Icy rain, sharp as steel needles, relentlessly pierced Chen Mo’s numbed skin. The image of Zheng Tai sprawled in a crimson pool, his back a canvas of lacerated flesh, burned like a brand onto his retinas, searing with each blink. The boy’s final, desperate gesture in the bloody water—the silent vine-choked bird cipher—ignited a torch within Chen Mo’s despair-frozen heart, casting a stark, defiant light.
He stood in the deluge, his left hand smeared with Zheng Tai’s blood, fingers clawing, twisting, coiling in the cold rain—a silent, furious replication! One! Two! Three! A perfect echo! A declaration of war! His gaze, honed like tempered steel, pierced the downpour, locking onto Li Entai’s abruptly darkened visage beneath the awning, onto Li Enci’s instantly glaciated eyes, onto the f
