The heavy wooden doors of the cultivation chamber detonated inward, showering the room in splinters and dust.

Through the haze, four figures stepped over the debris. Three men, one woman. Sun Yi’s HUD—or rather, his memory—tagged the female instantly: Hua Ling, the disgruntled ex-employee from the Seven Star Tower.

“Big Brother, that’s the target,” Hua Ling shrieked, her finger stabbing the air towards Sun Yi. greed practically dripping from her eyes. “Tower Master Mo handed him a VIP card the moment he scanned his Storage Bag. The capital reserves on this kid must be astronomical!”

Since her termination, Hua Ling’s resentment had festered like a corrupt file, but it was the potential payout that drove her here. She had seen the way the Tower Master’s expression shifted when he inspected Sun Yi’s assets. Even a Golden Core executive was shaken. That meant liquid assets. Massive amounts of Spirit Stones.

To her, Sun Yi was just a Qi Refining user. A bug in the system.

Driven by vengeance and ROI, she had outsourced the violence to her brother and his associates. They had done their due diligence, camping outside his courtyard, verifying there were no high-level admins or elders protecting him.

They had even deployed a Sealing Talisman. A local firewall. No data packets—no screams, no energy fluctuations—would leave this courtyard.

Once they looted the user, they would vanish from the Red Fire Market. In the Chaos Demon Commandery, ‘Player Killing’ for loot wasn’t just common; it was the meta.

The leader, a burly middle-aged man, locked eyes with Sun Yi. He chuckled, a low, rasping sound. “Kid. I hear you’re holding a lot of liquidity. Be sensible. Transfer the assets, and we might make this quick.”

“Big Brother, why waste bandwidth talking to him?” Hua Ling stomped her foot, impatient. “Just delete him!”

“Right. Let’s not lag behind schedule,” a young cultivator beside them sneered, shifting his weight.

The fourth man licked his lips, looking at Sun Yi like he was a loot box waiting to be opened.

But the leader hesitated. His instincts were flashing a warning light. The target was too calm. A Qi Refining user cornered by four Foundation Establishment cultivators should be trembling, begging, or panicking.

Sun Yi sat there like a CEO in a boardroom meeting he was bored with. Zero pulse elevation. Zero panic. It was… irregular.

Sun Yi scanned the opposition. Threat Assessment: Target 1 (Hua Ling): Early Foundation Establishment. Low threat. Target 2 (Leader): Foundation Establishment Grand Perfection. Moderate threat. Targets 3 & 4: Late Foundation Establishment. Pawns.

“Bold strategy,” Sun Yi said, his voice flat. “Executing a robbery inside the Red Fire Market’s VIP sector? You aren’t worried about the platform administrators coming down on you?”

“Hmph. We’ve already uploaded a patch—a Sealing Talisman,” the leader scoffed, though he kept his guard up. “We’re running on a private server now, kid. No one is coming to save you. Today, your session ends.”

“Big Brother, I’m taking the kill shot!”

Hua Ling couldn’t wait. Her face twisted into a mask of venomous hate. She flared her True Qi, and with a flash of light, a spirit weapon materialized in her grip—a long, vicious whip studded with metal barbs.

“Go to hell!”

She lashed out. The whip tore through the air with a high-pitched shriek, aiming to split Sun Yi’s skull. The velocity was impressive for a low-level user.

The leader didn’t intervene. It was a low-cost probe. If Sun Yi had hidden software or defensive tools, Hua Ling would trip the trap first.

Sun Yi watched the whip descend. In his eyes, it was just a vector equation. Velocity: High. Material integrity: Tier 1. Countermeasure: Manual override.

He smiled faintly and reached out.

The four intruders sneered. They knew the specs of that whip. It was a Ninth-Rank First-Grade Spirit Weapon, but the barbs were sharpened to Second-Grade standards. It was designed to shred protective True Qi like wet paper. Trying to grab it with bare hands was suicide.

“Courting death!” Hua Ling hissed.

Snap.

The sneers froze. Sun Yi had caught the whip mid-air. His fist closed. Pressure exerted. The metal barbs, forged to tear flesh, crumbled like dry biscuits against his palm. His skin remained unblemished. Not a scratch.

“Hardware discrepancy detected,” Sun Yi muttered.

Before the group could process the glitch in their reality, Sun Yi yanked the whip. The force was catastrophic. Hua Ling didn’t just stumble; she was launched like a ragdoll, flying straight into Sun Yi’s grasp.

She blinked, and suddenly the world tilted. Sun Yi’s hand was clamped around her throat, lifting her off the ground.

“Let… go…” She clawed at his arm, legs kicking helplessly.

Sun Yi tightened his grip. The airflow cut off. Terror finally overwrote her greed.

“Big Brother! Save me!” she wheezed.

“Release her!” the leader roared. He panicked, summoning a flying sword and firing it straight at Sun Yi.

The other two associates triggered their macros instantly. One hurled a bladed disc that spun like a buzzsaw; the other fired a silver armor-piercing awl.

Three Foundation Establishment attacks. A lethal combo. If Sun Yi relied on standard Qi Refining specs, he would be vaporized.

And they didn’t care about Hua Ling. She was acceptable collateral damage.

“Inefficient teamwork,” Sun Yi noted coldly.

He didn’t dodge. He simply adjusted his stance and swung Hua Ling in front of him like a meat-shield.

Thwack.

The leader’s flying sword punched through Hua Ling’s chest, exiting her back in a spray of crimson.

Hua Ling’s eyes went wide. She stared at the man she called ‘Big Brother,’ unable to comprehend the betrayal. They had grinded together for years. They weren’t blood related, but they were a team.

She died with that look of shock frozen on her face.

Sun Yi felt nothing. No pity. No remorse. Attempting to murder him voided their right to existence.

The other two attacks were closing in. Wind Thunder Step: Engage.

Sun Yi’s figure blurred. He became a streak of lightning, an afterimage that the projectiles passed harmlessly through.

“Bad lag!” The leader’s pupils dilated. The speed was impossible.

Instinct took over. The leader activated his defensive cooldown, summoning a heavy shield Spirit Weapon to block his front. It was a Second-Grade, Third-Rank artifact—his pride and joy.

“You can’t break this!” he screamed, trying to reassure himself. “This shield is—”

Sun Yi materialized directly in front of him. No fancy techniques. No spell casting. just a simple, efficient data input.

Right Fist. Forward.

“Brute force solution,” Sun Yi stated.

His fist connected with the glowing spirit shield. There was no resistance. The protective light scattered like static. The metal of the shield groaned, then shattered into a thousand useless fragments.

Boom!

The punch didn’t stop. It carried the momentum of a freight train, crashing through the leader’s True Qi barrier and impacting his torso.

The human body isn’t designed to handle that kind of kinetic energy transfer. The leader didn’t just die; he was deleted. His body exploded into a fine mist of blood and bone, painting the room in a grisly red hue.