Sarah Xin's pronouncement about opportunity hung in the air, punctuated only by the faint clink of chopsticks and Mei's despairing groan into her hands.
The strategic planning for the gentle, non-invasive assimilation of the Kalmas family was just beginning.
It was interrupted by the sound of the sky breaking.
A deafening CRACK-THOOM shook the entire estate, followed by a shower of plaster and dust from the dining room ceiling.
Two figures wreathed in brilliant, cool white flames shot through the newly created hole like comets, landing with a perfectly synchronized, graceful impact in the center of the table.
The steaming hot pot wobbled precariously. Plates rattled. Lara instinctively threw a shield of crimson fire around her family, while Byul summoned a sphere of water to douse the falling embers of plaster.
When the dust settled, two people stood amidst the ruins of the Xin family's dinner.
One was a tall, wiry old man with hair as white as snow and eyes that held the chill of a glacier. He wore immaculate white tactical gear, a stylized eagle emblem on his shoulder.
The other was a woman who seemed to be carved from living ice and grace, her features sharp and elegant, her long white hair flowing as if underwater. Her own white outfit was pristine, untouched by the destruction.
Sarah Xin did not flinch. She did not gasp. She slowly, deliberately, set down her chopsticks. She looked at the two new arrivals, then up at the perfectly person-sized hole in her ceiling, through which the evening stars were now beginning to twinkle.
She let out a long, weary sigh that spoke of decades of similar incidents.
"You old fools..." she said, her voice dangerously dry. "...again broke my ceiling."
The old man, Choi David, Guild Master of the Arctic Eagle and Byul's father, brushed a speck of dust off his shoulder.
"Sarah. A pleasure as always. The structural integrity of your roof is subpar. We merely highlighted the issue." His voice was a low, rumbling echo, like shifting ice sheets.
The woman, Choi Yunha, the S-ranked Aqua Diva and Byul's mother, offered a serene smile that didn't quite reach her cool eyes.
"Hello, dear family. We have returned. We brought... dramatic news." She gestured vaguely at the hole above them. "And a new skylight. You're welcome."
Mei peeked through her fingers, her previous embarrassment completely overwritten by sheer astonishment. "Grandpa? Grandma?"
Mudan, from his stool in the corner, started cackling, his ice pack forgotten. "I knew I liked your side of the family, Byul! They know how to make an entrance! None of this 'sneaking in the shadows' nonsense. Straight through the roof! I love it!"
Sarah massaged her temples. "You couldn't use the door? The door that we specifically reinforced for you after the last time?"
David looked genuinely puzzled. "The door involves landing and walking. This was more efficient. We were on a trajectory from the south."
"Efficient," Sarah repeated, the word dripping with venom.
Byul finally found his voice, a mix of fondness and exhaustion.
"Mother. Father. It is... good to see you. I take it your mission was a success?" He wisely focused on the news, not the new architectural feature.
Yunha's smile widened. "Oh, yes. A thorough success. The Turret group has been... dissolved." She said it with the same tone one might use to say 'the laundry is done.'
"Dissolved?" Lara asked, lowering her protective barrier.
"Permanently," David confirmed, his glacial eyes scanning the room.
He noticed Mudan's ice pack. "Having trouble, Mudan? A little... heated discussion?"
"My wife has a violent streak," Mudan said cheerfully. "I'm thinking of writing a paper on it."
Sarah ignored him, her strategic mind latching onto the news. "Turret is gone? Completely? That was a substantial organization. They supplied the Grey Fog."
"That was the assessment," David nodded.
"Which is why we took the initiative after intercepting their communications. They were becoming a nuisance. We tracked their leadership to a submerged base in the South China Sea."
Yunha picked up the story, her voice a melodic contrast to the destruction around her.
"It was really quite straightforward. David froze the entire facility solid—a five-square-kilometer iceberg is just floating out there now—and I simply... liquified the interior. It was like shaking a snow globe very, very hard. Then we left."
She said it so placidly that one could almost miss the horrifying implication of an entire military base and its occupants being instantly flash-frozen and then pureed from the inside out.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
"So," Mudan said, breaking it. "No prisoners for interrogation, then? No leads on the bigger Grey Fog picture? Just a... a human slushie?"
