The lighting in Shadow Marsh Hall remained dim, with the electrical system barely maintaining minimal operation. The holograms had long gone out, leaving only cold, silent air.

Guests huddled in corners, their terrified gazes focused on the altar. Viola Sterling stood there, her blood-stained wedding dress resembling battle armor.


Lucas Blackthorn knelt on one knee, breathing with difficulty. The neurotoxin had paralyzed his left arm, leaving him pale, with cold sweat soaking his forehead.

Viola's gaze swept over several bodyguards in the corner who were becoming restless. Their communication earpieces and weapon indicator lights were all extinguished, their personal defense systems completely disabled, rendering them no different from ordinary people at this moment.

She slightly raised her left hand, her fingertip gently pressing on the controller hidden in the folds of her dress.


Zzzap——!

A bodyguard in the corner who was attempting to secretly draw a ceramic dagger suddenly convulsed and collapsed, the electric shock device disguised as a watch on his wrist instantly overloaded and began smoking. The other bodyguards turned pale, completely frozen in fear.


Viola had demonstrated through her actions that any rash move would be met with precise and silent countermeasures.

However, just as her attention was slightly diverted, a bodyguard who had been crawling in the shadows used the noise of his fallen comrade as cover and suddenly darted out from behind an overturned table!

He held no electronic weapon, only a heavy solid brass table leg, raised high and whistling through the air as it swung violently toward the back of Viola's head! This was the most primitive attack, and also the most difficult to defend against using electronic means.

Viola seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. In the instant the table leg came swinging down, she didn't even fully turn around, but instead, the hand gripping Lucas's numb left arm suddenly yanked, pulling the staggering Lucas behind her like a shield!

"Ugh!" Lucas groaned as the heavy table leg struck squarely on his already numb and painful left shoulder, making his vision go dark, nearly causing him to faint.

Almost simultaneously, Viola's empty right hand flipped, and the deep blue dagger drew a brief cold flash, precisely slicing across the wrist of the attacking bodyguard!

"Ah!" The bodyguard screamed in pain as the table leg fell from his hand and blood gushed from his wrist. As he tried to lunge forward, Viola's skirt shifted slightly, and a miniature electric dart shot out from a hidden launcher, hitting him directly in the neck. The bodyguard collapsed to the ground in violent convulsions, completely losing consciousness.

The entire process happened in a flash. Viola released Lucas, who almost collapsed from the heavy blow to his shoulder and the poison. She didn't even look at the fallen bodyguard, her cold gaze sweeping across the room. No one else dared to move.

She slowly paced, stopping again in front of Lucas who was barely standing.

"Get up, Lucas," her voice was without a ripple of emotion. "The wedding isn't over yet. We still have one dance to complete."

Lucas painfully raised his head, flames of humiliation and anger burning in his blue eyes. "You... don't... dare..."

He practically squeezed these words through clenched teeth.

Viola ignored his refusal. She raised her left hand, and a small device on her wrist lit up with a blue light. In the distance, the castle's ancient pipe organ system was forcibly activated, emitting a twisted, off-key yet still recognizable waltz melody. The sound echoed throughout the empty hall, eerily strange.

"I said, get up." Viola repeated, the dagger's tip pressing closer again, "Or would you like the poison to move a bit closer to your heart?"

Lucas's facial muscles twitched violently. He stared intently at Viola and finally, using his still-functioning right leg and right hand, managed to stand up with extreme difficulty, wobbling unsteadily.

Viola stepped forward, her blood-stained heavy skirt almost sweeping across his feet. She didn't withdraw her dagger, but instead placed the cold flat of the blade directly against his spine at the lower back. With her other hand, she forcibly grabbed his paralyzed left arm and placed it on her armored shoulder.

"Dance," she commanded, applying slight pressure with the back of the blade.

The humiliating waltz began. Lucas was practically being pushed and dragged, stumbling as he moved his feet.

Viola dominated every spin and glide, her movements mechanical and cold, her bloodstained dress sweeping across the polished floor like an ominous flag.

Lucas was forced to follow, each step trembling with poison and fury. Distorted music accompanied them.

