Chapter 12: Breaking the Warden

The crimson laser dot remained fixed perfectly over Lin Feng’s heart, unmoving despite the torrential rain hammering down on Phoenix Street.

Zhao Kun stepped closer, his heavy leather trench coat swishing softly over the ruined cobblestones. His right hand held the large, custom-engineered tactical revolver with absolute, unshakeable stability. The weapon’s auxiliary chamber whistled—a low, terrifying hiss as the micro-generator inside aggressively converted Zhao Kun's raw, basic breathing exercises into a dense, compressed coating of pale blue Qi along the barrel.

"You talk about corporate insurance, brat," Zhao Kun said, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as his thumb calmly clicked the heavy iron hammer back.

Click.

"But I am the one who writes the policy in this province. Your speed is impressive for a mortal. But a kinetic firearm doesn't look at your footwork."

Lin Feng didn't look down at the targeting laser. He casually crossed his arms, leaning his spine back against the rim of the ancient stone well.

"Director Zhao, you've spent the last six hours tracing a digital cloner token, assuming you were hunting an infiltration squad from the Bai family," Lin Feng said, his tone conversational, entirely unbothered by the threat of a lethal firearm. "Your entire strategy tonight was built on an obsolete playbook. Let me ask you: if your weapon is designed to puncture early-stage Qi barriers... what happens when the target doesn't use a barrier at all?"

"It breaks the meat," Zhao Kun growled.

Without another syllable of dialogue, Zhao Kun pulled the trigger.

BOOM.

The roar of the custom revolver was deafening, the sheer explosive concussive force of the specialized powder cartridge blowing the rainwater ten feet outward from the barrel. A single, solid alloy projectile—wrapped in a jagged, swirling drill-tip of pale blue Qi—tore through the foggy air at three times the speed of sound. The compressed air pressure behind the bullet left a visible, vacuum-like distortion line stretching straight toward Lin Feng's chest cavity.

To an ordinary martial artist or an early-stage cultivator, a compressed Qi-bullet at this velocity was a definitive death sentence. It was too fast to dodge visually, and its piercing properties were explicitly calibrated to bypass structural body-refinement arts.

But to Lin Feng, currently anchoring the absolute absolute pinnacle of

Mortal Flesh Refinement—Stage 9 Peak

, the entire sequence unfolded with agonizing clarity.

He didn't activate an external Qi shield. He didn't execute a fluid movement to step out of the trajectory.

Instead, Lin Feng simply raised his bare right hand, his fingers spreading open with casual, loose precision.

Clang.

A sharp, metallic shriek—resembling a high-speed train screeching against rusted iron tracks—echoed through the open courtyard.

Zhao Kun’s deep-set eyes violently contracted behind his visor.

The heavy, armor-piercing alloy bullet hadn't penetrated Lin Feng’s palm. It hadn't even broken his skin. Lin Feng’s bare fingers had closed around the spinning projectile mid-air, catching it flawlessly between his index finger and thumb. The pale blue corporate Qi wrapped around the bullet hissed and crackled furiously against his palm, trying desperately to bore through his flesh, but the moment it made contact with Lin Feng’s internal, pristine energy reserves, it instantly shattered and dissolved into meaningless gray smoke.

Lin Feng stood perfectly unmoving, looking down at the flattened piece of lead resting harmlessly between his fingers.

"Your weapon formulation has a structural deficit," Lin Feng remarked softly, looking back up at the internal security director. "You're prioritizing linear kinetic velocity over energetic cohesion. When the spiritual fault lines truly fracture a year from now, a Tier-1 beast's hide will look like tungsten alloy to a toy like this."

He lightly flicked his wrist.

The flattened lead projectile flew backward through the rain, moving with such sudden, compressed physical velocity that it transformed into an invisible sonic crack.

Pshhh.

The bullet didn't strike Zhao Kun; it whipped past his left ear, cleanly shearing away his earpiece communications array and slicing a microscopic, bleeding line along his jaw before embedding itself three inches deep into the solid concrete pillar of the arched gateway behind him.

Zhao Kun stood completely frozen, the heavy custom revolver remaining extended in his grip. For the first time in his twenty-year career as the 'Iron Warden of Jiangnan,' a deep, instinctual chill crawled up his spine.

"Mortal Flesh Refinement..." Zhao Kun whispered, his gravelly voice losing its stable, authoritative rhythm. He lowered the gun slightly, staring at Lin Feng's smooth, unblemished skin. "The ancient military archives mentioned a theoretical state... an unbroken, pristine meridian structure that could absorb raw geological Qi without cellular rejection. You... you found a master manual before the awakening?"

"I am the manual, Director Zhao," Lin Feng replied.

He took his first step forward.

