lapel pin. "When *The New England Journal* publishes my..."
"Research?" Chen's baritone cleaved the hysteria. The pallor beneath his eyes – residual radiation burns – glowed phosphorescent under fluorescents. "Your forthcoming publication will be a retraction notice."
The smartphone screen bloomed with damning luminescence – Mo Chuanhe's thoracic cavity revealing lymphoma colonies metastasizing across the aortic arch. "Your vaunted diagnostics missed *this*." Chen angled the device with sardonic precision. "Enlighten us, *doktor."
He Feng's exhalation crystallized in the frigid air. "You were to be my magnum opus, Zhou Wei. Instead, you've become medicine's Icarus."
The professor's hands moved with procedural finality. "The metropolitan consortium has revoked your credentials. This isn't discipline – it's triage."
Zhou's retreating Oxfords struck staccato requiems across concrete. The fire door's metallic scream punctuated his parting curse: "Bask in your peasant savant's glory! When his quackery spawns malpractice suits..."
**Sanctum of Healing**
Lunar photons dissected Chen's fatigue through Venetian blinds, EKG tracings strobing across his radiation-jaundiced skin. He Feng's diagnostic gaze missed nothing.
"Pancytopenia manifests in petechiae," the professor murmured, fingertips grazing Chen's marbled forearm. "The epistaxis – how frequent?"
Chen's deflection materialized as a half-smile. "Transient occupational hazards."
"Transient?" He Feng's stethoscope clattered against pharmaceutical charts. "Radiation's cumulative..."
"My aspirations lie beyond sanatorium walls." Chen adjusted the cardiac telemetry leads with practised ease. "But for seeing past parchment credentials – my gratitude."
The telemetry's arrhythmic cadence underscored their ideological chasm. Beyond the observation window, urban constellations blinked with clinical indifference.
**Domestic Quadrant**
Zhao Wan'er's vermilion nail tapped Morse-code anxiety against tempered glass. The rearview mirror's convex eye captured phantasmal silhouettes haunting their gated enclave.
"Beloved..." Her whisper merged with the sedan's turbine hum.
"Mmm?"
"Naught of import." She buried the warning beneath concern for his radiation-tinged pallor. "Homeward, perhaps?"
Their elevator ascended through strata of weighted silence. Chen's key hovered before the biometric lock, arrested by his consort's tremulous inhalation.
"The bridal covenant you vowed..." Her accusation hung suspended like a precariously balanced saline drip.
The tumblers' click unleashed spectral processions – crumpled bouquets beside ICU monitors, satin heels abandoned for latex gloves.
Through floor-spanning windows, lunar scrutiny exposed relics of unconsummated nuptials: preserved lace yellowing in archival darkness. Chen's response emerged rough with cobalt therapy residue:
"That pledge wasn't palliative. It was the incision point."
Down the marbled corridor, Tang Mengru's derisive snort pierced mahogany barriers. The couple's interlaced fingers tightened – co-conspirators in a diagnostic labyrinth eclipsing all pathological mysteries.
The Anathema's Gambit
Lunar photons traced Zhao Wan'er's recumbent vexation as she confronted Chen Liang's comatose form. His thoracic oscillations synced to REM cycle cadences—a biological metronome marking circadian exhaustion.
"Typical..." Her epiglottis molded indignation into resigned mirth. Egyptian cotton transformed into chimeric armor against conjugal absurdities.
**Matutinal Rites**
Dawn witnessed Chen's gastronomic sorcery—congee pearls swimming in jasmine-infused broth and omelettes folded with chrysanthemum microgreens. The 7 Series' Nappa leather retained its shared warmth's ghost imprint, Zhao's corporate carapace fracturing momentarily before steel-and-glass colossi.
The surveillance specter resurrected during corporate vespers—unseen corneas burning cervical vertebrae. Colleagues' banter morphed into sibilant conspiracy.
"Phantom limb syndrome of the psyche," she diagnosed herself, crescent indentations flowering on palms. Spreadsheets metastasized across LCD panoramas—binary sutras against existential disquiet.
**Reliquary of Obsolete Crafts**
Patriarch Ma's atelier exuded Ming dynasty miasmas. Chen's silhouette merged with celadon glazes as the curator materialized through pu'er fog.
"The e-sports gladiator bestows grace upon my reliquary?" Amber worry beads clicked sardonic applause. "Your commissioned bow awaits—Tang composite laminates, though digital battlefields now demand..."
"Favor entreated." Chen's interjection carried ritual bronze gravitas. "Channel your clandestine auctions through Zhao Wan'er's exchange."
The barter unfolded with Spring and Autumn Period formality—Ma's rejection of fee reduction resonating with Warring States mercantile codes. Departing, Chen's peripheral vision snagged on Bolin Zhai's boarded windows.
