Bloodstained Long Bridge (Part One)

"Caitlyn! The Tyros Family you asked me to investigate..."

As usual, Vi barged into the Chief Constable's office without knocking. Unfortunately, perhaps the timing was bad today. The moment she entered, two pairs of eyes turned toward her.

"Uh..."

"Then we'll skip the report. I'll approve the files and get them to you as soon as possible."

"Understood. We'll take our leave first."

Seeing that Caitlyn had begun seeing her guests out, the owner of the other pair of eyes—a young female officer with fiery red hair—wisely gathered her things and turned to leave. As they passed by, Vi looked the young colleague over with undisguised interest. The other girl immediately shot her a fierce glare in return.

"Now that's one impressive little chick."

The office door closed, and Vi let out an offhand whistle.

"She's the former Sheriff Markos's Daughter?"

"That's right."

Caitlyn lifted the cup of coffee in front of her, now somewhat cold, and took a sip. Then she suddenly sighed.

"It's been several years already. It's been that long since the night her father died on Long Bridge. Even his daughter has grown old enough to enter the Enforcement Department as a trainee."

"Sounds like you still regret what happened to her father?"

Vi blinked in surprise.

"That former sheriff was trying to kill you back then, right there on that bridge, with a revolver pointed at your head."

"He received the punishment he deserved, didn't he? Markos wasn't a good man, but that doesn't mean I'll be biased against his daughter. At least for now, that girl seems like a talented and capable prospect. It's just because of what happened to her father, you understand."

Caitlyn spoke to Vi helplessly.

"She's heavily biased against people from the Bottom City, so you probably won't get along with her."

"I don't really care. There are already enough people in this department who can't stand me to fill a whole squad. One more won't make much difference."

Vi rolled her eyes indifferently.

"As long as you're willing to look at me, that's enough, Cupcake."

"Pfft!"

Caitlyn nearly sprayed the coffee in her mouth, coming close to losing all semblance of ladylike composure. She covered the corner of her mouth with a napkin, and a blush appeared on her cheeks.

"Why did you suddenly call me that?"

"Isn't it because you suddenly started talking about the past?"

Vi scratched her head, looking completely baffled.

"What's wrong? Why are you reacting so strongly? I used to call you that all the time, didn't I?"

"You do realize that was in the past?"

Caitlyn shot Vi an annoyed glare. A moment later, she spoke in a nostalgic tone.

"Sometimes, when I think back on it, it really was interesting, back when you still called me that. You looked like a street punk who didn't take anything seriously... Well, you haven't changed all that much, but at least I don't have to worry about you beating up your colleagues in the Enforcement Department just because you don't like the way they look at you."

"Tch. That's only because they don't dare provoke me to my face anymore."

Vi plopped down in the chair opposite Caitlyn and crossed her legs.

"Come to think of it, I don't understand it myself. I used to hate you Piltoverians from the other side of the bridge. At first, I wanted to punch every one of those bastards in the face. I never expected that one day I'd become one of the people on the other side of the bridge. It's just... Ah, forget it. I can't think of a suitable way to put it. Anyway, I don't know whether coming to Piltover to become an enforcer because you told me to was the right choice or not. I thought I could do more for the Bottom City here than I ever could by fighting in the sewers. But now, it's only when I stand beside Long Bridge and look over there that I remember where I came from and what I want to do. Tell me, have I changed? Have I become... less like Vi?"

Vi's sudden serious tone left Caitlyn silent. After furrowing her brows and thinking deeply for a while, Caitlyn gave her answer.

"It isn't only you. It's me too, Trainee Officer Dilana, the late Sheriff Max, and Silco. Long Bridge is the point where the Twin Cities converge, and their most sensitive nerve. Countless people's fates are intertwined upon it. Even the relationship between Zaun and Piltover is the same. What happens on that bridge is the most direct reflection of the relationship between the Twin Cities."

"Oh? Then what about the fact that I heard Piltover unilaterally sealed Long Bridge these past few days?"

"It's a special period, so we need a special response."

Caitlyn massaged her forehead and sighed. Clearly, the matter had placed her under considerable pressure as well.

"The toxic gas leak in the Bottom City has displaced many people, but Piltover can't possibly help everyone. And realistically speaking, a massive influx of Bottom City refugees would place an additional burden on public security. The council doesn't want to bear those negative risks. So restrictive measures are necessary."

"But won't that make the people from the Bottom City resent us? Piltover has always been living comfortably above their heads, and now we're pulling something like this too."

"Perhaps it will... But we have to put Piltover's interests first. All we can do is hope that, even if something negative happens, it remains within controllable limits. That's why the officers at the Long Bridge outpost were authorized to carry live ammunition."

"So we can only sit here and hope nothing happens?"

Vi stood up, clearly dissatisfied with Caitlyn's attitude. Caitlyn merely shook her head helplessly.

