At Li Feng's "come in," André shouldered open the door to the presidential suite with three trembling researchers in tow.
He stopped dead in the entry. The living room floor was packed edge to edge with etched runes—dense, interlocking lines like frost on glass. In the center, perched on wooden blocks, sat a nuclear warhead with its shell peeled back and its inner casing engraved with the same runic script.
André blanched. A nuke. In a hotel suite. If this thing went off, would the wizard die? He had no idea. He did know Las Vegas would be uninhabitable. Even if the wizard swore it wouldn't detonate, the thought of raw components quietly shedding radiation a few steps away made his skin crawl. Hospital after this, he told himself. Bloodwork, scans—find out if wizard "runes" actually hold radiation.
Li Feng, wearing nothing but boxers, scratched his head at the sight of André's three owlish captives—their thick glasses fogging, their knees knocking. "These the people I asked for?"
André forced himself upright from the waist up; the rest of him still shook. "Yes, Master Wizard. They're the only experts I could secure. Two are Russian, one American."
Li Feng circled them, rubbing his palms together, then pointed at the opened warhead. In crisp Russian and English, he said, "Gentlemen, walk me through it. Principles and internals. Explain it correctly…" He tipped his chin at the liquor cabinet. "You'll eat and drink well, and there'll be a bonus big enough to outlast you. Explain it wrong…"
He glanced at André.
Message received. André drew his pistol and racked the slide with a soft, oily shkk. He didn't have to say a word; the look was universal—we don't pay for burials.
The three exchanged a terrified conference of looks, then shuffled to the warhead and began talking—dense jargon, chamber layouts, initiators and reflectors, staged designs. Li Feng listened, testing, prodding. When he was satisfied they were the real thing, he lifted a hand.
"That's enough." He licked his lips, turned to André, and pointed at the floor. "Let these precious diamonds sleep tonight. We start here after dark. From tonight on, you teach me nuclear physics."
Teach? The experts blinked. All that muscle, all those agencies stirred up, just to be… his tutors? They glanced around: no lab benches, no chalkboards. Aside from a few precision screwdrivers and a warhead that could, theoretically, end the suite permanently, there was nothing resembling a classroom. Do we lecture with a live device in the middle? How long does that syllabus run—until the next ice age?
André didn't ask. He nodded to Li Feng, then waved the scholars toward the hallway. He had other business with the wizard.
Li Feng crooked a finger; a cold beer drifted out of the fridge and into his hand. He took a pull. "Talk."
André swallowed, lined up his words, and crushed down the fear. He stepped close and murmured, "Master Wizard, I've heard the boss is hunting for mediums. I don't know his exact plan, but in my experience, he's likely trying to—" He winked and tapped his throat with two fingers.
"Kill a wraith? Him?" Li Feng's mouth twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile. "And it's normal, isn't it? A man plays king for years, suddenly he's demoted to prince. Of course he gets ideas."
He flicked the empty bottle into the trash, dropped onto the sofa, pinched thumb and forefinger to his temples—and pulled. The soul-reading spell skimmed André's mind like a stone across a pond. A moment later, Li Feng's mouth tilted up.
"You, on the other hand, got tossed out of the power center because of me," he said lightly. "You're not taking it well. You want to switch sides, borrow my strength, kill your boss, and inherit his casino."
André froze, then lowered his head and stood at attention, obedient as a footman.
Li Feng rubbed his brow. To be fair, the casino boss had delivered: what Li Feng wanted, the man found—or tried to. Still… trying to wriggle out from under his thumb? That rubbed wrong.
He tongued his teeth, something hungry flaring behind his eyes, and rose. He took up his scythe. Shadows pooled. One by one, the improved Dementors poured into the room—tattered black shrouds, skeletal hands, the air dropping ten degrees with each arrival.
"These are beyond wraiths," Li Feng said, voice gone soft. "To them, a wraith is an hors d'oeuvre."
Frost filmed the hardwood. André's legs went numb to the knee. Li Feng's grin showed too much tooth. "They've been caged a long time. They're starving. I've told them to follow your orders, but hunger makes even humans do strange things. Monsters?" He shrugged. "Who knows. Best feed them immediately."
André wet his lips. "What do they—uh—like? Raw beef?"