"Reputational necrosis," Ma's elegy, accompanied jade abacus calculations. "The connoisseurs' cabal permits no fiduciary gangrene."
**Colosseum of Destinies**
Training simulators hummed cybernetic matins. Su Qingge's distraction pulsed through smartphone auras—dopamine pathways illuminated beneath corneas.
"Carnal diversions?" Chen's rebuke severed holographic battlefields. "Let Venus' arrows not pierce competitive carapace." The admonition echoed Thermopylae's final stand.
**Osteopathic Sanctum**
Hospital fluorescents revealed Chen's palmar bioluminescence during nocturnal interventions—astral mending of cancellous bone matrices at tectonic pace.
"You term this...manual therapy?" Zhao's interrogative eyebrow challenged quantum realities.
"Modified gua sha," Chen deflected, Cherenkov perspiration glistening at his hairline.
Beyond one-way mirrors, He Feng's spectrographic analysis documented impossible callus formation. "Auto-deceptive mountebank," the professor hissed, adjusting endoscopic recording rigs.
**Theater of Nemesis**
Bureaucratic Gehenna transformed He Feng's clinic into a pathological proscenium. Patient hordes writhed through corridors—Zhou Wei's vengeance manifesting through administrative alchemy.
"Hippocratic evangelist?" Zhou's baritone oozed saccharine venom during rounds. "Your messianic complex demands heavier stigmatic burdens."
The professor's essential tremor amplified while percussing pneumonic thoraxes. Nurses averted eyes heavy with Judas guilt.
**Crux of Therapeutics**
Mo Si Yu's Maybach idled before radiation oncology's pulsating runes. Father's PET scans glowered like supernova remnants across quantum tablets.
"Empirical blasphemy," Dr. Wu's stiletto heel punctuated dismissal. "This protocol reeks of TCM witchcraft!"
The heiress's jade bi disc warmed against her sternum—a Zhou dynasty divination relic. Between radiopharmaceutical vectors and qi meridians stretched truth's event horizon.
**Crepuscular Denouement**
Zhou's aerie reeked of Islay peat and schadenfreude. Surveillance mosaics cycled through He Feng's decline and Chen's thaumaturgic treatments.
"Flutter nearer, lepidopteran fool," he crooned to flickering feeds, trephines arrayed on autopsy-grade steel. "The flame hungers."
Blockchain alerts pinged—dormant account resuscitated. Facial recognition algorithms froze his diaphragm mid-expansion.
Decryption layers dissolved to reveal Zhao Wan'er's geolocation breadcrumbs. Zhou's cachinnations reverberated through dark pool algorithms and Silk Road proxies.
"Endgame commences, dirt-born virtuoso."
The Prodigal's Return
Post-match Klieg lights carved Su Qingge's silhouette against the esports pantheon's marble steps. Interview microphones bloomed like metallic orchids around the blushing MVP.
"Hail the Dream Team for their hard-fought triumph! Let us interrogate their jungle virtuoso!"
Chen Liang's shadow merged with backstage velour, his AD role's shackles in this meta-chained epoch rendering him the architect of invisible victories. Clairvoyant instincts mattered not when condemned to ward-bot purgatory.
The team's sidelong glances wove silent tapestries of homage. Each gank, each objective seizure – marionette motions guided by Chen's neural LCS broadcast.
"Cap'n..." Su Qingge's post-glory approach reeked of jasmine tea and contrition. "My... extracurriculars nearly surrendered Baron..."
"Let Eros' arrows pierce practice rooms, not tournament stages," Chen decreed, adjusting his team jacket's quantum fibre lining. "Next lapse earns you spectate mode in perpetuity."
**Domestic Reentry**
The penthouse airlock hissed its biometric welcome. Zhao Wan'er's stilettos struck marble in iambic counterpoint to the grandmother clock's pendulum verdict.
"He returns!" Tang Mengru's serpentine whisper slithered through teak panelling. Zhao Yi's newspaper transformed into a tactical blindfold against the impending stormfront.
Chen's olfactory cortex catalogued lingering animosity – bergamot tea steeped in matriarchal bile.
"Paternal acknowledgement occurred," Zhao Wan'er articulated through a veneered smile, digits executing a clandestine flank attack on Chen's external obliques.
The patriarch's stilted salute from Chesterfield trenches constituted the armistice's first fragile banner.
**Symposium of Fractured Harmonies**
The dining table's obsidian surface became a Cold War chessboard. Limoges china clinked like duelling rapiers over black truffle consommé.
Tang Mengru's soup spoon descended with operatic flourish. "Why break bread when filial bonds lie in ruins?"
