Chapitre 9: Resurfacing
Feng Ruoxi finished her meal and went straight to her bedroom, the ominous undercurrents of tension still lingering like a noxious cloud. Now that her stomach was full, the fever slowly ebbing, it was time to plan her next move.
She sank onto the plush embrace of the lavish four-poster bed, allowing herself a rare moment of respite as she absorbed the unexpected turn her existence had taken. Of course she had recognized Jiang Yukang the instant their eyes met - how could she not? Even amidst the haze of Feng Ruoxi's fractured memories, that striking visage accompanied by an aura of quiet, implacable power had roused embers of recollection from her previous life.
Bai Yunshu remembered him from the orphanage days, that singular presence which managed to stand apart from the dreary morass of their communal abandonment. She had never imagined crossing paths with him again, let alone under such unfathomable circumstances with him being revealed as some illustrious young master...and now her supposed fiancé.
Feng Ruoxi's eyes rolled in a momentary spasm of sardonic resignation at the utter absurdity of it all. Yet a part of her couldn't deny the faintest whispers of relief threading through the tumult. At least this unexpected fate didn't bind her to some utter stranger - there existed a gossamer thread of familiarity between them, ethereal and intangible though it may be.
Her lips twisted in a wry, humorless smile as she conceded that regardless of this or any other circumstance, she would live according to her own indomitable terms. Feng Ruoxi - or rather, Bai Yunshu's very soul - had been reforged in the crucible of life's most searing tribulations. She was the agent, the apex predator stalking the shadows between the world's most sacrosanct societies and anarchic underbellies.
Number One Spy, they had called her. And even inhabiting this unassuming young woman's body, that core truth remained inviolable.
As for the prospect of becoming Jiang Yukang's wife, a strange sort of mordant amusement welled up from somewhere deep within her psyche. She would embrace that role and all its attendant privileges...on her terms alone. For any existence remained infinitely preferable to languishing beneath the oppressive shadows of these circling Feng vultures any longer.
In fact, Yunshu mused with a silent snarl of disgust, permanently severing ties from this wretched environment was advantageous irrespective of the avenues that facilitated her departure. Any further prolonged association and she might very well snap, claiming a life simply for the principle of absolving the world of their repugnant, leech-like existences.
Her thoughts inexorably drifted back to that fateful day when death had quite literally stared her in the face, the stark crimson blossom lancing through her torso still seared into her consciousness like a brand. Bai Chengling's cherubic features wavered into unwavering clarity, an agonized yearning welling up from some unfathomable depth to greet the recollection of her beloved younger brother.
Oh how she wished to reach out and caress his cheek once more, reassuring him that his beloved Di had faced the specter of oblivion yet remained defiantly, triumphantly intact. But any such comforting reunions remained obscured by the shades of her previous life...and the lethal machinations that had sundered them apart on that unforgivable day.
Yes, the organization that had simultaneously forged and sanctioned her undoing would soon face the full, merciless fury of her reincarnated wrath. Bai Yunshu's obsidian eyes hardened to blazing glaciers of indomitable resolve as the flames of vengeance burned white-hot in the depths of her very marrow.
Whoever had dared orchestrate that unforgivable strike against her life would pay in a veritable deluge of searing retribution. Even if she was forced to claw her way up from the utter dregs of societal existence, this Bai Yunshu would not rest until those who betrayed her were reduced to bloody ruin at her feet.
A renewed surge of vindictive purpose lent steel to her backbone as she jolted upright from the plush bedding. There would be no more languishing in complacent introspection - the time had come to begin mapping the road toward ultimate, exacting vengeance.
Her eyes raked over the lavish appointments of the opulent bedroom with a calculating intensity, eventually settling upon the sleek lines of a laptop sequestered in one corner. The fact that it appeared coated with a discernible layer of dust did not escape her notice, a tiny crease furrowing her brow. Feng Ruoxi's lingering memories indicated this girl was anything but technologically inclined...
Which rendered such an unattended, top-of-the-line personal computer terminal residing in her inner sanctum utterly incongruous. Slipping from the bed's sumptuous depths, Yunshu stalked over and snatched up the device with unhurried decisiveness.
With a few deft keystrokes, she bypassed these rudimentary security protocols and set about combing through the laptop's directories, searching for any potentially relevant information or archived communiques. As expected, the core operating system yielded no clues or uploaded data pertaining to her previous existence - such sensitive material would understandably remain walled off from conventional access points.
