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LOCATION: CHENGDU REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION HUB
CITY: CHENGDU, CHINA
DATE: JULY 23, 2026 | TIME: 10:30 AM
At 10:30 AM, Xiao Jun picked up the warehouse phone and hit the speed dial button labeled "National Distribution Center."
The phone rang, and an assistant answered.
"National Distribution Center, how may I direct your call?"
"Put me through to Logistics. We have a problem here in Chengdu," Xiao said.
"Hold please."
A few moments later, a gruff voice answered on the other line.
"Chengdu? What's the problem?"
Xiao smiled. This was the moment.
He began reciting the speech he'd prepared.
"We are the Heaven's Mandate. We are holding 75 elementary school children and your entire regional Vitalyx stock hostage until all 1,137 of our brothers and sisters being held are released and safely aboard a neutral vessel in international waters."
The man on the other end was silent.
A long silence stretched. Ten seconds, then twenty.
Just as Xiao opened his mouth to speak again, the line went dead.
"What?" Xiao shouted.
He tried dialing the number again, but the phone line itself was dead.
He slammed the phone onto the desk and stormed back into the warehouse.
"Give me one of the mobile phones," he demanded while holding his hand out and shaking it impatiently.
The woman who'd been holding them in a basket chose one at random.
He tried dialing the number he'd memorized for the local news. But there was no signal.
Finally, in desperation, he dialed 110, the emergency number for police. This time, the call went through.
But it wasn't the police on the other end of the line.
He immediately heard background noise.
Like the inside of an airplane cabin.
He frowned. Why would the Chengdu police answer from a jet?
"Hello? Is this the Police?" Xiao said, suddenly unsure.
Li Wei, already en route to Chengdu on the private jet, smiled. He heard the nervousness in the man's voice.
He voice came out smooth and cold.
"You've made a grave miscalculation," Li said. "If one of those children so much as gets a paper cut, I will personally execute every one of your so-called brothers and sisters."
"How dare you—"
"Don't threaten me, worm. You have one hour to release the hostages. And if a single vial of Vitalyx is harmed in service of your fucking crusade, you will learn the true wrath of Heaven."
Silence on the other end.
"You have one hour. When the time's up, you won't see me coming."
Li cut the call.
Hours ago, Zhou Ren, the director of the Ministry of State Security regional intelligence office in Chengdu, had noticed the guards at the Vitalyx distribution center missed their 8:00 AM check-in.
Procedures were in place for a reason, and even if one missed the check-in, all of them would not. So, he pulled traffic cam footage.
Sometimes it was a good thing to be living in a surveillance state. So long as you don't pry into matters you shouldn't. Right?
In this case, he easily found the footage. A traffic light with cameras showed views from two complementary angles.
An elderly man crossing the road. Three buses stopping. Armed men boarding, children exiting, and moments later, the buses were on their way.
It was impressively efficient, and the pause by the buses hardly raised any flags.
It took only moments to get calls through to the bus drivers, who confirmed they'd been held at gunpoint.
Zhou called Li and filled him in. Li had been overseeing operations in Chongqing, only a one-hour flight away. He was already on his way to the airport by the time Zhou finished his report.
"Prepare your best operatives," Li said. "They probably won't be needed, but it's better to have overwhelming force than not enough. And Zhou, jam all signals in the warehouse section, but have any police emergency calls routed directly to me. You've done well today."
Zhou gave Li an address nearby the warehouse where they could muster and move in together.
Li had given Heaven's Mandate until 11:30 AM, but he would breach the building well before then.
Xiao stared at the phone, shock written all over his face.
"I think we've made a mistake," he said. "Grab some of the undershirts from the locker room and cut them into strips."
"What are we—"
"Do it," Xiao said. "Now. We're going to blindfold the children. Whatever happens next, they don't need to witness it."
For the next twenty minutes, strips of fabric were tied around the heads of the children and chaperones. Xiao also tied everyone's hands behind their backs to ensure they didn't remove the blindfolds.
He rigged small explosive charges on as many Vitalyx crates as he could, and set them to detonate on a switch.
Xiao called the guards inside and had everyone take defensive positions around the doors and windows.
They were as ready as they could get for whatever that dark voice on the other end of the line threw at them.
Maybe I failed to get my people released, Xiao thought, but I'll be damned if I'm giving up. We've still got all the leverage.
Fifteen minutes went by. The only sound that could be heard were the children whimpering. One said he had to go to the restroom, but Xiao told the kid to piss himself because he wasn't getting up.
That led to more crying and louder whimpering. One of the chaperones tried to negotiate. Xiao gagged her with another strip of cloth.
"That's enough from all of you!" he shouted.
At that moment, all the lights in the warehouse cut out.
