The pressure that had been crushing Shadow vanished the moment Ye Tianlong stepped into the fray. The dynamic of the battlefield shifted instantly. The Blade Wolf Knight, a terrifying creature in its own right, had already lost its mount—the hellhound—and now found itself cornered by two Tier-Nine Warlords. It was no longer a fight; it was an execution.
Without the mobility of its beast, the Knight was overwhelmed. Shadow moved like smoke, distracting the creature, while Ye Tianlong delivered the catastrophic blows. Within mere exchanges of steel and claw, the abomination fell, its body severed by their combined might.
Elsewhere on the chaotic field, Xiao Ke, Ling Feng, and Ye Yun were finishing their own grim work, cutting down the remaining Zombie Apostles. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the ragged breathing of the survivors. The cost of victory had been steep. Over fifty soldiers of the Steel Wheel lay dead in the mud. These weren't fresh recruits; they were the elite, the backbone of the battalion. Xiao Ke looked over the carnage, his heart aching as if he were bleeding out alongside them.
He forced himself to bury the grief. A commander could mourn later; right now, he had to lead.
"Duan Canglong, Luo Hou," Xiao Ke's voice was low but steady. "Sweep the field. Recover our dead. And get those survivors out of the cages."
Leaving the cleanup to his lieutenants, Xiao Ke, alongside Ling Feng and Ye Yun, sprinted into the darkness, chasing the direction where Ye Tianlong and the Blade Wolf Knight had vanished during their duel.
Three miles out, they found the aftermath.
The corpses of the Blade Wolf Knight and its hellhound lay cooling on the cracked earth. The scene was gruesome, but something specific caught Ling Feng's eye.
"Look at the skulls," Ling Feng said, pointing with the tip of his blade. "The neural cores have been harvested. Third Brother, your family's expert certainly has steady hands. If he were infected or dying, he wouldn't have had the presence of mind to loot the bodies."
Ye Yun nodded, relief washing over his face. Before he could speak, Xiao Ke spotted something etched into the dirt near the bodies.
"What's this symbol?" Xiao Ke asked.
Ye Yun crouched, tracing the lines in the dust. "It's a Ye family sigil. It means 'All Clear.' He killed the beast, realized we were safe, and slipped away to avoid complications."
Ten miles away, the complications were sitting by a small, crackling campfire.
Ye Tianlong and Shadow had finished binding their wounds. The adrenaline of the fight had faded, leaving behind the throbbing pain of lacerations and bruises. Ye Tianlong tightened the bandage on his left arm with his teeth, stood up, and brushed the dirt from his coat.
He had said it before the fight: humans should unite against the undead. But the undead were gone now. The truce was over. They were natural enemies returning to their default state. The fact that they weren't trying to kill each other right now was a miracle in itself.
"Leaving so soon?" Shadow asked.
Ye Tianlong didn't look back. "The job is done. We are enemies again. There is nothing left to say."
"Just because we're enemies tomorrow doesn't mean we can't drink tonight," Shadow said. With the flourish of a magician, he produced a bottle of liquor from his cloak. "We bled together. Don't you want to toast to survival?"
Ye Tianlong paused, his silhouette rigid against the firelight. "Why wait for tomorrow? Goodbye."
"Tsk, tsk." Shadow shook his head, popping the cork. "I thought you were a man of conviction. Turns out you're just a coward. Afraid I poisoned the wine?"
Ye Tianlong stopped. He turned slowly, his eyes narrowing. "You don't need to goad me."
Shadow grinned, his face illuminated by the dancing flames. "Then drink."
Ye Tianlong had a weakness for alcohol. In his solitary life, it was often his only companion. He hadn't touched a drop since accepting the mission to shadow Ye Yun, and the smell of the spirits wafting from the bottle was intoxicating. He hesitated for a heartbeat, then snatched the bottle from the air as Shadow tossed it.
"I fear no man, and certainly not a bottle," Ye Tianlong grunted.
Shadow laughed, throwing his head back and taking a massive swig from his own flask before watching Ye Tianlong do the same.
Ye Tianlong took a long pull, and his eyes widened. The liquid burned all the way down, a trail of fire settling in his gut. "Burning Knife? You drink this rocket fuel?"
It was the strongest, harshest spirit available to the common folk of the Empire. It tasted like swallowing a heated razor blade—painful, spicy, and brutally effective.
"Drinking shouldn't be gentle!" Shadow roared, wiping his mouth. "It needs to be fast, and it needs to hurt!"
The Burning Knife lived up to its name. These were two-liter bottles, and despite their high tolerance, the sheer potency of the alcohol began to strip away their defenses. Half the bottles were gone within the hour, and the silence of the night was replaced by the slur of drunken confessions.
