The four hired blades moved up the rocky ridge with the practiced coordination of skilled killers.
They didn’t shout. They didn’t brandish their weapons in the moonlight. They fanned out in a wide diamond formation, their soft leather boots making zero sound on the loose fiery ash, their short swords coated in oily black viper venom that glistened under the stars.
The lead mercenary leaped over the dark rock ledge, his blade thrusting straight for Lin Tao’s throat in a silent, lethal strike.
He never touched Lin Tao.
From the darkness of the cooling tower, twelve pounds of solid, cold-drawn iron swept through the air like the arm of a falling catapult.
CRACK!
Tie Shan’s iron pry-bar struck the mercenary squarely in the ribs. The impact was bone-shaking, carrying the full, terrifying driving force of an Iron-Bone warrior. The mercenary’s studded leather vest caved inward. Three ribs snapped with the sound of breaking dry branches. His body was hurled fifteen feet through the air, crashing into the rock face and slumping unconscious into the ash.
The leftover three killers froze in mid-stride, their eyes widening in shock.
“A body refiner!” one hissed, drawing two curved daggers. “Flank him!”
Two hired blades lunged toward Tie Shan, their blades weaving a cage of poisoned steel around the giant’s torso.
Tie Shan didn’t retreat an inch. He planted his heavy boots into the gravel, swung his twelve-pound iron bar in a tight, defensive arc that battered their daggers aside with ear-splitting metal clangs, and lunged forward with a brutal shoulder-check that sent the second killer tumbling down the rocky slope.
The third mercenary, seeing Tie Shan engaged, broke away and charged directly toward Lin Tao.
The killer sneered, seeing only an unarmed seventeen-year-old laborer with an empty dantian. He raised his poisonous blade for a downward cleave, aiming to split Lin Tao from crown to chest bone.
Lin Tao didn’t blink.
He watched the killer’s approach through his left eye, observing the uneven, glitchy animation vectors of his stride.
Frame twenty-three.
The mercenary planted his lead boot for the killing lunge. Then, Lin Tao tapped the four-inch steel land-mapper metal pen against the dark rock flat stone slab beneath his own heel.
The friction multiplier across a five-foot patch of loose fiery ash dropped instantly to zero.
The mercenary’s lead foot slipped forward as if striking wet ice on a frozen lake. Deprived of all traction, his balance point was wildly displaced. His legs whipped out from under him, and his downward sword strike split empty air.
The killer fell heavily onto his back with a heavy, shaking thud, his chin snapping against the hard stone, knocking his teeth through his tongue.
Before the dazed man could recover, Lin Tao stepped forward, placed the heavy heel of his iron-toed quarry boot firmly onto the mercenary’s right wrist, and applied ninety pounds of downward pressure.
Snap.
The wrist bone cracked cleanly. The poisonous dagger slipped from limp fingers.
Lin Tao knelt beside the groaning killer, retrieved the man’s leather belt pouch. Then he pulled out a folded yellow parchment scroll.
It was the official delivery invoice of the Black-Viper Triad.
Inscribed upon the parchment was the complete itemized manifest. Two hundred crates of Grade-Three Marrow Pills, delivered to the Azure River Ferry. Payment of four thousand silver bits to be passed to the account of Slag Overseer Meng. Authenticated by blood-seal.
At the bottom of the invoice, pressed firmly into scarlet wax, was Overseer Meng’s unique personal thumbprint and his bronze office seal.
Lin Tao slipped the parchment inside his green jade spatial ring, beside Hu’s old assassination contract and Elder Song’s golden decree.
Beside him, Tie Shan hurled the final unconscious mercenary down the slope, his breathing fully calm, his iron bar resting lightly across his shoulder.
“Four down,” Tie Shan rumbled.
“Viper Chen will realize his scouts are dead in five minutes,” Lin Tao said. He looked down at the wagons below. “And Overseer Meng will know that his paper trail is in our hands.”
Lin Tao turned his gaze toward the towering, red-hot ziggurat of the Central Smelting Pavilion.
The high-pitched sound whine from the fire core was rising in hum. It shook through the bedrock like an angry hornet’s nest.
“Meng won’t wait for dawn,” Lin Tao said quietly. “He’s about to make his final move.”
Lin Tao knelt beside the groaning mercenary with the shattered wrist, expertly stripping the man of his leather weapon belt, his three vials of viper venom. A pouch of forty silver bits stamped with the mark of the outer market city.
He tossed the silver pouch to Tie Shan, who caught it with one massive hand. Then he tucked it inside their wicker pack.
“The hired blades won’t return,” Lin Tao said. He looked down the dark trail toward the loading docks. “Viper Chen is a skilled smuggler. When his scouts vanish into the dark without a sound, he won’t charge blindly up the mountain. He will load his wagons, demand his payment from Meng, and prepare to flee before the morning bells.”
Tie Shan nudged the unconscious mercenary with the toe of his boot. “And Meng?”
“Meng is trapped between the fire pressure and the Disciplinary Bureau,” Lin Tao replied. His voice was cold as mountain ice. “A cornered animal always strikes at the easiest target. He will try to wipe out Pit Seven before the sun rises.”
Lin Tao turned toward the path leading back to their stone shelter, his steps quick and deliberate. “We have twenty minutes to prepare our defenses.”
Behind them on the dark trail, the four unconscious hired blades lay bound with spider-silk cord, their weapons stacked neatly beside the boulder. Lin Tao had stripped their spatial pouches, securing sixty silver bits, four iron daggers, and three vials of viper venom. In a protracted conflict within the volcano bowl, every scrap of metal, every coin. Every drop of venom was raw capital for their growing pushback.