Shen Shanshan folded her arms and stood by the curb, a lone blade in the night’s cold breath.

By 2 a.m., the street was a drained river—only wrecked drunks and a few operatives drifting through.

Before her loomed the headquarters of Emerald Pool Industries, their den—plain-faced above, secrets coiled below.

A veteran who’d worked for hundreds of outfits, she had never once set foot in this dull, expressionless block.

Their secrecy was absolute, a lidded well with no echo.

Yekase had told her they were being hunted for inhumane experiments with Neptune Energy; until that mech strode into the Fist Covenant Tournament, rumor was a dead wind.

Shen Shanshan waited for a signal, a starter pistol fired from thirty kilometers away.

[… zzzt …]

Static cracked in her earpiece, a spark in dark water.

[Shen, we’ve got movement here!]

“I hear you.”

[Twin Towers and the Southeast Union have about ten each. They’re chasing the convoy. Leaders unknown… A few small outfits are watching within a hundred meters, no sign of cooperation… Southeast Union just latched onto the cars!]

“OK, got it. Watch yourselves.”

She plucked out the micro earpiece and crushed it to grit—shell and guts mixed—and scattered it into the curbside drain like sand.

Walking through the front gate is the dumbest move; facts don’t do poetic reversals.

Her target was the fifth-floor exterior sign—more precisely, the small maintenance door tucked behind it. The lock was ordinary iron, a sheep among wolves.

The real problem: how to climb up under those harsh guard lines, bold as sunlight.

Her hand slid into her pocket and closed on a thumb-sized switch shaped like a fan control.

Yekase’s lifesaver—the Phase Shifter. The day it was born, its designs were burned; no second seed.

Shen had barely left the rental when Yekase chased her down and pressed it into her palm, a talisman against walls.

—3.25 seconds. Not enough to walk the front, but enough to slit the net and reach the little door with breath to spare.

Primary target: the Neptune mecha production line, a vein pulsing in stone.

She pinned the mission to her mind like a blade to a belt.

With secrecy this deep, the line had to sit underground—far underground. If she could lock it, the general assault could smash Emerald Pool’s supply of steel bodies.

She had once joked to Yekase: what if I phase into the ground for 3.25 seconds—clip through and raid the basement?

Yekase had warned: all the compute holds the quantum state. When time runs out, the failsafe only pops you out. It guesses the direction, but if there’s a middling gap on the path, it can wedge you and press you to paste.

Shen’s eyes swept the glass curtain wall, catching four cameras like cold eyes. She drifted to a corner, flicked her wrist, and a grappling hook slid from her sleeve like a silver fish.

In the next blink, she vanished—then reappeared perched on the lowest character of Emerald Pool’s LED sign, a crow on a neon branch.

The old iron frame groaned, a rusted hinge, but held.

She drew a vibro-cutter. The blade sang along the door seam, bit the latch free. She pulled the door and slipped inside, a shadow through silk.

—First step, done.

She touched down without a whisper in a maintenance warehouse, dust motes swirling like sleepy gnats.

Even the most mysterious Sinister Organization still has a janitor’s closet—this warehouse looked like any other and wore a little grime like tired skin.

She pressed to the door, opened a sliver, and stole sound and sight.

They must’ve pulled the night-shift fighters to guard the cars; Emerald Pool’s base lay quiet, a pond with no ripples.

Yekase’s timing was a switcheroo—this time they held the initiative, sharp and forward, not the burn-the-boats mood of Triple Calamity.

Half-crouched, Shen ghosted down the corridor, a cat in a long hall, meeting nothing but air.

For rank-and-file, a group’s death is just a new boss; no one rushes to die. Even if ordered to “volunteer,” excuses bloom like weeds.

Those with loans on their backs or shares in hand are few; the leaders send them to push the cars. So with a little care, Shen could map the whole base like tracing veins on a leaf.

…That’s how it should’ve gone.

After circling the entire fifth floor and finding not even half an office, a pebble of wrongness dropped in her gut.

A working building with an abandoned fifth floor? A mask with no face behind it.

Had Emerald Pool already slipped away in the dark, and that train outside was just sleight of hand?

No—those exterior cameras still stared and blinked like living eyes.