"Raw beef?" Li Feng looked at him like he'd proposed feeding diamonds to sharks. "They're monsters. What do you think they eat? Souls. And they're bottomless. The more you bring, the fuller they get, the more precisely they obey."
A ribbon of cold knifed André from spine to skull. It wasn't the aura. It was the tone—the way the wizard spoke of humans not as people, but as a food group.
He thought back to the first night. Back then, Li Feng's violence had been demonstrative—retaliation under gunfire, theater to cow the boss. In Vegas, gunfights happened. Power needed teeth.
But this? This felt like a hinge creaking. Like a mistake he'd regret for the rest of his short life.
Across the room, unseen until now, Kreacher watched. He hadn't tracked the words so much as the flicker—an instant of crimson at the corner of Li Feng's eye. Hunger, sharp as a vampire spotting a maiden's throat.
André hugged his coat tighter, bent at the waist in thanks, and motioned to the invisible pack. Time to hunt.
Quiet returned. Li Feng stretched, jaw cracking in a yawn, and padded toward the bed.
Kreacher slipped visible, fidgeting with his hem, and stepped into his path, eyes huge with worry.
Li Feng scowled. "What now? You itching for a beating?"
Kreacher flinched. "Master… I saw bloodlust in your eyes."
"Bloodlust?" Li Feng glanced down at himself. "You're seeing things. I wasn't thinking anything bloody." He paused, then waved a hand. "You mean the casino boss? That's not a big deal. We've killed before—where do you think the wraiths in my gourd came from? And he moved first. I'm only responding."
"If the boss sat still and behaved," he added, and even managed a hint of regret, "none of this would be necessary."
He yawned again, louder. "André wants the throne. The old boss wants a shot at us. I gave things a nudge—solve the problem, keep our study time. How does that make me bloodthirsty?"
He fell face-first into the pillow and started snoring almost on impact. The pressure of weeks of study bore down like a sleep spell.
Kreacher stared at his master's sleeping back, then at the mask on the table. The wizard said it himself: everyone carries repressed things. The mask doesn't just let them out—it magnifies them.
Bloodlust. And the Dementors' favorite meal.
Back when Li Feng had finally weaned and his split-crotch pants were sewn shut, he was still a wobbly walker—always tripping, always face-first. None of that stopped him from nursing a hero's heart: a kid sworn to roam the world righting wrongs.
He mainlined wuxia. Picture books, old dramas—Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, Legend of the Condor Heroes. Summer evenings, he'd plant himself on a tiny stool in front of a black-and-white TV, bowl in his lap, butt in the air, eyes glued to the screen. When the show got good, he'd set the bowl aside and swat at circling mosquitoes with the "Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms," or grab a stick and roll across the floor practicing the "Mad Demon Rolling Staff," intent on splitting flies on the wing.
His technique was nonsense. His face acting, though—the "hate the heavens, hate the earth" glare—was so convincing the insects kept their distance, as if wary of catching whatever this newly minted idiot-hero had.
Alas, the curtain always fell on the same ending: his backside lit up.
Not because he'd mastered some self-harming "Seven Wounds Fist," but because his parents, seated right there, would demonstrate their husband-and-wife combo technique—with his butt as the dummy. In those days, there weren't many cures for a rowdy kid. The fastest? A thrashing.
As he grew, he learned the truth: the inner energy, the qinggong, the sword-flight—they were TV magic. He was crushed for a while, then pivoted to the Foshan Shadowless Kick. That, at least, didn't need "internal force." With enough grit, you could kick doors and run on walls. Which is how he ended up kicking at the family door every day.
He was close to landing a four-kick midair combo—at least in his head—when his father demonstrated "Dad's Leg Technique" and punted him into a tactical retreat. If Mom hadn't intervened, Li Feng's grave would have been sprouting grass fat enough to feed a hundred sheep.
Eventually he accepted it: movies were movies. Even if someone could throw a Shadowless Kick—so what? In a decent society, what do you do with a lifetime of killing arts? Gouging eyes and smashing groins are standard moves; one misstep and you maim a pickpocket and end up sued into oblivion.
