The crowd froze, a hundred faces locked in horror. Blood pooled across the stones, dark and spreading, the metallic stink thick enough to taste.The big mercenary’s halves lay there like discarded meat—upper body face-down in its own mess, lower half still twitching. No one breathed. No one dared move.Then the screaming started.A woman dropped to her knees, hands clamped over her mouth. Merchants who had swaggered forward moments earlier stumbled backward, shoulders bumping, eyes wide with animal fear.The bamboo rod in Alex’s hand looked almost harmless again—slender, innocent wood—but every soul in the courtyard now knew better.Alex lowered it slowly, voice calm as morning mist. “One hit. That’s all it took. Anyone else want to test the other nine?”Silence crashed down harder than the roar of protest ever had.A thin merchant near the front—silk robes trembling—dropped his debt paper like it burned his fingers. “I… I’ll take the band-aid,” he stammered. “Please. That thing. It d

The next day, the great hall of the Bai Mansion felt too quiet.Alex lounged in the high-backed chair at the head of the room, one leg crossed over the other, fingers drumming lazily on the carved armrest. Sunlight poured through the open doors and painted long golden stripes across the polished floor.He had ordered the servants to leave the heavy wooden gates wide open. Let them come. He wanted to watch every greedy face twist when they handed back twice the gold they had stolen yesterday. A simple lesson: you don’t con the City Lord and walk away smiling.Zhuge Liang stood at his right shoulder.Hours crawled by. No line of merchants appeared. No clink of returning coins.Instead, a low rumble rolled up the street—hundreds of boots, mixed with the sharper ring of steel. Then the shouting started.“Lord Bai must answer for his tyranny!”“Open the gates! The people demand justice!”Alex’s eyebrow lifted. He rose slowly and stepped onto the wide balcony overlooking the courtyard. Belo

High above the misty peaks of Wudang Mountain, the sky filled with streaks of white. Hundreds of disciples rose on their flying swords, blades humming beneath their feet like living things.Lu Piao flew at the front of one tight formation, his plain robes whipping in the wind, jaw set like iron. For years he had swallowed his rage. Now it burned clean and bright.A younger disciple pulled alongside him. “Brother Lu Piao, you are joining the fight against the Yin Yang Sect?”Lu Piao’s face darkened, the old scar along his cheek pulling tight. “Joining? I’ve been waiting for this day since they beat me bloody in that back alley many years ago. Counted every insult, every stolen pill, every junior they cut down just to prove they could. Today I collect.”“Same here,” another called from his left, a woman with a fierce scar across her brow. “They slapped me in the middle of the street in Qingshui, laughed while the crowd watched. Said Wudang dogs didn’t deserve to walk the same ground. Th

When night came, Alex dragged Zhuge Liang over for dinner.He was deep in thought.If he meant to keep the promise he had made—five years to drag Wudang from the shadows and plant its banner at the very top of the Jianghu—he would need more disciplined blades. He would need an army. Real soldiers.People who would bleed and die for Wudang without hesitation, without question.Slaves were the fastest way. Once taken, they could not protest. Even if they protested, they would die. They had no human rights. They were a deadly machine in the making.In the Jianghu, the strong ruled. Defeat them, and the laws of heaven and earth itself bound them as slaves to the victor. No contracts. No oaths. Just raw, unbreakable submission.Every enemy they crushed became another sword in Wudang’s hand. Every rival lured here and broken became another brick in the foundation he was building.He needed more enemies.A great deal more.Last time, he had moved all the prisoners from Qingshui City to the W

High above on the roof of Bai Mansion, Alex watched the scene unfold through Mother Ai’s eyes. The blue interface tallied each new infraction in real time—two hundred and fourteen already, and the sun had barely cleared the eastern hills. A thin smile touched his lips. “Record everything,” he said softly. Mother Ai’s voice answered inside his head, calm and precise. “All visual and audio evidence logged, City Lord. The swarm is ready.” In the shadowed storage rooms beneath the mansion, thousands of sleek black drones stirred to life once more, silent as death itself. They rose on whisper-quiet wings and slipped out into the bright morning air, invisible against the sky. Down in the streets the bandits laughed louder now, drunk on easy fortune. Black Wolf slung a heavy sack of silver over his shoulder and grinned at the sky. “Boys,&r