Aragon's face twisted into a mask of uneasy confusion. "N-nothing," he stammered, his eyes darting away. "I just didn't expect Song Jiongyang to arrive so quickly. He moved faster than I anticipated."
Xiao Ke offered a faint, inscrutable smile. He lifted his glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light, and took a delicate sip. He set the glass down with a soft clink that seemed to echo too loudly in the tense room.
"Tell me, Mayor," Xiao Ke asked, his voice deceptively light. "How long have you been running this town?"
Aragon blinked, thrown off balance by the casual nature of the inquiry amidst the impending crisis. "Six years," he answered instinctively. "Maybe seven."
Xiao Ke nodded slowly, as if digesting a piece of trivia. "Six or seven years. And for that entire time, Song Jiongyang's 'Guns N' Roses' faction has been entrenched here as well. Mathematically speaking, you've been coexisting with Song for a long time. I imagine your relationship is quite… intimate."
The color drained from Aragon's face. The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, the air growing heavy with unspoken threats. He looked at Xiao Ke, then at the towering figures of Duan Canglong and Luo Hou, and finally at the ring of twenty grim-faced personal guards encircling the table.
"My Lord," Aragon said, his voice trembling with carefully curated caution. "I have had dealings with Song, yes. He is the de facto ruler of this region. I am merely a figurehead Mayor. To survive, I often have to smile when he laughs and bow when he passes."
"Is that so?" Xiao Ke's smile didn't reach his eyes. "So, was it for survival that you sold us out? Was it survival that made you play the gracious host, pushing wine on my men to dull their senses, all while you signaled Song to come and slaughter us?"
Aragon shot to his feet, knocking his chair back. "I didn't—"
He never finished the denial.
Duan Canglong moved with the speed of a striking viper. He lunged across the space, his fist connecting with the center of Aragon's face with a sickening wet crunch. Bang.
Aragon was sent reeling, blood instantly masking his features. Before he could hit the floor, Duan Canglong had him by the lapels, hauling him close. "You son of a bitch," Duan growled, his voice a low rumble of thunder. "You still want to lie? Do you take us for idiots? Give me one reason not to put a bullet in your skull right now."
Duan was a Level 5 Battle General, a powerhouse of raw kinetic energy. Aragon theoretically held the same rank, but the context of the fight matters. Surrounded by Xiao Ke, the terrifying Luo Hou, and two dozen elite soldiers, Aragon's will to fight evaporated. He was a cornered rat, not a warrior.
Blood dripped from Aragon's nose onto his tunic. As Duan shook him, Aragon's hands clenched into fists at his sides—a reflex of rage—but he forced them open immediately. Deep in his eyes, buried beneath the fear, a spark of pure, venomous hatred flickered.
Just you wait, Aragon thought, the internal monologue screaming against his panic. Wait until Boss Song wipes out you Imperial dogs. I'll chop you into meat for the stray dogs myself. And Xiao Ke... I'll make sure you die screaming. Just endure. Endure it a little longer.
Xiao Ke watched the display with detached calm. He stood up, smoothing the creases of his uniform, and waved a hand. "Stand down, Duan."
Duan Canglong released his grip, shoving Aragon backward. Xiao Ke stepped into the space, looking down at the bloody, trembling mayor.
"I have a distaste for liars," Xiao Ke said softly. "Lying implies you think I'm stupid enough to believe you. It's insulting. I will ask you one last time: Did you betray us?"
Aragon's eyes darted around the room like a trapped animal looking for a vent. Then, he collapsed. He hit his knees with a heavy thud, transforming instantly from a dignified official into a weeping wretch. He knew the game of the Lawless Lands: be a lion when you can, be a hyena when you must.
"Lord Xiao!" he wailed, clutching at the air. "I had no choice! I was forced! I have elderly parents, young children—my whole family lives in this town. You killed Song's men today. If I didn't give him something, he would have skinned my family alive! Please, look at my gray hair, think of my children! Spare this worthless life!"
"Sigh."
The sound escaped Xiao Ke's lips, heavy with apparent exhaustion and empathy.
Aragon's heart leaped. He bought it. The soft-hearted fool bought it.
What Aragon didn't know was that Xiao Ke was not merely eating dinner for the last two hours. His intelligence network had been active. While they drank wine, Xiao Ke's scouts had dismantled Aragon's entire history.
Aragon wasn't a family man. He was a former bandit of the wastes, a man who had built his career on robbery and murder before latching onto Song Jiongyang's boot. He had no parents here. No weeping children. His only "family" was a mistress who ran the local tavern. The "elderly and young" plea was nothing more than a script designed to exploit the perceived morality of an Imperial officer.
Xiao Ke looked down at him, feigning conflict. "To be honest, Song is coming with overwhelming force. I don't know if we can win tonight. Even if you hadn't sold us out, he would have come for revenge eventually. Killing you now... it doesn't change the tactical equation."
