[LOCATION: NETHER-CORE TOWER—STREET LEVEL] [TIME: 05:00 AM]
They arrived in silence.
No sirens. No flashing lights. Just three matte-black armored SUVs tearing down the smog-choked street of Sector 9 like sharks in dirty water.
They screech-halted in front of the Nether-Core Tower.
Twelve doors popped open. Twelve figures stepped out.
They wore tactical alchemy gear—heavy combat plates etched with suppression runes, gas masks that filtered out spiritual toxins, and short-barreled shotguns loaded with soul-shredding salt rounds.
Unit 7. The Alchemist Consortium's "Janitorial Staff." They didn't arrest people. They scrubbed them.
Captain Chen checked his watch. He was a slab of muscle and scar tissue, bored by the familiarity of violence.
"Target is a restructuring holdout," Chen said, his voice amplified by his mask. "Standard breach. Secure the liquid assets. Burn the biologicals."
"Intel says the building has new management," one of his lieutenants noted, racking a shotgun slide.
Chen sneered behind his mask. "Corporate trash. They always think a new title makes them a god. Breach in 3... 2... 1."
The front doors exploded inward.
[LOCATION: EXECUTIVE BOARDROOM—50TH FLOOR]
Fifty floors up, the explosion was just a dull thump.
Ren Wu didn't flinch. He was pouring tea.
"Jasmine?" he offered.
Han, the newly promoted branch manager, was hyperventilating in the corner. He was clutching his tablet so hard the screen was cracking.
"Sir! That's Unit 7! They liquidated the Iron Fist Sect last month! They don't take prisoners—they take inventory!"
Ren took a sip. "Captain Chen is punctual. I appreciate that in a vendor."
"Vendor?! They're here to kill us!"
"They're here to test the renovations."
Ren tapped the boardroom table. A holographic schematic of the Tower flickered into existence above the wood. Red dots were moving into the lobby.
Ren looked at the display like a Dungeon Master inspecting a board.
"Han, take notes. This is a stress test for the new security protocols."
Ren placed a finger on the Lobby Zone. He didn't type a command. He didn't cast a spell. He issued a decree.
[KING'S DOMAIN: SEALED] [AUTHORITY: ENFORCED]
[LOCATION: THE LOBBY]
Smoke from the breach charges cleared.
Captain Chen swept the room with his shotgun. "Clear left! Clear right!"
The lobby was empty. Reception desk, bare. The only things in the room were two massive statues near the elevators—Spirit-Iron Golems, standing motionless.
"Bypass the statues," Chen ordered. "Elevators. Move."
The squad didn't hesitate. They ignored the golems. Why wouldn't they? Golems were slow, dumb brute-force guardians. Easy to dodge.
As the point man ran past the left Golem, the statue didn't smash. It snapped.
The Golem moved with the speed of a striking cobra. It didn't swing a clumsy haymaker; it executed a perfect Eight-Trigram Palm strike.
CRACK.
The point man's runic armor shattered like glass. He was launched backward, folding around the reception desk with a sickening crunch.
"Contact!" Chen roared, spinning around.
The second Golem stepped forward. It dropped into a low, fluid combat stance—something a machine shouldn't know.
"What the hell?" a trooper yelled. "Since when do Golems know Kung Fu?!"
"Suppression fire!"
Shotguns roared. Salt rounds sparked harmlessly against the Spirit-Iron.
The Golems danced through the fire. They moved with Ren Wu's engraved martial imprint—ruthless, efficient, perfect. They broke arms. They shattered knees. They didn't kill; they dismantled.
One elite trooper tried to flank them, sprinting for the stairwell door.
He didn't make it.
A shadow detached itself from the wall. Lingshan. She didn't even draw her full blade. A flash of silver, a gargled noise, and the trooper slumped against the wall, clutching his throat.
Lingshan flicked the blood off her knife and faded back into the dark.
"Pull back!" Chen screamed, firing a runic grenade at the Golems. "Elevators! Get to the elevators!"
The blast knocked the Golems back just enough. Chen and his four remaining elites dived into the open freight elevator.
Chen slammed the '50' button. The doors hissed shut.
"Regroup," Chen panted, checking his ammo. "We hit them at the top. Heavy ordinance."
The elevator hummed. It rose smoothly. Floor 10... Floor 20... Floor 30...
Then, lights turned red. The elevator stopped.
A voice echoed from the speaker. Calm. Aristocratic.
"I'm afraid this zone is restricted to Senior Management."
Chen glared at the camera. "Override it! Hacker, get this thing moving!"
"Allow me," the voice said.
