Rising Sun City rose from the haze like a sleeping giant—rooftops stacked in terraces, banners snapping in the crisp northern wind, market alleys spilling with merchants and wagons. From the city gate we moved like shadows: a small caravan with the squad's banners muted, each man and woman cloaked and patient. You learned quickly in this line of work that noise killed a mission faster than a blade.
I walked at the head, Alex beside me. He had been given three months alone in the wild to burn off the last layer of hesitation; now his aura hummed low and steady—calm, huge, almost dangerous in how composed it made him. I kept a smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. The Jin Clan was rich, powerful, and wired into the very commerce of Rising Sun. They had wealth, guards, and the kind of reach that could drown an entire district in debt before the sun set twice.
We quartered a short distance from the Auction Quarter—an old merchant district the Clan had turned into a showpiece. The Jin Auction House sat where city wealth converged: marble steps, lacquered pillars, and a courtyard that swallowed sound. At first glance it was a palace masquerading as a market. At second glance, every statue and lantern hid an attentive pair of eyes.
I called the squad together under the pretense of scouting rotation. Yue Rong and Liang Chen had orders to hold the outer ring with the rest while a small recon team slipped inside: Alex, Liang Chen, Griffin, and two of our sharpest scouts—Rao and Mei. Liang Chen insisted on coming; I let him. He'd earned the right to test himself in this theater.
They moved like ghosts: through side alleys, under awnings, blending with traders, while I watched from the shadow of a tea stall. The city thrummed with life—vendors calling, horses stamping—an ambient noise that made infiltration easier and more dangerous. The Jin Clan's servants were everywhere, their uniforms marked by a red seal with a coiling sun motif; the clan's presence wasn't hidden, it was flaunted.
Time stretched. I watched the sun drop closer to the west and waited. The recon team's return could not be rushed; any misstep meant the alarms would ring and the entire plan would crumble.
They came back at dusk, slipping into the courtyard with wet leaves in their hair and the ghost of dust still clinging to boots. Alex's face was unreadable; Liang Chen's grin was gone, replaced by a look that said the city had shown its teeth. They gathered around me and unrolled the map under the light of a single lantern.
Alex spoke first, quiet and precise. "We surveyed the Auction House from inside and out. This is where we should strike."
He tapped a point on the map near the main hall. "Jin Auction House: fortified, but its strength lies in concentrated leadership and show. That's our opening."
Griffin laid out what they'd seen with quick efficiency. "Three clan elders are present inside typical auction hours. One at the peak of the 6th layer Origin Realm—he's the ranking mage-and-finance type, probably the bids and arcane valuation arbiter. The other two are at early and mid 5th layer Origin Realm—commanders who handle security and logistics."
Rao produced a small list—notes taken in the margins of a scrap of paper. I read without surprise:
3 Clan Elders (Auction House presence): 1 peak 6th layer Origin, 1 early 5th layer Origin, 1 mid 5th layer Origin.
10 Nominal Elders on site: late Monarch Realm from the early 7th layer to peak 9th layer Monarch realm — they act as heavy enforcers during big events.
~100 Sacred Lord experts stationed in and around the auction district — from early 3rd layer up to peak 6th layer, many of them late-stage experts in the 7th–9th band.
~1,000 lower-to-mid cultivators (Purple Blood through Desolate Lord realms) forming the guard and merchant militias.
My chest tightened reading the numbers. The Jin Auction House was not simply guarded; it was layered like a fortress pitched as a marketplace. Ten nominal elders at Monarch range inside the auction during prime hours meant any open fight could escalate into fighting elite monarchs and draw the Clan's higher-tier attention in minutes.
"Those hundred Sacred Lords," Liang Chen said low, "are the real teeth inside the district. They're mobile and trained for crowd suppression—perfect for turning an ambush into a slaughter. We can't just go in swinging."
Alex watched him with that cool, measured look he sometimes wore after a long day of meditative breakthroughs. "Then we won't go in swinging. We'll cut the head out of the show. The Auction House's influence is concentrated in those three elders and the nominal elders during the main event." His finger pressed the map again. "Strike the Auction early, while most of the Monarch contingent is off duty or distracted by other Clan business. Remove or incapacitate the three elders, and we fracture their command chain. The rest will fold or be confused long enough for us to shove through."
I let his plan sit. It was bold—surgical—but required timing and the perfect blend of stealth, speed, and precision. Which was precisely the sort of thing our squad lived for.
"Reinforcements?" I asked, because numbers never lie.
Rao shrugged, "Outside of the auction window, many of the higher-tier elders are housed in the Inner Compound. They rotate. If we time it between rotations, we have a narrow window—two, maybe three hours at most."
I rubbed my jaw, feeling the familiar thrill that accompanied a knife-edged plan. We'd spend tomorrow setting decoys, practicing ingress and egress, placing talisman beacons, and coordinating the timing with Alex's spatial techniques. Yue Rong and Liang Chen would oversee the outer ring: suppress patrols and draw attention away if needed.
"Good," I said finally. "We strike where they display wealth—where arrogance blinds them. The Auction House is the clan's stage. We tear the actors down. Prepare two teams: one to neutralize the three elders inside, and one to secure the exits and handle the Monarch-level guards if they react."
They nodded. No surprise, no bravado. Just the quiet, lethal readiness that had become our hallmark.
As the night deepened, lantern light washing the courtyard in gold, I felt the city's hum pressing back. Rising Sun City slept uneasily, unaware that the Vardar brothers and their squad were already laying the first threads of an operation that would either sever the Jin Clan's grip or leave our names carved into the streets.
Tomorrow, the Auction House would wake to a dawn it had not planned on.