The Moonlit Bar sat at the most opulent intersection of Emerald Street, a decadent sanctuary for the Mid-Tier Sector's power-brokers and high-stakes gamblers. Its massive, violet neon sign cast an ambiguous, pulsing arc across the smog-choked night sky. Outside, the curbs were lined with exorbitantly priced heavy-duty hover-bikes and armored limousines.
Gu Hanzhou stood in the deep shadows of a street corner, his grey cloak blending into the brickwork. Behind his cold metallic mask, his eyes were busy dissecting the bar's defensive perimeter.
Four hulking bouncers stood guard at the main entrance. Though they wore civilian suits, their bulging temples and the faint, glowing tracery of Order-patterns beneath their skin revealed their true nature: elite warriors at the High-Awakening Stage. In the alleyways flanking the building, Gu Hanzhou could sense two more presences—sharp, recessed breaths that belonged to the hidden sentries Lin Xiu had placed to watch his most precious vault.
"Since this is a warehouse disguised as a den of sin, the security is naturally tighter than it appears," Gu Hanzhou muttered to himself.
A silent infiltration was possible, but risky. If he were discovered, he would be cornered in a subterranean death trap. However, if the entire block descended into chaos, those hidden sentries would be forced to reveal their positions.
He turned away from the bar and walked toward a high-pressure gas charging station adjacent to the building.
The station's lone guard was nodding off in his booth. Gu Hanzhou drifted over the perimeter wall like a wisp of smoke. He didn't draw [Black Order]; instead, he used the heavy pommel of the sheathed blade to strike the guard at the base of the skull. The man collapsed without a sound.
After confirming there were no active thermal sensors nearby, Gu Hanzhou drew a combat knife and severed three massive liquid-hydrogen delivery pipes. This high-concentration fuel was a volatile beast—once leaked and exposed to the static electricity in the air, the results would be cataclysmic.
He pulled a thermal detonator, scavenged from the fallen Shadow Guard in the previous warehouse, and set a thirty-second countdown. He hooked it directly onto the central valve.
With his preparations complete, Gu Hanzhou walked back to the bar's main entrance.
He no longer bothered to hide. He stepped onto the red carpet, his military boots clicking with deliberate, heavy thuds.
"Halt. Invitation," the bouncer captain demanded, extending a hand. His gaze lingered on Gu Hanzhou's cold, utilitarian Quartermaster uniform with a look of undisguised contempt.
Gu Hanzhou didn't speak. He reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled stack of high-denomination credits and the silver officer's badge.
"The command office sent me. Lord Lin's operation at the lower docks has been compromised. I have a priority message," Gu Hanzhou said, his voice a raspy, filtered growl.
The moment the captain heard "Lord Lin," his expression shifted from arrogance to sudden alarm. He reached out to take the badge, his guard momentarily dropped.
BOOM——!!
A world-shattering roar erupted from the gas station next door.
The shockwave was so violent it instantly flipped two hover-bikes parked on the street. A pillar of flame erupted into the sky, turning the dark alleyways into a landscape as bright as high noon. Then came the secondary explosions—a chain reaction that made the very foundations of the street tremble. The massive floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the Moonlit Bar shattered simultaneously, raining down a thousand shards of crystalline glass like a deadly, shimmering storm.
"Enemy attack! Protect the basement!" the captain roared, completely forgetting Gu Hanzhou. He signaled to his men, and the four of them charged into the bar's interior, weapons drawn.
Inside, the aristocrats and socialites who had been dancing and laughing moments ago erupted into shrill screams. They surged toward the exits like a panicked herd, trampling over velvet furniture in their desperation to escape the spreading fire.
Gu Hanzhou moved against the tide.
His movements were fluid and rhythmic; every time he slipped through the frantic crowd, it looked like a lethal dance on the edge of a blade. Amidst the screams and the roar of the fire, his perception was fully dilated. His dark-gold Order Blood, still warm from the recent absorption of the Liquid Ore, accurately captured the abnormal vibrations coming from deep beneath the floorboards.
At the entrance to a private wine cellar behind the bar counter, the two hidden sentries finally emerged from the gloom.
They were assassins dressed in black, form-fitting tactical gear, clutching blue-glowing Order-Daggers.
"Hold the door! Kill anyone who approaches!" one of them hissed, his eyes darting through the smoke.
Gu Hanzhou didn't give them a chance to adjust.
He stepped onto a flipped mahogany table, using the momentum to vault into the air. In mid-flight, his hand locked onto the hilt of [Black Order]. The dark-gold blood within him reached a fever pitch, radiating an intense heat that seemed to distort the air around him.
The blade cleared its scabbard by a mere inch, and a dark-red line of killing intent sliced through the darkness.
The two assassins never even saw their enemy's face. They only felt a suffocating, tyrannical pressure that sealed off every avenue of escape.
"Die."
Before Gu Hanzhou even hit the ground, the blade was fully unsheathed.
This was no longer a simple horizontal slash. After absorbing the Liquid Order-Ore, every swing of his blade carried a strange, oscillating frequency that vibrated against the very laws of the physical world.
SHLICK!
Two heads spun into the air simultaneously amidst the flickering red emergency lights. Blood sprayed across the racks of expensive vintage wine, staining the amber liquids a horrific, vivid crimson.
Gu Hanzhou didn't look back. He kicked open the secret door leading to the basement and plunged into the darkness.
Behind him, the Moonlit Bar was a furnace of fire and absolute madness. But ahead of him, he had stepped into Lin Xiu's final, most guarded sanctum.
The air in the basement was heavy—saturated with a sweet, intoxicating floral fragrance.
He knew that scent. It wasn't perfume. It was the aroma of the substance that drove men to madness and fueled the Legion's war machine: Blood-Ignition Serum.