Thick, acrid gray smoke swallowed the grand living room in less than two seconds.
The heavy thud-thud-thud of combat boots hitting the expensive hardwood floor followed immediately after. They were moving fast, fanning out with military precision. Suppressed submachine guns swept the room, searching for targets through the blinding haze.
"Chu Feng!" Su Qingran coughed, her eyes watering as panic finally broke through her CEO persona.
I didn't waste a single millisecond.
My newly acquired [Grandmaster-Level Assassination Arts] instantly took over my nervous system. My heart rate plummeted to a dead, icy crawl. My breathing became completely silent. I moved with a fluid, terrifying grace that defied my tailored suit.
I grabbed Su Qingran by the waist, my hand firm and uncompromising, and pulled her smoothly to the floor behind the massive, reinforced marble kitchen island.
"Stay down," I whispered, my lips brushing against her ear. My voice was completely steady. No fear. No hesitation. "Don't make a sound, Qingran. Keep your eyes closed."
She gripped my suit jacket, her knuckles white. She was terrified of the men who had just broken into the house, but the absolute, unwavering calm radiating from my body anchored her. She nodded once, pressing her face against my chest, trusting me implicitly.
[Ding!] [Su Qingran feels absolute safety in your arms despite the mortal danger!] [Target's Affection is locked at Maximum!] [Host gains 500 Villain Points!]
I let go of her, standing up into the thick, swirling gray smoke.
Three mercenaries, I calculated, closing my eyes and letting my enhanced senses map the room. And one crippled Dragon Sovereign.
"Spread out! Thermal goggles on!" a harsh, accented voice barked from near the shattered window. "Find the billionaire and put a bullet in his kneecaps. The Boss wants to gut him personally."
Three distinct mechanical whirs clicked in the smoke as the mercenaries activated their thermal optics.
In a normal web novel, this is where the rich young master dies because he can't fight military-grade tech. But to a Grandmaster Assassin, thermal goggles are just glowing bullseyes in the dark.
I channeled my internal Qi, forcefully lowering my core body temperature until I matched the ambient air of the room. To their thermal lenses, I simply ceased to exist.
I slid my right hand into my coat, my fingers wrapping around the cold, textured grip of the Nine-Heavens Lightning Forged Karambit.
I stepped fully into the smoke. I didn't make a single sound. Not the rustle of fabric, not the scuff of a leather shoe. I was a ghost walking through a graveyard.
The first mercenary was creeping past the grand piano, his suppressed weapon raised, scanning the empty corners.
He never even saw the shadow drop from the ceiling.
I stepped onto the piano bench, launched myself silently through the air, and landed directly behind him. Before he could even register the shift in air pressure, I clamped my left hand over his mouth, violently jerking his head back, and drove the curved karambit straight into his cervical spine.
Crunch. A brief, muted crackle of tribulation lightning flashed in the smoke, instantly incinerating his nervous system.
He went completely limp. I lowered his 200-pound body to the floor without making a single sound.
"Bravo, report. Do you have a visual?" the second mercenary called out, standing roughly twenty feet away near the hallway.
No answer.
"Bravo?" The second mercenary's voice ticked up in panic. He swung his rifle around, the red laser sight cutting through the smoke. "Boss, Bravo is down! I repeat, Bravo is—"
I didn't give him time to finish the sentence.
I threw the karambit like a shuriken.
The meteoric iron blade spun silently through the gray haze, closing the twenty-foot gap in a fraction of a second.
Thwack.
The blade buried itself to the hilt directly into the center of the mercenary's chest, right through his Kevlar vest. The impact knocked him entirely off his feet. He crashed backward into a glass display case, a shower of shattered glass ringing out like an alarm bell.
"Contact! Contact front!" the third mercenary screamed, firing a wild, panicked burst from his submachine gun into the smoke where the blade had come from.
Pew-pew-pew-pew!
The bullets chewed through the plaster walls and shattered a vase, but they hit nothing but air. I wasn't there anymore.
I was already standing right next to him.
The mercenary stopped firing, his breathing ragged, desperately swiveling his head. He looked left. He looked right.
"Looking for me?" I whispered directly into his right ear.
The man yelped, trying to bring his rifle up to bear. I swatted the barrel away with the back of my hand, stepping into his guard. I drove two fingers—stiffened with internal Qi—directly into the brachial plexus nerve cluster under his armpit.
His entire right side instantly paralyzed, the rifle dropping from his numb fingers.
Before he could scream, I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him an inch off the ground, and slammed his head brutally against the nearest marble pillar.
His eyes rolled back, and he slumped to the floor, completely unconscious.
Three elite, battle-hardened mercenaries. Thirty seconds. Zero injuries.
The smoke was finally starting to clear, pulled out by the penthouse's advanced ventilation system.
Standing near the shattered window, holding a matte-black trench knife in his only good hand, was Long Chen. The Dragon Sovereign.
He was trembling.
The arrogant, bloodthirsty smirk he had worn when he threw the smoke grenade was completely gone. His eyes darted around the ruined living room, landing on the bodies of his three elite guards scattered across the floor.
"Impossible..." Long Chen wheezed, his chest heaving. He gripped his trench knife so hard his knuckles turned white. "You're a spoiled corporate heir. You sit in boardrooms! You don't... you can't move like that!"
I walked slowly out of the fading smoke, retrieving my karambit from the second mercenary's chest with a wet shhhk. I casually flicked the blood off the glowing blade.
I wasn't even out of breath. My suit wasn't even wrinkled.
"You really don't get it, do you, Long Chen?" I said, my voice echoing in the dead silence of the living room. I stopped ten feet away from him, my Overlord Aura crashing down on him like a physical weight. "You spent fifteen years in the desert thinking you were the predator. You thought returning to Jinghai would be a fun little vacation where you slap around the local rich kids."
"Shut up!" Long Chen roared, his eyes bloodshot, completely feral with desperation.
"You're not the predator, Sovereign," I said coldly, my eyes glowing with absolute, ruthless malice. "You're just a stray dog that wandered into my yard. I took your money. I took your army. And now..."
I glanced over my shoulder. Su Qingran slowly peeked out from behind the marble island. When she saw me standing tall and completely unharmed amidst the bodies of the assassins, the look of pure, unadulterated worship in her eyes was unmistakable.
I looked back at the ruined protagonist.
"And now," I finished, a dark smile curving my lips, "I'm going to take your life."
"I'LL CARVE YOUR HEART OUT!"
Driven entirely mad by the complete collapse of his Dao Heart, Long Chen lunged. His broken arm hung uselessly at his side, but his legs still possessed the terrifying explosive power of a mercenary king. He covered the ten feet between us in a single stride, thrusting the serrated trench knife directly at my throat.
It was a fast, desperate, lethal strike.
But to a Grandmaster Assassin, desperation is just another word for predictable.