The flashing lights of the federal marshals’ cars outside the Qin estate pulsed like a slow, merciless heartbeat. Inside the grand hall, the silence Xu Fen left behind was heavier than the accusation itself. Elder Qin stood by the fireplace, the gold-embossed summons clenched in his hand. For the first time, I saw a faint tremor betray his age.“They move like cobras, Jiang Hao,” he said, his voice rough and low. “They don’t strike to wound. They strike to paralyze. Treason.” He exhaled slowly. “They’re using the very laws I helped draft to bury me.”“The law is just a tool, sir,” I replied, fingers flying across my portable terminal as I synced with Luo Bing’s remote server. “And tools can always be turned on their master. Xu Fen thinks she’s untouchable because she’s surrounded by officials, judges, and cameras. We’re not climbing that wall.” I looked up at him. “We’re rotting the foundation.”Elder Qin turned sharply. “How?” His eyes were sharp, alert. “She controls the media. The

The note from Xu Fen felt like a shard of ice in my palm. Midnight. The industrial district. The Serpent was calling me out. But the Xu Family—the political architects of my sect’s annihilation—were still flailing in the ruins of their reputation. They were wounded.And wounded predators were the most dangerous.“Luo Bing, change of plans,” I snapped into my comms as I sprinted toward the parking garage. “Forget the courthouse. The Xu Family just triggered a Scorched Earth protocol. They’re wiping their central communication hub at the North Ridge villa. If those servers go, we lose the trail to the Serpent’s labs.”“I’m already inside their internal network, Mr. Jiang,” Luo Bing replied. A high-performance engine roared behind his voice. “Remote wipe confirmed. Twelve minutes until total data annihilation. I’m three minutes from the villa.”“Don’t wait for me,” I said. “Engage. I’ll be there in five.”The Xu Family villa loomed over A-City like a throne of glass and steel, perched ar

I stood ten paces from the man who had haunted my nightmares for six years.The warehouse reeked of damp concrete and the copper tang of ancient, repressed power. Elder Wu—the Serpent of the South—looked less like a monster and more like a withered scholar. Frail. Almost fragile. But the energy rolling off him was a suffocating tide, pressing against my chest and rattling my bones.“Elder Wu,” I said, my voice echoing off the corrugated steel walls. “The man who sold three hundred souls for a gray robe and a shadow.”Wu didn’t flinch. He adjusted his posture, slow and deliberate, as if conserving every ounce of strength. “Sold?” he repeated calmly. “No, Jiang Hao. I sacrificed them. There is a difference your young mind has yet to grasp. The Shadow Apothecary was a relic—a hidden garden in a world of concrete and steel. We were too weak to survive, and too selfish to share the secrets of life and death with those who truly rule.”“So you decided to be the one to share?” I spat, my fin

The warehouse doors didn’t just slam shut.They were sealed.A deep magnetic resonance rolled through the space, low and heavy, vibrating through the steel beams, the concrete floor, and straight into my chest. The sound wasn’t meant to intimidate. It wasn’t meant to warn.It was the sound of finality.A sharp hiss followed immediately, spreading through the warehouse like a living thing. The air thickened, sweet and cloying, the kind of scent that tricked the lungs into breathing deeper.I didn’t react.My breathing had already shifted, every inhale filtered through a refined Qi-circulation technique that stripped the poison down to nothing before it could even register as danger. The gas was irrelevant.My attention was locked on the man in front of me.The man who had collapsed.The man whose heart had stopped.The man who had died——and was now standing back up.Elder Wu’s body straightened slowly, vertebra by vertebra, his spine cracking loudly as if something inside him was bein

The dust of the Four Families had settled, leaving A-City suspended in a stunned, crystalline silence. I stood inside the high-tech war room of the Qin Estate, the floor-to-ceiling windows stretching wide to reveal a skyline that no longer belonged to vultures and parasites.The city was still standing, but its masters were gone.“Everything is packed, sir,” Luo Bing said. His voice echoed lightly through the vast chamber as he stepped forward and handed me a single encrypted tablet. “Final transfer of Xu, Zhao, and Li assets is complete. Billions in liquidated holdings. All of it has been redirected into the Shadow Medical Foundation, exactly as you ordered. Legitimate charities. Free clinics. Research divisions for orphan and terminal diseases.”I accepted the tablet, my eyes skimming the digital signatures scrolling across the screen.“Good,” I said. “Blood money should at least learn how to save lives before it disappears.”“What about the evidence?” I asked without looking up.“S