Chapter 5: The First Pillar

The night of October 13th descended upon Fuzhou with a deceptive calm. The air was thick and humid, and the sky was a starless, hazy canvas reflecting the city's orange glow. To the millions of inhabitants, it was just another Tuesday evening—a night of homework, late-night television, and the weary commute home from work. To Wei Heng, it was a fulcrum point in history, a night where a hero would have died and a tragedy would have been cemented.

He stood on the rooftop of a ten-story apartment building, a silent shadow overlooking the Fuzhou City Orphanage No. 3. The legacy of the assassin "Silent Shadow" was fully active within him; his presence was a void, his breathing so shallow it barely disturbed the air. He had been there for hours, a patient predator waiting for a pre-written fate to unfold. Below, the orphanage was a picture of humble peace. Lights were on in the windows, and the faint sound of children's laughter could be heard. Gao Qiang was there, helping one of the younger boys fix a bicycle chain under the dim glow of a porch light. 

Wei Heng checked his watch. 9:47 PM. Any minute now.

His gaze shifted from the orphanage to an empty, overgrown lot a block away. It was a forgotten piece of urban decay, filled with weeds and discarded construction debris. It was also the precise location where a D-Rank Gate was scheduled to rupture. He felt no tension, no anxiety. This was not a battle; it was a surgical procedure. He was merely an instrument of his own grand design.

At exactly 9:52 PM, the air in the empty lot shimmered. It was a subtle distortion at first, like heat rising from asphalt, but it rapidly intensified. A low hum vibrated through the ground, a sound below the threshold of normal hearing but one that Wei Heng's cultivator senses picked up with ease. The space began to tear. A jagged, vertical line of purple-black energy sliced through reality, widening into a grotesque, pulsating maw. The First Fuzhou Outbreak had begun. 

For a few seconds, there was silence. Then, the chittering started. The first Abyssal Crawler scrambled through the Gate, its insectoid legs scrabbling for purchase on the unfamiliar terrain. It was followed by another, then a dozen, then a hundred. A tide of black carapaces and glowing red eyes poured into the world, driven by a singular, ravenous instinct. They swarmed out of the lot, their movements chaotic but unified in their direction: toward the nearest source of life. The orphanage. 

The first screams came from a couple walking their dog down the street. The swarm descended on them with horrifying speed. Wei Heng watched, his face impassive. He did not move. Their deaths were a fixed point, a necessary sacrifice in the original timeline to alert the authorities. Intervening now would change too many variables. His target was Gao Qiang, and only Gao Qiang.

The chaos erupted. The crawlers, drawn by the noise and light, surged toward the orphanage. The sound of shattering glass and panicked screams filled the air. Inside the playground, Gao Qiang's head snapped up. His face, usually a mask of gentle weariness, hardened with a fierce, protective instinct.

"Get inside! Everyone, get inside now!" he roared at the few staff members and older children who had been outside. He shoved the small boy he'd been helping toward the main door, his large frame a solid wall between the children and the oncoming horror.

He grabbed the heaviest tool he could find—a hefty, cast-iron tire iron. It was a pitiful weapon against a horde of otherworldly monsters, but he held it like a holy sword. As the first crawlers burst through the fence, he met them with a guttural roar. 

Wei Heng watched from above, his eyes narrowed in cold assessment. He saw the raw power in Gao Qiang's movements. Each swing of the tire iron was clumsy, inefficient, but backed by a strength that was far beyond human norms. He shattered the carapace of the first crawler, then the second. But for every one he killed, five more took its place. They swarmed him, their sharp claws tearing at his clothes and flesh. He was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, but he didn't retreat. He stood his ground, a lone boulder against a relentless tide, his only goal to buy time for the children to get to safety inside. 

'This is it,' Wei Heng's internal monologue noted. 'The moment of his death. The moment his potential was extinguished.'

A crawler lunged from his blind spot, its mandibles snapping, aimed for his throat. Gao Qiang, off-balance from another attack, wouldn't be able to block it.