He paused, letting the hope bloom in Aragon's chest. "I'll let you go. Consider it an act of mercy. But listen closely: if I fall to Song Jiongyang tonight, I hope you'll remember this mercy and maybe plead for a quick death for my men."
Aragon slammed his forehead against the floorboards, again and again. "Thank you, My Lord! Thank you for your grace!"
Xiao Ke turned his back on the groveling man. "Let's go," he signaled to his officers. "The enemy is at the gates. It's time to work."
"Yes, Sir!"
The group moved toward the exit, boots thudding in unison.
Behind them, Aragon stopped kowtowing. He slowly lifted his head. The pathetic mask dissolved, replaced by a rictus of pure malice. He stared at Xiao Ke's retreating, his lips peeling back from his teeth.
Heh. Mercy? You naive fool. If you win, fine. But if you lose? I won't plead for you. I'll ask Song to let me flay the skin from your bones. You dare hit me? You dare threaten me? You're dead.
The sheer intensity of his hatred was almost palpable. Aragon was so lost in his revenge fantasy, dissecting Xiao Ke with his eyes, that he didn't notice the rhythm of the footsteps change.
Xiao Ke stopped.
He didn't pause; he simply ceased moving. Then, he spun around.
The turn was sharp, military, precise. Xiao Ke's eyes locked directly onto Aragon's face. There was no time for Aragon to hide the snarl, no time to replace the mask. He was caught, his soul laid bare in all its ugliness.
"Lord Xiao..." Aragon choked out, the blood draining from his face.
The name was still hanging in the air when metal sang.
Shing.
Xiao Ke's movement was a blur, a seamless transition from stillness to violence. He drew "Mengjiang"—his Fierce General warblade. The steel flashed, a cold arc of light that moved faster than thought, cutting through the air like a white stallion leaping a ravine.
Aragon didn't flinch. He couldn't. The neural impulses to dodge hadn't even reached his muscles before the cold bite of steel registered in his throat.
It was a clean cut. Effortless.
Aragon brought both hands to his neck, a futile attempt to hold his life inside his body. Blood erupted through his fingers in a dark, arterial spray. His eyes bulged, filled with shock and the terrifying realization of his own stupidity. He fell backward, hitting the floor with a wet thud, staring up at the ceiling with dead, unblinking eyes.
Xiao Ke flicked the blade to clear the blood and sheathed it in one smooth, reverse-grip motion. The click of the guard hitting the scabbard was final.
He looked down at the corpse, his expression bored.
"I changed my mind."
Without another glance, he turned and walked out into the night. Duan Canglong and the others followed, stepping over the body without breaking stride.
Outside, the desert night was about to ignite.
Five hundred meters away, a convoy of armed off-road vehicles tore across the scrubland. Song Jiongyang sat in the lead vehicle, his confidence soaring.
He was operating on Aragon's intelligence: One thousand men. A weak commander. Drunk soldiers.
It sounded like a butcher's dream. Song had brought two thousand hardened fighters, heavy weaponry, and his own formidable presence as a Level 9 Valiant General. In his mind, this wasn't a battle; it was a cleanup operation. He would crush this Imperial "Steel Wheel" unit and remind everyone in the Lawless Lands who the apex predator was.
He signaled his driver to cut the lights. Stealth, Aragon had suggested. Catch them with their pants down.
But arrogance is a blinding thing.
Song Jiongyang didn't see the shadows shifting in the distance. He didn't see that the darkness five hundred meters ahead wasn't empty.
There, concealed behind dunes and wreckage, dozens of Steel Wheel combat vehicles sat in silence, their engines idling low. They were arranged like a pack of wolves lying in wait. On the roofs, heavy machine guns were leveled, cold iron barrels staring into the approaching void. Behind walls, in alleyways, and atop ruins, hundreds of soldiers in dark steel armor waited, fingers hovering over triggers.
Qin Bing stood at the command post. She was the tactical heart of the operation, her experience vastly outstripping Xiao Ke's in large-scale warfare. She watched the thermal signatures closing in.
Six hundred meters. Five hundred.
"Fire," she whispered into her comms.
The night vanished.
The darkness was instantly shredded by hundreds of muzzle flashes. The tracer rounds wove a tapestry of death, a blinding net of fire that slammed into Song Jiongyang's vanguard with the force of a tidal wave.
The lead vehicles never stood a chance. They disintegrated under the hail of high-caliber rounds, exploding into fireballs that lit up the desert floor.
Song Jiongyang's vehicle was at the tip of the spear. The windshield shattered, and metal screamed as it was torn apart.
But Song was a Level 9 Valiant General. He was more than flesh and blood.
In the split second before impact, the nine Martial Vein nodes within his body flared to life. They erupted like dormant volcanoes, pumping a torrent of Origin Power through his system. A visible distortion, a shimmering energy shield, snapped into existence around him.
Bullets hammered against him. Ping. Ping. Ping. They struck the energy barrier and flattened, rippling the air like stones thrown into a pond, but they could not touch his skin.
