[HOST INTEGRITY: 30%]
[LOCATION: THE LAST STOP FACTORY - PERIMETER]
[TIME: 06:15 AM]
Five shadows moved through the downpour. They didn't splash. They didn't leave footprints. They moved like ink dropping into water—fluid, silent, and spreading fast.
These were the Silent Knives.
They were Tier-2 Spirit Cultivators, the elite "Clean-Up Crew" on the Alchemist Consortium's payroll. They didn't handle evictions; they handled erasures.
At the front, Viper signaled for a halt.
He crouched on top of a rusted shipping container, checking his jade-green tactical watch. He sighed, wiping the acidic rain off his face.
"We're two minutes behind schedule," Viper grumbled into his comms. "If I miss my reservation at the Sky-Garden, I'm going to be very upset. They have a limited-edition Spirit-Crab Omelet today."
"Focus, Boss," his lieutenant, a massive brute named Korg, grunted over the link. "The target is inside. Intel says the factory is guarded by basic wards."
Viper scoffed. He looked down at the rotting hulk of iron and concrete. It looked abandoned, except for the chimney spewing that strange, gold-black smoke.
"Intel says Ren Wu is a broke F-Tier merchant," Viper laughed softly, spinning a poison-tipped dagger between his fingers. "He probably guards this dump with a scarecrow and a baseball bat."
He stood up, cracking his neck.
"Let's make this quick. Breach and clear. Try not to get blood on my boots; these are new."
Viper raised his hand.
"Go."
[LOCATION: REN'S OFFICE]
The office was quiet, insulated from the storm outside.
Ren Wu sat behind his desk. He wasn't looking at the window. He was looking at a blank sheet of paper in front of him.
He picked up the Tiger Seal. The block of black jade felt heavy, cold, and hungry.
"Ugh, seriously?"
Jian groaned from his corner. He was slumped over his laptop, wearing noise-canceling headphones around his neck and eating a bag of spirit-chips.
"Ren, the perimeter sensors just died," Jian said, speaking with his mouth full. "I was in the middle of a raid in World of Cultivation. Can we not do a life-or-death battle right now? It's really cutting into my leisure time."
Ye Lingshan was already moving.
SHING.
Her sword, Winter's Edge, cleared its scabbard. The temperature in the office dropped ten degrees.
"Tier-2 Assassins," Lingshan said, her voice tight. She kicked the office door open. "They are using 'Ghost-Step' arts. They bypassed the outer wall in three seconds. Sir, get into the safe room. I can hold the hallway for two minutes."
Ren didn't move.
He dipped a calligraphy brush into a pot of red ink.
"Sir!" Lingshan barked, turning back. Her eyes were wide. "This isn't the time for paperwork! These are professionals! If they touch you, your vessel will shatter!"
"Lingshan," Ren said softly.
He didn't look up. He painted a single, straight line on the paper.
"Do you evacuate your house when cockroaches crawl into the kitchen?"
Lingshan froze. "What?"
"Do you run away?" Ren asked, dipping the brush again. "Do you negotiate with the cockroach? Do you ask it nicely to leave?"
"No," Lingshan said, confused. "I step on it."
Ren set the brush down.
He looked up.
His eyes were no longer green. They were Solid Gold. There were no pupils, no irises. Just the burning, rotating gears of the Grand Ledger.
"Exactly."
Ren stood up. He didn't pick up a weapon. He picked up the Tiger Seal.
"Jian," Ren commanded. His voice sounded like a heavy stone door sliding shut. "Put the courtyard on the main screen."
"Fine, fine," Jian muttered, wiping chip dust on his jeans. "But if they break my server, I'm charging you overtime."
[LOCATION: THE COURTYARD]
Viper landed in the center of the muddy courtyard.
He looked around. The factory loomed over him, dark and silent.
"Too easy," Viper muttered. "This is almost insulting."
He saw the factory sign hanging above the main entrance: THE LAST STOP.
He sneered. He threw a dagger.
THWACK.
The dagger severed the chain. The sign crashed into the mud.
"Come out, little rat!" Viper shouted, his voice amplified by his Qi. "Come out and die, and I'll make it quick! Or stay inside, and I'll make sure your death takes longer than my breakfast!"
His team laughed. Korg slammed his fists together, creating sparks.
"Boss," Korg said. "I bet he's hiding under his bed. Should I punch the door down?"
Viper walked toward the main door. "Burn it down. Smoke him ou—"
Viper stopped.
The rain stopped.
Not just the rain around him. The rain in the sky.
The droplets froze in mid-air, suspended like diamonds.
The wind died. The sound of the city—the distant sirens, the hum of traffic—vanished. The world went dead silent, like a video whose audio track had been cut.
"Boss?" Korg whispered, his smile fading. "Why is the air... heavy?"
Viper looked up.
His eyes widened. His jaw dropped. The toothpick in his mouth fell into the mud.
The clouds above Sector 9 were parting. But they weren't drifting away. They were being shoved aside.
A golden light bathed the courtyard. It was blinding, sterile, and cold.
"What..." Viper gasped. "What is that?"
It wasn't a moon.
It was a Palm.
A Hand.
A spectral hand, five hundred meters wide, descending from the smog. It wasn't made of flesh. It was made of Golden Paper.
The "skin" of the hand was covered in burning, shifting text. Millions of rows of black calligraphy. Laws. Edicts. Sentences.
And on the center of the palm, burning in red light, was a single word:
[ DENIED ]
[ SYSTEM NOTICE: JURISDICTION BREACHED ]
[ 5 UNAUTHORIZED ENTITIES DETECTED ]
[ APPLICATION: REJECTED ]
"Move!" Viper screamed, his voice cracking. "Move! It's a Tier-4 Art! It's a Siege Spell!"
