The boundary wall of Old Sector 4 was a monument to Earth’s forgotten history, a towering slab of cracked ferrocrete slick with toxic, acidic rain. There were no neon lights here, no Academy peacekeepers. Just the suffocating darkness and the distant, haunting howl of mutated beasts in the wastelands beyond.
Zhao Ming stood beneath the rusted husk of an Old Era transport ship, checking his datapad for the twentieth time. His hands were shaking. The fake vitals of his assassins were still looping, a rhythmic, agonizing pulse of green light that mocked him.
"Where is he?" Zhao Ming hissed, kicking a loose piece of scrap iron into the toxic mud. "The dealer said midnight."
"He is not coming, Zhao Ming," a voice translated into Chen Xi’s mind. Sylphe had tapped into the local black-market comms network. "I intercepted the dealer's encrypted channel ten minutes ago. I sent him a spoofed message from the Ironfang Syndicate canceling the meet and threatening his life. You and Zhao Ming are entirely alone. The nearest biological signature is a mile away."
Chen Xi stood on the roof of the transport ship, directly above the pacing syndicate heir. He wore the rusted iron scavenger mask, his grey Academy uniform replaced by unmarked, dark tactical gear. He didn't carry a single tool. He didn't need one.
Stellar Furnace Art: Kinetic Compression.
Chen Xi closed his eyes. He drew the cold, polluted air into his lungs, but he didn't exhale. He forced the energy down, compressing it into his cells until his muscle fibers became as dense as depleted uranium. The sheer gravitational weight of his Qi made the rusted roof beneath his boots groan.
He stepped off the edge.
He dropped thirty feet, landing directly behind Zhao Ming. He didn't use Qi to soften the blow—he used it to anchor himself. His heavy combat boots hit the toxic mud with a sickening, heavy thud that cracked the ferrocrete beneath the soil.
Zhao Ming whirled around, drawing his plasma-pistol in a blind panic.
He froze. Standing before him was a nightmare forged in the slums. The man was completely silent, his face hidden behind a scarred iron mask that reflected nothing but the dim, ambient smog. The localized gravity around the figure felt oppressive, suffocating.
"Who are you?!" Zhao Ming screamed, his voice cracking. "Who sent you? The Crimson Skulls? The Lin Family? Listen to me, I am the heir to the Ironfang Syndicate! Whatever they're paying you, I'll triple it! Just put your hands where I can see them!"
Chen Xi didn't speak. Silence was a weapon that bred terror. He slowly raised his right hand, curling his fingers into a loose fist.
"I said stay back!" Zhao Ming roared, his terror overriding his rationality. He didn't fire the pistol; he dropped it. His Rank-A potential flared to life. The air around him instantly superheated. Blinding, blue-white plasma erupted from his palms, forming a crackling, unstable sphere of pure thermal destruction.
He thrust his hands forward, unleashing a torrent of superheated ionized gas that melted the very rain in the air into steam.
"Warning: Thermal output exceeding 4,000 degrees," Sylphe stated, her voice icy and detached. "He lacks any sophisticated routing technique. He is simply venting raw power like a broken exhaust pipe. Exploit his center line."
Chen Xi didn't dodge.
He stepped directly into the path of the plasma wave. He punched forward. He didn't use a complex martial arts form; he used the most fundamental, brutal application of his Stellar Furnace Art.
A shockwave of compressed Kinetic Qi exploded from his knuckles. It met the plasma wave head-on. The physics were absolute. The sheer density of Chen Xi’s kinetic force created a vacuum cone, splitting the superheated plasma perfectly in half. The blue fire roared past his shoulders, instantly turning the ferrocrete wall behind him to molten slag, but leaving Chen Xi completely untouched in the center.
Zhao Ming’s eyes bulged in absolute horror as the iron-masked demon walked through his ultimate attack without a single burn.
"Impossible..." Zhao Ming gasped, his plasma sputtering as panic disrupted his focus. "What kind of monster—"
Chen Xi vanished.
With a burst of kinetic force that shattered the ground beneath his feet, Chen Xi closed the ten-meter gap in a fraction of a second. Before Zhao Ming could raise his hands to conjure a plasma shield, Chen Xi’s left hand shot out, clamping around Zhao Ming’s right wrist.
The grip was inescapable. It felt like being caught in the jaws of an industrial hydraulic press.
