The middle-aged man appeared beside the flame demon, dressed in simple attire, his face completely devoid of fear. Instead, he smiled and warned the fleeing crowd.
The escaping people turned to him in shock, unable to understand why this man dared to approach the monster that had just burned so many to death.
But confusion aside, no one in the crowd intended to listen to this strange man’s advice.
In the next second, a dozen people turned and fled in the opposite direction.
Seeing this, Yan Qi’s mother, Li Caifeng, also prepared to follow them and escape.
But Yan Qi, noticing that the flame demon ignored the middle-aged man, sensed something unusual about him. She immediately slammed on the brakes, stopping her mother from dragging her away, and shouted:
“Mom, don’t run! If we run, we’ll definitely die!”
Feeling the strong resistance and hearing her daughter’s cry, Li Caifeng turned to Yan Qi, slightly angry.
“What are you saying, Xiao Qi? We have to get out of here, or that monster will burn us to death!”
Facing her mother’s frustration, Yan Qi, trusting her instincts, replied firmly:
“Mom, believe me. Running will only get us killed faster.”
Unconvinced and only focused on getting her daughter to safety, Li Caifeng was about to pull her away when the flame demon—which had been blocking their escape route—suddenly leaped forward.
With physical abilities far surpassing a human’s, it covered dozens of meters in a single bound, cutting off the fleeing group.
This time, the flame demon didn’t just block their path. It raised its arm and swung—
In an instant, the dozen or so people who had ignored the warning were engulfed in black flames. Their agonized screams filled the air before they collapsed, lifeless.
Witnessing this, Li Caifeng paled, realizing she had nearly led her daughter to the same fate. She shuddered in relief, grateful Yan Qi had stopped her.
Yan Qi, meanwhile, clenched her fists. She knew her true, frail self stood no chance against these one-star abyss monsters. She desperately wanted to transform and eliminate them—but with so many witnesses and surveillance cameras likely still recording, she couldn’t risk exposing her secret.
For now, she had to wait and observe, biding her time for the right moment.
As mother and daughter processed their thoughts, a voice rang out from where the flame demon had been:
“I told you not to run, yet none of you listened. Sigh.”
The strange middle-aged man looked at the charred corpses, their stench of burning flesh thick in the air, and sighed regretfully.
“Y-You… who are you?” stammered one of the survivors, trembling as they recalled his earlier warning.
The man showed no hesitation in answering.
“I am a follower of the Lord of Flame Demons.”
“Lord of Flame Demons?” The survivors exchanged confused glances. Someone dared to ask:
“Who… or what is that?”
The man’s voice filled with reverence.
“He is a great deity residing in the divine realm, master of wrath and flame, who shall judge all injustice in this world with purifying fire.”
“A god?” someone gasped. “Do gods really exist?”
The man gestured at the flame demon—now subdued by some unknown object on his person—and the smoldering corpses.
“Of course. How else could we summon these Flame Angels to cleanse the sinners who refused to heed our warnings?”
An elderly woman, fear in her eyes, whispered,
“What… do you want from us?”
The man smiled.
“Nothing much. We merely wish to exchange all of you… for our imprisoned High Priest.”
[Time Skip: 30 Minutes Later]
Under the threat of dozens of flame demons and several cultists, nearly a thousand people—those who hadn’t escaped the station square in time—were forced to surrender their communication devices and herded into the train station’s waiting room.
The flame demons patrolled the perimeter, their fiery bodies a constant reminder of their brutality. They had already burned hundreds alive and even crushed one man into a pulp with their bare hands to prevent escape.
Terrified, the captives pressed toward the center of the room, desperate to stay as far from the monsters as possible.
“Dammit, there are too many people here! How am I supposed to transform and destroy these abyss monsters—and those damn cultists—without being seen?”
Yan Qi, currently held tightly in her mother’s arms within the crowd, gritted her teeth in frustration.
“Xiao Qi, what’s wrong?” Li Caifeng asked softly, noticing her daughter’s tense expression.
“Nothing, Mom. Just a headache.”
“Should I massage your temples?”
“No, it’ll pass.”
Thinking her daughter was putting on a brave face, Li Caifeng whispered reassuringly:
“Don’t worry. Your father already knows what’s happening here. He and his colleagues will rescue us soon.”
“Mm. I know.”
Yan Qi nodded, though she knew the truth—her father and his coworkers were ordinary humans. They couldn’t possibly handle this.
She was the only one who could.