The moon was a sliver of bone in the starless sky, offering little light to the rugged, pine-choked mountains miles outside Fuzhou's urban sprawl. Here, far from the prying eyes of the Hunter's Association, the Iron Fist Clan was conducting its clandestine harvest. Their leader, Bao, a thick-necked man whose face was a roadmap of old scars, barked orders as his hunters dragged shimmering, crystalline ores from the mouth of a cave. The air crackled with the raw, untamed energy of the C-Rank Gate hidden within.
"Faster!" Bao growled, his voice echoing in the quiet night. "The Association's patrol drones swing this way in two hours. I want this place stripped clean by then."
His men worked with a greedy haste, their movements sloppy and inefficient. They were thugs and brawlers, not a disciplined unit, held together by fear of their leader and the promise of a massive, untaxed payday. They were completely unaware that they were being watched.
Half a click away, perched on a rocky outcrop shrouded in shadow, the four members of Aegis observed the operation. They were invisible, their heat signatures masked by custom cloaks designed by Sun An, their positions chosen by Mei Ling's flawless analysis of the terrain.
'They have thirty members on-site,' Mei Ling's voice echoed in their minds, a calm, precise stream of data. 'Twenty are hauling ore. Ten, including their leader Bao, are inside the Gate, engaging the boss. Their comms are on a closed, encrypted channel, but the encryption is amateurish. I'm listening to their panicked chatter as we speak.'
"What's the status inside?" Wei Heng asked, his voice a low murmur that was swallowed by the wind.
'The boss is a 'Crystal-Shelled Behemoth.' Slow, powerful, high physical defense. The Iron Fist team is trying to brute-force it down. They're taking heavy losses. Three are critically injured, and the rest are nearing exhaustion. They've dealt about eighty percent of the necessary damage.'
Wei Heng looked at his team. Gao Qiang stood like a statue, his breathing deep and even. Chen Ling was a study in controlled energy, her eyes fixed on the cave entrance, her hands flexing and un-flexing. Sun An was checking the readouts on a wrist-mounted device, monitoring their own vitals.
"They have done the hard work for us," Wei Heng stated, a cold, predatory gleam in his eyes. "They have tilled the fields and sown the seeds. Now, we will reap the harvest."
He laid out the plan with swift, brutal simplicity. It was not a battle. It was a seizure.
"Oracle, jam their communications the moment the boss falls. No calls for backup," he commanded mentally.
'Done.'
"Lifeweaver, prepare non-lethal incapacitating agents. Flash-bangs and fast-acting sedatives. Your targets are the twenty guards outside."
Sun An nodded, pulling several sleek, metallic canisters from his pack. "They will be neutralized in seconds."
"Titan, Valkyrie. You are with me. We enter the moment the boss is dead. Titan, you will secure the entrance. Nothing gets in or out. Valkyrie, you will secure the target."
"The target?" Chen Ling asked, her voice a low growl.
"Bao," Wei Heng said, his gaze locking onto hers. "Isolate him. Incapacitate him. One strike. Show them the difference between a brawler and a weapon."
They waited. The minutes stretched into an eternity. They could hear the distant, muffled roars of the Behemoth and the panicked shouts of the Iron Fist hunters. Finally, a triumphant, exhausted cheer echoed from the cave, followed moments later by a deafening roar as the massive creature fell.
'The boss is down. Jamming their comms now,' Mei Ling reported.
"Go," Wei Heng commanded.
They moved as one. Sun An peeled off, circling around the perimeter with the silence of a ghost. Gao Qiang and Chen Ling flanked Wei Heng, their footsteps making no sound on the rocky ground as they descended toward the cave.
The twenty guards outside were celebrating, their guard completely down. Suddenly, three canisters arced through the air, landing perfectly in their midst. There was a blinding flash of white light and a hiss of rapidly expanding gas. The celebrating hunters choked, their eyes wide with surprise, before slumping to the ground, unconscious. The entire perimeter was neutralized in less than five seconds.
Wei Heng's team didn't slow. They entered the cave, a wave of heat and the coppery smell of blood washing over them. The interior was a massive cavern, its walls glittering with the same valuable crystals the hunters had been mining. In the center lay the corpse of the Crystal-Shelled Behemoth, a creature the size of a bus, its crystalline hide shattered in a dozen places. Around it, ten exhausted and wounded Iron Fist hunters were panting, leaning on their weapons. Their leader, Bao, had his foot planted triumphantly on the creature's head, a greedy smile on his face.
"Look at the size of that core!" he bellowed. "We're going to be rich!"
"I'm afraid there's been a change in management," a calm voice said from the entrance.
Bao and his men spun around. Standing there, silhouetted against the moonlight, were three figures. A massive man who blocked the entire exit, a lithe, dangerous-looking girl, and a teenager in a simple combat suit.
"Who the hell are you?" Bao snarled, raising his blood-stained axe. "Aegis?"
"You've been poaching on territory that is now under our protection," Wei Heng said, stepping forward into the cavern's dim light. "And you have been operating outside the Association's laws. We are here to collect a toll."
Bao threw his head back and laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "A toll? You and what army, kid? There are ten of us, and you're just three brats!"
"You have ten wounded, exhausted men," Wei Heng corrected, his voice dropping, becoming as cold as the grave. "We have a Titan and a Valkyrie. The calculation is not in your favor."
Enraged, Bao charged. "Kill them!"
His men, running on fumes and fury, surged forward.
"Titan," Wei Heng said calmly.
Gao Qiang took a single, heavy step forward and slammed his foot into the ground. BOOM! A shockwave of earthy Qi erupted from him, and a solid wall of rock, five feet high, shot up from the cavern floor, physically blocking the charge of Bao's men. They crashed into it with grunts of pain and surprise.
The move was so unexpected, so powerful, that it left a single, clear path between Wei Heng and the stunned Iron Fist leader.
"Valkyrie," Wei Heng said, his voice a whisper.
Chen Ling was already moving. She wasn't a brawler charging into a fray. She was an arrow fired from a bow. She covered the distance in a heartbeat, her form a blur. Bao, a seasoned C-Rank hunter, barely had time to raise his axe in a clumsy block.
Her fist, glowing with the crimson light of focused rage, did not strike the axe. She struck the man. Her blow was a single, precise impact to his solar plexus. All the explosive power of the 'Asura's Heart Sutra' was concentrated into that one point.
Bao's eyes bulged. The air was driven from his lungs in a silent scream. His armor cracked. He didn't fly backward; he simply crumpled, his nervous system overloaded, his body folding around the point of impact like a piece of paper. He hit the ground, unconscious before he even knew what had happened.
The remaining Iron Fist hunters stared in horror, frozen behind the rock wall. Their invincible leader had been taken down in a single, silent blow by a girl half his size. The fight was over before it had even begun.
Wei Heng walked calmly past the groaning form of Bao and placed a hand on the massive, glowing core of the dead Behemoth. "This, and all the ore you have so generously mined for us, will be Aegis's toll."
He turned to the terrified hunters. "Tell your master what happened here tonight. Tell him that Aegis is watching. The shadows of Fuzhou belong to us now. Any guild that operates outside the law will answer to me."
He and his team worked with swift efficiency, gathering the valuable core and loading the mined ore into their van, leaving the unconscious guards and the humiliated, defeated hunters in the cavern.
As they drove away, leaving the Iron Fist Clan to lick its wounds, Wei Heng knew the message had been sent. They were not just a guild of prodigies. They were a force of order, a power that would enforce its own rules. The game had changed. He was no longer just a player moving pieces.
He was the one setting the board.