Shadow, the legendary assassin who slept with one eye open, had let his guard down completely. He lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the smoke drifting toward the stars.
"You know, Ye Tianlong..." Shadow mumbled, his voice thick. "I grew up... nobody gave a damn about me. I'm a weapon—just a tool. Never lived a day for myself. But today? Today was good. When you came back for me... that was it. You're my friend now."
Shadow chuckled darkly, closing his eyes. "First friend. Probably the last. Guys like me... we don't get seconds."
Ye Tianlong sat by the fire, his vision blurring. He looked at the assassin, unable to tell if the man was truly wasted or playing a deep game. He sat in silence for a long time before whispering to the flames.
"I've never had a friend either."
Slowly, Ye Tianlong drew a dagger. The metal gleamed orange in the firelight.
Behind him, Shadow's eyes snapped open. His hand drifted imperceptibly toward his hilt, his breathing maintaining the rhythm of a deep sleep. He waited for the strike.
But the strike never came.
Ye Tianlong picked up a piece of unburnt firewood. With surprising delicacy, he began to carve. His expression softened, the cold killer replaced by a man lost in memory. The dagger chipped away the wood, revealing the curve of a face, the slope of a shoulder. It was a woman.
Shadow watched through slitted eyes, his hand relaxing on his sword. He realized his mistake. Ye Tianlong wasn't posturing for a kill; he was revealing his soul. The carving was of a woman he loved in secret, a vulnerability he would never show the world. By carving it here, in front of Shadow, he was silently acknowledging their bond.
You only sheath your claws around friends.
Back at the ambush site, the mood was a mix of grim satisfaction and horror.
Duan Canglong and the team had cleared the battlefield. The cages were open, and the cargo was spilling out—hundreds of terrified, emaciated humans. Before Xiao Ke could even begin to process the logistics of this rescue, Liu Jinqual shouted from the rear of the convoy.
"Commander! You need to see this!"
Xiao Ke, Ling Feng, and Ye Yun approached the heavy transport trucks. There were five massive containers, the size of small houses. When they pried the lids open, the light of their torches reflected off thousands of jagged, obsidian-like surfaces.
"My God," Ling Feng gasped. "Black Crystal."
Even the usually composed Ye Yun couldn't hide his shock. "This quantity... If we refined this into high-grade steel, we could outfit an entire platoon with masterwork weapons. We're talking dozens of blades."
Xiao Ke reached in, his fingers brushing the cold, humming stone. He didn't know the market rate, but he knew his own weapon, The Fierce General, was forged from this material. It had cost ten thousand gold coins.
Five containers. Fifty weapons worth. The math was staggering. This was hundreds of thousands of gold coins sitting in the dirt.
"We lost good men tonight," Xiao Ke said, looking at the shimmering wealth. "But this... this ensures their sacrifice wasn't for nothing."
The return to Anping Town was a somber procession. They dismissed the drivers of the Twin Eagles Merchant Alliance, leaving them with just enough water to survive the walk, and commandeered the trucks to transport the refugees.
They thought they were moving under the cover of darkness, but the wasteland has eyes. Scouts from the "Guns & Roses" organization watched from the ridges, their night-vision binoculars tracking the convoy's every turn, logging the intel for future leverage.
Dawn was breaking when the convoy rolled into the Steel Wheel's base. Qin Bing, the battalion commander who had held the fort, rushed out to meet them. Her face was pale with worry, flanked by Liu Feifei and a guard detail.
When Liu Feifei saw the Black Crystal, her eyes lit up with avarice, but the joy was quickly dampened by the sight of the refugees—filthy, broken, and numbering in the thousands.
"Commander," Qin Bing whispered, noting the depleted ranks of the soldiers. "Was it a trap?"
"The cargo wasn't goods. It was people," Xiao Ke said, his voice hard. "We secured the civilians, but we ran into a zombie unit. A Level 9 Blade Wolf Knight. If Ye Yun's family hadn't intervened, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
Qin Bing paled. She quickly organized the intake, herding the nearly two thousand refugees into the training grounds for processing.
As the sun rose, the truth came out. These people were from Vermilion Bird City. They had been lured by job offers, kidnapped, and sold by the Twin Eagles Merchant Alliance to the zombies in exchange for Black Crystal.
"Trafficking humans to feed the undead?" Ling Feng slammed his fist onto a crate. "We are fighting for the survival of our species, and these bastards are selling us out for rocks! Qiao Zhennan is the Grand Commander of the Undying Bird Corps. This treason is enough to have him executed. We have to report this to the Emperor immediately."
Xiao Ke looked at his advisors. "Thoughts?"
