The secret passage leading out of the mine's depths was suffocatingly narrow. The walls were a skeletal mess of rusted pipes that hissed and groaned under the pressure of high-temperature steam. Gu Hanzhou moved through the labyrinthine ductwork like a phantom, his movements even more fluid than before. Every muscle in his body seemed to have recalibrated, melting into the shadows as if he were part of the darkness itself.
The fusion with the remnant blood of the Ancient Court had elevated his senses to a terrifying degree. He could now hear the world in layers. Several floors above him, he could distinguish the heavy, rhythmic grinding of industrial gears, the clicking of solenoid valves, and the idle, disorganized chatter of patrolling guards.
Minutes later, he came to a halt behind a layer of dust-caked ventilation grilles.
Beyond the grate lay Armory No. 3, one of the Night Order Legion's secondary supply depots in the Furnace District.
While not a core manufacturing plant, this facility housed the standard-issue gear for the lower-sector garrison. Gu Hanzhou's gaze swept past the rows of bulky alloy power-armor. To him, those suits were nothing more than iron coffins—heavy, loud, and restrictive. They would turn him into a glaring target, and his survival depended on the exact opposite: speed and invisibility.
With practiced silence, he unscrewed the grille and dropped into the room, landing as softly as a shadow touching the floor.
The armory smelled of ozone and heavy machine oil. Long racks of rifles and armored lockers stood in disciplined rows under the flickering hum of fluorescent lights. Gu Hanzhou's objective was specific. He needed a scabbard capable of containing [Black Order], and a set of lightweight protection that wouldn't hinder his agility.
After gorging itself on blood, the blade of [Black Order] radiated a murderous intent so sharp it almost hummed. Without a proper vessel to seal it, its aura would act like a lighthouse in the dark, constantly alerting powerful sensors and high-tier Order users to his presence.
He drifted through the aisles, his fingers grazing over expensive, cold steel.
Suddenly, his hand paused over an old, blackened wooden box tucked away in a corner. It was buried under a pile of discarded mechanical parts and rusted scrap, forgotten by time and covered in a thick shroud of grey dust. Inside his chest, his dark-gold blood gave a distinct, rhythmic throb. It was a resonance—the blade was calling out for the box.
He wiped away the grime, revealing an intricate, ancient locking mechanism etched with "Seal-Wards," a form of containment sorcery that had long since been declared obsolete by the modern Legion.
"Open," Gu Hanzhou whispered.
He pressed his right palm against the lid, funneling a thread of his Order Blood into the mechanism.
Click. Clack-clack-clack.
A series of internal tumblers shifted and groaned. The lid slid back with a slow, heavy hiss, revealing a long, jet-black scabbard.
The material was neither metal nor wood; it possessed a strange, lukewarm texture, smooth as polished bone. There were no ornate decorations, only several vein-like grooves running along its length that pulsed with a quiet, solemn gravity—the exact same energy signature as [Black Order].
Gu Hanzhou reversed his grip and slid the Tang Dao into the sheath.
SHIIIIING—!
The sound of the blade finding its home was like a dragon's low growl, clear and echoing. In an instant, the restless, murderous aura of the sword vanished. The weapon became unremarkable, appearing as nothing more than a common, perhaps even weathered, long-sword.
"Masterpiece," Gu Hanzhou murmured.
He could feel the scabbard not only masking the blade's edge but also slowly nourishing the steel, refining the chaotic energies the sword had devoured from the Shadow-Crawlers and the Adjudicators.
With the weapon secured, he turned his attention to a rack in the center of the room. He pulled out a set of black inner-armor. It was a specialized "Soft-Suit" woven from Shadow-Silk and Star-Fragment Iron, usually reserved for elite inquisitorial scouts. It was impossibly light, incredibly tough, and possessed a high resistance to Order-based energy attacks.
Without a word, Gu Hanzhou stripped off his tattered, blood-stained rags and donned the suit. The cool, sleek material clung to his skin like a second layer of muscle, providing him with a sense of security he had never known in the mines.
Just as he prepared to vanish back into the vents, the electronic lock on the armory's main blast-door hissed open.
"Move it! Lord Lin issued the order—now that the lower levels are 'sanitized,' we need to dispatch a thousand rounds of Order-Piercing ammunition to the Upper District immediately."
A group of logistics soldiers pushed heavy hover-carts into the room.
Gu Hanzhou's gaze turned cold. He didn't want to trigger a base-wide alarm yet; his energy reserves were still recovering from the back-to-back evolution and combat.
Like a gecko, he kicked off a shelf and lunged upward, his fingers locking onto a heavy overhead crane rail. He tucked his body into the deep shadows of the ceiling's mechanical architecture, holding his breath until his heart rate slowed to a near-stop.
The soldiers worked frantically below, oblivious to the predator watching them from the dark.
"Hey, did you hear?" one soldier whispered, leaning against a crate. "There was a rumor about the detonation down in the Rift."
"What rumor?" his companion asked, checking a manifest.
"Four guys from the sweep-squad didn't come back. Lord Lin's face was like thunder when he returned. Word is the Inquisition is locking down every exit in the Furnace District. They're hunting a 'High-Value' fugitive."
"A fugitive? You mean that slave? No way he survived ten tons of high-explosives..."
Gu Hanzhou listened from his perch, his eyes narrowing.
Lin Xiu was no fool. The officer had realized the discrepancy. However, this lockdown was as much an opportunity as it was a threat.
He waited for the soldiers to push the heavy carts out of the room. As soon as the door began to hiss shut, he dropped silently from the crane. He didn't just leave with the scabbard and the armor; he reached out and snatched a silver officer's badge from a nearby desk—one of the soldiers had left it there during the shift change. It was engraved with the "Garrison Order" insignia.
With this badge, he wouldn't just be a ghost; he could walk through the checkpoints as a messenger.
Before leaving, Gu Hanzhou caught his reflection in a large, cracked mirror at the back of the armory.
The reflection was no longer that of a starving mine-slave. The boy in the mirror wore sleek, black tactical armor, a primitive but majestic black-sheathed Tang Dao hung at his waist, and his eyes... the innocence was gone, replaced by a depth as cold and dark as an abyssal pool.
He was no longer a piece of fuel hiding in the cracks.
He was a hunter walking the razor's edge of their own laws.
Gu Hanzhou pushed open a side service door, his silhouette melting back into the streets where soot and night intertwined. The darkness of the Iron City was still vast and oppressive, but to him, it was no longer a cage.
It was his hunting ground.