Chi Shi Chokes

"Whatever~ let's just leave it at that."

Luo Qiusheng replied testily, "Fine, fine, whatever you say."

Ending the call with a sigh, he looked down at the phone in his palm. The casing was stamped with the cold, silver emblem of Kassel College—a specially encrypted terminal issued by the academy.

He swiped his finger across the screen and, without hesitation, dialed the private number of Principal Hilbert von Ange.

There was no familiar, steady voice on the other end, only a monotonous, icy busy signal echoing repeatedly. A few seconds later, the call disconnected automatically, and the screen went dark.

"Principal von Ange, what role are you really playing in this century-spanning chess game?" Luo Qiusheng murmured at the pitch-black screen, his eyes clouded with layers of suspicion.

The red Ferrari sped along the empty highway. The previously gloomy sky suddenly underwent a violent transformation; a torrential downpour descended without warning, and rolling thunder tore through the heavy night, causing the car body to tremble slightly.

At first, one could still catch glimpses of the occasional vehicle on the highway, but as he drove further, the surrounding traffic grew increasingly sparse. Eventually, his was the only car left on the entire road, lonely and isolated as it cut through the curtain of rain.

The surrounding environment began to undergo a strange, eerie distortion. The streetlights on both sides of the road flickered out one by one, and the silhouettes of the trees along the roadside became twisted and blurred. Nothing remained between heaven and earth but endless darkness and the raging storm.

At this moment, Luo Qiusheng's mind was entirely occupied by the Secret Party's intricate web of conspiracies and power struggles. Lost in a fog of speculation, he failed to notice that the space around him had long since broken away from the rules of the real world.

The next second, the car jolted violently, shaking crazily as if it had driven into an invisible, distorted barrier.

Luo Qiusheng focused his gaze on the road ahead. The straight highway stretched out infinitely; the pitch-black night, the desolate road, and the violent storm wove together into a familiar scene of desperation. Countless fragments of memory surged through his mind, and he instantly grasped the reality of his situation—this was a Nibelungen, the kingdom of death within the Dragon Tribe.

His heart tightened with alarm as he weighed his options: turn around and flee, or face the confrontation head-on? In a split second, he slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator.

He knew all too well that Chu Tianjiao, a veteran S-class Hybrid at his peak, had suffered a crushing defeat in this very same rainy night and this very same domain decades ago, which was a testament to Odin's terror. Yet, he understood even better that this god's target this time was, in all likelihood, himself.

In the dead silence of the space, not a single soul could be seen, yet countless invisible gazes were locked firmly onto his body.

Beneath the roar of the wind and rain, faint, eerie whispers layered over one another, drilling into his ears. At times they sounded like the soft, whimpering cries of infants, at others like the playful, mocking laughter of children—chilling and grotesque, enough to make one's scalp crawl.

"Are these Dead Servants?"

Luo Qiusheng's eyes turned sharp. Instantly abandoning any hope of luck, he slammed on the brakes! The Ferrari's four tires shrieked against the pavement, sending four trails of black smoke rising into the rain.

The torrential rain condensed into a heavy wall of water, slamming down onto the roof of the car with a deafening roar. The sturdy aluminum alloy frame groaned with subtle vibrations, as if it would be crushed by the weight of the storm at any moment.

A black Maybach sat silently in the middle of the road, its four doors wide open. Its emergency lights flickered with a faint, orange glow, swaying in the dark rain like a fleeting firefly in a desperate situation.

Had he braked a second later, the outcome would surely have been a mangled wreck and certain death.

Luo Qiusheng pushed the door open and stepped out, scanning his surroundings with his guard up. The world was as black as ink, with only the headlights of the two cars cutting through the darkness to cast four straight beams of light. The entire space was terrifyingly silent; there were no signs of a struggle, yet it was permeated with an inescapable sense of death and danger.

He leaned down and lightly touched the black mud settled on the road. The cool sensation clung to his fingertips, and a faint, bloody malice spread, only to instantly transform into an intensely sweet, sugary scent—two contradictory auras blending in a bizarre fashion.

A fine, numbing sting soon traveled from his fingertips, as if a weak toxin were seeping into his skin through his pores.

Startled, he immediately dipped his fingers into the rainwater on the road and scrubbed them repeatedly.

Lifting his fingers to inspect them, he saw that the skin that had touched the black mud had turned a sickly, pale white. The corrosiveness and toxicity were clear; had he left it in contact any longer, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

"Is this... the blood of a Dead Servant?"

Blurred memory fragments suddenly flooded his mind. This stretch of rainy highway and the scene of this eerie Nibelungen were incredibly familiar—it was the classic, desperate scenario where Lu Mingfei and Nono broke into the fourth Dragon Tribe secret realm and faced Odin head-on.

Before his thoughts could settle, the wind and rain churned. A towering, boundless giant slowly turned in the depths of the rain curtain, its god-like presence crushing the very air and causing the entire domain to stall. The god stood at the core of the endless storm, roaring flames rising from his body. The scorching heat burned against the torrential rain, turning the falling droplets into a hazy white mist. The light and flames on the divine body flickered amidst the mist, rising and falling like the breath of a god.

Beneath him, an eight-legged steed stood with its head held high, its entire body covered in dense, golden scales, each one flowing with an ancient, faint light.

A deep, thunderous rumble rolled in the horse's throat, and as it exhaled, tiny flashes of lightning tore through the rain and mist, its power terrifying to the extreme.

The god wore heavy, dark-gold ancient armor, draped in a deep blue cloak that snapped in the wind. In his hand, he gripped a spear as ancient and vigorous as withered wood. His attire and appearance were identical to the god recorded in Norse murals.

Yet, over his stern divine body, layers of pale, tattered burial shrouds were tightly wrapped, the fabric covered in winding, twisted blood-red runes. The intersection of holiness and death stripped away the god's purity, making him look more like a malevolent ghost returned from the netherworld.

A silver-white mask covered his face, and icy, cold air spilled from the eye and mouth holes, sealing away all expression and leaving only boundless majesty.

"Odin." Luo Qiusheng whispered the name, his tone utterly certain.

No further proof was needed: the eight-legged steed Sleipnir, the supreme spear Gungnir, and the blue-robed, gold-armored divine attire all corresponded to the supreme god of life and death in Norse mythology.

This god also served as the god of the underworld, whose Valkyries gathered the souls of fallen warriors to be sent to Valhalla to await the final battle of Ragnarök—the very source of the thick aura of death surrounding him.

According to myth, Odin was the nemesis of the Black Dragon Nidhogg and had deep ties to the supreme Dragon Tribe.

But this was precisely the greatest flaw—the Secret Party's millennial research had long since confirmed that all myths in the world were derived from the history of the Dragon Tribe. In the era of the dragons, there had never been a transcendent god like Odin; he was like a paradox born from nothing, drifting outside the rules of the world dominated by the dragons.

"You have finally come?"

Odin, who had been silent for so long, spoke slowly. His tone was flat and waveless, devoid of joy, anger, or ripples, as if he had been waiting quietly in this desperate place for thousands of years, certain that he would eventually set foot here.

The god did not take a single step forward, yet that presence, which stood above all living things, had already transformed into an invisible blade pressed firmly against the center of Luo Qiusheng's brow. The extreme pressure bore down on him, and he clearly perceived that if Odin were to urge his horse forward even an inch, he would be instantly pierced through the skull, his soul annihilated.