Ye Yun, ever the pragmatist, shook his head. "It's not that simple. The Qiao family is powerful. Qiao Zhennan will deny knowledge, claim it was a rogue element of the merchant alliance, and cut ties. If we accuse him publicly without a smoking gun, we become the villains who destroyed a major trade route. We'll be pariahs."
"So we do nothing?" Ling Feng asked, incredulous.
"We report it," Ye Yun clarified. "But we report it directly to the Emperor. We are his students. Let the Throne decide the politics. We provide the intel; he provides the judgment."
Xiao Ke nodded. "Agreed. I'll write the report. As for these refugees... their IDs were destroyed. They're ghosts now. They can't go back to the city. We'll keep them here as auxiliary support. We feed them, we pay them, and in six months, if they want to leave, we help them get new papers."
The refugees, expecting to be turned away or enslaved, wept with gratitude when the announcement was made. For them, the Steel Wheel wasn't just a military unit; it was salvation.
Hundreds of miles away, in the heart of the Central Province, the Qilin Imperial Palace stood as a monument to ancient power. But inside the Emperor's private study, the air was freezing.
Emperor Jiang Ning walked in, shivering in his robes. He frowned at the cold fireplace. "Why is there no fire? Is the wood wet?"
Eunuch Li, the Emperor's personal attendant, bowed so low his nose nearly touched the floor. "Your Majesty... forgive me. You issued a decree three days ago to cut palace expenses. You said heating the study was... wasteful."
Jiang Ning froze. He remembered now. The Cabinet Elders—his so-called advisors—had humiliated him again. They had lectured him on extravagance while demanding he open his private Inner Treasury to bail out the state's Public Treasury.
It was absurd. The Public Treasury collected the taxes; the Cabinet managed it. The Inner Treasury was the Emperor's personal allowance, meant to feed his family and staff. Yet the Cabinet claimed the state was broke while simultaneously scolding the Emperor for buying charcoal.
"I am the Emperor of the realm," Jiang Ning muttered, sitting heavily in his icy chair, "and I cannot afford to be warm because those old vultures are bleeding me dry."
"Your Majesty..." Eunuch Li began, his voice trembling.
"Enough," Jiang Ning waved him off. "It's not your fault. It's the Cabinet. They bully the master to shame the house." He picked up a sealed document from his desk. "What is this?"
"A report from the Lawless Lands, Your Majesty. From Commander Xiao Ke of the Steel Wheel."
Jiang Ning sighed, rubbing his temples. "Great. My student has arrived in that hellhole, realized it's impossible, and is now writing to beg for money I don't have."
"Actually, no," Eunuch Li said, suppressing a smile. "You should read it."
Jiang Ning broke the seal and began to read. His weary expression shifted to surprise, then anger, and finally, a look of profound satisfaction.
"He intercepted a slave shipment," Jiang Ning murmured. "The Twin Eagles... the Qiao family... trading our people to zombies."
"The Qiao family," Eunuch Li whispered. "Qiao Zhennan's mentor is Elder Zhang of the Cabinet."
"Of course he is," Jiang Ning sneered. "Elder Zhang lectures me on morality while his student sells humans for profit. The hypocrisy is staggering."
"Shall we move against Qiao Zhennan?"
"Not yet," Jiang Ning said, his eyes sharp. "If we strike now, they'll scapegoat a low-level merchant. We wait. We let them think they're safe. Tell Xiao Ke to continue the investigation quietly."
"There is one more thing, Your Majesty," Eunuch Li added. "Xiao Ke mentions the loot. They seized a massive shipment of Black Crystal Stones. He estimates the value at three hundred thousand gold coins."
Jiang Ning braced himself. "And he wants to know how to split it?"
"No," Eunuch Li beamed. "He is asking if he should arrange transport to send the crystals back to the capital, to be deposited into your Inner Treasury."
The Emperor sat back, stunning silence filling the cold room. Three hundred thousand gold coins. It was a fortune. It was enough to heat the palace for a decade. It was enough to silence the Cabinet for a month.
And Xiao Ke, a man sent to the edge of the world with no funding and no support, was offering it all to his liege.
A laugh bubbled up from Jiang Ning's chest—a sound of genuine, unburdened joy.
"Loyalty," Jiang Ning said, shaking his head in wonder. "I have a court full of well-fed ministers who steal the crumbs from my table, and one starving student in the wasteland who tries to send me a feast."
"Commander Xiao is a man of rare character," Eunuch Li agreed.
"He is," Jiang Ning said firmly. "And I will not exploit that character. Write back to him immediately. Tell him the Emperor is gratified, but the gold stays where it is. He needs it more than I do. Tell him to use it to build the Steel Wheel into a force that shakes the earth. I don't want his money, Li. I want him to become the tree that shelters the throne."