The ever-present sound of the overhead fan died down, and the silence was eerie. Even the children seemed to sense something was wrong, and stayed silent.
Xiao moved around the warehouse, his rifle up and ready for anything.
From far in the back of the warehouse, he heard a quiet thud.
When Li and Zhou arrived at the warehouse, they found no guards outside, and the place was locked down.
Li gave Zhou instructions and headed around the back of the building. Zhou was to cut the main power to the warehouse at exactly 11:12 AM and wait for Li's signal.
Zhou pleaded to come with him, but Li said Zhou was more helpful securing the perimeter and preparing to usher the children to safety.
With that plan in place, Li crouched and entered the underground service tunnel for the warehouse. He followed the large pipes and conduits for water, electric and gas along the southern wall of the building until he found a hatch overhead.
Li listened for several minutes, and once he was sure the room above was unoccupied, he slowly lifted the access panel and lifted himself up into the utility room at the back corner of the building.
The warehouse was quiet but Li could hear children whimpering and hushed demands for silence.
It made his blood boil.
He stayed low and inched forward. He peeked through the utility room door, and saw a man fifteen feet in front of him.
The man held an assault rifle, but he didn't look very comfortable with it.
The guard was looking out the window, with his back turned to Li. In one fluid motion, Li pushed the door open and launched himself at the man. As he leapt through the air, he drew his Jian sword and slammed the butt of the handle into the back of the man's head.
The guard never even raised his weapon. A thud was all that could be heard. Li grabbed hold of the unconscious body and lowered it to the ground, careful to make no noise in the process.
Zhou had counted twenty of them through his review of video surveillance. Nineteen to go.
Li stepped forward, crouching behind the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and spotted another guard fifty feet ahead. He'd never be able to close the distance without alerting this one.
He formed a small stone in his palm. This one was around four inches in diameter. Li waited until the right moment, and threw the stone forward with all the strength he could muster.
He bolstered his considerable strength with his chi, and the stone struck the guard on the back of the head. He fell to the ground quietly, as Li had closed the distance just in time to catch the fall.
Eighteen to go.
Li worked his way around the inside perimeter of the building, rendering the guards unconscious. They'd be in a lot of pain when they woke up, maybe even suffering concussions, but they'd be alive.
In the end, he was left with six men, all standing in a circle around the children.
The kids were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs.
From his hiding spot, Li could smell the urine and feces. The kids were so scared, they'd pissed and shat themselves. And these bastards let them do it.
Just as he was beginning to rethink his plan to leave them alive, he was spotted.
No more time for regrets, Li thought.
He rushed forward, running in a zig zag pattern. One of the men raised his rifle to shoot, just as Li arrived within range.
Li executed a dive roll at the last second, and at the end dropped the man to the floor in a leg sweep.
He punched the guard in the head just hard enough to knock him out. With the System enhancements and months of practice, Li's control over his body and the strength of his strikes was impeccable.
He took down three more in similar fashion.
That left two more.
One of them had grabbed one of the chaperones. She was blindfolded and gagged, and the man held a knife to her throat.
"Stay back," he said, "or she dies first."
Li laughed.
"I already gave you the chance to do the right thing."
Xiao stood there, his knife against the teacher's throat. He never wanted it to come to this. He never meant to hurt the children or the chaperones.
He only wanted his people freed and a chance to live their lives somewhere they wouldn't be persecuted for their beliefs. Was it too much to ask?
But he knew the answer already. They'd taken the lives of the guards and warehouse employees when they arrived. And when the 8:00 shift showed, Xiao tried sending them home, but six of them refused and he had to kill them too.
He knew he had blood on his hands.
Some follower of Heaven's Mandate he was.
This was immediate retribution for his actions this very day.
He dropped the knife, and it fell to the floor, clattering on the cement.
The noise rang loudly in the quiet warehouse, and the children jumped at the noise. Then, Xiao heard a ruffle of fabric, and his world went dark.
Li opened the front door, and Zhou entered with his men. The police were right behind them, and the children were taken to safety, while the twenty members of Heaven's Mandate were taken into custody.
Li slipped out the way he'd entered before anyone could ask him any questions. He texted Zhou:
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Good work today, Zhou.
Take all the credit.
Leave me out of it.
We'll be in touch soon.
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Zhou smiled at the text, and began explaining to the police that he had a martial arts expert infiltrate the building. Because he was an employee of the Ministry of State Security, the police didn't question anything. Zhou also insisted that he not be on the news, and the police handled the rest from there.
When Xiao awoke in a prison cell, all he could think about were the eyes of the demon who moved faster than his eyes could track.
Who was that?
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System Broadcast
Vitalyx Recipients: 2,009,517,326
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@ChengduNews5: All 75 children in Chengdu confirmed safe. Panda outing rescheduled with police escort.
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