In the quiet corner of Outdoor Medicinal Pool #9 on Floating Island #1, twelve pale, gaunt men wearing oversized yellow hibiscus-flower cotton bathrobes stood huddled near the stone steps.
Their leader was Cold-Viper, the feared Number One Platinum Killer of the Shadow-Kill Assassin Guild—an underground organization that had hidden in the dark sewers of the Central Continent for three hundred years.
Every single one of the twelve men was a Rank 6 Peak Golden Core shadow-cultivator. However, beneath their floral bathrobes, their skin was covered in ugly black-and-purple frostbite veins, and their fingers trembled uncontrollably every few seconds.
“Boss,” whispered Shadow-Seven, the youngest of the twelve killers, pressing a hand against his chest to hold back a painful cough of black blood. “Why couldn’t we just fly over the roof at midnight and drop the Black-Widow Soul-Rot Poison into Pei Xuan’s courtyard pool? Why did we have to spend five Spirit Stones each to buy regular bath passes and put on these ridiculous yellow flower shorts?”
“Shut up and keep your head down!” Cold-Viper hissed out of the corner of his mouth, glancing nervously at the scarred, one-armed old guard—Old Wei—who was sitting at the security desk twenty yards away sharpening a heavy black-iron broadsword. “Didn’t you see the No-Fly Array over the train station? Anyone who flies more than ten feet off the boardwalk without a railway conductor’s badge gets zapped by fifty lightning cannons! And the sign at the gate says anyone standing around in Pool Area #9…
