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## **Chapter One: The Ice in the Room**
The city of **Xintai** never slept—it watched.
Neon rain smeared the glass of the top-floor office, the skyline a jagged pulse of light behind it. Below, sirens cried like wounded ghosts, muffled by the height. Inside the room, time held its breath.
A man screamed.
Bai Lu didn't blink.
She sat at the long obsidian table, a vision in white—white coat, white blouse, white heels. Immaculate. Unmoved. Her skin, pale as marble. Her eyes, two black mirrors that reflected nothing back.
The man across from her thrashed, cuffed to a chair bolted to the floor. His face was bleeding. She hadn't touched him.
She hadn't needed to.
"You lied," she said softly. Her voice was low and smooth, like snow falling over a grave.
"I-I didn't—!" he stammered. His aura flared—a flicker of greenish shimmer around his trembling form. He was Awakened. Low-tier, but still one of the Veiled.
Bai Lu's gaze flickered to the aura. "You tried to mask your core. Badly." She stood slowly. Her heels didn't make a sound on the black tile. "That's insulting."
"You don't know who I work for!" he snarled, reaching for arrogance like a drowning man reaching for air.
"I do." She tilted her head. "And they're already dead."
Silence.
Then a *snap*—not from her fingers, but from something deeper. The man's aura cracked. His scream was brief this time.
With a wave of her hand, she dismissed his consciousness. Not with force. With precision. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped in the chair, breathing but silent.
Bai Lu turned to the mirrored wall. "You can come in now."
The wall shimmered. From it stepped a man in a gray suit, middle-aged, sweating. *Normal.* His hands were shaking.
"I thought…" he swallowed. "You were just a consultant."
"I am," Bai Lu said. "But you didn't call me here for advice."
He hesitated. "What are you?"
She looked at him. Really looked. The air chilled.
"I'm what they send," she said, "when the monsters begin to whisper."
She walked past him, the door sliding open silently. Her phone buzzed once. She glanced at the screen.
A new name. A new problem. A new shadow to hunt.
Outside, the rain hit harder, but none touched her.
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