The night before the strike felt heavier than any battlefield I had stood on. Rising Sun City slept in layers of lamplight and shadow, its merchants closed, its nobles drunk on their own arrogance. From the courtyard of our rented safehouse, I watched the city breathe and thought of the auction house like a beating heart — loud, vain, and vital.
We had one window. Two, at most. The Jin Clan's guards rotated like clockwork; ten Monarch-level enforcers ensured their presence during public hours, but when they dispersed to attend to private business the inner compound loosened. That was the hour we would steal.
I gathered the team in the shadowed hall and unrolled the plan. Lanterns carved circles on the floor as Alex traced the geometry of the auction district with his finger. Spatial folds shimmered faintly around his hand as he explained ingress points and layered pockets of escape.
"Timing is everything," he said quietly. "I'll open the exit corridor at T+0:10 and close it at T+0:40. Two directional folds — one for ingress, one for egress. If anything distorts, I collapse them. No one gets lost in the city, and no one gets pursued through the streets for long." His eyes flicked to mine. "I'll need constant focus; I'm not leaving the compound physically. Hao will be my anchor."
Hao — Liang Hao — nodded. He would remain at Alex's side, stabilizing the rifts and manning the talisman beacons Alex would lay invisibly through space. Hao had become a quiet anchor to Alex's often abstract spatial tricks.
Yue Rong and Liang Chen would command the outer ring. Yue Rong had already worked the city's shadows for two days, learning alleys, vendor schedules, and patrol habits; Liang Chen had spent that time forging contacts among the city's low-level muscle — rumors, bribes, small favors. They would mask our movements, pull attention where needed, and sweep the perimeter if the clan's patrols smelled a rat.
The hall hummed as I assigned teams.
"Team One — Infiltration," I said. "Alex, Liang Hao, Griffin, Rao, Mei, and two of my best duelists. Your job is surgical: get inside the auction hall, neutralize the three elders, and extract any immediate threats. You must do this without raising the main alarm."
"Team Two — Exit & Suppression," Liang Chen echoed. "Yue Rong leads the suppression. Our men will handle the exits, disarm the Monarch-level guards if they appear, and pin down any quick-response units."
"Team Three — Decoys & Chaos," I continued. "Two squads will create commotion in the merchant quarter, draw the bulk of lower-tier guards and the local militia away from the auction. Use talismans to start controlled fires, staged fights, and ruckus. No civilian casualties. Collateral will be smoke and noise."
Plans are one thing. Implementation another.
We had three days to prepare. The courtyard turned into a workshop: talismans were drawn and infused, runes etched into thin copper plates, wards bound into lengths of cloth. The smiths we used in secret forged blades with mana-threaded edges to cut through talismanic bindings and the leatherers stitched fast-release packs that could be dropped and hidden in the tight alleys of Rising Sun.
Yue Rong oversaw the talisman team with unnerving precision. She inked sigils with a steady hand, chanting counters beneath her breath. "These sigils will mask heat traces and dampen spiritual signatures for ten minutes," she explained one afternoon, dipping a seal into red ink. "That should be all we need for ingress."
Liang Chen drilled the suppression squads. Where Yue Rong favored silence and misdirection, Liang Chen favored pressure and spectacle. He had a dozen men practicing blocking and feigning retreat — a choreography to lure guards into traps where they would be pinned by sudden earth spikes and steam walls.
We rehearsed the timing until the cadence became muscle memory. Alex walked the team through the spatial corridors in simulation — we practiced entries into invisible folds, steps measured to the heartbeat, exits aligned with lantern poles and alley intersections. I watched him breathe through it, his focus immaculate. The spatial corridors were the lynchpin: if Alex held them, we slipped in and out. If he faltered, the whole squad died in the city's teeth.
On the second night we tested the talisman nets. I stood in the center of the courtyard while a line of men sent a cascade of linked sigils down the street. The wave froze in mid-air like a spun net, humming with restrained energy. Liang Chen sent a simulated patroling squad through it; the sigils released a burst of dampening force, dropping the faux-guards to their knees. It worked. We timed the release. We synchronized our watches. We sharpened our nerves.
Memories of the Jin Clan's reported strength threaded through every rehearsal. The presence of Monarch-level elders in their auditing halls meant we needed contingencies for royal-grade power. Thus we forged anti-monarch talismans — slotted rings that, when worn and activated, could shatter the flow of a moderate monarch-cultivator's mana for a handful of heartbeats. They were crude and risky, but in the hands of Yue Rong and two specialists, they might buy a window.
On the eve of the strike, we laid final beacons across the routes: small iron markers hidden beneath tiles, stringed with mana like trip-lines, only to hum when touched by a Monarch-level aura. They would not detonate — only warn. Alex would watch the beacons in space and retract us before the net closed fully.
As night deepened, I called everyone for the last brief. The men gathered, faces lit by torchlight — resolute, not reckless. I looked at each of them: Liang Chen's grin was back, sure and sharp; Yue Rong's eyes reflected the firelight with a cool, lethal glow; Alex's aura hummed like a coiled blade.
"This will be clean, efficient, and swift," I told them. "We don't make enemies of a nation. We disable a clan. Execute your part and trust the rest. No heroics— only precision. We move at dawn, at the thin hour between rotations. If anything breaks, we fall back."
A hush. Then a chorus of affirmed, determined voices.
When the courtyard emptied, I stayed. I walked to the edge of the roof and watched the auction house's distant silhouette under the moon. The city seemed indifferent, unaware of the blade about to be drawn across its heart. I flexed my fingers, feeling the hum of the talismans strapped across my arms, the comforting weight of responsibility.
Tomorrow we would strip a stage of its actors and see if the Jin Clan could bleed when cut properly. Tonight, I rehearsed the timing in my head, heartbeat to heartbeat, window by window.
The trap was set. Now all that remained was the strike — and the test of every man and woman I'd chosen to stand with me.