The central logistics hub of the Zhao Group sat on the fringes of Jiangnanās northern industrial district like a massive, windowless fortress of corrugated steel and reinforced concrete. Late at night, the facility was dark, saved only by the high-intensity floodlights sweeping across the perimeter fencing and the low, mechanical hum of industrial ventilation shafts.
Lin Feng dropped from a low-hanging willow tree outside the eastern boundary wall, landing silently in the tall grass. He wore his black hoodie, gloves, and a simple mask covering the lower half of his face.
He unzipped his backpack and pulled out the items: the stolen silver keycard belonging to Manager Zhou and the military-grade variable frequency cloner he had acquired from the Jade Pavilion.
The corporate suits are arrogant,
Lin Feng thought as he crept toward a side staff entrance tucked away in the shadow of a massive loading dock.
Before the Great Awakening, they rely entirely on localized biometric data and digital protocols. They don't realize that in the face of future knowledge and refined physical senses, a data stream is just as porous as an open door.
He reached the side door, a heavy steel slab controlled by a glowing digital terminal. Lin Feng attached the fiber-optic leads of the matte-gray cloner to the card reader's interface seam, then slid Manager Zhouās keycard into the deviceās slot.
The clonerās digital display rapidly flickered with lines of green code, matching the encrypted, rotating biometric algorithm of the Zhao Group's intranet.
Beep.
The indicator light on the heavy door turned from a solid, defensive red to a soft, welcoming emerald green. The magnetic lock disengaged with a dull hiss of compressed air.
Lin Feng slipped inside, closing the door behind him before the automated terminal could log a delay exception.
The interior of the logistics facility was an endless maze of towering steel shelves stretching forty feet to the ceiling, stacked high with shrink-wrapped pallets, industrial components, and high-end consumer goods awaiting distribution. He closed his eyes, utilizing his
Mortal Flesh RefinementāStage 3 Peak
senses.
His ears picked up the distant, synchronized footfalls of two night-shift guards patrolling the western aisle, their boots squeaking faintly against the polished epoxy floor. Far above him, the soft clicking of automated security cameras tracking their pre-programmed paths cut through the dark.
Instead of sneaking down the open corridors, Lin Feng grabbed the steel framework of the nearest shelving unit. With a light flex of his fingers, his grip dug into the metal like iron claws. He pulled himself upward with absolute ease, his body moving with the silent agility of a phantom as he scaled the shelves, navigating across the high structural crossbeams completely out of the sightlines of both the guards and the security cameras.
He tracked the spatial memory of his previous life, moving toward the subterranean core of the facilityāthe heavily reinforced high-value storage vault.
Ten minutes later, Lin Feng descended a narrow concrete utility stairwell, dropping onto a landing directly facing a massive, circular vault door made of polished, solid tungsten alloy. The digital security system here was twice as complex, requiring not just a master keycard but a secondary localized proximity signature from the terminal.
Lin Feng smiled faintly under his mask. He plugged the cloner back into the diagnostic port. The Jade Pavilion's hardware hummed, aggressively replicating the internal administrative token he had pulled from Manager Zhou's phone telemetry.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The heavy, multi-ton tungsten gears inside the vault door slowly ground open, rotating back with a heavy, muffled hiss of pressurized seals.
Lin Feng stepped into the vault, closing the heavy door behind him to a narrow crack. The air inside was completely dry, chilled to a precise temperature to preserve delicate electronics and rare corporate commodities.
He ignored the rows of titanium lockboxes filled with bearer bonds and high-end prototypes. His gaze locked instantly onto a nondescript wooden crate resting on a lower steel pallet in the back corner. The crate bore a faded customs stamp from the Shandong Archaeological Registry:
LOT 409 ā ANCIENT JADE ORNAMENTS (MOUNT TAI SITE).
Lin Feng walked over, grabbed the iron prybar he had brought in his pack, and wedged it beneath the crate's lid. With a sharp, controlled burst of his physical strength, the heavy iron nails groaned and popped free.
Inside, nestled in coarse straw and faded yellow silk wrapping, were dozens of ancient, discolored jade pendants, ceremonial rings, and broken stone tablets. To an antique appraiser, they were fascinating artifacts of a bygone dynasty.
To Lin Feng, they were a goldmine.
The moment his gloved hands brushed past the topmost layer of artifacts, his
Dantian
vibrated violently. A deep, resonant warmth flooded his veins.
"Three of them," Lin Feng whispered, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, golden light.
