The thick, acrid smoke rising from the gorge felt like a physical weight crushing down on Bai Ruolan’s chest.

She dragged herself to the edge of the rocky ledge, the heat radiating from the molten trench below still hot enough to scorch her skin.

Her mind went entirely blank as the agonizing groans of the mutilated enforcers echoed through the narrow pass.

These weren’t standard guards; they were the absolute elite of the Golden Cauldron Union’s martial branch.

Men who had survived brutal territory disputes and beast tides were now reduced to broken, charred husks, begging for death in the dirt.

A cold, paralyzing dread completely seized her throat.

The realization hit her with the force of a spiritual hammer: It was never a supply line.

The Tang Clan hadn’t sent an emergency shipment across provinces because they were desperate, they had sent a moving executioner’s block wrapped in crimson banners.

They had anticipated the union’s arrogance, predicted the exact bottleneck where they would strike, and sacrificed a few low-grade decoys and high-grade illusion talismans just to break the union’s spine in a single evening.

What she didn’t know was that those slaughtered drivers weren’t even guards of the Tang Clan.

They were merely low-level, desperate rogue mercenaries whom Shen Yu had hired for a handful of cheap spiritual stones, tossing them replica armor to act out their parts.

He hadn’t lost a single drop of his own clan’s blood; he had simply traded a fraction of his pocket change to buy the absolute destruction of the union’s martial force.

"Help... Elder... Miss Ruolan..." A weak, gurgling cry came from just below the ridge.

Ruolan’s head snapped down.

The lead Golden Core elder, the same man who had been smiling triumphantly just minutes prior, was crawling through the black ash.

His lower body was entirely pinned beneath a shattered, burning fragment of an iron carriage wheel.

His golden core aura, normally so dominant and suffocating, was flickering like a dying candle in a storm.

She scrambled down the loose shale, her tattered robes tearing further against the rocks as she dropped to her knees beside him.

Her hands shook violently as she reached for her storage ring, pulling out a high-grade healing salve.

"Elder! Hold on, I have—"

"No... save... the medicine..." The elder coughed violently, a thick mist of blood spraying from his lips, his hand gripping her wrist with a desperate, terrifying strength.

His eyes were wide with a profound, lingering horror.

"A trap... it was a calculated trap... they knew... they knew everything..."

His grip suddenly loosened, his eyes rolling back as his final breath escaped into the soot-choked air.

The light in his pupils faded completely, leaving him stiff and lifeless on the scorched stone.

Tears of pure, unadulterated frustration and sheer terror finally spilled over her ash-stained cheeks.

She stumbled backward, her boots slipping on the blood-slicked gravel.

The silence that followed the elder’s death was louder than the explosion itself.

Out of three hundred elite warriors, more than half were dead, and the rest were so severely crippled they wouldn’t be able to channel a single drop of true Qi for months.

She had wanted so desperately to prove herself.

She wanted to show Senior Brother Mo that she could handle the city, that she could protect their design, and that she was worthy of being the head of the branch.

Instead, her very first independent command had led their entire martial force straight into a slaughterhouse.

’Who is doing this? she screamed internally, her chest heaving as she clutched her head. Who is the monster leading the Tang Clan? How could anyone possess such a terrifying, flawless grasp over our movements?’

The image of the proud Patriarch Cao Yan signing his soul away to a mysterious backer flashed through her mind.

The Cao Clan hadn’t simply found an ally, they had invited a demon into Crimson Iron City, and that demon had just erased the union’s military dominance without even showing his face.

A sudden wave of icy survival instinct pierced through her panic, forcing her trembling limbs to steady.

The sun was dipping below the mountain peaks, casting long, bloody shadows across the canyon.

By tomorrow morning, the Cao Clan would open their flagship dispensaries, flooding the market with their infinite, high-purity stock.

If she returned to the union headquarters empty-handed, with news that their enforcers were entirely broken, the elders would descend into complete, hysterical anarchy.

Meng De would lose total control.

She couldn’t afford to break down here. The enemy had won the opening gambit with absolute, terrifying brilliance, but the war wasn’t over.

"Listen to me!" Ruolan shouted, her voice raspy from the smoke but laden with a sudden, desperate authority that made the groaning survivors look up.

"Anyone who can still move, gather the wounded! We fall back to the southern secret warehouses immediately! Do not leave a single trace of our identity in this pass!"

Clenching her sword until her knuckles turned stark white, Bai Ruolan forcefully wiped the tears from her face, smearing the dark soot across her pale cheeks.

She cast one final, bitter look at the burning, molten trench below before turning her back on the carnage, her figure blurring into the gathering twilight as she raced back to save the union from absolute collapse.

The return journey to Crimson Iron City was a grueling nightmare.

By the time Bai Ruolan reached the southern secret warehouses under the cover of a moonless night, less than eighty enforcers remained with her.

Most were badly burned, their bodies supported by those few who had only suffered minor shrapnel wounds.

Leaving the crippled vanguard under the care of the warehouse medical deacons, Ruolan didn’t waste a single second to rest.

She immediately took a private spirit-carriage back to the Golden Cauldron headquarters.

The adrenaline that had kept her upright in the mountains was now turning into a cold, heavy dread that pooled in her stomach.

When she pushed open the heavy double doors of the union’s top-floor council hall, the atmosphere inside was near the boiling point.

-x-

A/N:

Weekly PS: 27/80

Monthly GT: 43/30