Help! I Do Not Want to Guide a Disaster

"An obvious one," Xinyuan frowned. "Did Pei Luo find Wenzhi in our quarters?"

Su Zheng tapped her earpiece, her brow furrowing as she listened to the static. "I can’t connect to him."

Xinyuan let out a sharp breath. He didn’t wait.

He teleported them.

This time, they appeared directly in front of their old apartment building. Like the rest of the city, the structure was a pile of shattered concrete and ash.

But standing right in the center of the concrete rubble was Lin Wenzhi.

He was wearing the exact same clothes Wenzhi had been wearing earlier. He stood there with the exact same freckled face, his features set in a familiar, irritated frown.

"Wenzhi?" Su Zheng’s breath hitched, taking a half-step forward. Then she froze, her eyes scanning the thick red fog around them. "Wait... he’s not wearing a filter mask..."

"That’s not him," Xinyuan hissed.

"I..." Su Zheng looked at Xinyuan in shock.

Up on the rubble, the fake Lin Wenzhi’s frown suddenly twisted into a wide grin. He let out a loud, mocking laugh. A mocking imitation of Wenzhi’s voice.

The impostor raised his palms and began slapping his own face, hard, over and over again. The flesh bruised and swelled under the impacts, but the grin never faded.

"Awww," the fake Wenzhi mocked, his voice dripping with glee as he continued to strike himself. "Does this hurt? Does this hurt, Xinyuan?"

Xinyuan’s eyes burned red. "Stop it."

The fake Lin Wenzhi pouted, mocking him. He took a theatrical step down from the rubble, intentionally slipping.

"Oops." He tumbled dramatically, rolling off the concrete block and crashing hard onto the cracked asphalt below.

Xinyuan closed his eyes, his hands clenching so hard his knuckles turned white.

The impostor scrambled back up to his feet. Fresh blood was pouring down the side of his head from a nasty gash, but he just lazily wiped it away, smearing the red across his freckled cheek.

"Ouch!" He laughed. "Does it hurt you, brother? To be staring at this face?"

Xinyuan snapped his eyes open "You are disgusting."

"Whatever you say," the fake Wenzhi drawled. "You are the one who is disgusting, though. You’ve been killing so many of us. Even targeting your own father. He is furious that you aren’t speaking about Mother.... but then again, she’s not really with us anymore, is she? And it’s not like you ever cared."

"What did you do to him?" Xinyuan rasped.

The fake Lin Wenzhi burst into laughter. "What was necessary! I’m surprised you don’t even know yet. Can’t you feel it? The loss? The sudden, gaping emptiness? That slipping sensation... like the hand you held so tightly has finally ripped itself off your body and dropped into the abyss, leaving you just staring? That’s how it’s supposed to feel, right?"

Beside him, Su Zheng’s breath caught. "Wenzhi is... dead?"

The fake Lin Wenzhi’s face instantly dropped into a cold, irritated frown. "Handle the unwanted guest."

The air pressure slammed downward as the suffocating pressure of a Disaster-class Esper materialized out of the red miasma.

Without warning, Kuan launched a devastating energy blast straight at Su Zheng. Reacting on pure instinct, Su Zheng threw up a dense shield of her mist, desperately covering herself and the frozen, unresponsive Xinyuan.

But a secondary attack came screaming from behind. The impact slammed directly into her back, throwing her forward.

She recovered instantly, coughing up a bit of dust, and frowned. With a burst of speed, she stormed toward Kuan. The explosive clash of their powers instantly dragged the fight down the street, the massive shockwaves drawing the attention of the screaming, mutated monsters lingering in the fog.

Left alone in the wreckage, Xinyuan stared at the fake Lin Wenzhi. "Stop wearing his face."

"And if I don’t listen?" the impostor asked, tilting his head with a mocking grin.

Xinyuan gritted his teeth and the fake Wenzhi just laughed.

"This..." He pressed a hand against his own cheek, stroking the skin. "You can’t kill me if I’m wearing his face."

Xinyuan breathed heavily, the air burning his lungs. Desperate, he tried to force a connection, trying to pull Wenzhi into his mindspace, trying to reach for that familiar, soothing bond.

Nothing.

There was absolutely nothing. The silence was a vacuum. Yet, his mind completely rejected the reality. He couldn’t process it. He refused to believe it.

And because he was so lost in the crushing weight of the emptiness, he didn’t even realize the fake Lin Wenzhi had closed the distance.

It was only the sudden lack of any warmth, the chilling realization that he couldn’t recognize the soul of the person standing right in front of him, despite the face, that snapped him back.

This was not Wenzhi. He could always feel Wenzhi’s soul, and a stolen face couldn’t mimic that.

But the distraction was enough.

The fake Lin Wenzhi plunged a heavy syringe deep into Xinyuan’s shoulder. "A tranquilizer mixed with Lin Wenzhi’s extracted guiding energy," he whispered. "Don’t worry. You will be just fine, brother."

Xinyuan froze as the mix was already rushing through his veins.

The physical frame and freckled face of Lin Wenzhi immediately melted away, shifting back into the sharp, golden-eyed features of Shao Jingxin. His brother grinned, his teeth stained with blood. "Good night, brother."

Xinyuan stumbled backward, a devastating wave of exhaustion slamming into his being. His vision blurred, the world tilting as his knees buckled.

But before his consciousness completely failed him, his mist rose from his body like an angry, howling storm. Reacting to his subconscious rage, the black shadows transformed into a massive, razor-sharp scythe.

Moving entirely on its own, the scythe whipped through the air with terrifying speed, slicing clean through Shao Jingxin from his head all the way down his torso.

Jingxin’s eyes widened in horror as his sliced body collapsed to the dirt.

In the very next second, the last of Xinyuan’s strength gave out, and he collapsed heavily onto the concrete, blacking out entirely.

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