The Nine Dragons doesn’t need a butcher

The lab’s lights flickered once—a deliberate signal—before plunging into strobe-like chaos. Red emergency beams sliced through the sterile white glow, casting the room in the pulse of a dying heartbeat. Alarms erupted, their wails syncopated with the thud of distant explosions. Somewhere in the compound, steel doors blew inward. Gunfire crackled like static.

Luo Jian stepped forward, his voice cutting through the din. “Your purges gutted us, Wei Long. Jakarta. Surabaya. You severed a muscle to excise a splinter.” He gestured to the monitors, where live feeds showed smoke billowing from the syndicate’s armory, Huang Jin’s ships swarming the docks. “You turned allies into enemies. Made us vulnerable to vultures like him.”

Wei Long’s karambit glinted as he spun toward Mei Lian, but she stood unmoved, her posture regal amid the bedlam.