He tried to run.
He couldn't.
Viper's legs buckled. It wasn't fear. It was Gravity.
The pressure of the Hand descending created a column of crushed space. The mud around Viper's boots turned to stone instantly. He felt like the entire sky had decided to sit on his shoulders.
"My legs!" Korg screamed, falling to his knees. "I can't move my legs! The air is solid!"
"Defensive Formation!" Viper howled. "Shields! Burn your lifeforce! Put up everything you have!"
The five assassins threw their hands up. They burned their Qi. Green shields, blue barriers, iron walls—Tier-2 defensive arts that could stop a tank shell.
The Hand didn't care.
It didn't fall fast. It fell slowly.
It touched the top of the defensive shields.
POOF.
The shields didn't shatter. They Evaporated. The golden paper touched the magic, and the magic was simply annulled. It was like erasing a pencil drawing with a thumb.
"No," Viper whimpered. He looked up at the endless expanse of golden text coming down to meet him. "This isn't fair! I just wanted an omelet!"
The Hand descended past the roofline.
The air pressure burst Viper's eardrums. Blood poured from his nose.
He realized, in that final second, that he wasn't fighting a cultivator. He was fighting the Law.
And the Law always wins.
[ART: THE HEAVY HAND]
[ACTIVATION COMPLETE]
The Hand touched the ground.
[LOCATION: REN'S OFFICE]
Ren Wu held the Tiger Seal over the blank paper.
His hand trembled slightly. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
[WARNING: VESSEL INTEGRITY DROPPING]
[COST: 5% INTEGRITY]
[CURRENT: 25%]
Ren didn't hesitate.
He slammed the seal down.
THUD.
The sound wasn't loud. It was the dull, heavy thud of jade hitting wood. A sound you might hear in a quiet library.
But outside, the world ended.
SPLAT.
The monitors in the office went white. The cameras shook violently. A shockwave rattled the windows, cracking the reinforced glass.
Then, silence.
Jian stared at the screen, a half-eaten chip falling from his mouth.
The dust settled.
The courtyard was... different.
There was no mud. There was no debris. There were no bodies.
There was just a perfect, smooth, geometric depression in the earth. A palm print, five feet deep, pressed into the soil.
It looked wrong. It looked too clean. It was as if reality itself had been indented. The dirt within the print hadn't just been crushed; it had been smoothed into a mirror-like surface of compressed earth.
And in the center of the palm print, trapped in the smooth surface, were five flat, red stains.
They weren't bodies. They were two-dimensional shadows. Like flowers pressed between the pages of a heavy book.
Jian pulled off his glasses. He wiped them on his shirt. He put them back on.
"Ren..." Jian whispered. "Did you just... turn them into a jpeg?"
Lingshan lowered her sword. Her hand was shaking. She looked at the screen, then at Ren.
She had trained her whole life to fight dangerous men. She knew how to kill wizards, demons, and beasts.
But she didn't know how to fight that.
Ren lifted the seal from the paper.
There was a perfect, square red stamp on the page. Inside the square, the character for [VOID].
Ren crumpled the paper.
He tossed it into the wastebasket.
"Jian," Ren said. He sounded tired. The golden light faded from his eyes, leaving him looking pale and mortal again.
"Y-Yes, Ren?"
"Take a picture of that palm print."
Ren sat back in his chair, rubbing his aching shoulder.
"Send it to the Alchemist Consortium's public email."
"What... what subject line?" Jian asked, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Ren closed his eyes.
"Subject: Application Denied."
The Response
[LOCATION: ALCHEMIST CONSORTIUM HQ - SECTOR 9 BRANCH]
[OFFICE OF SECTION CHIEF ZHAO]
Section Chief Zhao was a busy man. He was currently reviewing the quarterly eviction notices and sipping a cup of expensive demon-tea.
His terminal beeped.
"Priority Message," his AI assistant chirped. "From: The Last Stop Factory."
Zhao smirked. "Ah. Viper must have finished the job. Send the photo of the corpse to the archives."
"Image loading..."
The image appeared on the massive holographic wall.
Zhao dropped his cup.
Shatter.
He stared.
He didn't see a corpse. He saw his elite Clean-Up Crew—five million coins worth of assassins—turned into a sticker on the pavement.
And above them, stamped into the earth itself, was the undeniable, terrified geometry of a power that shouldn't exist in Sector 9.
Zhao stood up. His chair fell over.
"That's not a Martial Art," Zhao whispered, his face turning grey. "That's... that's a Siege Weapon. Who hides a Siege Weapon in a cheap incense factory?!"
The phone on his desk rang.
It was the Red Line. The direct line to the Upper Layer.
Zhao stared at the phone. He knew, with absolute certainty, that his easy life was over.
The Rat hadn't just bitten back.
The Rat had just declared War.
[AUTHOR NOTE]
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
> Viper: "I'm going to kill you before breakfast."
> Ren Wu: "Your application for breakfast has been denied."
> The Sky: Manifests a 500-meter Golden Stamp.
> Viper: "I would like to appeal th—" SPLAT.
>
Next Chapter: The Iron Baptism.
The defense is secure. Now, we build the Army.
Ren realizes that "Red Bandana" thugs aren't enough. It's time to throw them into the furnace and forge the Iron-Ash Legion.
The Hand has spoken! Drop a Power Stone to leave your own stamp on the leaderboard! 🖐️🔥
[END OF CHAPTER 66]