Chapter 165: The Unseen Blade
Lisa took a final, deliberate bite of a pastry, chewed slowly, and placed her utensils down with a soft, precise click. She dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin, her movements unnervingly calm. Then, she turned her gaze back to Morris, her lips curving into a smile that held no warmth, only the cold gleam of a predator moving in for the kill.
"So," she began, her voice silky. "Shall we talk business? My question is simple: how long is this transfer going to take? And, of course," she added, a mocking lilt in her tone, "we both know you're not planning to deliver fifteen trillion in physical cash."
A visible sheen of sweat broke out on Morris's forehead. His composure crumbled. His fingers, trembling slightly, went to the top button of his shirt, fumbling to loosen it as if the room had suddenly become suffocating.
"Ms. Mingrui, please," he implored, his voice cracking. "Can't we just... can't we have a little more time?"
Lisa's smile vanished, replaced by an expression of icy finality. "You have used that exact excuse five times. The answer is no. There are no more extensions. You will either provide us with a verifiable, immediate payment plan for the full amount, or we will begin the process of seizing every single one of your assets. And if those assets prove insufficient..." she leaned forward slightly, her eyes locking onto his, "...as per the contract you signed, we will be well within our rights to liquidate the remaining debt by selling you at the slave market. The choice is yours."
The veneer of the civilized businessman shattered completely. Fear and desperation twisted Morris's face into a snarl.
"For that," he spat, his voice rising to a hysterical pitch, "you'll have to catch me first, you bitch!" He slammed a hand on the table. "ATTACK THEM!"
The command was a trigger. From hidden panels in the ceiling, from behind decorative screens, a dozen figures dropped into the room. They were clad in dark, form-fitting suits that blurred their outlines, moving with the silent, lethal grace of professional mercenaries. Their swords were already drawn, glinting in the morning light, all aimed at Lisa.
But they were already dead.
The moment Morris's body had tensed to give the order, Moon's eyes had narrowed. His Eternal Volt Sutra had already mapped the faint electrical signals of their heartbeats, the whisper of their breathing from behind the walls, the minute shifts in the air pressure. It painted a perfect, real-time schematic of the threat in his mind. A flick of his fingers, a micro-expression—an imperceptible signal to Kai.
As the assassins lunged, time seemed to warp for Moon and Kai.
To Morris and Lisa, it was a blur of impossible speed. One moment, the ninjas were mid-air, weapons poised to strike. The next, a series of sickeningly precise events occurred in a single, horrifying instant. A glint of a thrown knife embedded itself in a throat across the room. A neck snapped with a dry crack from another direction. A third assailant crumpled, a deep, clean gash across his windpipe. It was a symphony of simultaneous, fatal blows delivered from a standstill.
The speed was incomprehensible. It wasn't something a normal human, or even these highly-trained mercenaries, could process or counter. Morris's triumphant snarl froze on his face, morphing into pure, uncomprehending terror.
Before the first body could hit the floor, the entire squad of twelve assassins was already lifeless. They fell not in sequence, but as one, a macabre rain of collapsing forms that thudded against the expensive marble, their blood beginning to pool on the pristine surface.
Kai and Moon had not moved from their positions behind Lisa's chair. Their posture was unchanged, their breathing even. It was as if they had willed the men to die.
Lisa, who had braced for a fight, slowly turned her head. She looked at the circle of corpses surrounding them, then back at the two impassive men standing guard behind her. She had expected a struggle, a messy, violent confrontation that her previous bodyguards would have had to brawl through. This... this was not a struggle. This was an execution. This was a display of power so absolute, so effortless, it was terrifying.
Her shock was not from the violence, but from its utter lack of drama. Her eyes, wide with a dawning, profound awe, lingered on Kai and Moon. She had known they were capable, but she had just witnessed something else entirely. They weren't just bodyguards; they were a force of nature.
Seeing his entire squad of assassins annihilated in the blink of an eye shattered Morris's last vestige of courage. Panic, pure and primal, took over. His eyes, wide with terror, darted to a concealed button on the arm of his ornate chair. It was a final, desperate gambit—a self-destruct mechanism for the room, a scorched-earth policy meant to erase everything, including himself, rather than face the bank's retribution.
Kai's senses, however, were tuned to a frequency beyond normal perception. He felt the minute shift in Morris's bio-signature, the spike of adrenaline and despair that preceded the move. Even before Morris's finger made contact, Kai was already in motion. His hands moved in a fluid, practiced gesture. The ambient moisture in the air—from the condensation on glasses, the humidity from the gardens—coalesced instantly, forming a shimmering, dome-like shield of compressed water around himself, Moon, and Lisa.
BOOM!
The blast was deafening, a concussive wave of heat and force that vaporized the dining table, shattered the panoramic windows, and turned the opulent room into a smoldering crater. The shockwave hammered against Kai's water shield, making it ripple violently but not break. It was an explosion designed to kill even a King-Level Hunter, but Kai was no ordinary King-Level. His control was absolute, his power refined in far more brutal crucibles.
