[LOCATION: NETHER-CORE TOWER — EXECUTIVE OFFICE]
[TIME: 02:15 PM]
The elevator doors slid open with a soft, expensive chime.
The smell hit the room first.
Lotus extract. Crushed pearls ground into powder. Pure, refined Spirit Qi that had been bottled and aged like fine wine.
It was the smell of money.
Representative Shen stepped onto the carpet like he owned it.
He wore a tailored white silk suit that practically glowed against the grey pollution visible through the office windows. A jade thumb ring—the kind that cost more than most people earned in a lifetime—rested on his right hand, catching the light. Two enforcers flanked him like attack dogs on leashes: identical twins with shaved heads, carbon-fiber tactical armor that probably violated three weapons treaties, and Tier-D cultivation auras that made the air pressure in the room spike uncomfortably.
Shen looked around the office with barely concealed disgust.
He pulled out a white silk handkerchief and wiped a microscopic speck of dust from his lapel, as if the very air in Sector 9 was contaminating him.
"So," Shen said, his voice smooth as expensive oil. "The rumors are actually true. Someone was foolish enough to buy this condemned wreck."
Ren Wu sat behind his mahogany desk, fingers steepled in front of him.
He didn't stand up.
Didn't offer greetings or pleasantries.
Han stood to Ren's left, clutching his clipboard like it was a bulletproof shield. Chief Kui stood by the door, his massive frame squeezed into his new black suit that was already showing stress tears at the shoulders.
Kui stared at the floor like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
He owed Shen forty thousand Silver. In the Underworld, you didn't make eye contact with your creditors unless you wanted to lose the eyes in question.
"Representative Shen," Ren said, gesturing with one hand toward the leather chair positioned in front of his desk. "Please. Sit."
Shen didn't sit.
He walked directly to the desk, leaned over it with deliberate intimidation, and dropped a thick parchment scroll onto the polished wood.
Thud.
The sound echoed in the quiet office like a judge's gavel.
"I don't sit in the Slums, Mr. Ren," Shen said with a sneer that exposed too many white teeth. "I collect."
He tapped the scroll with his jade ring—a casual gesture that made a sound like breaking glass.
"Your new employee, Kui, owes the Alchemist Consortium forty thousand Spirit Silver for a weapons shipment he 'intercepted' six months ago. With accumulated interest at standard Consortium rates, the total comes to fifty-two thousand."
Shen's smile widened, showing even more teeth.
"I know you don't have fifty-two thousand Silver lying around. Nobody in this garbage dump does. So I'll be generous today—sign ownership of the Iron-Blood Foundry over to the Consortium. Do that, and I won't have my associates break Kui's legs in seventeen places and dissolve your internal organs with acid."
Silence stretched like a wire pulled tight.
Han stopped breathing entirely. Kui's massive fists clenched until the knuckles went white, but he didn't move a muscle.
Ren looked down at the scroll.
Then he looked up at Shen.
"Fifty-two thousand," Ren repeated, his voice soft and thoughtful.
"Payable immediately," Shen said, flashing that shark-like grin again. He flared his Qi in a deliberate show of force.
A wave of Tier-D spiritual pressure rolled off him like heat from a furnace. The teacups on Ren's desk rattled. The windows creaked in their frames. Papers on Han's clipboard rustled like leaves in a storm.
It was a classic intimidation tactic—raw, violent dominance designed to make lesser cultivators wet themselves and sign whatever you put in front of them.
Ren didn't even blink.
He reached into his jacket pocket with calm, deliberate movements.
He didn't pull out a weapon or a defensive talisman.
He pulled out a pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses.
He slipped them on with the care of someone about to do detailed work, then reached for the scroll and unrolled it across his desk.
"Let's review the contract terms," Ren said.
"There is nothing to review!" Shen snapped, his spiritual aura flaring hotter. The temperature in the office spiked another five degrees. "It's a standard Consortium debt marker. Blood-signed. Legally ironclad."
"Nothing is ironclad," Ren said quietly.
He summoned the Black Ledger.
