The crumbling ruins of Sub-Sector 4 were eerily quiet after the destruction of the Sentinel Mechs. To the casual observer, the sector was just a dead zone of concrete and rusted rebar. But through the lens of Chen Xi’s Stellar Furnace Art, the air was vibrating with microscopic data.
He crouched on a steel girder two stories above a ruined commercial plaza, his breathing slowed to one inhalation per minute.
"They have split up into a standard trident formation," Sylphe reported, her voice a whisper of pure data in his mind. "Distance between operatives: forty meters. They are using military-grade optical camouflage cloaks and silenced magnetic accelerators. These are not street thugs, Chen Xi. Zhao Ming hired the Ironfang’s elite executioners."
Chen Xi’s eyes tracked a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer moving through the rubble below. The optical cloaks were good, but they bent light, not dust. In the ash-choked air of Sector G, they left a faint wake, like a fish swimming through muddy water.
"If I kill one with martial arts out in the open, the Academy's high-resolution orbital cameras will record my Qi signature," Chen Xi muttered sub-vocally. "I need a blind spot."
"There is an Old Era subterranean coolant refinery fifty meters to your left," Sylphe stated, pulling up a 3D wireframe in his vision. "The facility used liquid nitrogen and heavy freon. The ambient thermal interference is so high it scrambles infrared, and the lead-lined walls block standard optical feeds. There are no active cameras inside."
"Perfect. Let's invite one inside."
Chen Xi tapped his collarbone. Wraith uncurled, its blue optics flashing once in understanding. "Wraith. Go to the eastern flank. Find the operative on the right point of the trident. Make a noise. Sound exactly like a panicked cadet tripping over scrap. Lead him into the coolant refinery."
The tungsten spider vanished into the shadows, moving with terrifying speed.
Chen Xi didn't wait. He dropped from the girder, falling two stories, and used his dense Kinetic Qi to absorb the impact entirely in his knees, making absolutely no sound as he landed. He slipped through a rusted access hatch and descended into the freezing darkness of the refinery.
The air down here was thick with a chemical haze, stinging the eyes. Massive, frost-covered pipes lined the walls, groaning under the pressure of ancient, semi-functional coolant systems. Chen Xi didn't just see pipes; his [Basic Mechanical Affinity] mapped the entire pressure system in his mind. He recognized the specific alloy of the release valves, the maximum PSI tolerances, and the exact points of structural decay.
He moved to a cluster of primary valves and waited, melting into the pitch-black shadows near the ceiling.
A minute later, the heavy iron door of the refinery creaked open.
The faint shimmer of the Ironfang assassin stepped inside. The operative was sweeping his silenced magnetic accelerator back and forth, hunting the noise Wraith had made. As the assassin moved deeper into the frost-choked room, the interference scrambled his optical cloak, causing it to flicker and drop.
He was a scarred mercenary with heavy cybernetic optics embedded in his skull.
"Target isolated," Sylphe confirmed coldly. "No external monitoring detected."
Chen Xi closed his eyes. The Stellar Furnace Art ignited. The ambient thermal energy in the freezing room rushed into his lungs, compressing into raw, explosive Kinetic Qi. He didn't let the energy leak into the air as a glowing aura; he forced it deep into his muscle fibers, packing it down until his flesh felt as dense as the high-carbon steel he worked with.
The mercenary stepped beneath Chen Xi’s shadow, his cybernetic eye whirring as it tried to pierce the chemical fog.
Chen Xi dropped.
He didn't yell. He didn't flourish. He descended like a falling anvil. The mercenary's combat implants shrieked a proximity warning, and the man reflexively spun, bringing the magnetic accelerator up to fire.
Chen Xi’s left hand shot out. His fingers, reinforced by the Alloy-Weave Refinement, clamped around the barrel of the rifle with a grip strong enough to bend the metal, shoving the weapon violently upward. The silenced round punched harmlessly into the concrete ceiling.
Before the mercenary could process the terrifying physical strength of the "Rank-C Mechanic," Chen Xi’s right wrist flicked forward.
SNIKT.
Driven by a burst of compressed Qi, the nine-inch Viper-Mantis blade shot from his bracer, vibrating at a frequency that effortlessly bypassed the mercenary's subdermal Kevlar weave. The blade slid seamlessly under the man’s jaw and pierced straight up into his brainstem.
The mercenary’s eyes rolled back. Death was instantaneous, the neural pathways severed before they could even register pain.
Chen Xi caught the heavy body before it could hit the metal floor and make a sound. He lowered the corpse gently, his breathing already returning to a steady, calm rhythm. The blade retracted with a soft hiss, leaving a clean, bloodless puncture wound.
"One down," Chen Xi whispered.
"Clean execution. However," Sylphe noted, her holographic form flickering into existence to look at the body with clinical detachment. "If the Academy proctors find this body, they will instantly recognize the wound profile. It is too precise. Mechanics do not kill with surgical strikes to the medulla oblongata."
"I know. That's why I brought him here."
Chen Xi grabbed a heavy wrench from his belt. He didn't smash the body. Instead, he looked up at the massive, frost-covered coolant pipe directly above them.
"The structural integrity of this Class-4 release valve is compromised by decades of thermal expansion," Chen Xi analyzed aloud, stepping back and measuring the angle. "There's roughly four hundred PSI of liquid nitrogen trapped behind a rusted locking pin. If the locking pin fails, the valve blows downward."
Chen Xi channeled a tiny fraction of Kinetic Qi into his wrench. He threw it with the precision of a sniper.
The heavy iron wrench struck the rusted locking pin dead center. The pin shattered.
With a deafening roar, the massive valve blew open. A torrent of hyper-pressurized, sub-zero liquid nitrogen blasted downward like a geyser, striking the mercenary's upper torso directly. The sheer kinetic force of the blast crushed the man's chest cavity, while the extreme cold flash-froze the flesh, completely obliterating the surgical stab wound beneath a layer of jagged ice and shattered bone.
To any Academy investigator, it would look exactly like the mercenary had tripped a decaying pressure valve in the dark and been crushed by the industrial blowout.
Chen Xi caught his wrench as it bounced off the wall and slipped it back into his belt.
"Brilliant," Sylphe praised. Her golden eyes flared as she reached out with her digital consciousness. "I am currently intercepting his biomonitor feed. It is transmitting to a localized datapad—undoubtedly Zhao Ming's. I have isolated the heartbeat signature and placed it on a continuous, perfectly healthy loop."
"Keep it looping," Chen Xi smiled coldly, turning his back on the frozen corpse. "Let Zhao Ming think his hounds are still hunting. By the time he realizes the signal is fake, it will be far too late."
Chen Xi adjusted his grey mechanic's jacket, stepping out of the freezing refinery and back into the ash-filled ruins of Sector G. The cameras would see him emerge exactly as he had entered—a lucky cadet just trying to stay out of sight.
"Where is the second one, Sylphe?"
"Three hundred meters north," the AI replied, her voice practically purring with predatory anticipation. "He is currently investigating a broken terminal near the heavy machinery depot."
"Perfect. Let's go do some maintenance."