David fixed him with a look. "Interrogation is messy. This was clean. The threat has been neutralized. The pipeline to the Grey Fog has been severed. The message has been sent."
"The message being 'don't mess with the Arctic Eagle or we'll turn you into a nautical landmark'?" Mudan clarified.
"Precisely."
Sarah finally stood up, brushing plaster dust from her elegant clothes. "While I appreciate the... decisiveness, we had agents infiltrating Turret. We were gathering intelligence!"
Yunha waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, we evacuated them first. They were on a nearby fishing boat, very confused. They should be calling in their report any moment now."
As if on cue, a phone buzzed from somewhere in Lara's pocket.
Sarah took a deep, steadying breath, visibly counting to ten. "So. You annihilated a major criminal organization, potentially costing us a valuable lead into the larger Grey Fog syndicate, and broke my ceiling. Is that the sum of it?"
David looked slightly offended. "We also acquired their financial ledgers."
He reached into a spatial pouch at his belt and dropped a water-stained, but intact, ledger onto the ruined table. "The freezing process preserves paperwork wonderfully."
Sarah stared at the ledger, then at the hole in her ceiling, then back at the ledger. The internal conflict was visible on her face.
Mei, seeing her grandmother's mounting fury, decided to try and diffuse the situation.
She gestured to the destroyed table. "Would... would you like to sit? We have hot pot. Or, we did."
Yunha's eyes lit up. "Oh, I love hot pot! David, look! They were having a family meal!"
She seemed genuinely touched, as if they hadn't just cratered the dining room. She gracefully stepped over a broken plate and sat in what was left of Sarah's chair.
"Don't mind if I do. It's been ages."
David gave a curt nod and sat as well, somehow making the act of sitting amidst rubble look like he was holding court on a throne of ice.
An utterly surreal scene unfolded. The Choi grandparents began calmly serving themselves from the miraculously intact hot pot, as if they'd been invited all along.
Sarah stood fuming. Mudan was still cackling in the corner. Byul looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, and Lara was on the phone with their evacuated agents, her expression a mixture of relief and exasperation.
Mei simply sat back down, feeling a strange sense of familial whiplash. This was her family.
Guild Masters and S-ranks who argued about ceilings and annihilated criminal empires before dinner.
David took a bite of beef, chewed thoughtfully, and looked at Sarah. "So. The ceiling. Send me the bill."
He then turned to Mei. "Now, little blossom. Your father mentioned something about a boy with interesting abilities. A 'Grinning Fox'? Something about you and a tree?"
Mei's soul attempted to leave her body for the second time that day.
She shot a betrayed look at her father, who suddenly found the water stains on the ledger utterly fascinating.
Mudan stopped laughing. "Hey! That's my gossip to share!"
Sarah's eye twitched. The bill for the ceiling was the final straw.
"GET OUT!"
She roared, her crimson aura erupting, making the hot pot broth boil violently.
David and Yunha merely looked up, unimpressed.
"Now, Sarah, there's no need to shout," Yunha said, sipping the now-superheated broth without flinching. "We're family. We're just catching up."
"OUT! ALL OF YOU!" Sarah yelled, pointing a trembling finger first at the Chois, then at Mudan.
"I have a ceiling to fix and a guild to run! And I need to strategize how to recruit a farm boy whose parents are probably more powerful than all of you combined without his grandparents crashing through my roof for a hot pot party!"
The room went silent.
David and Yunha slowly turned to look at each other, then back at Sarah. Their expressions had shifted from mild amusement to keen interest.
"A farm boy?" David asked, his voice dropping to a intrigued rumble.
"More powerful than us?" Yunha added, a glint in her eye. "Now that is interesting."
Sarah paled. She had just made a critical error.
In her rage, she had revealed the one thing she had wanted to keep to herself for strategic advantage.
Mudan started laughing again, even harder. "Oh, you've done it now, Sarah! You've gone and piqued their interest! You might as well have sent them a formal invitation!"
Sarah put her face in her hand. The hole in the ceiling was the least of her problems. She had just unleashed two of the most powerful and direct individuals in China on the Kalmas family.
And she had a feeling that their method of "recruitment" would involve a lot more freezing and liquefying than subtle diplomacy.