The alley was too quiet.
Tianming could feel it in his bones—the weight in the air, the faint metallic scent on the breeze. Something was coming.
He tightened the straps on his gloves, eyes scanning every rooftop as he moved through the dim passageway behind a textile factory on the city’s south edge. Fang and Zhao were ten minutes behind him, tracking a lead on an abandoned Lotus Clan drop-point. Tianming had pushed ahead alone.
That’s when he heard it—the soft shuffle of boots on gravel.
Then silence again.
Too late.
A figure lunged from behind a stack of crates. Tianming twisted instinctively, the attacker's blade missing his neck by a hair. He grabbed the assailant's arm mid-swing, redirected the momentum, and slammed him into the wall. The man crumpled, groaning.
But more came.
Three, five, seven men emerged from the shadows, all in tactical black gear, faces masked.
Tianming raised his fists.
The first attacker rushed with a baton. Tianming ducked low, swept his leg out, and brought the man crashing down with a palm strike to the throat. Before he could recover, another charged with a knife.
He sidestepped, trapped the knife arm under his own, then drove his elbow down on the attacker’s wrist until the blade dropped. With a brutal spin, he yanked the man around and slammed him into another oncoming attacker like a battering ram.
A boot swung at Tianming’s ribs from behind.
He blocked with his forearm, spun, and landed a hook punch to the man’s jaw so hard he hit the wall with a crack.
But they were coordinated. Not street thugs—these were trained killers.
Two closed in at once—one high, one low.
Tianming leapt backward, narrowly avoiding a flurry of blows. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he surged forward again, channeling every ounce of strength. He ducked a jab, came up under the man's chin with a savage uppercut, then twisted, caught the second by the wrist, and dislocated his elbow with a precise yank.
He heard a shout—Fang.
She sprinted into the alley, gun in hand. “DOWN!”
Tianming dropped to one knee as she fired three quick rounds into the air, not to kill but to scatter.
It worked.
The last two attackers vanished into the shadows, retreating like phantoms.
Zhao arrived seconds later, panting. “What the hell happened?”
“Ambush,” Tianming muttered, wiping blood from his lip. “Professionals.”
Fang crouched beside him, checking his ribs. “This wasn’t random.”
“No,” he said, voice low. “Song Rui’s message.”
She glanced at the bodies sprawled on the pavement. “Then let’s send one back.”
Later, in the safehouse, Fang stitched a shallow gash along Tianming’s forearm.
"The stronger you become, the more your enemies want to destroy you.,” she murmured.
Tianming smiled faintly. “Fitting.”
Zhao sat across the room, decrypting data pulled from one of the attackers' phones. “Got a name. Hei Hu—Black Tiger. They’re Song Rui’s personal mercs. Ex-special forces. Off-the-books.”
Tianming’s eyes narrowed. “So Rui’s done playing politics.”
“He’s burning everything to find you,” Zhao said. “But there’s more.”
He turned the screen around.
A video file played—grainy, recorded through a camera on the assassin’s shoulder. It showed a warehouse with rows of crates being loaded into trucks. But not by humans.
Combat drones. Military-grade.
Zhao froze the image. “Recognize the logo?”
Tianming’s heart dropped.
A silver orchid.
“The Orchid Society,” Fang said darkly.
Tianming nodded slowly. “Lu Qingshan’s private army.”