Chapter Four

I sat in the run-down café called "Old Times" at the end of the street. The black coffee in front of me had gone cold, covered with a layer of dark brown oil. Outside the window, the acid rain in Grey Harbor was even more intense than last night. The signal for activating "Cleaner" privileges flickered like fireflies on my terminal, while the air on both sides of the street had silently solidified into a killing formation.

The Gray King rescued Julian , apparently intending to use him here.

I wasn't in a hurry to leave. Because I knew that for those hunters living in the gutter, I was the only prey they could use to prove their existence tonight.

"Commander Long, two people locked onto the rooftop at twelve o'clock. Five-man ambush team inside the modified SUV at three o'clock. Civilian communications have been completely cut off throughout the block." The adjutant's voice in the earpiece was as calm as the deep sea.

I looked up, my peripheral vision glancing at the glass window. In that instant, a sniper bullet pierced through the window, grazing my cheek, and the glass shattered with a crash. But I didn't even shift my weight; the bullet pierced the coffee cup on the table, shattering the porcelain, but only leaving a faint, red mark on my cheek, burned by the intense heat.

Prediction? No, that was just their outdated tactic.

In that instant of shrapnel flying, my eyes finally turned cold.

At the other end of the street, a dozen or so black SUVs filed in like black venomous insects, their blinding high beams blaring, forcibly illuminating this forgotten neighborhood. Julian Vance sat in a luxurious, armored limousine. His door opened, revealing a face etched with arrogance and madness, tinged with an indescribable, morbid pleasure.

Behind him stood the high-ranking "Cleaners," a unit heavily recruited by the Morgan Group. They wore identical nano-combat suits, equipped with individual thermal imaging systems, and carried armor-piercing sniper rifles capable of easily penetrating main battle tanks.

Julian stepped out of the car, his expensive fur coat soaked by the rain. He stood in the rain, laughing wildly, as if he could already foresee me being riddled with bullets, dragged like a dead dog through the mud. “Liam! My good brother! You think you can win by cutting off my capital chain?” He waved his arm, aiming at the hidden cameras covering the entire street. “Tonight, all the live streaming channels in Gray Harbor will broadcast this trial live. I want everyone to see how you die at my feet!”

The “cleaners” surrounded us in a fan shape, their gun barrels pointed uniformly at the broken facade of the café. The clanging of metal was extremely jarring and brutal in the silent rain.

I lifted the hem of my coat but didn’t go outside.

I put down my coffee spoon, my movements as elegant as if I were attending a banquet. Just as Julian was about to give the order to attack, a mocking smile appeared on my lips, and I gently pressed the “clear the area” button on the touchpad under the table.

“The game begins.”

Boom—!

The loud noise didn’t come from any gunshot, but from the drainage pipes beneath the entire block.

Without warning, the previously smooth metal sewer covers were simultaneously ripped off by the immense pressure.

Simultaneously, hundreds of small electromagnetic pulse generators erupted with a blue ion storm. It was a deterrent force powerful enough to paralyze all electronic devices within a one-kilometer radius.

"Buzz—buzz—"

The thermal imaging on all the "cleaners'" combat suits instantly turned into a static screen. Their expensive night vision goggles, navigation systems, and even their rifles with automatic locking capabilities were reduced to scrap metal in a piercing hiss of electricity.

Panic.

Utter panic.

These self-proclaimed elite assassins, the moment they lost their electronic aids, were like blind men deprived of their sight. I leaped from the blasted ruins of the café, my dark military blade slicing a deadly arc in the cold rain.

This wasn't a battle; this was slaughter.

I didn't aim for their vitals, because that would be too merciful. I moved through their chaotic formation with an abnormally high speed. Each person I passed left a trail of crimson blood. I don't need thermal perception; I can pinpoint an opponent's location simply by their breathing and the pervasive smell of blood in the air.

A "cleaner" brandished a fighting knife in terror, trying to catch my shadow in the darkness. I grabbed his wrist with such force that I plunged the broken bone through his throat. He collapsed limply, his eyes filled with disbelief and terror.

Less than ten minutes later,

the once-arrogant "cleaners" were reduced to a pile of severed limbs. Rainwater mingled with warm blood at the sewer entrance, forming a crimson stream that flowed into the eternally dark abyss.

The street fell silent once more, save for the continuous acid rain that washed away the stench of blood.

I walked to the bulletproof car with its wrecked door and pulled the limp Julian Vance out. His trousers were soaked; it was from incontinence. His arrogance had been utterly crushed into dust in the past ten minutes, with the fall of those Morgan Group assassins.

Before the last Morgan Group leader, I casually tossed Julian to the ground like trash. He frantically tried to draw his dagger, but I gave him no chance. A powerful punch, carrying immense force, shattered his ribs; the sound of breaking bones was clearly audible in the rainy night.

I crouched down, looking at Julian, sprawled on the ground like a rag doll, unable to utter a single cry for help. I retrieved the GPS tracking chip from his armored vehicle and waved it in front of him.

“You think you’re the hunter, Julian?” I looked at his face, contorted with utter terror, my voice soft, yet colder than the winter rain. “But in my game, you’re not even worthy to be a pawn.”

A cold glint flashed in my blade. Instead of ending his life, I slammed his right hand—the one that had once commanded board meetings—hardly into the drain grate under the streetlight.

A piercing scream drowned out the rain.

I didn’t stop. From the chip implanted under his skin, I successfully extracted the highest-level encrypted original file—the “Agreement on the Replacement of the Gray Harbor New Town.”

Looking at the signatures and complex entries, I sneered. The so-called “legitimate investment” was nothing but outright plunder. And behind it all, the Morgan Bank executives—those “Gray Harbor creators” who sat at the top of the pyramid, whose names were never revealed—were planning a so-called “extermination hearing” tomorrow.

Did they want to eliminate me?

I stood up, raindrops dripping from the brim of my hat, creating tiny ripples on the ground. I placed the locator next to Julian's palm; with a piercing pain shooting through his hand, he nearly fainted.

The hearing, all right.

I left this place to him, to this commercial fortress about to crumble completely because of his arrogance. I disappeared into the rain and mist, leaving only one sentence echoing in the ruined streets taken over by darkness:

"See you tomorrow, everyone. I hope you're prepared for your...death sentences."