The moment his sneaker touched the wet cobblestone floorboards, an invisible, crushing dome of pure physical weight detonated outward from his frame. The rain falling within a five-meter radius of Lin Feng was instantly vaporized into thick, white steam by the immense kinetic heat humming beneath his skin.

Zhao Kun’s enforcer instincts took over. Realizing a firearm was entirely useless against a physical monster of this caliber, he threw the custom revolver aside. He lowered his center of gravity, his large hands coiling into tight, heavy fists as he activated his family's hidden internal breathing style—

The Tremor Core.

A dark, muddy brown hue seeped into Zhao Kun’s forearms, his muscle fibers swelling and hardening until his skin resembled the cracked, heavy surface of ancient mountain stone.

"I don't care what manual you hold, brat!" Zhao Kun roared, his voice carrying a dense, vibrating soundwave designed to shatter a mortal's inner ear. "The Zhao Group owns the soil of Jiangnan! If you stand against us, I will bury your foundation into the bedrock!"

Zhao Kun sprinted forward, his heavy boots destroying the cobblestones as he threw a massive, earth-shattering straight right punch toward Lin Feng’s face. The kinetic force of his arm moving generated a mini-tornado of displaced rainwater that swirled around his forearm like a drill.

Lin Feng didn't slow his pace. He didn't adopt a defensive stance.

As Zhao Kun’s fist came within twelve inches of his eyes, Lin Feng simply extended his left hand, his bare fingers wrapping around the enforcer's massive, stone-hard wrist like an iron vise.

Crunch.

The dark, muddy brown Qi protecting Zhao Kun’s forearm instantly imploded under the sheer pressure of Lin Feng's grip. The reinforced carbon-fiber bone implants inside the director's wrist shattered into microscopic powder with a horrific, grinding crunch.

"Aaaaagh!" Zhao Kun let out a choked, bloody gasp, his knees buckling from the sudden, overwhelming agony.

"You talk too much about ownership, Director," Lin Feng said, his gaze locking onto Zhao Kun’s terrified face from inches away. His eyes burned with an ancient, golden light that seemed entirely older than civilization itself. "The Zhao family doesn't own the fault lines. You're just monkeys screaming at the earthquake."

Lin Feng raised his right hand, making a loose fist, and delivered a compact, three-inch punch directly into the center of Zhao Kun’s sternum.

THUMP.

The sound was shockingly quiet compared to the prior explosions, but the spatial payoff was devastating. The absolute, unmitigated kinetic energy of

Mortal Flesh Refinement—Stage 9 Peak

bypassed the director's heavy tactical vest, traveling directly into his internal organs.

Zhao Kun didn't fly backward. The force localized inside his chest cavity, cleanly snapping his collarbones and violently rupturing his primary energetic pathways. The internal security director spewed a large arc of dark crimson blood into the rain, his eyes rolling back into his head as his consciousness entirely vanished. He collapsed into the mud at Lin Feng's feet, his stone-hard skin instantly softening back into ordinary, fragile human flesh.

The courtyard became completely silent once more, save for the rhythmic, steady drumming of the storm.

Lin Feng stood over the broken body of the Iron Warden, his breathing remaining perfectly flat, his pulse steady. He unzipped his backpack, pulling out his cheap smartphone. He bypassed the local encryption, opening an automated direct-dial line he had extracted from the Jade Pavilion's private server logs.

The call connected on the first ring.

"Xuanwu?" Bai Qingxi’s sharp, anxious voice came through the speaker, accompanied by the distant sound of blaring corporate sirens at her family's medical headquarters. "Where are you? Zhao Kun’s vanguard detachment has completely vanished from our tracking satellites near the antique quarter. Did you escape?"

Lin Feng looked across the courtyard at the twelve broken enforcers and the unconscious director bleeding into the cobblestones.

"Tell your grandfather to send his clean-up trucks to the Phoenix Street courtyard," Lin Feng said, his voice smooth, cold, and entirely detached. "The Iron Warden of Jiangnan is broken. His vanguard is neutralized. You have exactly three hours to seize the Zhao Group’s real estate assets in the southern hills before their corporate board realizes their head of security is offline."

A sharp, audible gasp echoed from the other end of the line. The sound of papers dropping and a chair screeching back proved Bai Qingxi had completely lost her corporate composure.

"You... you defeated Zhao Kun? Alone?" she stammered, her voice shaking with an uncharacteristic, profound awe. "Who... who are you really, Xuanwu?"

"The stage is yours, Director Bai," Lin Feng said smoothly, tapping the screen to disconnect the call. He threw the phone into his backpack, pulled his black hood low over his face, and stepped over the director's limp body.

The mishap of the corporate pursuit was thoroughly liquidated. The city of Jiangnan was about to change hands, and the undefeated apex of New Huaxia was already moving toward the next hidden inheritance.