"We both know this, Vi. The conflict between the Twin Cities has existed for a long time. But aside from doing our best to delay its worsening, there's nothing else we can do. At least, not for now."

Vi wanted to argue further, but whether because she was bad with words or for some other reason, she ultimately only sighed along with Caitlyn.

"Fine. Let's just hope nothing else goes wrong at a time like this..."

"Chief Constable Caitlyn!!"

The moment Vi finished speaking, an officer suddenly pushed the door open and rushed in. Caitlyn was startled, and an ominous premonition rose in her heart. The officers of the Enforcement Department had a strong sense of hierarchy and would never casually barge in without knocking. Unless...

"We received an emergency call. There's been a massive explosion on Long Bridge. The number of casualties is unknown!"

"What?"

Caitlyn's eyes widened. Vi did the same. The two of them stared at each other with nearly identical expressions for several seconds before remembering what they needed to do first.

"Form up. Everyone gear up and come with me to the scene. You, notify the Medical Department and have them send a rescue team with us."

Ling Ying swung up a gust of sword wind, scattering the thick smoke around her and the water vapor filling the bridge. A dense scent of blood immediately forced its way into her nostrils. Ling Ying stared silently ahead. The protective wall that had once stood there, belonging to the Enforcement Department, had been reduced to twisted rubble and several pitch-black craters. As for the officers, some had seemingly vanished into thin air, while others had become "part of the bridge." At least at this moment, Piltoverians and Zaunites were no different. Their flesh, severed limbs, and corpses had gathered upon the bridge, painting it into a road leading straight to hell.

"Help... help... me..."

A person covered in blood crawled into Ling Ying's field of vision. He wailed and reached out toward her, but Ling Ying did not move. From her angle, the poor man's lower body had already disappeared. All that supported him now was his instinctive will to survive.

"Please... help..."

"Crack!"

Before he could finish, a broad foot came down, clearly with no intention of avoiding him. The poor man's skull shattered with a crisp crack. The owner of that foot seemed completely unaware of it and continued forward, stepping on with a foot covered in red and white matter.

Ling Ying raised her gaze and examined the approaching figure. It should have been a man. She said "should" because his sparsely haired skull and heavily muscled body were covered in distinctly abnormal purple markings. At a glance, they looked somewhat similar to Ling Ying's Void Transformation Ability. The difference was that this man's entire body was hideously deformed. The foot that had crushed the refugee was as thick as a tree trunk, while the other was even more withered than an ordinary person's. The man limped across Long Bridge like that. When he was roughly a hundred meters from Ling Ying, he stopped and twitched his nose, sniffing. Then, like a cat that had caught a mouse, he suddenly charged toward her in excitement.

"Stay back. Don't come out."

Ling Ying turned around and gave a few instructions to Orianna and Jayce, who had yet to recover from the shock of the explosion. She condensed another Shadow Barrier to protect them. At that moment, the inhuman thing charged right up to her. Ling Ying calmly shifted aside to evade his attack, while the edge of her sword moved slightly.

"Slit!"

The Mutated Man suddenly stopped. He lowered his head and saw a two-finger-wide cut across his stomach. Purple-red blood with a foul odor gushed out. The strike had clearly enraged him. With a roar, the Mutated Man raised a pair of fists the size of stone bowls above his head and violently smashed them down toward Ling Ying.

A deafening boom rang out. Chunks of stone flew everywhere, and a sizable crater appeared in the concrete bridge surface. Yet the person who should have been there had vanished. The man stared blankly. His eye, squeezed into a narrow slit by a purple pustule on his forehead, searched upward. At that moment, black mist blossomed above his head. Ling Ying shot out from within it, and a line of Cold Light swept through the air. A bloodline instantly spurted from the Mutated Man's remaining eye.

"Awooo!"

The pain drove the Mutated Man to let out a beastlike roar. One hand instinctively covered his eye, while the other fiercely clawed toward Ling Ying's general direction.

Ling Ying did not rely on evasion to gain the advantage as she had before. Instead, she chose what looked like the worst possible option—standing still, raising her hand, and throwing a punch directly into the Mutated Man's fist.

The next moment, her slender arm collided with his arm, several times thicker than hers. Then, in a move that defied all common sense, she halted that fist in midair, preventing it from advancing even half an inch.

"If we're comparing brute strength, I won't lose."

Ling Ying's lips curved upward. Fresh purple markings, resembling cracks in ice, spread across her right arm, turning her snow-white skin into dense scales and transforming her fingers into icy claws. The Void Power easily forced the Mutated Man back several meters. Taking advantage of his unsteady footing, Ling Ying chased after him, seized the fist he had just swung, and then...

"Crack!"