Time seemed to slow for Wei Heng. He pushed off the rooftop, his body a silent projectile. He didn't fall; he descended, using the building's facade as a vertical runway. He landed on the street below as softly as a falling leaf, not a single sound betraying his arrival. In his hand, he held a simple, three-foot length of steel rebar he'd picked up from the roof.

He moved. It wasn't a run; it was a flow. He became a blur of motion, the rebar an extension of his will. He intercepted the crawler attacking Gao Qiang, the steel bar piercing its head with a wet crunch. He didn't stop. He flowed through the swarm like water, the rebar dancing in his hands. It was no longer a blunt instrument; it was a spear, a staff, a sword. He was using the techniques of a legendary martial grandmaster, one of the 100,000 souls, and in his hands, a piece of scrap metal became a weapon of absolute death.

Every strike was perfect. A jab to an eye socket. A precise thrust through an unarmored joint. A sweeping blow that shattered multiple legs at once. He killed a dozen crawlers in the time it took Gao Qiang to register his presence. There was no wasted energy, no flashy moves. It was the brutal, terrifying efficiency of a being who had mastered the art of combat over ten thousand years. 

Gao Qiang stared, his mouth agape, the tire iron hanging limply in his hand. He saw a teenager, someone who looked like he should be in a classroom, dismantling a horde of monsters with a calmness that was more terrifying than the creatures themselves. In less than a minute, the courtyard was silent, littered with the twitching corpses of dozens of crawlers.

Wei Heng stood in the center of the carnage, the steel rebar held loosely in one hand, not a single drop of alien blood on his clothes. He turned his head, his gaze locking onto Gao Qiang. His eyes were cold, ancient, and held an authority that made the nineteen-year-old powerhouse feel like a child.

"Gao Qiang," Wei Heng said, his voice level. It wasn't a question.

"H-how... who are you?" Gao Qiang stammered, taking a half-step back.

"That doesn't matter," Wei Heng stated, walking toward him. "What matters is that you were about to die. You fought bravely, but your strength is unrefined. Your methods are crude. You died a meaningless death protecting a few, when you could have the power to protect millions."

He stopped a few feet from the stunned brawler. "You have potential. More than almost anyone I have ever seen in this world. But potential is worthless if you're dead."

The distant wail of sirens began to cut through the night. The Hunter's Association was finally responding.

"The authorities are coming," Wei Heng said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "They will ask questions you can't answer. They will offer you a place in a guild where you will be used as a blunt instrument until you break. That is one path."

He pointed the rebar at Gao Qiang. "Or, you can take another. Follow me. I will give you the training to turn that raw strength into true power. I will give you the resources to ensure the safety of this orphanage, not just for one night, but forever. I will make you a shield that can withstand the coming storm."

Gao Qiang was overwhelmed. This boy spoke of his death as a past event, of the future as a certainty. He had just witnessed a display of power that defied all logic. But in the boy's words, he heard a brutal, undeniable truth. He had been about to die. He had been weak. And his deepest desire, the core of his being, was to be strong enough to protect the innocent. 

"Why?" Gao Qiang asked, the only question he could form. "Why me?"

"Because you were willing to die for them," Wei Heng answered, his gaze flicking toward the orphanage door, where frightened children's faces were peeking out. "That is a quality I cannot teach. Everything else, I can. Your choice."

The sirens were getting closer. Gao Qiang looked at the dead monsters, then at the strange, powerful teenager, then back at the orphanage. This was insanity. But it was also a chance. A chance to become what he had always dreamed of being.

He dropped the tire iron with a clang and gave a single, decisive nod. "I'll follow you."

"Good," Wei Heng said, a flicker of something that might have been satisfaction in his ancient eyes. "Go inside. When the Hunters arrive, tell them you hid and saw nothing. Tomorrow, at noon, meet me at the old bridge by the Nanping district. Come alone."

Without another word, Wei Heng turned and melted into the shadows, vanishing as silently as he had appeared. He left behind a courtyard of dead monsters, a future S-Rank Hunter whose fate had been irrevocably altered, and the first official pillar of the guild that would one day challenge the heavens.