Chapter 20: Sunder the Fang

The fine, oily drizzle falling over the northern industrial district didn't stop, but the silence inside the locked alleyway grew so dense it felt solid.

The two remaining mercenaries of the Gilded Fang took a synchronized step backward, their heavy tactical boots sliding across the slick asphalt. Their predatory, battle-hardened focus had completely collapsed, replaced by a raw, instinctual alarm. The mechanical indicators built into their tracking visors were flickering wildly, unable to register how a lone youth in a plain hoodie could pluck a supersonic, Qi-conductor volcanic arrow out of the air with his bare palms.

"Leader..." the mercenary with the trench sword whispered, his voice dry and tight inside his linen face wraps. "His baseline energy reading didn't spike until the point of impact. It’s a total internal loop. He’s not drawing from the atmosphere; his

Dantian

is already producing its own liquid weight."

The archer didn't respond immediately. His jaw was clenched so tightly that a thick tendon throbbed along his neck. He was a master tracker who had executed dozens of rogue targets for the capital's shadow brokers, but those targets had been flawed, frantic individuals who manually forced open their meridians using unstable methods.

The youth standing before him didn't have a single flaw in his stance. His posture was perfectly straight, blade-like, and completely anchored—as if the entire tectonic weight of the Jiangnan fault line was directly supporting his heels.

"Don't panic!" the archer suddenly roared, his voice carrying a forced, dense vibration to override his squad's psychological paralysis. "He’s only forced open a single channel! The physical container cannot maintain that level of output without environmental circulation. Split his focus! Use the

Twin Python Flanking Form

!"

The archer frantically dropped his recurve bow, his right hand shooting down to his tactical thigh harness to pull out a sleek, rapid-fire submachine gun custom-engineered to fire high-density tungsten needles. At the same time, the sword-wielding mercenary lunged forward, his curved trench blade erupting with a volatile, high-frequency gray current that cut the falling raindrops into tiny wisps of steam.

They moved with absolute, military-grade coordination. The swordsman ran a jagged, serpentine path along the brick factory wall to claim Lin Feng’s blind spot, while the archer opened fire from the front, a continuous, deafening

bzzzzt

echoing through the alley as hundreds of supersonic tungsten needles tore through the white steam.

To an ordinary mortal elite or a Stage 5 flesh-refinement practitioner, this overlapping kinetic net was a definitive terminal payload. There was no space to slide, no cover to claim, and the piercing capacity of the needles could punch through three inches of reinforced structural steel.

But to Lin Feng, currently anchoring the flawless baseline of

Qi Circulation Channeling—Stage 1

, the entire frantic sequence looked incredibly clumsy.

"Your understanding of speed is too linear," Lin Feng said softly.

He didn't execute an intricate defensive martial arts form. He simply took a short step forward, letting out a sharp, controlled exhalation through his teeth.

BOOM.

The liquid Qi circulating through his

Ren Channel

violently surged outward through his pores, generating an invisible, spherical shockwave of absolute atmospheric pressure that detonated within a three-meter perimeter around his body.

The hundreds of supersonic tungsten needles didn't just miss—the moment they struck the boundary of his invisible Qi dome, their forward kinetic momentum experienced a total, devastating reversal. The tiny metal spikes violently shattered into a fine metallic dust that sprayed backward through the rain, blinding the archer's electronic tracking visor and tearing his linen face wraps into shreds.

Before the archer could wipe the blood and metal dust from his eyes, Lin Feng’s silhouette disappeared from the center of the alley.

Pshhh.

He didn't use a flashy movement art; his raw physical velocity at Stage 1 Circulation simply outpaced the optical data transmission rate of the mercenaries' electronic gear. He appeared directly inside the swordsman’s serpentine trajectory, his porcelain-smooth hand shooting out like a striking viper to intercept the incoming gray trench blade.

Clang—crunch!

Lin Feng’s bare fingers closed around the vibrating alloy blade, completely halting its high-frequency rotation in less than a millisecond. With a casual, effortless turn of his wrist, he flexed his forearm. The solid, custom-tempered steel weapon didn't just break; it violently twisted and crumpled into a mangled ball of scrap iron under the immense squeezing pressure of his bare palm.

"What kind of monster..." the swordsman gasped, his eyes widening in absolute horror behind his mask as his entire right shoulder joint groaned from the sudden, unyielding leverage.

"You're relying too much on the blade's frequency," Lin Feng remarked smoothly, his vacant, bottomless eyes locking onto the man's face from inches away. "When the deep world-rifts tear open six months from now, a Tier-2 abyssal beast will swallow a frequency like this like a common candy."

Lin Feng didn't deliver a traditional martial strike. He simply shifted his weight forward, his shoulder casually bumping into the mercenary's chest plate.

Thump.

The compact, unmitigated kinetic energy of his Stage 1 body bypassed the dark mesh armor entirely, traveling directly into the man’s core skeletal matrix. The swordsman didn't fly backward; instead, the incredible force localized inside his torso, cleanly snapping his collarbones and violently short-circuiting his neural pathways. The mercenary let out a strangled, bloody cough, his eyes rolling back as his consciousness instantly vanished. He dropped onto his knees, collapsing face-first into the oily puddle at Lin Feng’s feet.

The lead archer, now bleeding from dozens of tiny facial lacerations caused by his own reflected needles, dropped his ruined firearm into the mud. He didn't attempt to draw a third weapon. His elite training and mercenary psychology, built entirely on the predictable parameters of modern weaponry and basic martial arts, completely shattered.

He backed away until his shoulders slammed against the rusted iron doors of the old chemical plant, his chest heaving frantically.

"Who... who are you?" the archer stammered, his rasping voice cracking with a profound, primitive terror that no shadow broker's bounty could ever justify. "The capital... the high director told us you were just a broke student who lucked into an ancient excavation site... You're an old soul... a hidden Grandmaster from the pre-scientific eras..."

Lin Feng didn't pursue him. He stood perfectly still under the gray overcast sky, his clothes completely unmarred by the blood or filth of the alley. He casually walked back to the wooden pallet, picking up his worn utility backpack and slinging it over his right shoulder.

"Go back to your shadow brokers in the capital," Lin Feng commanded, his voice carrying a deep, spatial resonance that caused the puddles on the asphalt to vibrate in perfect geometric rings. "Tell them that the Mount Tai white jades have been thoroughly digested. Tell them that if they send another lawless hound into Jiangnan Province, I won't just break the teeth—I will erase their financial ledger from the capital's board entirely."

The archer looked down at his broken, unconscious squad members, then back up at Lin Feng's terrifying, vacancy-filled gaze. He didn't utter a single syllable of compliance. He simply scooped up the limp forms of his companions, dragging them toward a waiting, unmarked transport van hidden in the parallel lane. Within seconds, the rapid, desperate screech of tires echoed through the foggy industrial quarter, leaving the alleyway in absolute silence once more.

Lin Feng pulled his cheap smartphone from his pocket, checking the screen one last time. The local encrypted network boards were completely silent regarding this sector, proving the Gilded Fang had operated entirely outside the public ledger.

A minor mishap had been thoroughly cleared from his path, but the countdown to the Great Awakening was still ticking, and the undefeated path toward the apex of New Huaxia was forcing him to look toward the primary grand stage—the Capital’s Imperial Academy.