He dug his hands into the center of the pile, pulling out three large, jagged pieces of uncut, opaque white jade. They didn't look polished or beautiful; they looked like common, cloudy river stones. But through his refined spiritual perception, he could see the dense, swirling vortexes of crystalline sapphire energy locked deep inside the mineral matrix.
Dormant Spiritual Stones. High-grade.
Before the Awakening, the raw spiritual energy of the world was compressed and trapped inside high-density geological nodes. Mount Tai was the primary anchor point of eastern Huaxia's ancient energy rifts. These stones had been excavated from the deepest, untouched strata of the mountain, packing a concentration of pure, unrefined Qi that was a hundred times denser than the premature seed he had consumed in the mud pit.
With these three stones, I won't just refine my flesh,
Lin Feng realized, his pulse quickening with precise calculation.
I can violently force open my primary spiritual pathways. I can step directly into the next major power realm before the year ends.
Suddenly, the lights inside the subterranean vault violently flickered.
The soft, amber low-voltage bulbs vanished, instantly replaced by a blinding, pulsing crimson glare. A high-pitched, deafening electronic siren began to scream through the concrete walls of the stairwell outside.
šØ INTERNAL VAULT BREACH DETECTED. SECTOR 04 LOCKDOWN INITIATED. AUTOMATED DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS ENGAGED.
Lin Feng didn't panic. His expression remained utterly detached as he shoved the three heavy spiritual stones into his backpack, zipping it tight.
A mishap,
he thought calmly, analyzing the situation.
The vault door didn't have a digital trigger, which means the Zhao Groupās headquarters implemented a passive mass-variance sensor beneath the storage pallets. The moment the weight of the crate decreased by more than two kilograms, the alarm triggered automatically.
The heavy tungsten vault door began to slide shut, its massive hydraulic pistons groaning as they forced the multi-ton slab back into its locking frame to seal the intruder inside a living tomb.
At the same time, the heavy steel grates of the ventilation shafts above him snapped open. Two sleek, quad-copter security dronesāeach equipped with a high-capacity stun-dart turret and a high-frequency tracking laserādropped into the vault, their red ocular lenses locking onto Lin Feng's silhouette.
"You're a bit too late to lock the cage," Lin Feng muttered.
Before the drones could synchronize their targeting systems, Lin Feng moved like a strike of lightning. He grabbed his iron prybar from the floor, spinning on his heel, and hurled it through the air with the explosive velocity of a ballistic missile.
CRASH.
The iron bar tore completely through the rotor assembly of the first drone, shattering its carbon-fiber frame into a shower of sparks and sending it spinning violently into the concrete wall, where its battery pack exploded in a localized ball of white flame.
The second drone fired a rapid burst of three high-voltage stun darts.
Lin Feng didn't dodge backward. He stepped
forward
, his body executing a flawless, low-profile slide beneath the trajectory of the darts. The projectiles hissed through the air, embedding themselves harmlessly into the wooden crate behind him.
As his slide brought him directly beneath the hovering drone, Lin Feng shot his right fist straight upward.
Mortal Flesh RefinementāStage 3 Peak Force.
His bare fist struck the underbelly of the armored drone. The immense, compressed kinetic impact traveled through the chassis, violently compressing the internal components and causing the machine's cooling core to implode. The drone died instantly, dropping into his hand like a dead bird. Lin Feng casually tossed the scrap metal aside, his eyes locking onto the closing vault door.
The gap was down to less than eighteen inches. The tungsten alloy slab was moving with thousands of pounds of hydraulic pressure, capable of shearing an armored vehicle in half.
Lin Feng sprinted toward the narrowing exit, his new physical limits pushing his body to a velocity that blurred in the crimson strobe lights. He reached the gap just as it shrunk to a mere ten inches.
Instead of trying to squeeze through flat, Lin Feng turned his body sideways, guiding a thin, dense layer of his internal Qi into his shoulders and ribs to compress his physical mass. He glided through the microscopic opening with the fluid precision of a ribbon slicing through water.
The moment his heel cleared the frame, the tungsten door slammed shut behind him with a thunderous, deafening
BOOM
that shook the entire concrete foundation of the utility stairs.
Lin Feng stood on the dark landing, unbothered by the screaming sirens above him. He adjusted the straps of his heavy backpack, feeling the deep, thrumming warmth of the three spiritual stones pressing against his spine.
The corporate fortress was in absolute chaos, but the prize was already won.