Night — Li Feng's Room
Night settled quietly over the Second Branch residence, city lights blinking beyond the window like distant signals.
Li Feng sat at his desk, posture relaxed, one hand resting on the trackpad while the other lazily spun a pen between his fingers.
Arachne's earlier alert had lingered at the back of his mind all day — a tiny, persistent itch.
Now that he finally had a moment, he woke his terminal.
Arachne's compiled surveillance summary appeared instantly.
Clean. Minimalistic. Just the raw chain of actions.
Li Han had contacted a technical director inside the Zhao Conglomerate — someone from their internal product evaluation team.
Not through official channels.
Not through any traceable family connection.
Just a quiet, off-the-books request.
The pattern unfolded clearly:
• fragments of Silent Hands' public specs forwarded
• market analysis attached as context
• a request for an "independent vulnerability assessment," strictly off record
• a private meeting scheduled for the director to present his findings
It wasn't an attempt to steal Silent Hands.
Not even close.
It was a probe.
Li Han was searching for leverage — something, anything he could use when the patriarch eventually turned his attention back to the Second Branch.
A weakness to present.
A flaw to inflate.
A narrative he could weaponize.
Arachne's summary laid it out plainly:
[Arachne Report — Silent Hands Inquiry]
Origin: Li Han
Target: Zhao Conglomerate — Technical Evaluation Division
Intent: Off-record assessment of Silent Hands' stability, feasibility, and potential weaknesses
Meeting: Scheduled (underground, informal)
Notes: No involvement from Zhao main branch; limited to technical staff only
Nothing more.
No conspiracies.
No hidden alliances with the Zhao Family.
No serious movement behind the scenes.
Just Li Han digging — clawing for a foothold he didn't have.
Li Feng closed the file.
No tension.
No surprise.
Just confirmation of what he already expected.
Li Han could dig all he wanted.
At the end of it, the only thing he would uncover was irrelevance.
---
PING.
A notification slid across his terminal — from the encrypted Hawkeye console, the soft glow cutting cleanly through the dim room.
[New Message — XBlade]
Li Feng opened it with a tap.
[XBlade: Hawkeye… you probably don't remember me, but I'm the one who posted the kidnapping bounty last month.
The case you helped me crack.]
Li Feng's eyes narrowed a fraction.
'I remember him'.
[XBlade:
I'll get straight to business.
I'm starting a security company — not a small one. Fully structured, clean on paper, and properly funded.
Right now, I have:
• 50 field operatives
• A 5-man cyber unit (1 senior, 4 juniors)
• Contracts in negotiation
• A strong client network from my PI (Private Investigator) years
Everything is prepared… except the backbone.
Someone who can push us directly into the top tier.
I want a partnership.
You as CTO. 50/50 split.
With your skill, we can skip small clients entirely and take high-end cases from day one.]
Li Feng leaned back slightly in his chair.
A bold offer — and a calculated one.
But beneath the professional tone… there was a subtle pressure.
A man who needed this company to succeed, quickly.
"Hm. He wants immediate altitude," Feng murmured.
With a flick of his wrist, he dragged the chat window to his secondary display.
His fingers moved — clean, efficient.
[Hawkeye:
If we partner, understand clearly:
Nothing in the company will be hidden from me.
Systems, oversight, infrastructure — all would inadvertently be under my supervision.
Nothing would happen without me knowing about it.]
The reply came faster than expected.
[XBlade:
I accept. Honestly… I'd prefer it that way.
And there's something else you should know — I'm not alone.
My tech team is here with me. We're reviewing your profile together.
I explained the 50/50 split, but they think you're worth 20% at most.
They think you're hype.
They think the bounty case was luck.
I don't want that mindset festering later.
If you can convince them now… it settles everything].
Li Feng paused.
So the team wanted proof.
Reasonable.
He didn't respond with arguments.
Just action.
He executed a light trace — nothing invasive, only metadata from the chat tunnel.
Then he sent three items:
• Their exact GPS coordinates
• A file — a clean, high-resolution image of the conference room they were sitting in
• One line:
[Hawkeye: This should clear their doubts.]
The typing indicator on XBlade's side froze.
Li Feng didn't wait for the reaction.
While carrying the conversation, he had been digging quietly into XBlade — the desperation in the man's offer was too pointed to ignore.
And with Level 2 Cyber Security, peeling back his digital history was almost effortless.