As the dust began to settle, the advanced environmental isolation systems of the villa activated. Invisible energy walls shimmered into existence around the blast perimeter, containing the destruction perfectly within the room, preventing any collateral damage to the rest of the structure or the city outside. The technology ensured that the violent affairs of the wealthy remained their own private secret.
Kai dissipated the water shield. He unceremoniously hauled a stunned Lisa over his shoulder and, with Moon covering their flank, strode out of the wreckage and into the pristine hallway.
It was then that Lisa snapped out of her daze, the professional in her surfacing through the shock. She began to thrash in his grip, not in fear, but in frantic calculation.
"Oh, shit! Mr. Morris! He's dead!" she cried out, her voice laced with genuine professional horror. "Where am I supposed to get 15 trillion credits now?! I was counting on seizing and liquidating his main property! He just blew it up, and himself with it! This is going to look terrible on my recovery record!"
She was so consumed by the financial catastrophe that she didn't notice Kai's utter lack of concern.
"He is not dead yet," Kai stated flatly, his voice cutting through her panic.
---
Deep beneath the villa, in a cramped, dimly lit emergency tunnel, Morris was indeed still alive. He stumbled forward, his lungs burning, each breath a ragged gasp that drew in smoke and toxic CO2. A wracking cough shook his frame. He had escaped the blast, but barely. He needed to get to his hidden transport, to flee the planet.
His path, however, was blocked.
In the middle of the tunnel, two creatures stood. One was a small, fluffy white feline cub, no larger than his hand. The other was a tiny black puppy, staring at him with innocent curiosity.
Morris stopped, panting, a confused frown creasing his soot-stained face. A baby cat and a pup in this tunnel? Hein? What kind of joke is this?
It was no joke.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the air around the two creatures distorted. The black puppy grew, its form expanding, shifting, its fur thickening into a majestic, dark mane. In moments, where the pup had stood was now a massive black wolf, as large as a polar bear, with menacing crimson markings tracing its powerful muscles and intelligent, golden eyes that held no pity, only ancient judgment.
Simultaneously, the white cub underwent its own terrifying transformation. It swelled in size, stripes of brilliant blue erupting across its fur. It became a colossal white tiger, its frame even larger than the wolf, with icy blue eyes that glowed in the dim light. Its sheer presence filled the tunnel, a vision of primal power.
Before Morris could even process the impossibility before him, the great white tiger, Snow, lunged. Its movement was a blur. It didn't maul him; it precisely clamped its powerful jaws around his torso, careful not to crush him, but immobilizing him completely. Lifting him effortlessly off his feet, it turned and began to carry the coughing, terrified man back the way he came. The black wolf, Kuro, fell into step behind, a silent, ominous shadow herding their prize back to its masters.
Morris's escape had lasted less than a minute. The debt was not so easily voided.
Lisa stared at Kai, her mind reeling. The calculating debt collector was gone, replaced by a woman struggling to reconcile reality with the impossible. "What do you mean, 'he is not dead yet'?" she demanded, her voice trembling with a mix of frustration and disbelief. "We both saw it! He blew himself up right in front of us! There's no way anyone could have survived that!"
Before Kai could offer any explanation, two colossal forms emerged from the swirling smoke and lingering flames of the decimated room.
It was Kuro and Snow.
Kuro, the immense black wolf with his crimson markings and mane like shadow given form, paced forward with a predator's grace. His golden eyes held a terrifying intelligence, sweeping over the scene before locking onto Kai with clear recognition.
Behind him, Snow, the majestic white tiger whose size dwarfed even Kuro, moved silently. His blue stripes seemed to glow against his pristine fur, and in his powerful jaws, he carried Morris.
The man was a horrifying sight, drenched in his own blood. Snow's fangs had punctured deep into his abdomen, and a grievous wound bled freely, staining the tiger's white muzzle crimson. Yet, aside from this brutal injury, the rest of Morris's body was untouched. There were no burns from the explosion, no shrapnel wounds. It was proof—undeniable proof—that even in the midst of retrieving him, Snow had enveloped Morris in a protective energy shield, preserving the asset from the very blast he had triggered.
The sight of these two mythical beasts, emerging from hellfire with their prey, shattered the last of Lisa's composure. A sharp, terrified gasp escaped her lips. All professional pretence forgotten, she instinctively stumbled backward, seeking refuge behind Kai's solid, unmoving form. Her fingers clutched at the fabric of his shirt, her earlier awe now eclipsed by primal fear. These weren't just powerful bodyguards; they commanded creatures from legend.
Kai ignored her panic, his focus entirely on the scene before him. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod to Snow, a silent command understood only between them. With a fluid motion, the great tiger opened its jaws, letting Morris's limp, bleeding body drop unceremoniously onto the scorched marble floor with a sickening thud.
Kai then turned his head slightly, his voice as calm and flat as ever, addressing the terrified woman hiding behind him. "He is alive," he stated, as if commenting on the weather. "The debt is still collectible. Your record is safe."
He looked from Morris's broken form to Lisa's pale, shocked face. "Now, would you like to renegotiate the terms with your client, Ms. Mingrui?"
To be continued…