She’d never seen a setup like this. As a well-behaved mercenary, a tool-for-hire, her style was simple: I don’t know who’s right; I know where to go and who to kill. Charge like a bull. If the wind turns, run like water.

She started missing Yekase—the woman could build three theories off a hiccup over the phone, not leave her flailing like a blind moth.

What’s going on?

Seeing not a single soul, Shen stopped hiding and strolled the corridors in daylight boldness.

Fine. Check other floors first.

She entered the stairwell and looked up and down. No lights. The hush felt like any ordinary company, not a Sinister Organization at the cliff’s edge.

She rubbed her chin and tried on Yekase’s tone. “At times like this… right, invert the thinking.”

Up and down were dead calm, and the architecture felt blunt, like they’d never considered a knife at the door. A carpet search would bring back empty nets.

Some genius with a permanent scowl who only yields to gentle hands would say: it’s a miscast coin—faces on both sides. Flip it all night, it lands the same. The only break lies in one event—

“…the coin standing on edge.”

Shen lifted her gaze to the stairwell wall, to a square vent so plain it was invisible.

If Emerald Pool hadn’t gone mad enough to pipe oxygen into a sealed cavern, then that vent must lead into parts the stairs didn’t reach—down, where stones remember secrets.

She slipped the grille free without a sound and slid into the duct, her body a quiet lizard. She looked down into a throat with no bottom.

Hands and feet braced, she steadied herself and began to slide, slow rain down smooth bark.

She counted the drop in her head, time into height.

Five meters… ten… fifteen…

Fifteen meters is five stories’ worth, and the duct kept plunging like a well that forgot the sky.

…Didn’t expect the basement to give itself up this easily. They never thought someone would fast-rope a vent.

Light from outside finally poured in, painting the cramped shaft in pale gold.

Shen peered past the spinning fan into the world beyond, a watcher through a millstone.

Then a sight crashed into her eyes—one she wouldn’t forget for ten years—like a scroll flying open in a gust.

If she had to pull a word from her lean vocabulary, it would be… “Peach Blossom Spring.”

Not as romantic as the classic; “underground city,” or “slum,” fits better—roots tangled in dark soil.

In a cavern vast enough to drown thought, multicolored shipping-container buildings jostled and stacked, stairs, shafts, and beams stitching them together like a crooked loom.

Through gaps big and small, deeper levels yawned—dozens of meters more—and lights pricked those depths like scattered stars.

And… people.

People everywhere.

Men and women, old and young, moving between containers, on stairs and skybridges, living like the surface at arm’s length.

They lived as if born to this grave of pressed steel—containers squeezed into a pit that buried you alive with neighbors.

Look in any of the 360 degrees, and within ten meters your view hit metal—space narrowed like a throat.

The Black Market is a maze too, walls on all sides, but at least it keeps a bright atrium in the heart.

Shen knew if she moved here, in under three months she’d catch depression like a dogpile online—storm and silence all at once.

Maybe Yekase would adapt better, but even she once said she dreamed of a floating workshop island of her own—heart set on sky; hiding in plain sight was forced by gravity.

Yet the residents… felt at home, as if they’d always lived like this.

They lived under Emerald Pool’s headquarters, in a hidden underground city no map admits.

Shen’s mind unfurled the 3D map of Twin Towers City’s subway lines—memorized for fleeing through tunnels—and she realized: the few zones long left undeveloped, even deliberately skirted, included this very pocket.

So that’s what they built down here.

No surprise—a group with several construction teams had started secret infrastructure, roots under stone.

She grasped Emerald Pool’s intent at once—hide the true production line inside an underground “employee housing.” Even if outsiders break in, complex terrain and families in flight would tangle every blade.

She had to get back and tell Yekase—fast.

She whipped her grappling hook upward, ready to leave—thread back to sky.

Click.

A cover plate slid aside above her. Square light poured in, and a head framed itself in the gap like a coin’s cold face.

…Oh crap. That’s bad.

…

“Looks like we have a guest.”

Against the light, Shen couldn’t read the face. She tried banter, a leaf on a stream. “Uh… I’m lost. You know which shopping street this is—”

“Drink? Coffee or tea?”

“…Tea?”

“Wrong. Coffee.”