I felt the change in the air before I saw it.
Liling tensed almost imperceptibly. Her eyes moved quickly toward one of the subordinates on the right. I followed her gaze and saw him.
One of the hooded men had slid his hand into his robe and pulled out a small object that glowed with a faint light. I didn't know exactly what it was, but the radiance had the quality of something activated by energy. And by the way he held it, he was pointing it directly at Liling.
"Liling, watch out!" I shouted.
Everything erupted in motion.
The object in the subordinate's hand detonated with a blinding flash. A wave of expansive force roared forward, directed specifically at where Liling had been standing a second before. But she was no longer there.
She had moved at the exact instant of my warning. She was a blur of speed that my eye could barely follow. The explosion impacted empty space, kicking up clouds of dust and stone fragments. Liling reappeared fifteen feet away, completely unharmed.
The leader reacted instantly. His hands traced complex patterns as brown and gold energy wrapped his skin in defensive layers of Earth Qi.
"Attack!" he ordered his subordinates.
But Liling had already taken the initiative. She crossed the distance between her and the leader in less than a second. Her right fist lit up with crackling electricity as she threw it directly against the man's earth defense. The impact resonated like thunder.
The leader's defensive technique fractured; visible cracks spiderwebbed across the surface of the golden energy. The man's eyes widened in shock.
"What...?" His voice came out broken. "That level of strength..."
Liling didn't give him time to finish. She attacked again, this time with both hands. It was a sequence of fast, precise strikes that forced the leader to retreat step by step as he desperately reinforced his shield.
The four subordinates lunged forward to help their boss, but Xiao Yue moved to intercept them. She slammed her right foot onto the ground and flames erupted in a perfect circle around us, reaching ten feet high. The heat was intense even from my position. The four men stopped dead, forced to recoil.
The flames vanished as abruptly as they had appeared. When they died down, Xiao Yue was already in front of one of the hooded men. Her right fist flew toward the man's face, and he raised both arms to block while a blue water energy enveloped his forearms.
But the punch never arrived.
Xiao Yue stopped the blow at the last moment and spun her body with fluidity. Her left leg rose in an upward arc and struck beneath the man's high guard, directly into his ribs. The sound was horrific: the dry crunch of breaking bones. The subordinate doubled over and his defensive technique dissolved as his concentration shattered.
One of his companions screamed with fury and horror.
"Damn it!"
He launched a water technique. A liquid whip materialized in his hand and he snapped it toward Xiao Yue with lethal speed. However, Liling appeared between them in a flash. She caught the water whip in mid-air with her left hand; electricity surged through her arm, electrifying the water and sending violent shocks back toward its creator.
The man howled as the current tore through his body. Liling didn't stop: she spun on her axis, using the momentum to hurl the man against the wall of the nearest building. The impact caused fragments of brick to break loose.
Meanwhile, the leader had regained some composure.
"Fire-red hair... Advanced-level fire techniques at the Foundation Establishment stage... Perfect Qi control," he whispered, his eyes locked on Xiao Yue as he processed the information. "You... you are from the Silver Cloud Clan."
Xiao Yue didn't respond.
The leader began to perform hand seals rapidly. The ground beneath his feet trembled and several earth fragments rose, molding into dozens of sharp needles that floated around him.
"If you are who I think you are, this just turned into a much larger incident."
He launched the needles toward Xiao Yue from multiple angles simultaneously. But what they hit wasn't the young woman, but an afterimage; a decoy created by pure speed. The real Xiao Yue appeared behind the leader. Her fingers lit up with concentrated fire at the tips, sharpening them like blades.
He turned just in time to block with an improvised earth shield, but the fire cut through the defense like paper. The leader barely managed to back away, preventing the fire claws from slicing his throat by mere inches. Instead, they left shallow, bleeding gashes on his cheek and neck.
He fell to his knees, breathing heavily.
"Monster," he muttered with a broken voice. "You fight like someone in the Golden Core stage. How is that possible at your cultivation level?"
