Ambush — Devour Them

Lu Yuan left the Jiuhu Shopping District and headed back toward the slum district.

He decided to stop by Daming Martial Arts Gym. It had been a few days since his last visit.

When he stepped through the door, every student training inside straightened up and offered respectful greetings. Lu Yuan smiled and nodded back.

Each one of them found something else to look at the moment his gaze drifted their way.

At his current level, there was no one in the gym who could give him a real fight anymore. Only Franming could still hold his own against him — and Franming hadn't been around lately. He had been absent every time Lu Yuan had dropped by recently.

Since there was no one to spar with, Lu Yuan shrugged and started drilling Body Technique alone. After a while he made his way to the back of the gym, where he eventually found Xiaohu working through his forms in the corner.

Xiaohu looked up at once and stopped, wiping the sweat off his face with his forearm. He grinned. "Yuan-bro! You haven't been around in days!"

"Had some free time. Figured I'd come work out."

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow. "Xiaohu, want to spar?"

"Absolutely not." Xiaohu shook his head vigorously. "I am not getting in the ring with you again. One punch last time and you nearly launched me into orbit."

"I was holding back."

"Go find someone else."

Xiaohu waved him off and went back to his own training. Lu Yuan shrugged, scanned the floor — every capable student had suddenly discovered something fascinating on the opposite wall — and started working through his own practice alone.

After a while, he glanced over. "Where's Brother Ming? Not back yet?"

"No," Xiaohu said between strikes. "He's been insanely busy lately. Every time he comes home it's the dead of night. Sometimes he doesn't come back at all."

"Was he like this before?"

Xiaohu thought it over. "I mean... he'd occasionally stay out all night. But nothing like this. It's been way more frequent recently."

Lu Yuan nodded. "Do you know what he's been going out to do?"

Xiaohu laughed. "Come on, Brother Yuan. We're just foot soldiers — how would we know what the boss is up to? All I can say is he comes home exhausted every single time. He's a strong First-Rank warrior, and whatever he's been doing still runs him into the ground. It's clearly not easy work."

"I see."

Xiaohu glanced over curiously. "By the way, A-Yuan — why are you suddenly asking about all this?"

Lu Yuan smiled. "Just thinking — with Brother Ming being this swamped, maybe something big is going on in this area."

"Something big? What kind of big thing?"

"Nothing. Just talking."

He let the subject drop. The thought stayed, though.

He found himself thinking back to the giant mutated dog from a few days ago, wondering whether Franming had run into something similar out there.

After all, with a Gene Warrior's earning potential, even the weakest of them wouldn't normally end up living in the slums. The ones who stayed either had specific goals here or had decided to plant a flag and run their own corner of this world. Either way, strong Gene Warriors in the slum district were rare — and the Shadow seemed capable of engaging them now. Sooner or later, it would set its sights on them.

Lu Yuan left Daming Martial Arts Gym.

——

10:20 PM.

He strolled back toward his apartment complex at an easy pace, not particularly concerned with anything.

Two blocks from the gym, a sharp crack split the quiet night air.

Then — *bang bang bang bang!*

Rapid gunfire erupted from somewhere nearby.

Lu Yuan stopped.

*A gunfight?*

Gunshots were a daily fact of life in the slum district. But a firefight this intense? Even here, that was rare.

He'd had a faint sense of being watched from somewhere in that direction, just moments before.

*Now it was gone.*

Before he could process that, several dark shapes swept past from nearby at speed and dropped into a small, unmanned park at the edge of the road.

Four Gene Warriors in full battle armor, weapons in hand — arranged around a single figure at the center.

Lu Yuan stared.

Under the park's pale lamps, he could make out their faces.

Among the four, he recognized one immediately.

*Pete. The Black Rat Gang's Pete.*

He turned his attention to the one they had surrounded.

The central Gene Warrior was a middle-aged man — handsome, in a weathered sort of way. His black hair was threaded through with streaks of white, his face carrying the settled weight of years, and something underneath that was cold and sharp. He stood utterly still, a quiet authority about him that didn't need to announce itself.

The four surrounding him:

The shortest of the group — lean and wiry, wearing black leather armor — held two short daggers. He watched the middle-aged man with a thin, predatory smile.

