The instant I plunged into the pool, Isabella’s scream lodged in her throat—like a violin string abruptly snapped. Three meters underwater, her skirt billowed like black seaweed, tangling around my wrist. I seized her ankle and hauled her upward; my fingertips brushed an old scar along the inside of her calf—the one she’d gotten at seven, when she shoved me into a glass door to snatch the strawberry cake from my hands. Breaking the surface, she choked and coughed, curling into a shrimp-like hunch, her mascara smeared into two bruised streaks beneath her eyes. On the poolside, my mother gripped her champagne flute until it clicked and groaned in her hand. My father stood crookedly, his tie askew, his gaze locked onto the mole behind my left ear—the exact spot marked “distinguishing mole” on his twenty-year-old sperm donation records. “Asher?” My mother’s voice trembled. “You… you were placed in foster care at five…” “By you,” I said, wiping water from my face. My soaked work vest clung tightly to my chest, revealing an old, worm-like scar just below my collarbone. “That day, Isabella wore a new dress—and tossed candy wrappers at me through the car window.” Sirens pierced the party music. Two officers stepped forward, cuffs glinting. Before they could speak, Isabella grabbed my arm: “Wait—he saved me!” Before the words fully left her lips, her phone slipped from her drenched skirt pocket. The screen lit up with an unsent text draft: [Dad, Asher broke in again today—to steal the ring. This time I caught him on camera opening your safe…] I looked down at her. Water dripped from her jawline into the pool, rippling outward in quiet, concentric circles. Turns out the sharpest blade is always hidden inside the sweetest wrapper.

The glass doors of the hospital lobby shattered inward just as I crouched in the corner of the pediatric IV area, swabbing the palms of a little girl with a fever using an alcohol pad. She was delirious with heat, clutching the cuff of my white coat. Her voice was faint: “Sister… are you the one who gave me the injection last time—the one that didn’t hurt?” I didn’t answer. Just pressed the pad even more gently. Then—screams tore through the air. “Lin Wan! You actually have the nerve to show up here?!” My ex-husband, Chen Zhe, seized his former wife’s arm. His wedding ring still gleamed on his finger, blindingly bright. “You’ve brought *him*—some random man—to steal our child?!” Behind him stood a man in an Armani suit, his gold watch catching the light as he calmly adjusted his cufflinks—her current husband, Xie Yan. “Steal?” Xie Yan smiled faintly—soft-spoken, yet the entire hall fell half a beat silent. “Dr. Chen, the third coronary bypass you performed? I stepped in and completed it. Dare you claim your daughter is standing here today because of *your* hands—hands that have trembled for three years?” A murmur rippled through the crowd. I kept swabbing the girl’s palms. The sharp scent of alcohol spread like a silent fuse. Then—she seized. Not from the fever. It was status epilepticus—the EEG report had just flashed in. The monitor shrieked. Red alarm lights pulsed across the tiled floor, like blood beating. The head nurse rushed over, shoving me aside: “Hurry—call Chief Lin!” No one answered. Because Chief Lin wasn’t in the lobby. She was inside the ICU, gowned in full isolation gear, kneeling on one knee—barehanded, steadying an ECMO pump on the verge of failure. The seventh-generation artificial heart-lung system she’d personally modified. The only person in the hospital qualified to recalibrate its parameters. Meanwhile, in the center of the lobby, Chen Zhe pointed straight at me: “*Her!* That new night-shift nurse! She altered my daughter’s medication records yesterday—*in secret!*” Xie Yan turned—and locked eyes with me. Three seconds passed. He removed his watch and tossed it to his assistant. “Clear Operating Room One. Then call Director Shen—and tell him: ‘Qingluan is awake.’” Silence crashed down—absolute, suffocating. Even the monitor’s shrill beep seemed to stutter. I finally released the girl’s hand, rose, and smoothed my white coat—its hem stained with fresh, glistening alcohol, shimmering cold-blue under the lights. I pulled off my mask. At my left earlobe, a silver earring shaped like a needle caught the light—the insignia of the National Young Neurosurgeon Championship, melted down and recast by my own hands. Xie Yan walked toward me. His dress shoes crushed rumors beneath each step. He stopped before me, bent, and picked up the alcohol pad I’d dropped—his fingertip brushing mine, damp with antiseptic. Then, in full view of everyone, he gently traced the old scar running across the back of my hand—the one carved by splintered bone three years ago, in a field hospital in Africa, when I’d held open a child’s neck wound with my bare hands to extract shrapnel lodged in the carotid artery. “Dr. Lin Wan,” he said softly—yet the chandeliers above hummed in resonance. “It’s time you returned to the operating table.” The LED screen mounted high in the lobby flickered once. Then switched automatically—to live surgery feed. The surgical lamp flared. A pair of gloved hands lifted the titanium neuro-dissector—the only three such instruments in existence. The camera panned slowly upward. Revealing a face calm to the point of austerity. And eyes—washed clean with alcohol, yet forever stained with blood.

In the late-night showdown at "Tranquility Restaurant," light sliced like knives, tearing through the silence. Jasper, the rising star chef, said nothing. With a gentle push of his fingertips against the fish's belly, he removed every bone from the East China Sea silver perch—without breaking the skin. The tail still quivered faintly, as if swimming in the deep sea. The room erupted. Old-school master Zev sneered, “Just flashy tricks. Cooking isn’t illusion.” But before the words faded, surveillance footage suddenly played on the main screen—three years ago, Zev had used his so-called “inner energy infusion” to manipulate taste illusions, secretly influencing judges and stealing the Golden Spoon that rightfully belonged to another. The evidence was undeniable. Shock rippled through the crowd. Zev leapt to his feet, eyes bloodshot. “Who do you think you are? You dare ruin my life?” He lunged at Jasper, palm blazing with fury. Yet Jasper closed his eyes—left hand drawing a circle, right hand striking like lightning. He unleashed the long-lost **Dance of the Beast, Bone-Stripping Technique**. One blade, one cut—silent, seamless. Zev froze. His knife clattered to the floor. He looked down. Five crimson lines bloomed across his apron, perfectly aligned with the projected positions of the five vital organs. The outcome was clear. Then, a dark figure stepped in through the rain. Hair white as snow, left sleeve hanging empty. Master Chef had arrived. His gaze settled on Jasper, soft but profound: “The final disciple I’ve waited twenty years for… has finally made this blade speak again.” Silence swallowed the room. Only the crackle of stove flames remained, illuminating the young man once mocked as “all show, no soul.” He turned, removed his chef’s hat—and revealed an old lotus-shaped scar on the back of his neck. The **“Crimson Flame Brand.”** A mark known only to Master Chef’s lineage. He hadn’t come to challenge the rules from the start. He had come to **burn the old throne to ashes.**