Flexing her fingers in preparation, Feng Ruoxi set about deploying a myriad of remote tunneling techniques to bypass the various electronic tripwires and honeypots guarding the laptop's ingress vectors. Seconds ticked by in profound stillness, the only sounds her measured respiration and the computer's softly whirring fans.
At last, a final succession of code keys cycled through and the obsidian void of her command prompt blossomed open into rolling emerald matrices of scrolling data. Smiling grimly, Feng Ruoxi leaned in and began sifting through the endless cascades of information with a raptor's intensity.
And there, buried amidst the deluge of code and raw transmission signatures, faint glimmers of archived intel began percolating to the surface. Dossiers, redacted field reports, intercepted communiques - slivers and glimpses of the shadow world that had birthed, forged, and ultimately sought her undoing.
Each fresh revelation, no matter how seemingly innocuous, catalyzed a resurgence of searing recollections within the pit of Feng Ruoxi's stomach. Sights, sounds, and scents long suppressed by the obliterating trauma of her 'death' came rushing back in visceral clarity, each jagged fragment slotting back into its proper niche until that former existence solidified into terrifying lucidity.
At last, a familiar encrypted chatstream bloomed to crackling vitality, myriad handles and code-signatures cascading through the queued incoming messages. Yunshu's fingers stilled, ebony pools drinking in the chaotic welter of unfurling communiques as her mind sorted through the often cryptic web of signals and countersignals.
Then, she saw it - buried amidst the digital morass and half-obscured by redacted an indecipherable string of code bearing her own signature designator as the appended handle. What remained of the distorted message fragment spoke volumes through sheer desperation alone:
"Yunshu, are you receiving? Please confirm status and report, this is an OXCORP9 Alpha-level overwatch! SIGNALCROSS is compromised, strike packages are inbound on-"
Whatever other fateful revelation the missive might have conveyed abruptly terminated in a jumbled knot of corrupted data, the rest obliterated by some catastrophic system override.
Feng Ruoxi felt her breath freeze in her lungs, even as some primal sixth sense catalyzed the myriad fragments of information into one blindingly lucid revelation: Her cover had been irreparably compromised, likely due to some preventative triple-cross by the very organization she had dedicated her life to.
Staring into the heart of that silent, unforgiving digital abyss, she realized the cold truth at last - her death had been willfully, maliciously engineered by the very hands that had forged her into the world's most implacable instrument of tactical espionage.
Some withered, rotting root buried deep within the innermost strata of the organization had decreed her existence a liability and expended the resources to initiate a scorched-earth severance of all ties, no matter how obliterating or cruel.
In that endless instant of breathless stillness, Bai Yunshu felt every unspent remnant of grief, rage, and vengeance ignite into a white-hot supernova of perilous conviction blazing behind her glittering obsidian stare.
There would be no quarter, no fleeting fragments of mercy afforded for whatever callous suits and corrosive influences festered behind this inexcusable betrayal. By whatever means necessary - guile, blood, or even the scorching of entire realms in her wake - she would hunt down and eviscerate every single conspirator behind her unforgivable undoing.
This was no longer a crusade of vengeance...
It was outright, unapologetic retribution ordained by the cosmos itself.
And as the flames danced in Bai Yunshu's hungering gaze, shedding their sanguine glow over the scrolling code with macabre ambiance, she knew her path forward had been indelibly illuminated: To hunt. To stalk. To utterly obliterate those who betrayed her until not even their tainted shades remained to profane the waking world.
The crucible of absolute reckoning had been forged from the ashes of supreme treachery and malice - and only one figure would emerge unbroken from its earthly manifestation. That same figure would then bear the mantle of that merciless, scouring flame out into oblivion's endlessly spiraling frontier and burn every trace of the old order to cinders.
A new age unlike any before witnessed would rise in the wake of that incandescent purification. One tempered in the searing crucible of trial, strife, and the ultimate victory of Bai Yunshu's indomitable will over all who dared stand in its way.
With that fateful vow catalyzing her very being into one unstoppable vector of purpose and conviction, the former Number One Spy turned back to the scrolling morass of encrypted intel awaiting her ministrations.
Her work had only just begun. Those who betrayed her would come to realize the grave miscalculation of their transgression.
The age of reckoning had been ordained, its fires stoked by their own callous malice.
All that remained was to allow it to burn, scouring all opposition to ash and cinders without mercy or restraint.
And from that hallowed conflagration's worthless residue, the phoenix of Bai Yunshu's rise to ultimate ascendancy would take shape - eternal, inviolable, and transcendent.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone