The black assault SUV turned off the wide asphalt avenue into the narrow, cobblestone entrance of Loose-Cultivator Alley.
Located behind the ancient Baicao Medicine Market, this winding labyrinth of low grey-brick tenements and narrow alleys had been the capital’s sanctuary for independent martial artists for two centuries.
Here, herbal peddlers, itinerant swordsmen, and retired martial instructors lived in cramped poverty, selling low-grade talismans and wild herbs to scrape together enough spirit stones for their monthly cultivation.
Yet today, the alley was engulfed in violent shouts and splintering wood.
Dozens of stalls had been kicked over. Dried ginseng roots, broken porcelain vials, and shattered tea tables littered the damp cobblestones.
More than two hundred thugs clad in dark wolf-skin vests and steel-reinforced gauntlets were marching through the alley, carrying heavy wooden clubs and iron chains.
At their head walked Deacon Gui, an enforcer from the hidden Ghost-Sword Sect hired by the Murong and Zhao families. His face was pale and gaunt, his left hand replaced by a gleaming, four-fingered iron claw.
“Listen up, you alley rats!” Deacon Gui’s voice shrieked through the street, amplified by Rank 4 Mid spiritual qi. “By order of the Capital Chaebol Alliance, every registered loose cultivator in Yanjing is conscripted into the Chaebol Private Iron Guard! Sign this blood-oath and take up arms against Taichu Group and the Ninth Bureau! Those who sign get five spirit stones a month! Those who refuse will have their dantians crushed and their bodies fed to the river fish!”