CRACK.
Chen Xi crushed the bones in Zhao Ming’s wrist with a casual squeeze. The syndicate heir let out an agonizing, high-pitched scream as his plasma connection was violently severed, the bones grinding into a fine powder beneath the tactical gloves.
Chen Xi didn't stop. With his right hand, he delivered a short, devastating palm strike to Zhao Ming’s left shoulder.
The kinetic force didn't just break the joint; it traveled through the bone, shattering the collarbone and dislocating the shoulder blade simultaneously. Zhao Ming’s left arm went entirely limp, dangling uselessly at his side.
"Wait! Wait, please!" Zhao Ming sobbed, falling to his knees in the mud, staring up at the emotionless iron mask. The arrogant, untouchable Elite student was gone. He was just a terrified boy who had relied on a genetic lottery his whole life, completely unequipped to handle someone who had clawed his way up from the bottom.
"You... you fight like the slums," Zhao Ming coughed, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as the kinetic shockwaves tore at his internal organs. "Who are you...?"
Chen Xi stood over him, the rain washing the mud from his boots.
"Your assassins died well," Chen Xi finally spoke, his voice artificially deepened and muffled by the iron mask, sounding like grinding metal. "They thought they were hunting a rat."
Zhao Ming’s breath hitched. His pupils dilated to the size of coins as the horrifying truth finally slotted into place. The missing assassins. The impossible string of "accidents" in Sector G. The mechanic who had stood in the plaza and smiled while being mocked.
"Chen... Xi?" Zhao Ming whispered, his mind fracturing. "You're... you're a Dual-Class? A mechanic and a... my god... you set us up."
Chen Xi didn't smile. He didn't gloat. He simply raised his foot.
"You talk too much," Chen Xi said.
He drove his combat boot squarely into Zhao Ming’s chest. He unleashed the full, unbridled reserve of his Kinetic Qi in a single, localized point. The kinetic force bypassed the ribcage entirely, sending a shockwave directly into Zhao Ming’s heart.
The organ ruptured instantly.
Zhao Ming’s body jerked violently, thrown three meters backward into the mud. He was dead before his head hit the ground, his eyes wide open, forever frozen in the terrifying realization of his own fatal mistake.
Chen Xi exhaled. The localized gravity around him dissipated. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the pleasant, thrumming exhaustion in his muscles.
"Biological termination confirmed," Sylphe purred, appearing on his shoulder as a hologram, looking down at the corpse with utter contempt. "A Rank-A Esper, beaten to death in under thirty seconds by a mechanic using nothing but physical force. If the Academy professors could see this, they would rewrite the entire curriculum. That was beautiful, Chen Xi."
"It was necessary," Chen Xi corrected, walking over to the body. He didn't waste time marveling at his victory. He immediately began looting. He stripped Zhao Ming of his high-tier spatial ring—an incredibly expensive piece of tech that Chen Xi desperately needed—and his encrypted datapad.
"What is the disposal protocol?" Sylphe asked, analyzing the surrounding area. "The rain will wash away your footprints within twenty minutes, but a corpse with shattered internal organs and crushed wrists points directly to a high-tier martial artist. The Ironfang Syndicate will tear the slums apart looking for whoever did this."
"Let them look for a martial artist," Chen Xi said, pulling a small vial from his pocket. It was a synthesized pheromone extract he had harvested from the Steel-Scaled Hound in Chapter 1. "They won't be looking for a Rank-C mechanic who was asleep in his dorm."
He poured the concentrated beast pheromones over Zhao Ming’s body. The pungent, acidic scent immediately began to react with the toxic air, creating a beacon that would attract every hungry cosmic beast within five miles.
"Wraith," Chen Xi called out.
The invisible spider drone dropped from the rusted transport ship.
"Take his left arm," Chen Xi ordered coldly. "Drag it a hundred meters toward the wasteland perimeter. Make it look like a pack of scavengers fought over the corpse. Leave nothing intact."
Wraith’s blue optics flashed in compliance. It uncloaked, its bladed legs easily slicing through the dead flesh, beginning the grisly work of erasing the syndicate heir from existence.
Chen Xi turned his back on the carnage, melting into the shadows of the dead zone. He had a spatial ring to crack, an AI to feed, and an Academy to conquer. The scavenger phase was over. The true ascent had begun.