Ren Wu didn't use a spell. He simply exerted his will. In his domain, his word was Law. And the Law said that Gravity was a variable, not a constant.
[DECREE: SUBMISSION] [GRAVITY: 10X]
WHAM.
No ramp up. Instant. Captain Chen and his elites were slammed into the floor as if a truck had been dropped on them. Armor groaned. Bones snapped. One trooper passed out immediately as blood rushed from his head.
Chen tried to push himself up. Couldn't. His own arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Pinned like an insect on a collection board.
"Going down," the voice said pleasantly.
The cable snapped.
The elevator dropped. Not a free fall—a powered descent. A missile of steel and screaming men rocketing toward the basement.
[LOCATION: THE STAIRWELL]
Three members of Unit 7—Bravo Team—had taken the stairs to flank the lobby fight.
"We're almost there," the lead trooper wheezed. They had climbed twenty flights at a dead sprint. "Breach on three."
He looked at the floor sign.
FLOOR 3.
He blinked. "What? We just passed Floor 15."
They kept running. Another ten flights. Legs burning. Lungs heaving. They checked the sign again.
FLOOR 3.
"It's a loop," the rear guard whispered, panic creeping into his voice. "Feng Shui distortion. Space is folded."
"Standard countermeasures!" the leader yelled. "Disrupt the flow!"
He raised his shotgun to blast the walls.
HISSSSS.
Vents above them opened. Not fresh air. Thick, greenish-black smog. The concentrated spiritual toxicity Ren had purged from the office vents.
[SYSTEM: WASTE DISPOSAL - ACTIVE]
"Gas! Mask up!"
They clawed for their masks. But the smog wasn't just gas; it was corruption. It ate through filters. It ate through rubber.
Last thing Bravo Team heard was the sound of their own choking, endlessly echoing in a stairwell that went nowhere.
[LOCATION: EXECUTIVE BOARDROOM]
The elevator doors at the back of the boardroom were dented, twisted, and forced open.
A hand, bloody and shaking, gripped the frame.
Captain Chen crawled out. He was a mess. Armor was scrap metal. Left leg dragged uselessly behind him. But he was Tier-C+. Too stubborn to die.
He pulled himself across the expensive carpet, leaving a trail of oil and blood.
He raised his last weapon—a heavy-caliber runic pistol—and aimed it at the man sitting at the table.
"You..." Chen wheezed, blood bubbling in his mask. "You corporate... trash."
Ren didn't look up from his tablet. He swiped a notification away.
"Your persistence is commendable, Captain. Your hygiene, less so. You're ruining the carpet."
"Die!" Chen squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Lingshan was there. She hadn't just appeared; she simply decided to exist in the space next to him. Hand on the gun barrel. Sword at Chen's throat.
Chen froze. He looked into the bodyguard's eyes and saw nothing but the void.
Ren finally looked up. "Lingshan. Wait."
Lingshan paused, the blade breaking the skin of Chen's neck.
"Don't kill him," Ren said, standing up. "Postage is expensive."
Ren walked over to the broken Captain. He loomed over him, not like a fighter, but like a mountain. Pressure in the room spiked. Not magic. Pure Authority.
Chen found himself trembling. For the first time in ten years, he wasn't looking at a target. He was looking at a predator.
Ren pulled a pristine white envelope from his jacket. He tucked it gently into the ruined chest plate of Chen's armor.
"You failed to liquidate the asset," Ren said softly. "Now, I am liquidating you."
Ren nodded to the window.
Lingshan grabbed Chen by the collar. She dragged him to the floor-to-ceiling glass.
"Wait!" Chen gargled. "We have... a contract..."
"Contract terminated," Ren said.
Lingshan threw him.
CRASH.
Captain Chen plummeted fifty stories. He screamed the whole way down. He crashed onto the roof of his own wrecked SUV, crumpling the metal, shattering the windshield.
He survived. Barely. His cultivation protected his vital organs, but every bone in his body was dust.
He lay there, staring up at the smoggy sky, gasping for air. His hand brushed the white envelope Ren had tucked into his armor.
With trembling fingers, he opened it.
A single sheet of paper.
[NETHER-CORE TOWER: INVOICE FOR DAMAGES] [ITEMIZATION: LOBBY REPAIR, ELEVATOR MAINTENANCE, CARPET CLEANING] [ADDITIONAL FEE: EMOTIONAL DISTRESS] [TOTAL: 10,000,000 SPIRIT SILVER]
[PAYMENT DUE: YESTERDAY]
Chen's vision faded to black as the sirens finally began to wail in the distance.
[NETHER-CORE TOWER: SECURED] [REPUTATION: ASCENDING] [MESSAGE SENT]