The Phoenix of the Slums

The silence shattered as a brick crashed through the processing house window. Fang dove left, rolled behind a support beam, and loaded her weapon. Zhao hit the lights, plunging the interior into darkness just as red laser sights dotted the walls.

“Positions!” Tianming growled.

The Wolves of Jiangnan moved like ghosts—six men, dressed in matte-black tactical gear, advanced through the tea field with silencers raised and faces hidden behind skull-patterned masks.

Tianming didn’t wait. He burst through the sliding door like a bullet, low to the ground, avoiding the initial shots. One wolf fired—Tianming twisted mid-sprint, the bullet grazing his shoulder.

He closed the distance in a blur, ducked under another shot, and drove his elbow straight into the man’s sternum, collapsing his chest with a crunch. The attacker wheezed and fell back—Tianming twisted behind him, grabbed his silencer, flipped it up, and fired it point-blank into a second man’s thigh.

The second wolf screamed and dropped his weapon. Tianming dashed forward, grabbed the injured leg, and hooked it behind his own. He yanked the man off-balance, spun him midair, and slammed him down with a judo osoto-gari.

“Two down,” Tianming hissed.

Fang popped up from behind the wooden beam inside the house and took a shot—clean headshot through the window, dropping a third wolf before he even turned.

But they were still coming.

Zhao shouted from the back room, “They're breaching the left wall!”

Dr. Jin stayed crouched beneath the old processing table, clutching a USB drive. “We can’t lose this location. There’s data here that leads to the next Key!”

Tianming made a break back toward the side wall just as the Wolves burst through with a battering ram.

The first one lunged at him with a machete. Tianming pivoted, sidestepped just in time, and grabbed the man’s wrist. With a sharp twist, he disarmed the blade, flipped the weapon, and drove it upward into the man’s armpit—finding the soft spot beneath the vest. The man dropped like a puppet with strings cut.

Another came at him from behind—Tianming sensed the rush, dropped low, and swept his leg in a wide arc, catching the attacker’s ankle. The man fell hard.

Tianming pounced, drove a knee into the man's face, then grabbed the dazed man’s gun, turned, and fired twice at the last wolf standing outside.

Both shots missed—this one was faster.

The final wolf somersaulted forward, closed the gap, and unleashed a storm of blows—punches to the ribs, neck, and a spinning crescent kick aimed at Tianming’s head.

Tianming blocked high with both forearms, but the final kick knocked him backward. Blood on his lip.

“I see they trained you with the Eight Hidden Styles,” Tianming muttered, cracking his neck.

The wolf didn’t respond—just lunged again.

Palm strike to the chest—parried. High kick—dodged. Knee strike to the gut—caught.

Tianming dropped low, used the man’s momentum, and performed a perfect shoulder throw. As the wolf flew midair, Tianming spun with him, caught the landing arm, and locked it into an armlock, pulling until tendons popped.

The man screamed, then blacked out.

Panting, Tianming rose to his feet, the entire tea field littered with bodies.

Fang emerged from the shadows, brushing dust off her jacket. “That all of them?”

“For now,” Tianming said, wiping blood from his lip.

Dr. Jin stepped out slowly, holding up the USB. “This has the location of the Second Key. We have to move. If the Wolves found us this fast, they’re already tracking the rest.”

“Where’s the next one?” Fang asked.

Jin hesitated. “Hefei."

Tianming froze. “That’s Lotus territory.”

She nodded. “And worse—he doesn’t know what he is. But he’s the strongest of the Seven.”

Tianming looked at the rising sun over the tea farm and clenched his fist. “Then we go into the lion’s den.”