The high-altitude wind howling over the peaks of Jiangnanâs southern hills carried the clean, cold scent of wet pine and mountain soil. Lin Feng walked out from the edge of the forest line, stepping onto the abandoned asphalt pass just as the first true rays of the morning sun pierced the thick blanket of high fog.
He adjusted the single strap of his worn utility backpack. Within his lower abdomen, his newly consolidated
Dantian
spun with a slow, heavy rhythm, its movement completely silent, yet radiating an incredible internal heat. The single channel of liquid Qi circulating through his
Ren Channel
was fluid and deep, perfectly grounding his weight against the steep mountain incline.
Qi Circulation ChannelingâStage 1,
Lin Feng thought, his vacant, bottomless eyes tracking a flock of birds dispersing over the valley below.
The threshold is crossed. Before the regional rifts open on a global scale, my energetic blueprint is already interacting with the primary fault lines of Earth. The human flesh is no longer just a soft container; it is an active conductor.
He pulled his cheap smartphone from his pocket. The screen lit up instantly, bypassing the network timeouts as the localized signal routing data drive he had handed to the Central Bureau operatives began to interface with the stateâs automated telecommunication arrays.
The digital world was experiencing a silent, subterranean shift.
While the public news channels were still heavily focused on the corporate gridlock between the Zhao Group and the Bai family, the inner forums of the
Brocade Carp Network
were showing massive spikes in high-level data encryption originating directly from the state capital's regulatory networks.
Thread: [đš ADMINISTRATIVE SHIFT] Central Bureau deploys massive heavy machinery logistics detachments toward the Western Mountains. Civil evacuation directives drafted under 'Geological Safety' protocols.
Thread: Emergency banking halts implemented across all assets tied to the Zhao Family Real Estate Group. The corporate board is facing an unprecedented internal audit.
A cold, undefeated smile touched Lin Feng's lips beneath his gray utility jacket.
The mishap of encountering the black-ops engineering squad had been thoroughly transformed into a long-term strategic shield. By passing the precise geological variance data of the upcoming western ruptures to the bureau, he hadn't just saved thousands of low-lying mortal lives ahead of the historical schedule; he had completely dismantled the Zhao familyâs corporate immunity. The authorities would no longer look at the southern hills as a simple real estate conflictâthey would treat it as a critical sector of national security, permanently locking down the ancestral estate under an administrative seal.
The Zhao family was effectively frozen on the board, their resources tied up in legal and military gridlock, completely blinding them to the independent monster growing right in their backyard.
Suddenly, a localized, unencrypted text alert flashed across the bottom of his smartphone interface. It was from a burner number he had assigned to a passive listening script on Bai Qingxiâs private server log.
"The Jade Pavilion has initiated an immediate logistical relocation. My grandfather has approved the acquisition of the northern industrial logistics hub. We found the storage crates empty, Xuanwu. The Mount Tai jades are gone. If you are the one holding the stones, be carefulâthere is an independent mercenary group known as the 'Gilded Fang' currently entering Jiangnan. They were hired by the capital's shadow brokers to track the physical path of the ancient artifacts."
Lin Feng stared at the text for a short moment before calmly deleting the message logs from his storage array.
The Gilded Fang,
his mind calculated, his pulse remaining perfectly flat.
In my past life, they were a notorious syndicate of lawless cultivators who specialized in raiding early-stage inheritance sites and liquidating independent practitioners for their cores. They don't look at corporate laws or national infrastructure protocols; they only follow the trace of raw, compressed Qi.
He slung his backpack tighter across his shoulder and turned his steps toward the winding path leading back down into the Jiangnan metropolis.
The board was splintering into three separate fronts. The corporate giants were bleeding their financial reserves, the regulatory bureau was shifting its military assets to protect the western populations, and the lawless hounds of the capital were drawing their blades to hunt down a phantom.
"Let them come," Lin Feng whispered into the mountain wind, his voice carrying a dense, spatial resonance that caused the wet pine needles on the ground to vibrate in unison. "The cage is open, the tracking lines are set, and the apex of New Huaxia has just finished his first loop."
He stepped down into the creeping morning fog, his silhouette instantly vanishing from the mountain ledger as he prepared to greet the hunters.