It materialized on the desk with a sound like a heavy door slamming—a void-black tome that seemed to absorb the light around it. Shen's glowing spiritual aura hit the book's surface and just... vanished, like water poured into desert sand.
Ren picked up his fountain pen—a simple black implement that looked entirely mundane.
He opened the Ledger.
The pages rustled with a sound like dry leaves and distant screaming.
"Item one," Ren said, his pen hovering over the yellowed paper. "The principal loan amount of forty thousand Spirit Silver. Were these funds distributed in actual currency?"
"We provided weapons of equivalent market value," Shen said with barely concealed irritation. "Standard barter transaction."
"Ah." Ren made a note in the Ledger.
The ink glowed a faint, sickly red that seemed to pulse like a diseased heartbeat.
"Barter exchange. But the interest is being charged in Spirit Silver currency. That constitutes unauthorized currency conversion without a Central Banking license."
Shen frowned, his confidence wavering for the first time.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Ren didn't look up from his work.
"Item two. The interest rate. Thirty percent monthly compounding. According to the Sector 4 Commercial Code—which applies to this transaction since you are a registered Mid-Ring corporate entity operating across sector borders—the maximum legal interest rate for unsecured commercial debt is twelve percent annually."
Ren drew a harsh red line through a section of Shen's scroll.
Hissss.
The parchment began to smoke where the ink touched it. The blood-signature at the bottom flickered and dimmed like a dying light bulb.
"Stop touching that!" Shen barked, his voice cracking with genuine alarm. He snapped his fingers at his enforcers. "Break his fingers. Both hands."
The twin brutes lunged forward with professional speed.
Their fists glowed with concentrated kinetic Qi as they aimed directly for Ren's hands, intending to shatter every bone from wrist to fingertip.
Ren didn't even look up from his paperwork.
"Objection," he said calmly.
[DECREE: CONTEMPT OF AUDIT]
[TARGET: UNAUTHORIZED ENFORCERS]
[PENALTY: KINETIC REFLECTION]
CRACK.
The twins didn't hit Ren.
They slammed face-first into an invisible wall of compressed air positioned directly in front of the desk. The kinetic energy from their own spiritual-enhanced punches rebounded instantly, redirected back into their own bodies with mathematical precision.
Bones snapped with sounds like breaking tree branches.
Both men screamed—high, desperate sounds that didn't match their intimidating appearance—and collapsed to the carpet, clutching their shattered hands as white bone fragments pushed through torn skin.
Shen stumbled backward, his arrogant expression crumbling into something resembling fear.
"What... what was that? Some kind of defensive artifact?"
"That was the standard penalty for disrupting an active financial audit," Ren said, turning another page in the Ledger with methodical precision. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Predatory lending practices."
Ren stood up slowly.
He removed his reading glasses and folded them carefully, setting them on the desk.
His dark eyes locked onto Shen's face with the intensity of a surgical laser.
For a fraction of a second—just a heartbeat—the human mask slipped.
Shen saw something else looking at him through Ren's eyes. A shadow that stretched impossibly across the ceiling. An ancient presence that had judged emperors and found them wanting.
Something that remembered when stars were young.
"You are not a licensed financial institution, Representative Shen," Ren said, his voice dropping in temperature until frost should have formed on the windows. "You are an unlicensed loan shark operating across sector boundaries to artificially inflate your corporate asset portfolio through predatory debt instruments."
Ren pressed his palm flat against the smoking scroll.
[AUDIT COMPLETE]
[FINDINGS: ILLEGAL PRACTICES DETECTED]
[INITIATING COUNTER-CLAIM]
"I am formally counter-suing the Alchemist Consortium for illegal financial practices, unauthorized inter-sector currency conversion, and attempted extortion through threat of violence."
The scroll burst into golden flames that didn't burn the desk.
Shen screamed as a searing sensation hit him directly in the center of his chest. The jade thumb ring on his hand—a cultivation treasure worth fifty thousand Silver—shattered into fine green powder that drifted to the carpet like toxic snow.
