Bai Ruolan slowly stepped down the rocky path, her fur mantle fluttering in the wind as she walked onto the blood-slicked canyon floor.

She held her unsheathed ice sword at her side, her eyes sweeping over the carnage.

There wasn’t a single survivor left standing.

"Miss Ruolan, the escort was a complete joke, they were just using illusion treasures to mask their weak cultivation," the lead elder reported, wiping the blood of a fake expert from his blade.

He gestured toward the long line of captured iron carriages behind him, his eyes gleaming with greed.

"But the cargo is completely genuine. Every single carriage is bursting at the seams with top-grade Earth-Purging Moss and Crimson Core Grass."

A smirk curled Ruolan’s soft lips, an expression she had unconsciously mirrored from watching Senior Brother Mo over the past several weeks.

Her heart raced with a thrilling, triumphant ecstasy as she looked at the defeated wreckage.

"Burn the carriages that are broken, and secure the rest," Ruolan commanded, her voice ringing out with an icy, absolute finality.

"Divert the remaining cargo back to our secret warehouses in the southern hills. Tomorrow morning, the Cao Clan will open their grand flagship dispensaries expecting a fresh delivery of herbs... but they will find nothing but empty streets and an executioner’s axe."

"Burn the carriages that are broken, and secure the rest," Ruolan commanded, her voice ringing out with an icy, absolute finality.

"Divert the remaining cargo back to our secret warehouses in the southern hills. Tomorrow morning, the Cao Clan will open their grand flagship dispensaries expecting a fresh delivery of herbs... but they will find nothing but empty streets and an executioner’s axe."

The enforcers immediately set to work, barking orders as they began checking the intact carriages and shifting the heavy crates.

The iron wheels ground against the blood-stained gravel, and the crackle of burning wood began to fill the gorge.

But as the initial high of the flawless victory began to settle, a strange, unnatural silence seemed to creep beneath the crackle of the flames.

Bai Ruolan stood in the center of the carnage, her fingers still wrapped around the hilt of her ice sword.

She looked down at one of the broken crates where a bundle of Earth-Purging Moss had spilled out onto the rocks. Her sharp, highly sensitive alchemical mind suddenly twitched.

The aroma of the herbs was dense, yes. It was overpowering.

But as she drew in a deep breath of the mountain air, her brow violently furrowed.

Beneath the overwhelming herbal scent, there was a faint, biting chemical undertone, a volatile, synthetic heat that had absolutely no business being inside a raw, unrefined herb.

Her gaze snapped toward the core of the spirit-carriages.

The defensive spiritual arrays woven into the iron frames weren’t just humming from the cargo’s mass.

They were vibrating.

The frequency was rising, expanding, and rapidly spiraling out of control.

It wasn’t a logistical transport convoy. It was a giant, rolling countdown.

A sudden, paralyzing jolt of pure horror struck her heart.

"Get back!" Ruolan’s voice shattered the air, a high-pitched, desperate scream that echoed violently off the canyon walls.

"Move! Everyone, run far away from the carriages right now!! It’s a trap!!"

Without waiting for a response, her legs moved on pure instinct.

Channeling every ounce of her true Qi into her soles, she leaped backward, her body blurring as she shot up the rocky cliffside path, frantically scrambling away from the bottleneck floor.

The union enforcers and the Golden Core elders blinked, completely stunned by her sudden, erratic panic. "Miss Ruolan? What are you—"

Before the lead elder could even finish his sentence, the world turned completely white.

BOOM!!!

A cataclysmic, earth-shattering explosion violently ruptured the entire throat of the canyon.

The thirty iron-bound transport carriages did not just catch fire, they detonated simultaneously, unleashed a blinding, towering pillar of crimson and gold spiritual flame that violently tore through the gorge.

The volatile, highly compressed explosive talismans packed deep beneath the fake layers of herbs instantly transformed the entire convoy into a lethal, splintering storm of shrapnel and incinerating heat.

The shockwave hit like a physical mountain, violently ripping through the air.

The three hundred elite enforcers who had been standing directly beside the cargo didn’t even have time to scream.

They were instantly swallowed by the roaring inferno, their bodies and weapons vaporized in a fraction of a second.

Even from her distant position high up the ridge, the sheer force of the blast slammed into Ruolan’s back, throwing her violently forward onto the jagged rocks.

The sound was deafening, a roaring thunder that caused the entire mountain peak to violently shake, sending thousands of tons of real, unscripted debris raining down into the burning abyss below.

The roaring thunder of the explosion slowly died away, leaving only the crackle of a ravenous, crimson inferno and the heavy, black smoke choking the canyon.

Ruolan lay flat on her stomach against the high, jagged rocks. Her ears were ringing with a deafening, high-pitched buzz, and her vision swam with blinding spots of light.

Her premium fur mantle was singed and covered in ash, and a sharp, burning pain flared across her shoulder where the shockwave had slammed her into the cliffside.

Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself up on her hands and knees. Her breath came in short, ragged, terrified gasps as she dragged her gaze over the edge of the ridge to look down into the throat of the canyon.

Her breath completely caught in her throat. Her beautiful blue eyes widened to their absolute limits, staring blankly down at the apocalyptic landscape below.

The destruction was absolute, but the horror down in the gorge was far more visceral than total annihilation.

Almost half of the three hundred man elite force, the very foundation of the Golden Cauldron Union’s martial strength, had been completely vaporized or torn to shreds by the initial blast.

For the survivors, the canyon floor had turned into a literal living purgatory.

Mutilated, injured bodies were strewn everywhere across the scorched rocks.

Nearly a hundred men lay groaning and writhing in agony, their leather disguises fused to their burned flesh, while thirty others were so catastrophically, seriously injured that their vital Qi was rapidly fading into the smoke.

And the worst part?

The union had gained absolutely nothing from this bloodbath.

Where a towering line of iron carriages had stood moments ago, promising a treasure trove of stolen herbs, there was now only a massive, black, molten trench filled with twisting tongues of lingering spiritual fire and the scattered, useless ashes of a perfect trap.