The alley was a canyon of dark brick, smelling of damp garbage and stale beer.
At the far end, a single, flickering yellow security light cast long, dancing shadows.
Lin Hao stood directly beneath it, by a mountain of overflowing dumpsters, his back to the twenty-foot-high brick wall. He was trapped.
A perfect dead end.
He turned, slowly.
The footsteps that had been running, eager and heavy, skidded to a stop at the alley's entrance, ten meters away.
The three men.
The moonlight from the street behind them cast them in perfect silhouette.
They were bulky, larger than he'd thought, and they spread out instantly, their forms blocking the only exit.
The trap was sprung.
"Well, well. Look at this," a low, gravelly voice echoed in the narrow space.
The leader stepped forward, moving out of the silhouette and into the flickering, sickly yellow light.
Lin Hao could see him clearly now.
The man was in his thirties, with a broad, brutish face.
A jagged, white scar, puckered and old, ran from the corner of his left eye down to his lip, pulling it into a permanent, cruel sneer.
"Scar-face," Lin Hao thought, his mind clinical.
"A college kid, all alone," Scar-face said. He was enjoying this, rolling the words in his mouth like fine wine. He cracked his thick neck.
"We were just watching Old Man Feng's, wondering who'd be dumb enough to visit this late.
Turns out, it's you. You're really stupid, kid."
His two-man crew fanned out, their backs to the street, their eyes locked on Lin Hao.
One of them, a wiry man with twitchy hands, pulled a short, metal crowbar from under his hoodie.
The other, a heavy-set brute, just cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshots in the quiet alley.
They were mortals.
Lin Hao could smell the cheap alcohol on their breath, even from ten meters away.
He could hear all three of their hearts, thumping with a fast, adrenaline-fueled thump-thump-thump.
The hearts of excited predators who thought they had their prey cornered.
"We saw you go in with nothing," Scar-face continued, taking another slow step forward. He was the picture of arrogant, worldly menace.
"And you came out with a nice, heavy jacket. Old Man Feng doesn't just... give things to people."
He was wrong, Lin Hao had come out with a box, which he'd already stashed, but the logic was sound. They knew a transaction had happened.
Click-SSSK.
The sound was sharp, definitive.
A cheap, six-inch switchblade sprang from Scar-face's hand, its blade catching the yellow light. It was a pathetic, mortal-grade tool.
Lin Hao's new [Qi-Guiding Blade] would have cut it in half without even noticing.
"So here's the deal, kid," Scar-face said, pointing the blade at him. "You're gonna make this easy. You're gonna hand over that jacket.
You're gonna hand over any cash you got. And you're gonna hand over that bank card and the PIN you just used. We know how Feng works."
He smiled, and the scar on his face made the expression grotesque.
"And just for being stupid enough to walk in here... we're still gonna have to break your legs. Nothing personal," he shrugged. "Just business.
Can't have you running to the new 'Super Cops' or whatever."
Lin Hao looked at the knife. He looked at the man's face, twisted with cruel confidence.
He looked at the other two, who were already visualizing their share of the money.
This was his first test. This was the "wolf" Old Man Feng had warned him about.
It was... pathetic.
He was a [Level 5: Blood Vitality] cultivator.
He could punch through solid wood. He could leap to the ceiling. His skin was like iron, his bones like forged steel.
And he was being threatened by three, slow, drunk, breakable mortals.
He wasn't scared. He wasn't even angry.
He was just... disappointed. And he was still hungry.
A small sigh escaped his lips. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
"I was going to let you go," Lin Hao said. His voice was quiet, almost conversational, but it carried perfectly, cutting through the man's threats.
"If you had just asked nicely. Maybe I would have given you a few dollars."
The three thugs stopped. The silence in the alley was sudden and total.
Scar-face stared, his brain a few seconds behind, trying to process what he'd just heard.
He processed it.
"Asked... nicely?" he repeated, his voice dropping from a confident sneer to a low, guttural growl of pure, insulted rage. "You... you think this is a joke?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He was done talking. He was going to show this smart-ass kid what a joke looked like.
"I'll gut you!" he roared.
He lunged.
To himself, he was an explosion of motion, a deadly blur crossing the ten feet of pavement to bury his knife in the kid's soft stomach.
But to Lin Hao, the world went to syrup.
His [Level 4: Grandmaster] senses, amplified by his [Level 5: Blood Vitality], kicked in. The world didn't just slow down; it crawled.
He could see everything.
He saw Scar-face's right foot push off the cracked pavement, sending up a tiny, lazy puff of dust.
He saw the man's arm, his "External Path", with fewer muscles contracting in a sloppy, inefficient, telegraphed motion.
He saw the arrogant, furious sneer on the man's face, his eyes wide, already anticipating the feeling of the blade sinking into flesh.
He saw the switchblade itself, a cheap piece of metal, arcing through the air in a slow, pathetic, predictable line.
It was aiming right for his stomach, just as the man had promised.
It was the slowest killing blow he had ever seen.
Lin Hao didn't move. He didn't flinch.
He just watched it come.