The picture came together quickly:
XBlade — real name George, based in Bear country — had been a senior investigator at Silver Shield Analytics, a solid mid-tier PI firm with good credentials… and terrible leadership.
His CEO's entitled son had stolen credit for the very case George cracked — the same kidnapping operation that Hawkeye had helped solve.
When the client paid a massive bonus for the rescue, the CEO's son used the publicity to inflate his own reputation.
While George, who had done the real work, was edged out.
Ostracized.
Pushed to resign.
The message between his lines finally made sense.
He had poured everything he had into building this new firm — his savings, his mortgage, his pride.
And the case itself…
It wasn't small at all.
The kidnappers belonged to a larger syndicate — one the federal authorities had been chasing for years with zero success.
Kidnappings.
Extortion.
Disappearing victims.
The little girl Feng helped rescue?
The only recorded case where a victim had been found alive.
No wonder the client had paid ten times the original fee.
No wonder the betrayal had hit George so hard.
Li Feng exhaled quietly through his nose.
"So that's the real story."
Now the offer made perfect sense.
And so did the fear behind it.
---
For a few seconds, nothing appeared on the chat screen.
Just the delivered status under Li Feng's last message — the GPS ping
the image of the office
and the silent implication woven between them.
Then:
[…typing]
A response finally came in.
---
[XBlade: …Alright.]
Another pause.
Then—
[XBlade: You've made your point.]
And then, more controlled, almost formal:
[XBlade: Whatever doubts my team had… they're gone.]
No exaggeration.
No praise.
No theatrics.
Just a man realizing he was speaking to something far beyond what he expected.
A second message arrived almost immediately:
---
[XBlade: Hawkeye… I knew you were good.
But I didn't know you were this good.]
A third message followed — shorter, more resolute:
[XBlade: The 50/50 split stands.]
Then, as if he needed to show he understood the hierarchy now in play —
[XBlade: From this point on, you and I aren't "sharing" a company.]
[We're building one.]
A final message blinked onto the screen:
[XBlade: Send the details for the joint registration. We'll move immediately.]
---
Li Feng didn't reply immediately to XBlade.
He didn't need to.
While the message blinked quietly at the edge of the screen, he was already moving.
He shifted the Hawkeye console to the left monitor and opened a clean workspace on the right.
Within seconds, he had begun laying out the framework for something he'd been expecting to need eventually:
a shell company.
It wasn't complicated for someone operating at Level 2.
He drafted a corporate entity under an innocuous, legally airtight name — Blackshore Technologies Ltd.
A fully registered digital corporation with no physical address and no public-facing structure.
Only a single signature slot existed for "technical oversight," the identity masked behind multiple trustee layers.
It looked ordinary from the outside.
Invisible on the inside.
Exactly how he preferred it.
While the structure generated and the trustees were assigned, Li Feng reviewed the foundation of the security company XBlade proposed.
The man's preparations were solid.
He had already assembled:
• 50 trained security operatives
• A 5-person cyber team
• Initial clients and warm leads
• A budget shaped by someone who understood how security firms burned cash
It wasn't a desperate man starting from zero.
It was a professional building something real — fast.
Next, Li Feng considered his role.
"CTO."
He didn't mind the title.
He began making preparations.
A security company without cyber control was a corpse.
To make the partnership functional — and protected — he began designing the infrastructure he planned to provide:
Five core tools, all built using Level-2 Cyber Security and Programming:
• A breach-mapping engine
• A passive network intrusion detector
• A modular encryption suite
• A rapid-response audit system
• A false-flag trace generator
None of these tools could compare to Li Feng himself or the Li Web.
But for a regular company?
They would be legendary.
Any cyber department equipped with them would stand at the top of the national market.
Li Feng noted each system blueprint and assigned their development priority.
He didn't need weeks.
He needed hours.
Then he reviewed the information he had gathered about XBlade.
His real name.
His employment history.
His forced resignation.
The string of kidnappings tied to the syndicate.
The client who paid tenfold.
The missing victims that were never recovered.
It all aligned perfectly.
And more importantly:
This new company had the perfect storm for growth, A dangerous case, A skilled founder, A reliable team, And now — him.
By the time he finalized the structure for Blackshore Technologies and prepared the integration files, the entire partnership process had been reduced to a streamlined sequence of digital steps.
All XBlade needed to do was sign.
Li Feng sat back.
Everything was aligned.
Everything was ready.
---
Hello, Author here,
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