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

The room was still packed with the senior elders and Union Head Meng De, their faces illuminated by the frantic, flickering lights of dozens of messaging talismans floating in the air.

The news of the Cao Clan’s unprecedented midday sales had only grown worse.

"Miss Ruolan!" Meng De slammed his hands onto the table, his eyes locked onto her disheveled, ash-stained appearance.

The room fell into a deathly, expectant hush.

"You’ve returned! What is the status? Did the enforcers secure the Tang Clan’s herb convoy? Speak to us!"

Every elder leaned forward, their eyes filled with a desperate, pathetic hope.

Ruolan stood in the doorway for a long breath, her tattered robes whispering against the floorboards.

She looked at the head treasurer, the man who had proudly orchestrated the destruction of the Peng clan, and saw him sweating profusely.

Slowly, she stepped into the light of the torches, her voice dropping into a hollow, deadpan tone.

"The ambush failed," Ruolan said flatly.

"Failed?!" the Head Alchemist shrieked, his face twisting into a mask of pure horror.

"How could three hundred elites and three Golden Core elders fail against a basic transport caravan?! Did the Tang Clan deploy an army?!"

"There was no army. And there was no herb cargo," Ruolan replied, her blue eyes flashing with a chilling, residual trauma.

"The entire convoy was a paper tiger. The drivers and escorts were low-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators disguised as masters using high-grade illusion talismans. The moment we struck... the carriages detonated."

A collective gasp echoed through the hall.

"They were packed entirely with compressed explosive talismans," Ruolan continued, her small hands clenching into tight fists hidden within her sleeves.

"It was a deliberate, calculated trap meant to draw our martial forces into the narrowest bottleneck of the Viper’s Throat. Over a hundred of our men are dead. The rest are catastrophically crippled. The three Supreme Elders... have been vaporized."

The words slammed into the council hall like a physical hammer.

Two of the older elders literally collapsed back into their chairs, their faces turning a sickly, ghostly green.

The head treasurer dropped his jade brush, his hands shaking so violently he couldn’t pick it up.

"Vaporized... three Golden Core masters..." Meng De stammered, his legalistic, corporate confidence completely shattering.

He stumbled backward, nearly knocking over his own high-backed chair.

"This... this is impossible! Who could possess such absolute, terrifying ruthlessness? To sacrifice thirty armored carriages and dozens of high-grade illusion treasures just to bait a trap?! That’s a fortune in capital spent just to kill our men!"

"A demon," the Head Alchemist whispered, his voice cracking with hysteria.

"The person leading the Tang Clan’s operation isn’t a businessman. They are a military strategist playing a game of total annihilation! They knew we would ambush the pass! They read us like an open book!"

"Union Head!" another deacon burst into the room, holding a freshly glowing communication talisman. His face was pale with panic.

"The marketplace scouts just sent word! The Cao Clan has officially posted public announcements across the entire city! They claim that due to their ’eternal partnership’ with an external powerhouse, their supply of ninety-six percent purity Tier 1 and Tier 2 Pure Flow Pills is officially limitless!"

The deacon swallowed hard, looking terrified.

"And... and to celebrate their victory over our ’failed monopoly,’ they have announced that starting tomorrow morning, they are dropping their prices even further, to a permanent sixty percent discount for anyone holding a registered mining license!"

"Sixty percent?!" an elder roared, throwing his hands in the air.

"That’s below the foundational cost of raw materials in this province! They are trying to bleed us dry in a single week!"

"They can afford to bleed because they aren’t paying local prices!" Ruolan snapped, her sharp voice instantly cutting through the growing hysteria.

She stepped up to the main table, her presence suddenly commanding the room despite her injuries.

"Listen to me, all of you!" she commanded, her brilliant blue eyes scanning the terrified faces of the council.

"We have lost our martial supremacy, but the Golden Cauldron Union still holds the structural monopoly over the city’s primary distribution licenses and real estate. If we panic now, we hand them the city on a silver platter."

She looked toward the man sitting directly next to Meng De, the Faction Leader of the Refining Faction.

He was leaning back in his seat, a smug, thinly veiled smile stretching across his face.

To him, her catastrophic failure in the mountains wasn’t a tragedy for the union, it was a golden ticket, a perfect opportunity to tear down her credibility and seize the throne of the branch leadership for himself.

She knew exactly what kind of wretched, opportunistic thoughts were running through his head.

But rather than letting him bait her into anger, she skillfully used the moment to pivot.

She turned directly to Meng De, dropping her head slightly as a heavy, genuine shadow of guilt crossed her features.

"Union Head Meng De, I deeply apologize," Ruolan said, her voice dropping into a low, somber tone.

"The fault for this tactical failure lies entirely with me. I underestimated the sheer ruthlessness of our enemy, and my oversight has cost the union dearly."

Meng De opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word of blame, Ruolan snapped her head back up.

The guilt in her eyes vanished, instantly replaced by an unyielding, razor-sharp focus that commanded the attention of the entire room.

"But we cannot afford to waste time weeping over spilled blood," she continued, her posture rigid and authoritative.

"Do not lower our prices. I repeat, do not enter a blind price war with a ghost. If we match their fifty-five or sixty percent discounts, we will only bleed our own treasury into dry dirt."

"Then what do you propose, Miss Ruolan?!" the Head Alchemist pressed, his voice strained with desperation.

"They are selling ninety-six percent purity! How do we fight a monopoly of perfect quality?!"

"We fight quality with superior innovation," Ruolan stated coldly, her brilliant blue eyes flashing with the absolute pride of a genius alchemist

"High purity means they have optimized the refinement of a standard recipe. But it is still just a Pure Flow Pill. Its structural effects have a natural limit."

She stepped closer to the grand table, slamming her small fist down to emphasize her words.

"They think they have cornered us, but they have actually exposed their hand. I will lock myself in the primary alchemical chambers tonight. I will break down their advanced recipe, isolate its core components, and engineer an entirely new, superior Tier 2 pill. A medicine that not only clears earth-toxins with absolute purity, but permanently hardens the miners’ meridians against future corrosion!"

"After all, that was the exact medicine which passed through my very hands before it was ever delivered to the Peng Clan," she said coldly.

The elders stared at her in stunned silence. Her rapid, cold-blooded transition from a catastrophic battlefield disaster to a brilliant alchemical counter-offensive completely took their breath away.

’Senior Brother Mo...’ Ruolan thought internally, her heart racing as she forced her exhausted, aching body to stand tall against the crushing weight of the room

’You gave me this grand opportunity to lead, and I will not let you down. I will hold this line and break this mysterious Tang Clan representative’s design before you even return.’

Little did the brilliant young alchemist know, the very "Senior Brother Mo" she was desperately trying to protect and impress was currently sitting comfortably in the Cao Clan’s most luxurious private guest chambers, lazily sipping a cup of premium snow-tea, waiting to watch her next move with absolute, wicked amusement.