His car, however, had no such protection.
The fuel tank ruptured. A spark found the vapor.
BOOM.
The vehicle dissolved in a catastrophic explosion. Song Jiongyang was hurled through the air, a ball of kinetic energy and rage, tumbling across the rocky ground. He skidded to a halt, covered in soot but physically unharmed.
"Boss! Are you hit?!"
His guards scrambled toward him, firing blindly into the dark as they tried to help him up.
Song shoved them away with a roar. He scrambled to his feet, eyes wild, taking in the scene. His vanguard was burning scrap metal. His men were bailing out of the heavy trucks in the rear, disorganized and panicked.
"Aragon!" Song screamed, his voice cracking with fury. "That double-crossing bastard! Did he set us up? Or did he walk right into a trap himself?"
His lieutenants gathered around him, crouching behind debris. "They were waiting for us, Boss," a bearded captain shouted over the gunfire. "This is a kill box! What do we do?"
Song's eyes burned with the reflection of the burning jeeps. Retreat would mean losing face. In the Lawless Lands, losing face was a death sentence.
"We kill them!" Song bellowed. "Screw the ambush! We have the numbers! We have the power! Push forward! Frontal assault! I want every Imperial dog dead by sunrise, or we lose this territory forever!"
The order went out. The Guns N' Roses fighters, realizing there was no way back, surged forward with the desperation of cornered animals. The night erupted into total chaotic warfare.
High above the battlefield, perched on the skeletal remains of a ruined clock tower, a figure sat in silence.
He was wrapped in a black cloak that seemed to absorb the ambient light. His eyes were dead, devoid of emotion, like those of a deep-sea fish. This was Shadow, the assassin sent by Qiao Zhennan.
He had walked here. No vehicle, no support. Just legs and patience.
He sat cross-legged, a high-powered sniper rifle on one side, a serrated combat knife on the other. Calmly, methodically, he squeezed a tube of nutrient paste into his mouth, chewing slowly. Below him, men screamed and burned. He watched it like one watches a television program with the volume down.
He was waiting for one face.
Suddenly, the flow of battle changed. From the Steel Wheel camp, a wedge of figures broke cover. They didn't seek shelter; they sprinted directly into the teeth of the enemy fire.
Shadow stopped chewing.
These weren't grunts. They moved with the terrifying speed and grace of Valiant Generals.
To the shock of the attackers, the Steel Wheel unit wasn't just standard infantry. Ye Yun's personal guard—an elite unit gifted by one of the most powerful families in the Empire—had joined the fray. Twenty Valiant Generals, flanked by nearly a hundred high-level Battle Generals, crashed into the enemy line like a sledgehammer.
Leading them were Xiao Ke, Qin Bing, and the fierce noblewomen, Ling Feng and Ye Yun.
Xiao Ke was brave, but he wasn't bulletproof yet. He lacked the energy shielding of the higher tiers. But he didn't need it. Ye Yun and Qin Bing flanked him, their own energy fields expanding to create a shimmering corridor of safety for him.
They hit the Guns N' Roses lines. It was a massacre.
Qin Bing's lightsaber hummed, a blur of neon death. Enemy soldiers raised their rifles, eyes wide with terror, but they were too slow. The blades sheared through gun barrels, armor, and bone alike.
Seeing the elite vanguard shatter the enemy morale, Duan Canglong and Luo Hou roared a war cry, leading the main infantry force in a crushing wave behind them.
In the chaos, a massive figure loomed out of the smoke in front of Xiao Ke.
He was a Level 6 Battle General, a giant of a man with a heavy alloy warblade. He saw Xiao Ke's rank insignia and sneered. "Well, well. A Commander? And only a Level 5 weakling?" He laughed, a guttural, wet sound. "Jackpot. Die for me!"
The giant swung. His blade cleaved the air, aiming to split Xiao Ke from shoulder to hip.
Xiao Ke didn't dodge. He stepped into the swing.
He raised "Mengjiang."
It wasn't a fast strike. It looked almost heavy, like a mountain collapsing. But the kinetic force behind it was impossible. The air shrieked as the blade descended, a sound like a tearing canvas.
The giant felt a flicker of doubt, but it was too late. Momentum was committed.
The blades met.
There was no clang of metal. There was a snap.
The giant's alloy blade shattered like glass. Xiao Ke's weapon didn't even slow down. It punched through the shrapnel and bit into the giant's neck.
The man's head spun into the air, his face frozen in a final expression of confused horror. How? His dying brain fired. How is he this strong?
Xiao Ke didn't watch the body fall. He kicked the headless corpse aside and scanned for the next target.
High above, on the dark rooftop, Shadow set down his food paste.
He picked up the sniper rifle. He settled the stock against his shoulder, slowed his breathing, and looked through the scope.
The crosshairs drifted over the burning battlefield, moving past the screaming soldiers, until they settled firmly on the center of Xiao Ke's forehead.