"My Silver!" Shen gasped, clutching his chest as if he'd been shot. "My cultivation base!"
"I am levying an immediate compensatory fine," Ren stated, his voice ringing with absolute authority that made the air vibrate. "Twelve thousand Spirit Silver, to be deducted directly from your personal spiritual cultivation reserves to compensate for damages to my property, stress inflicted on my employees, and the considerable waste of my valuable time."
Grey smoke began pouring from Shen's mouth and nose.
His crystallized spiritual energy was being forcefully extracted from his soul, converted into raw currency by the cosmic accounting system that governed such transactions.
The System recognized Ren's legal authority.
The debt had been inverted.
Shen dropped to his knees, gasping like a drowning man. His pristine white silk suit was soaked through with cold sweat. His Tier-D cultivation aura collapsed inward, shrinking down to the weak, flickering presence of an ordinary mortal.
Ren walked around the desk with measured steps.
He stood over the gasping executive like a judge delivering sentence.
"The debt is cleared in full," Ren said softly. "Your contract is void and unenforceable. If you or any representative of your organization steps foot in Sector 9 again without paying the appropriate transit fees, I won't simply fine you."
Ren's eyes glowed with cold red light.
"I will liquidate you. Permanently."
He pointed toward the elevator doors.
"Get out of my office."
Shen scrambled backward across the carpet like a beaten dog, his expensive shoes leaving scuff marks on the polished floor. He didn't say a word, didn't issue threats or try to save face.
He grabbed his two groaning enforcers by their collars and dragged them toward the elevator, leaving trails of blood on the carpet.
The doors closed with a soft chime.
The room fell quiet.
The expensive smell of lotus extract was gone, replaced by the sharp scent of ozone and burnt parchment that lingered like smoke after a fire.
Chief Kui was staring at Ren with his jaw hanging open.
He had just watched his new boss defeat a Tier-D Consortium representative using nothing but a fountain pen and a detailed understanding of contract law.
"Boss..." Kui rumbled, genuine awe making his voice shake. "Did you just... rob him?"
"I audited him," Ren corrected, sliding the Black Ledger back into his inventory with a gesture that made it fade from reality. "There is a legally significant distinction between the two activities."
Ren walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out over the smog-choked industrial wasteland of Sector 9. He folded his hands behind his back, his posture absolutely straight.
He had won the battle.
But he had just declared war on the biggest pharmaceutical cartel in the Underworld.
"Han," Ren said without turning around.
"Y-yes, Mr. Ren?" Han squeaked, still clutching his clipboard so hard his knuckles had gone white.
"The Consortium will retaliate. They'll cut off our supply lines for basic medical supplies and cultivation materials. They'll try to starve us out economically before attempting direct violence."
Ren turned his head slightly, his profile sharp against the grey light filtering through the polluted air.
"I refuse to pay retail prices to my enemies. We need our own production capacity."
His eyes were cold and calculating.
"Find me an alchemist. Someone talented but desperate. Someone hungry enough to take risks. Someone the Consortium discarded."
Han swallowed hard, his throat clicking audibly.
"I... I might know someone, sir. Down in the lower slums. They call him the Mad Brewer. He got fired from the Consortium last year for... ethical violations."
Ren's smile was sharp enough to cut glass.
"Perfect. Schedule an interview."
He turned back to the window, watching the smoke rise from a thousand illegal factories.
"It's time to build a product line."
Author's Note:
First rule of the Underworld: Never bring a loan shark to an auditor fight. You'll lose every time.
Ren just turned a debt collection into a hostile counter-acquisition. The Alchemist Consortium thought they were shaking down a small-time operator. Instead, they just got legally destroyed by someone who actually reads contracts.
Next Chapter: "The Headhunter" - Ren ventures into the deep slums to recruit a disgraced alchemist. When you can't buy from your enemies, you build your own supply chain.
Add this to your library to watch the corporate empire strike back!
The war for Sector 9 escalates. The product development phase begins. And someone is about to discover that "ethical violations" is just another term for "innovative business practices."