159: Chapter 159 The Wing Thief
One month later.
Downtown Los Angeles.
Inside 'Lux,' a top-tier nightclub with an intense modern industrial style, the deafening electronic bass felt powerful enough to shake one's heart right out of their chest.
The dance floor was a chaotic scene of revelry, the air thick with the cloying scent of premium perfume mixed with alcohol.
Qin Ming, dressed in a plain black jacket, sat boldly at the luxurious ebony bar, looking completely out of place among the suit-and-tie adults surrounding him.
“I'll have a strawberry sundae.” Qin Ming tapped the marble surface of the bar.
Behind the bar, a bartender named Patrick, dressed in a custom vest, stopped polishing a glass.
He frowned and glanced down at Qin Ming as if he were looking at a stray cat that had wandered into a fine-dining restaurant.
“Kid, minors aren't allowed in here.” Patrick's voice was cold, carrying a clear intent to drive him away.
He turned his head and spoke coldly into his headset, “Donald, you're failing at your job. A kid snuck in; get him out of here.”
Qin Ming didn't even change his posture, his fingers continuing to tap an off-beat rhythm on the counter. “I'm waiting for Lucifer.”
Hearing that name, Patrick's hand paused slightly while wiping the glass, followed by a mocking smirk. “I don't think my boss is in the business of adopting orphans, nor does he have any child friends.”
Two burly security guards in black suits had already pushed through the crowd, one of whom was Donald.
He reached out with a finger as thick as a carrot, intending to grab Qin Ming's shoulder.
Qin Ming didn't look back.
When Donald's finger was still ten centimeters away from Qin Ming's shoulder, it snapped back violently, as if burned by invisible acid.
He clutched the back of his hand, his face contorted in agony, yet he couldn't make a sound.
Qin Ming stood up, straightened the hem of his jacket, and looked at the stunned bartender.
“You made two mistakes.” Qin Ming held up two fingers. “First, you didn't give me my strawberry sundae. Second...”
Qin Ming curled his lips into an overwhelming smile. “I wish you sweet dreams tonight.”
As the words fell, Qin Ming's figure vanished from the bar without a trace.
The glass in Patrick's hand hit the marble counter with a 'crack,' shattering into pieces.
A second later.
The pungent smell of the sea replaced the perfume of the bar.
Outside an abandoned smuggling warehouse in Long Beach.
This was one of the most hidden treasure troves of the Los Angeles black market.
Qin Ming stood before the massive corrugated iron warehouse and closed his eyes.
He quickly locked onto an extremely dense, almost blinding energy source.
That power was both divine and carried a certain fallen wildness.
“Found it.”
Qin Ming walked deep into the warehouse and located the shipping container. He hooked his fingers into the gap and pried it open with a light pull.
Qin Ming bypassed the Matryoshka dolls in the center and opened a hidden compartment at the back. On a display rack lay a pair of massive, pure white, shimmering wings. They were the former wings of the Archangel Lucifer; even though they had been severed, they still contained a suffocating divine pressure.
Qin Ming stepped forward and reached out to touch the cold white feathers.
The holy light energy within his body actually resonated faintly with the wings.
With a thought, the massive wings were instantly stored into the system's inventory space.
“Since I came looking for you personally and didn't find you,” Qin Ming said flatly, looking at the empty rack, “then next time, you'll be the one coming to find me.”
The phone screen in his pocket suddenly flickered violently.
“Breaking news... Master... Sam, whom you asked me to watch... doesn't seem to be doing well... The forecast shows... they are going to die.” Larry's way of expression remained fragmented.
“What happened?” Qin Ming walked out of the warehouse.
“...Found some Bloody Mary... currently being slaughtered one-sidedly.”
Qin Ming raised an eyebrow.
These Demon Hunter brothers who ran around everywhere really never stopped for a moment.
“Take me there.” Qin Ming reached out and placed his hand on Larry's pale wrist.
At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away in an antique shop.
The dim room was filled with cluttered antiques and furniture covered in white sheets.
Sam stared fixedly at the large antique floor mirror in front of him.
The mirror did not show his reflection.
In its place was a terrifying woman with disheveled hair and black blood constantly flowing from her eye sockets.
The physical manifestation of Bloody Mary.
And beside Bloody Mary, Sam's deepest nightmares were surfacing.
The Mary in the mirror made a shrill, spiteful sound that seemed to scrape against the depths of Sam's brain: “You never told her the truth—who you really are. But it's more than that, isn't it?”
Sam clutched his head in agony, his knees buckling as he fell to the floor with a 'thud.'
Mary continued her mental torture ruthlessly: “Those nightmares you kept having—Jessica screaming, burning. You dreamed about it days before it happened, didn't you?!”
“Shut up...” Sam squeezed a broken voice from his throat.
“You wanted to be normal so badly, you'd rather believe it was just a dream.” Mary's face pressed against the glass, black blood spreading across the surface. “How could you ignore them like that? How could you leave her alone to go through that?! You dreamed it would all happen!”
Two streaks of blood flowed from Sam's eye sockets.
His heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a cold, giant hand. The physical pain, combined with extreme guilt, completely stripped him of the strength to resist.
“This is your fault.” Mary delivered her final judgment. “You caused this. You killed Jessica.”
Sam's breathing grew weaker and weaker, his vision stained red with blood. His body was completely immobilized, and he had lost even the strength to lift a finger.
“BANG—!”
The closed door of the antique shop was violently kicked open from the outside. Wood splinters flew everywhere.
Dean rushed in like a furious leopard, carrying a heavy crowbar.
He took one look at his dying brother lying in a pool of blood and, without a single word, swung the metal crowbar with all his might, smashing it into the large floor mirror.
“CRASH—!”
The deafening sound of shattering glass echoed through the room.
The mirror broke into pieces, with shards of all sizes scattering across the floor.
Dean dropped the crowbar and was about to help Sam up from the ground.
But in the glass shards scattered on the floor, Bloody Mary's spiteful face was reflected in all of them at once.
Then, a pair of pale hands reached out from the largest shard.
Mary's twisted body crossed the physical barrier of the mirror, manifesting physically in the real world.
She slowly turned her head, her hollow, bleeding eye sockets locking onto Dean.
“You killed them!” Mary's voice became an overlapping shriek, her resentment turning into a literal gale of dark wind that blew away all the white sheets in the room. “All of those people!”
Dean instinctively reached for the gun at his waist, but he knew very well that salt rounds would have no decisive effect on a vengeful spirit that had already materialized.
Mary's fingernails had grown excessively long, carrying a thick aura of death as they lunged straight for Dean's throat.
Just as Mary's nails were less than half an inch from Dean's skin—