After another forced turn, Viola suddenly leaned close to Lucas's ear, her voice so low only he could hear: "How does it feel, Lucas? Being forced to do something against your will, how is it?" Her voice carried icy mockery, "Just like how you forced me back then."

A flash of extreme rage passed through Lucas's eyes, yet he was powerless to resist.

While performing this bizarre dance, Viola used her free left hand to rapidly input a string of commands on the miniature control panel hidden in her dress folds. She was confirming a trap set long ago—days earlier, the "Ghost" hacker team she had hired had already infiltrated the Blackthorn Private Medical Center's security system, located and cracked the control protocol of the deep implanted sensor inside Selina's body. Now, she only needed to send the final execution command.

She pressed the confirmation key.

Far away at the Blackthorn Private Medical Center, in the intensive care unit, the vital signs monitor connected to Selina Cole suddenly emitted a sharp alarm!

On the screen, the signal curve representing a sensor inside her body abruptly exploded into a chaotic pattern of static, followed immediately by a red indicator representing extreme tissue damage that skyrocketed frantically!

"No——!"

Selina, lying on the hospital bed, suddenly widened her eyes and let out a heart-wrenching, inhuman scream!

She felt an indescribable, tearing agony from her lower abdomen, as if something inside her had been violently detonated and torn apart! Blood instantly soaked through the sheet beneath her.

The medical team fell into chaos immediately... and all these sounds were clearly and simultaneously transmitted to Shadow Marsh Hall through the hospital room's surveillance system, which had long been hacked, playing from the tiny speakers hidden in Viola's skirt hem, amplified and echoing in every corner!

The sound was so shrill it made one's scalp tingle!

Lucas's dance steps suddenly froze, his face instantly turning paper-white: "Selina?! What have you done to her?!"

"A small gift." Viola's voice was ice-cold and piercing, the dance did not stop, "Remember the biosensor you implanted in her to prevent betrayal? That little device connected to her uterus, claimed to monitor life and loyalty? My 'friends' just helped it run on overload."

Through the speaker, Selina's screams gradually transformed into intermittent, frenzied wailing and incoherent cursing.

Lucas's eyes were bulging with rage.

Viola spoke no more, only pushed him more forcefully in their dance. Her steps were precise and purposeful, not random movements. She skillfully guided - or rather forced - the staggering Lucas, step by step approaching a slightly darker floor tile in the center of the ballroom, whose edges seemed to have minute cracks.

With a seemingly natural spin, she calculated the angle and force, suddenly pulling the off-balance Lucas along with her. Their combined weight plus the momentum of the rotation slammed down hard and precisely onto that target tile!

Crack! Crash——!

A shattering sound erupted, much louder and crisper than before! The floor tile couldn't withstand such impact and instantly shattered completely, collapsing downward!

Lucas's feet were left dangling in midair as he lost balance and began to fall. But Viola was prepared—she gripped his hand and yanked upward, pulling him stumbling to the edge of the collapse, while she remained standing steadily to the side.

Beneath the shattered tile was not foundation soil, but a hidden, small cavity. Inside the cavity sat a simple, ancient-looking cremation urn of grayish-white, its surface covered with fine engravings. The urn gleamed with a cold luster in the dim light.

More striking was the surface of the cremation urn, which was engraved with an unmistakably clear and complex pattern—blooming red irises and sharp black thorns tightly entwined together, interwoven and inseparable, seemingly symbolizing some ancient and profound connection.

Viola's gaze fell upon the cremation urn, her eyes suddenly turning incredibly cold, even more so than when she had looked at Lucas.

When Lucas saw the cremation urn and the intertwined pattern, his pupils sharply contracted, and an extremely complex, almost panicked expression flashed across his face, as if he had temporarily forgotten even Selina's continued screams.

Red iris and black thorn. The Cole family and the Blackthorn family.

Why are the symbolic totems of these two sworn enemies so tightly interwoven on a hidden Cremation Urn? What unknown origins and secrets lie behind this?

This intense question, accompanied by Selina's continuous and increasingly feeble groans of pain, coiled around the hearts of everyone present like a cold venomous snake.