"Mother..." Zhao Wan'er's ladle hovered over diplomatic no-man's-land.
"My solar return approaches!" Jade bangles collided like clashing samurai swords. "Shall I greet society as the matron whose scion wed a... a..." Her talon gestured toward Chen like an accusation.
Chen's molars pulverised Sichuan peppercorns to subatomic particulates. Zhao Wan'er's arch-supported assault on his lateral cuneiform preceded verbal ceasefire:
"Grand Hyatt's celestial ballroom," she proclaimed with the U.N. mediator's cadence. "Chen underwrites Dom Pérignon waterfalls and Balenciaga grand entrances."
Chopsticks froze mid-dumpling. Tang Mengru's ocular calculations measured social redemption against swallowed bile. "With Voss water accompaniment?"
"Evian crystal carafes."
"And..."
"Van Cleef lunar-phase brooch for your décolletage."
The matriarch's vermilion lips curled in Pyrrhic triumph. "Let the masquerade commence."
**Nocturnal Racism**
Postprandial silence throbbed with unresolved chronologies. Chen's dishwashing ballet – typically met with mortar fire critique – unfolded in eerie armistice.
"Desist!" The command emerged strangled. Three years of "parasite" epithets dissolved in the Miele appliance's ultrasonic hum.
Zhao Wan'er's ocular tracking of maternal retreat faltered. Chen's baritone shattered the détente:
"This social ransom's fiscal haemorrhage..."
"Blood money well-spent," his consort countered, pruned fingers interlacing with his. "For familial détente."
**Panopticon's Embrace**
Jiaxing Auction's neoclassical colonnades framed Zhao Wan'er's professional poise. Patriarch Ma's ivory cane tapped approval against travertine.
"Your curation elevates my antiquities," the connoisseur bowed. "The Chenghua chicken cup shall ascend to eight figures beneath your gavel."
Appraisal complete, familiar dread cohabitated Zhao Wan'er's cervical vertebrae. Rearview mirrors reflected phantom pursuants in quantum superposition.
Chen's encrypted pulse vibrated through Lamborghini's carbon fibre chassis: *Surveillance matrix pristine. Phobia or foresight?
Her vermilion nail hovered above haptic response. The freeway's sodium glare fractured into a kaleidoscope of LiDAR eyes.
Pharmacological Betrayal
Tang Mengru's unprecedented concession crystallized the air—a suspended moment where even dust motes hesitated mid-descent. Zhao Yi's newspaper crinkled in symphonic bewilderment.
"Relieved of scullery martyrdom?" The patriarch's ocular lenses dilated in disbelief. "Shall crockery achieve sentience and self-cleanse?"
"Perhaps *you* crave immersion in suds?" The matriarch's jade bracelets clashed like warring samurai, sleeves ascending her forearms in theatrical menace.
Zhao Yi's retreat to culinary trenches unfolded with Chaplinesque absurdity, glowering at Chen Liang over copper-clad sauté pans.
**Matrimonial Negotiations**
Zhao Wan'er's boudoir transformed into a clandestine council chamber. Her Montblanc cardholder materialized like Arthurian steel.
"Mother's vanity tax," she declared, pressing platinum against Chen's calloused palm. "Let fiscal wounds be mine to bear."
Chen's thumb traced the card's embossed numerals—cuneiform of conjugal solidarity. "These digits pulse with your essence. Reciprocity demands—"
"Pedantry!" Her interjection carried damask finality. "Marital ledgers balance through shared burdens, not transactional calculus."
The Ming urn's residual commission glowed between them—a monetary bridge spanning relational chasms.
**Nocturnal Alchemy**
Moonbeams through chiffon drapes gilded Zhao Wan'er's collarbones in argent vulnerability. Chen's clairvoyant gaze penetrated ceramic chalices—hormonal saboteurs masquerading as fertility draughts.
"Imbibe", Tang Mengru's serpentine directive permeated oak panels. The nightly libation steamed with biochemical perfidy.
Chen's gustatory receptors catalogued false elixir's acrid notes—chemical neutering veiled as virility potion. Two years of monastic restraint illuminated through pharmacological treachery.
**Pharmaceutical Reconnaissance**
Clairvoyant irises dissected the matriarch's biochemical armoury:
1. Leuprorelin acetate ampoules
2. Danazol troches
3. Triptorelin nebulizers
Each vial's clinical mandarin whispered endocrine warfare. Chen's neural matrix cross-referenced pharmacopoeias—sterilisation protocols laid bare.
**Hematologic Inquest**
He Feng's clinic throbbed with hypocratic cacophony. Chen navigated supplicant tides, encrypted manifest clutched like Nag Hammadi scrolls.