One of the remaining subordinates tried to pull something from his robe while everyone was distracted. My eyes caught the movement: I saw his hand slide inside his clothes and glimpsed the flash of yellow paper with red inscriptions. I didn't know what it was, but the glow reminded me of the object that had exploded before. The urgency with which the man was pulling it out suggested danger.
"Xiao Yue!" I shouted. "The one on the left! He's pulling something out!"
Xiao Yue reacted in a fraction of a second. She launched herself toward the subordinate with explosive speed, her fingers still wrapped in cutting fire. The man had barely pulled the paper talisman out when Xiao Yue's hand reached him. It was a clean, precise movement.
The subordinate's arm fell to the ground, still clutching the talisman. The man screamed, collapsing backward while clutching the bleeding stump with his other hand. Xiao Yue stepped on the fallen paper, extinguishing the inscriptions that had begun to glow.
"Communication talisman," she said coldly. "He was going to call for reinforcements."
The leader, still on his knees and bleeding, looked at the severed arm and then at his dying subordinate. Finally, he looked up at Xiao Yue and Liling. The reality of his situation hit him full force: he had catastrophically underestimated his targets. What he thought would be a simple arrest had turned into a one-sided massacre.
The other two subordinates still standing exchanged panicked glances. One of them, the one Liling had thrown against the wall, tried to get up to flee. Liling appeared behind him and, with a quick blow to the base of the skull, knocked him unconscious.
The last subordinate raised both hands in surrender.
"Wait! Wait! I'm not going to fight. I surrender."
Xiao Yue looked at him with coldness, but didn't attack. The leader coughed up blood; his earth defense had completely collapsed. He was helpless. He looked up with eyes that were gradually losing focus.
"Lady Xiao Yue," he said weakly, "of the Silver Cloud Clan... Protecting a criminal from the Alchemists Guild... This... this is going to create a massive diplomatic incident."
Liling approached slowly. Her hand was still sparking with residual electricity.
"That would only be a problem if someone reported what happened here."
The leader's eyes dilated with final realization.
"No... the Guild will know. When we don't report in..."
"The Guild will know that five scouts disappeared in the Lower District," Liling stated in a flat voice. "An area known for high crime. Muggings, robberies... People disappear all the time."
The leader tried to crawl away, but he was too weak. Liling raised her hand.
"Wait..." The man's voice was a broken whisper. "If you kill me... if you kill an official agent of the Guild..."
"No one will know it was us."
Her palm slammed against the back of the leader's skull with calculated precision. Electrical energy penetrated directly through the bone and brain tissue. The man slumped forward. Dead before hitting the ground.
Following that, in a series of swift and methodical movements, Liling finished off the rest of the cultivators. The last body fell with a wet thud against the cobblestones.
I stood motionless, processing what I had just witnessed. Five people were alive three minutes ago; now they were corpses. My CEO mind tried to categorize the situation, but my stomach didn't agree.
"Kenji." Liling's voice pulled me out of my paralysis.
I looked at her. She had blood spatters on her left sleeve. Her golden eyes watched me with absolute calm.
"Did any of them manage to activate a communication talisman?" I asked. My voice sounded surprisingly stable.
"No," Xiao Yue replied. "I checked."
"Then we have maybe an hour before the Guild notices they haven't reported their status," I continued, forcing my brain to work. "Two hours at most."
"Correct," Liling nodded. "That's why we need to move. Now."
Xiao Yue was already searching the bodies. She removed medallions, talismans, and any items that could identify them as Guild agents.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Erasing evidence," she replied without looking up. "If someone finds these bodies, they'll think they were victims of common bandits. It happens all the time in this area."
Liling walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"I know this is... hard to process. But I need to know you're with me. That we're in this together."
I looked her directly in the eyes.
"I am," I said. "We are."
It wasn't a lie. I had crossed a line when I did business with Xiu Mei; this was simply the natural consequence of those decisions. In my previous life, I learned that once you enter an aggressive market, you can't back out halfway. You either play for keeps or you lose.
"Good," Liling said as she withdrew her hand. "Then let's go."
We walked toward the alley exit. Behind us, the five bodies lay in the growing darkness. The Lower District would claim them before dawn. And we would move forward with our plans.
Because that was how this world worked.