The horrifying sound of shattering echoed again, just like the noise made by the poor man whose skull had been crushed earlier. Ling Ying twisted the Mutated Man's right arm into a crooked shape. Pale bones broke free of the flesh, and splintered bone pierced straight through his elbow. The pain instantly drove the Mutated Man mad. Like a crazed beast, he roared furiously while wildly swinging his remaining left arm. Yet he soon quieted down, because Ling Ying cleaved off that left arm with an upward stroke of her sword. The Mutated Man's body swayed as it fell backward. With an utterly casual expression, Ling Ying "conveniently" tore off his right arm as well. Amid a shower of blood, Ling Ying stood with a sword in one hand and the enemy's severed limb in the other, resembling a terrifying monster from a dark fairy tale. Her vertical pupils, each split by a jagged line in the center, radiated nothing but bloodthirsty desire.

"So that's all you've got. Tch..."

Ling Ying glanced at the Mutated Man rolling and struggling on the ground and curled her lip in disdain. Looking bored, she casually tossed the severed arm into the canal. Then she walked over to the Mutated Man, raised Doran's Blade, and brought it down toward his neck.

"From the way he's dressed, he might also be a Zaunite from the Bottom City. But how did they become like this, and why did they attack the Piltover outpost on the bridge?"

As her sword descended, a string of questions flashed through Ling Ying's mind. But under the influence of the frenzy of battle and her other negative emotions, thinking clearly was obviously useless for reaching any meaningful conclusion. It merely caused her sword stroke to hesitate for a moment. Yet that brief distraction changed what happened next. In the end, Ling Ying did not swing her sword. Instead, she suddenly leaped away from her position. Two seconds later, a stone statue taller than a person fell from the sky, crushing the already half-dead Mutated Man into a pool of sludge without the slightest suspense. Ling Ying landed several meters away. She first examined the stone statue, smashed to pieces on the ground, which had originally stood beside the bridge. Then, intrigued, she followed the arc of its trajectory with her eyes. A massive figure emerged from the fog on the bridge. With each exaggerated step, like a heavy hammer striking the ground, the figure added a new scar to the already battered bridge surface. If the previous Mutated Man could still barely be recognized as human, the creature before Ling Ying, standing as tall as a single-story building, had already fallen outside the category of humans. What looked somewhat familiar was that this Humanoid Tank was covered in large purple markings, just like the man before him. The difference was that his hands and feet were covered in crude-looking yet extraordinarily sturdy Steel Armor, while his head was enclosed in a massive Circular Helmet as large as a water vat. Several devices resembling Breathing Tubes extended from beneath the helmet and were inserted directly into the giant's chest. The helmet itself was filled with an unknown Purple Liquid, obscuring whatever lay inside. Only two vicious glints, seemingly representing eyes, flickered faintly within.

"Interesting."

Ling Ying raised a brow. There was no worry or fear in her voice. Instead, it revealed a fierce eagerness for battle. When she saw more than ten Mutated Men, similar to the one just crushed into a mess, emerge behind the Humanoid Tank, that feeling rose into intense excitement. It drove her forward to meet the enemy, who outnumbered her ten to one.

"Swish!"

Ling Ying removed her bloodstained coat and tossed it aside. Only a thin, close-fitting vest remained on her upper body. Then she drove Doran's Blade, which had accompanied her all this time, forcefully into the bridge. In its place, a scythe as tall as a person suddenly appeared in her hand. Its dark-purple handle looked metallic at first glance, yet seemed even more like the shell of some living creature. The curved blade was so thin as to be nearly transparent, while the purple edge surrounding it made it look more like a blade of light. It bore some resemblance to Piltover's Hextech energy swords. Ling Ying, however, knew that the two had nothing to do with each other. The great scythe came from her other body—the Forelimb Scythe, the primary offensive weapon of the Mantis Void Beast. The reason it had appeared in this form was naturally connected to Ling Ying's earlier fusion with her Void Consciousness. In the past, she had always been cautious whenever using Void Power, worried that the Void Consciousness might seize control again. Now that she had defeated it and made it part of herself, Ling Ying no longer needed to fear such absurd nonsense as being betrayed by her own power. She could use the abilities of her Void Body without restraint. Of course, this was not entirely without side effects. Now that Ling Ying and the Void Consciousness had become one, with their two bodies linked to each other, Ling Ying's original personality had naturally suffered a backlash as well. Certain instincts originating from the Void Creature had taken root in her subconscious. Normally, this was not much of a problem. But once she entered battle, she became as difficult to restrain and as restless and excited as she was now.

She alternated the scythe between her left and right hands, flourishing the "new weapon" in a circle. Ling Ying smiled and licked the corner of her mouth. Her pace quickened further, while the Mutated Men facing her charged to meet her head-on. The helmeted giant threw his head back and roared, and the Mutated Men around him instantly charged at Ling Ying as if injected with stimulants. It had to be said that watching a group of people with abnormally swollen limbs run was truly bizarrely comical.

"Good. Let's see what you're capable of."