"Decipher these biochemical runes," he implored during the professor's 167-second prandial hiatus.
He Feng's sclerotic eyes scanned the hormonal indictment. "Anti-gonadotropins? These induce—" Epiphany pierced fatigue's veil. "Who would—"
"Academic inquiry". Chen's interruption thrummed with forensic intensity.
The professor's Waterman circled three agents. "Testicular apoptosis inducers. Chronic exposure yields—"
The revelation drowned beneath crash cart klaxons.
**Natal Ultimatum**
Tang Mengru's cellular missile shattered medical revelations. "Lacustrine manor or genealogic erasure!"
Chen's cortex visualized the private archipelago's exclusivity—membership demanding patrician bloodlines or decadal wealth.
"Mother's social resurrection requires a phoenix pyre," Zhao Wan'er decoded the ultimatum. "Shall we storm Olympus' gates?"
Chen's digits danced across quantum-encrypted portals. Blockchain forges roared—digital transmutation of esports laurels into social artillery.
**Crepuscular Armistice**
As Selene ascended her pearl throne, Chen's enhanced optics captured Tang Mengru's twilight ritual—subdermal poisons administered before a gilded psyche-mirror.
The matriarch's reflection articulated silent anathema: "No spawn shall carry your tainted helix."
In adjacent chambers, Zhao Wan'er's slumbering form radiated vestal trust—blissfully oblivious to biochemical matrimonial minefields.
Chen's phalanges hovered above endocrine disruptors. Hippocratic vows duelled with cuckolded fury—healer's ethos versus betrayed consort's retribution.
The Breguet marine clock's pendulum sliced the temporal continuum—relentless metronome counting toward reckoning's hour.
Chariots of Hubris
Tang Mengru's voracious smirk widened as Chen Liang capitulated to her demand. The Lakeheart Manor citadel's access cypher—a gilded skeleton key to societal absolution—passed from Patriarch Ma's liver-spotted grasp into her covetous clutches.
"Eternally yours to wield," the antiquarian rumbled, oblivious to its imminent role in her theatre of pretension.
**Domestic Tinderbox**
The penthouse thrummed with Tang Mengru's stiletto percussion. Zhao Yi's broadsheet whispered defensive haikus against his wife's verbal fusillade.
"Desist your ruminant mastication!" She pivoted, vermilion talons carving air. "Had I accepted Minister Luo's proposal—"
"The navigation's synced to Lakeheart!" Chen Liang's entrance severed the conjugal siege.
Tang Mengru's countenance underwent instantaneous metamorphosis—from Gorgon's wrath to geisha's demure smile. "Our Chen executes flawlessly!" Her talons closed around the key fob like a cardinal seizing sacramental wine.
**Pavilion of Vehicular Vanity**
The parking complex transformed into an amphitheatre of social gladiatorial combat. Relatives' leased BMWs and asthmatic Škodas formed a paltry phalanx against the matriarch's obsidian Audi TT.
"Cousin, surely this route's erroneous?" A bleached-blonde harridan sneered. "Didn't Wan'er's fiscal woes necessitate selling her Continental?"
Tang Mengru's key fob trilled. Electroluminescent constellations danced across the coupe's onyx flanks. "Zhao Yi—entertain the groundlings."
As her consort marshalled slack-jawed kin into the luxury vessel, Tang Mengru extended a clawed imperative. "The tertiary steed, Wan'er."
The garage reverberated with an electronic carillon—a second Audi materializing like a mechanical doppelgänger.
**Procession to Perdition**
"Vanguard formation!" Tang Mengru barked at the stupefied horde. "My epidermis rejects proletarian leather stench."
Relatives scattered to their automotive indignities. Through polarised glass, the matriarch savoured their envy-etched visages—a decade's derision avenged through combustion-engine alchemy.
**Abandonment's Epilogue**
"Chen Liang remains!" Zhao Wan'er's objection emerged strangled as the TT's turbocharged howl faded.
The matriarch's mirth pierced soundproofed confines. "Let the clodhopper secure his haycart!"
**Hackneyed Confidences**
Chen Liang arrived to find his consort marooned on a concrete atoll. "Shall we commandeer a wheeled palanquin?"
Zhao Wan'er's saffron-hued Gucci clutch compressed against tachycardia. "Your stoicism defies reason."
"Gilded cages pale beside your radiance." Their fingers entwined as a canary-yellow taxi materialized—a proletarian barge navigating toward Lakeheart's gilded farce.
Through fissured upholstery, Chen Liang's palm cradled pharmaceutical evidence—a silent declaration of biochemical warfare.
The taximeter's relentless cadence marked time's march toward domestic Götterdämmerung.
To be continuous…