A second warrior, powerfully built, carried a shield in his left hand and a blade in his right.

A third was a woman with a staff.

And Pete, who had stepped back from the others, putting distance between himself and the target. A long rifle was forming in his hands.

*Lu Yuan knew Pete's Gene Battle Technique: a short-burst boost to dynamic visual acuity. He was far better suited to long-range combat.*

Pete had mentioned that the Black Rat Gang was planning to move on the Wild Dog Gang.

Lu Yuan studied the four attackers and the man at the center.

*Pete's no minor figure in the Black Rat Gang. So the one they've surrounded...*

The conclusion wrote itself.

*Someone who required Pete plus three other Gene Warriors to surround — this man is not low-ranking in the Wild Dog Gang.*

The black leather armor man's cold smile hadn't wavered.

"Boss Xue..." His voice dropped, deliberate and unhurried. "You didn't expect this, did you. Today, here — we laid a trap, and you walked right into it." He let the moment linger. "You've got no one to blame but yourself. You've been getting too bold lately. Encroaching on our Black Rat Gang territory? We aren't the type to swallow that quietly."

The middle-aged man — Boss Xue — gave the four of them a single, level look.

"Just the four of you?"

The smile on the black leather armor man's face went rigid.

"Stubborn right up to the end?!" His voice cracked to a snarl. "Sure, you're strong — near second-rank — but there are *four* of us here! *Kill him!!*"

At the command, three warriors erupted with spirit-light and lunged.

Only Pete stayed back, leveling his rifle from range. His pupils had already begun to shift — thinning to vertical slits.

The middle-aged man let out a short, low roar.

Blood-red light blazed across his body.

*Boom.*

He vanished.

An instant later, he reappeared at Pete's side.

His right leg swept out like a cracking whip, the air shrieking around it —

Pete was launched upward. He flew backward and slammed into the park's decorative fountain statue. Stone cracked. He tumbled down into the water basin at its base and lay completely still.

The other three froze.

The black leather armor man didn't think — he turned and bolted.

But the middle-aged man was already in motion. In a blur that barely registered as movement, he put the shield-bearer and the woman flat on the ground, then broke into pursuit.

Lu Yuan watched from the shadow of the alley and silently mourned for the black leather armor man.

*At that speed, he won't cover ten meters before he's caught.*

*Although his eyes could follow the middle-aged man's movements, his body couldn't. That man's power is completely out of his league right now.*

He was right. The middle-aged man returned moments later, dragging the black leather armor warrior by the collar. The man hung limp and unresponsive — alive or dead, it was impossible to say.

"You broke through to second rank?!" The question came out hoarse and broken.

A cold smile. "Got lucky. Broke through just a couple of days ago."

He looked down at the four bodies.

Something moved in his gaze. A flicker of hunger. Of wanting.

Then, without warning, his body went rigid.

Dark mist — ink-black and formless — began to swirl within his eyes.

*"Devour them."*

The words came out barely above a murmur.

He gathered up the four bodies without ceremony, left the park swiftly, and dissolved into the night.

——

The park was empty.

Lu Yuan stood in the alley, brow furrowed.

*Before, he had sensed something watching from that direction. A cold, fixed presence.*

*Now it was gone.*

He hadn't expected to find a Gene Warrior that strong in the slum district.

He glanced at Pete, lying motionless in the cracked fountain's water basin.

He and Pete were not friends. This wasn't his problem. And if he had been spotted — if that man had turned and noticed him — he wasn't sure he could have gotten away.

He hadn't moved to intervene. There was no point.

The middle-aged man paused at the far edge of the park. He turned, and his gaze settled on the direction Lu Yuan had come from. His brow creased, faintly.

Then he was gone.

Lu Yuan slipped deeper into the alley.

He moved through the back streets, keeping clear of both the ongoing gunfight in the distance and the direction the two men had gone, working his way free of the whole tangled mess.

In the distance, the gunfire continued. Nobody went to investigate. Nobody got involved.

That night, every tenant in the surrounding blocks huddled inside their rooms, trembling, terrified a stray bullet might come crashing through the walls at any moment.