Truth be told, kung fu is a killing craft. It rarely "nurtures health." Even those sweet grannies doing taiji in the park—the right hand "hook"? It's for snagging joints and eyes. If you want longevity, do exercise. A lifetime of taiji or a lifetime of calisthenics doesn't differ much for your heart. Look up the "real masters"—they punch like hammers, but how many make it to eighty?
And the line that stuck hardest: No matter how good your kung fu is, one bullet ends it.
In peaceful times, why torture yourself?
Eventually he let the dream go.
Then fate—blind, drunk, or both—handed him a second life. And not just any life: an opening act in a world of the extraordinary.
He didn't have sword-flight, but he had magic. With a shield up, guns and rockets were a nuisance. With a portal, he could step to the earth's far side faster than a jet—passport control being the only real obstacle. He could even flick his wrist and make a demon kneel and call him "grandpa." It scratched that old itch to right wrongs.
Best of all, life no longer had to end at a scant hundred years. With luck and grind, he could live long enough to watch empires rust.
With power like that, it was hard not to swell. He wanted to show off, do something big.
But this was the Marvel world. Too many ceilings—and too many heads he couldn't afford to bump. Thor and his class of gods? He'd get folded. Worse, there were earthlings who could drag him across the floor, and he'd have to smile and apologize for the scuffs after.
He was not picking those fights.
So he played by the rules. Aside from personally putting down the Abomination, whose else had he killed? Those soldiers who died under his gunfire—he didn't pull the trigger with his hand; the bullet did that.
In other worlds, though—worlds where heaven was first, earth second, and Li Feng an easy third—why not loosen the leash? If he wanted something, he took it. If someone blocked him, he made them move.
Still, a decade of compulsory education left a groove. He wasn't a butcher. There was a line in his mind that held back the worst of him.
Until this world. The "Mask" world. He let some pressure bleed out—robbed banks, abducted experts. No subtle plans; just impulse with muscle. He wasn't killing anyone, so his conscience slept fine. Aside from Loki and Odin descending to smack him, who was he supposed to fear?
He forgot one thing: emotions aren't steam you can bottle forever. The longer you compress them, the richer they distill. When they blow, it's a flash flood.
Worse, his path was an Eastern cultivation. Everyone on that road meets the same hurdle: heart-demons—born from whatever lurks inside.
Loki's Mask could read the heart. Maybe it couldn't crack his mind fast. But he wore it every night. Water on stone.
And the Mask's fuel wasn't "magic" as he practiced it. It was divine power. He had more total energy, maybe—but its quality left his in the dust.
Consider Son of the Mask: the guy conceives a kid while wearing it, and three special green tadpoles go in first. The baby's born superhuman. That's gene-editing, courtesy of god-power.
So: wear the Mask long enough, and it infiltrates. Genes, temperament. Sooner or later, it reads you. Then it amplifies what it finds.
Li Feng didn't see it. Every time he used the Mask he clamped down on whatever tried to rise. Even when Kreacher warned him—again and again—about the red glint growing in his eyes, he waved it off. Worse, he started cuffing the elf to shut him up.
Half a year passed. The three physicists, now full-on night creatures themselves, taught until sunrise and slept through the day.
One night on the hotel roof, Li Feng stood in the wind, Mask on his face, eyes crimson to anyone with eyes. He raised his hands, solemn as a priest.
A spark like a sesame seed formed between his palms. Seconds later it swelled to the size of a soccer ball. Heat rolled off it, bright as a second sun. He grinned, breath shaking. He held it there, willed it stable.
Finally. After all this time—the nuclear reaction fireball was real.
Then it wasn't.
The orb wobbled. Control slipped. His face went stiff.
He didn't think—he threw it, a streak arcing away across the city.
Before it reached the horizon, he wrapped himself and Kreacher in the Mirror Dimension, and—still flushed with triumph—turned to watch the show.
A mushroom climbed into the night.
His smile died by inches.
People on the streets went to ash between heartbeats. Towers ran like candles and folded in on themselves. The horizon writhed.
Maybe releasing the fireball had bled his pressure off. Maybe the horror itself cut through the fog. Either way, he tore the Mask off. Color drained from his face.
"Did I do that?" he asked, to no one and to Kreacher both.
Kreacher knew they were safe in the Mirror, but hell blooming outside still made him lower his head. His voice shook. "Yes, Master. Kreacher watched you cast it with his own eyes."