The ink-black dark of the forge didn't hinder Lin Yuan's vision. To his unaugmented eyes, the room was a void, but across his retinas, three glowing thermal silhouettes shifted past the smashed window frame, their movements cautious and calculated.
They were light on their feet—likely $0\text{-}3$ agility practitioners from the Liu and Zhao clans. They didn't make a sound as they slipped toward the primary furnace, heavy vials of corrosive brine hidden in their robes, ready to crack the firebrick and ruin his primary infrastructure.
Lin Yuan didn't draw a blade. He didn't breathe louder. He simply stepped out from the shadow of the cooling racks, intercepting the lead infiltrator directly in the center of the workspace.
The scout's reactions were sharp. Realizing he was compromised, his arm whipped forward in a blur, a high-grade steel dagger aiming directly for Lin Yuan's throat to silence him before an alarm could be raised.
Clang.
The sound wasn't that of tearing flesh, but of metal striking an unyielding anvil.
Underneath Lin Yuan's linen collar, the newly synthesized sub-dermal mesh of his $0\text{-}5$ Cast Iron Shell vibrated with a microscopic hum. The layered kinetic dampeners absorbed the entire localized momentum of the strike, dispersing the force across his reinforced skeletal structure effortlessly. The steel blade of the dagger simply buckled under its own kinetic feedback, shattering into a dozen jagged metallic shards that rained onto the stone floor.
The scout's eyes widened in the dark, his breath catching in his throat. Before the man could process why a human neck had just broken a forged weapon, Lin Yuan's hand snapped forward.
He caught the intruder by the throat, his fingers locking onto the windpipe with the crushing force of a hydraulic press. With a sharp, measured twist of his wrist, he snapped the vertebrae cleanly, ensuring the man couldn't even manage a dying gasp.
The remaining two scouts scrambled backward, their hands reaching for their waist-pouches, but Lin Yuan's movements were already calculated. Pushing off the stone floor with his $0\text{-}5$ optimized legs, he closed the distance instantly, looking less like a running man and more like a phantom gliding through the dark.
He caught the second man mid-pivot, slipping behind his guard. Lin Yuan applied a precise, backward levering force against the scout's elbow and jaw simultaneously. A sickening, muffled pop echoed in the room as the neck disconnected from the spine.
The third scout managed to draw a smoke pellet, his fingers trembling under the immense atmospheric pressure Lin Yuan seemed to radiate. He never got to drop it. Lin Yuan's palm struck the center of his chest with flat, unyielding force. The blow didn't push the scout back; the localized kinetic energy transferred entirely inward, liquefying the man's heart and lungs while leaving the outer clothing pristine.
Silence returned to the forge. Three corpses lay slumped on the damp stone floor.
Lin Yuan stood over them, his breathing level and unhurried. He extended his hand, palm downward, over the chest of the nearest infiltrator.
[Auxiliary cleaning protocol initiated.]
[Deploying residual baseline nanite pool...]
A fine, dark metallic mist drifted from his fingertips, settling over the dead flesh like a hungry shroud. The microscopic machines went to work with terrifying speed, breaking down the complex biological proteins, clothes, and weapons at an atomic level. Within minutes, the physical evidence of the intrusion was entirely gone, reduced to nothing but a thin layer of harmless carbon dust and microscopic trace iron scattered across the soot-covered floor.
Lin Yuan swept the dust into the furnace intake with his boot. The Liu and Zhao families would eventually realize their agents hadn't returned, but as far as the town guards were concerned, three men had simply evaporated into the fog of the lower district.
By dawn, the quiet evaporation of the scouts had sent a cold ripple through the upper district. The Liu and Zhao families didn't launch an open assault—they knew the political cost of starting a street war in a town backed by the Gao clan. Instead, they opted for a bloodless strangulation.
By midday, the supply lines to the Iron Lattice Inn were severed. The Zhao family locked down the warehouses containing high-density grain mash and medicinal salves, while the Liu family used their leverage over the local mining syndicates to completely freeze all deliveries of raw black-iron grit to Lin Yuan's forge.
Inside the inn's common room, the atmospheric strain began to show. Rough mercenaries and rogue warriors sat over empty tables, grumbling as the high-calorie rations dwindled. Outside, black-market prices for basic smithing materials shot up by four hundred percent. It was a calculated bottleneck designed to starve Lin Yuan's resource engine before his operations could scale.
But Lin Yuan didn't panic. He had already calculated this exact trajectory the moment he expanded.
The thing is, he had already quietly laid the groundwork for an independent security infrastructure. Days prior, he had quietly purchased ten young slaves, aged seventeen to eighteen, from the low-tier border pens. They were emaciated, but their baseline anatomy had been hardened by a lifetime of enduring the $2.4\times$ gravity.
Using highly optimized chemical compounds and data-driven physical training, Lin Yuan had initiated Protocol Zero.
To ensure absolute, uncompromised loyalty, he had unlinked microscopic strands of his nanite pool, introducing them as dormant biological monitors directly into the neural pathways of their brains. They weren't mindless zombies; they were hyper-focused assets whose survival instincts were permanently bound to his commands. Under his strict supervision, the AI had stripped the backlashes from a low-grade internal cultivation manual, forcing their bodies to absorb nutrients and compress muscle fibers at a ridiculous, artificial rate.
Within days, all ten had broken through to Layer 0, Level 4 ($0\text{-}4$).
They were now outfitted in the dark workshops beneath the inn. Lin Yuan provided them with high-density steel blades featuring perfect weight distribution, layered sub-dermal kinetic mesh under their clothes, and dense, slate-gray fabric guard uniforms designed to resist tearing under high environmental stress.
In this world, wild monsters and beasts possessed an inherent structural advantage over humans due to their raw bone density and predatory evolution. To take down a common $0\text{-}1$ beast, it typically required a coordinated squad of two or three $0\text{-}1$ human martial artists. By that logic, a single $0\text{-}4$ beast in the wild usually required an entire hunting party of veteran mercenaries to slay.
But Lin Yuan's ten guards weren't emotional, uncalibrated humans. Armed with optimized combat logic, flawless weapons, and lightweight protective armor, their collective lethality defied the local standards. They moved with a chilling, mechanical synchronization that made them the most elite unit in the outer district.
As the morning fog rolled over the jagged stone perimeter of Wu-Tan Outpost, Lin Yuan stepped out of the back gates, his dark coat shifting slightly under the gravity. Behind him, the ten silently fell into formation, their footsteps perfectly mirrored, their expressions entirely devoid of fear.
They bypassed the main trade checkpoints entirely, turning their faces toward the dark, crushing horizon where the wild gravity fluctuated—headed directly into the perilous depths of the Sinking Mire to harvest their own fuel.