Chapter 385: Under New Management
Lingyun had barely settled into the chair when the quiet lieutenant cleared his throat.
The man still stood near the window with his gun lowered, watching Lingyun breathe around what was probably more than one cracked rib. His gaze moved briefly toward Luo’s body before returning to Lingyun.
"His death won’t give you the market."
Lingyun adjusted his damaged shoulder against the uncomfortable chair and winced when the movement pulled through his chest. "I know," he shrugged.
The lieutenant’s eyebrows lifted.
Apparently, he had expected an argument.
Head Luo had controlled the office, but the black market sprawled across most of the warehouse district beneath the red crane. Each building had its own crews, storage managers, brokers, guards, and people who believed their section was important enough to operate without interference.
Luo’s death would create an opening.
And openings attracted idiots.
Lingyun looked at the man beside the window. He had refused to die for Luo without openly betraying him before the outcome was certain. It wasn’t loyalty, but it was intelligent self-preservation, which Lingyun generally found to be much more dependable.
"What’s your name?"
"Han Zhi," the quiet man replied.
"How many section leaders?"
"Seven with enough armed men to cause problems. Four more who control inventory, the healers, information, and the tunnels," came the reply, but Lingyun already knew that.
It was nice to know that not everything had changed in this life.
He glanced at Luo’s body and raised an eyebrow. "And how many of them actually liked him?"
Han Zhi’s mouth tightened. "That wasn’t required."
"Good answer."
Lingyun leaned forward and immediately regretted it when his ribs shifted. The pain sharpened his smile rather than removing it.
"Bring them here."
Han Zhi looked at the ruined men scattered around the office. "All of them?"
"All the useful ones."
"And who decides that?"
Lingyun stared at him.
Han Zhi nodded once. "I’ll get them."
It took less than twenty minutes for the first section leaders to arrive. By then, Luo’s body had been moved beside the wall, the living lieutenants had been carried to the healer downstairs, and someone had wiped enough blood from the floor that the office looked like a leadership transition instead of a slaughterhouse.
Lingyun appreciated the effort.
Eleven people crowded into the room, ranging from armed crew leaders to a thin woman holding three inventory ledgers against her chest. Several stopped when they saw Luo’s body while others looked at Lingyun sitting behind the desk and immediately began calculating whether his injuries made him easy to remove.
Lingyun could practically hear the numbers moving around inside their heads.
One man reached the wrong answer quickly.
He was large, dressed in military scraps, and followed by four guards who had ignored the instruction to wait outside. His gaze lingered on Lingyun’s bloodied shirt and poorly supported shoulder before a smile appeared.
"Luo is dead," he said.
Lingyun glanced toward the body. "Congrats. Very observant. Did you want a gold star for your uniform?"
"That doesn’t make you the head," the military man continued, ignoring Lingyun’s sarcastic respons.
"No," Lingyun agreed. "Killing everyone who disagrees generally handles that part."
The man’s guards reached for their weapons.
Han Zhi stepped farther from them, proving again that he had survival instincts worth preserving.
The section leader laughed and moved closer to the desk. "You’re injured."
"And you’re still talking."
The man drew a handgun and aimed it at Lingyun’s chest.
Lingyun didn’t stand, he just lifted his hand, made a finger gun, and lowered his thumb with a smirk.
A thin flame entered through the trigger guard and wrapped around the man’s finger. He screamed and dropped the weapon, but Lingyun had already sent a second line beneath the cuff of his pants.
The fire curled around his ankle and the smell of skin burning started to fill up the room. Tendons tightened until they threatened to snap, and the man collapsed hard enough to strike his chin against the floor.
His guards hesitated.
Lingyun rested his good elbow on the desk. "Anyone else want his section?"
The largest guard looked down at his fallen leader before slowly raising both hands. "Who do we report to?"
"Han Zhi for now."
Han Zhi’s face remained controlled, although he clearly hadn’t expected the sudden promotion.
The injured section leader tried to push himself upright.
Lingyun increased the heat around his ankle until he dropped again.
"You challenged me," Lingyun explained pleasantly. "That means you no longer work here."
The man clenched his teeth. "Then kill me."
"I would love to, but you’re really not important enough," Lingyun shrugged casually.
He turned to looked at the guards. "Remove him from the district. If he comes back, burn him somewhere that won’t bother the customers."
They dragged their former leader away without protesting.
The atmosphere in the office changed after that.
Good.
Lingyun didn’t need everyone terrified. Fear made people sloppy if they had too much of it. He only needed them to understand that restraint was something he practiced for Rouxi’s benefit, not something they had earned.
He looked over the remaining leaders. "Trading continues. No interruptions, no sudden price changes, and no one starts fighting downstairs because Luo died."
The woman with the ledgers shifted them higher against her chest. "What about existing agreements?"
"If they’re profitable, keep them. If they’re stupid, bring them to me."
The head healer stepped forward next. "Our people aren’t part of the armed crews."
"They remain protected," Lingyun said. "Anyone who threatens a healer inside market territory loses the hand they used, followed by whatever else irritates me."
The woman nodded, apparently satisfied.
"No stealing from customers," Lingyun continued. "Not inside the district. Once they leave the fence, their poor decisions become someone else’s business."
A broker near the back frowned. "Some merchants pay crews for additional protection."
"They can continue."
"And the staff?"
"If they’re useful, they keep their jobs. If they aren’t useful, find them something they can learn before deciding they’re disposable."
That answer surprised several people.
Lingyun ignored it. Rouxi collected useful things, whether they were supplies, plants, or dangerous men. Destroying half the market because Luo had hired poorly would only leave her with a smaller gift.
He turned toward Han Zhi. "Anyone who challenges me gets one opportunity."
"To surrender?" Han Zhi asked.
"To challenge me."
Lingyun smiled.
"No one needs a second."
Silence settled over the office.
"Lastly, the woman downstairs with Jian Yuche gets whatever she wants. No payment. No questions. No one tells her why."
The inventory manager glanced at Luo’s body and then back at Lingyun. "Does she know?"
"Not yet," Lingyun smiled. Rouxi probably wouldn’t ask any questions. Not if it benefited her.
"Are we supposed to address her as—"
"You aren’t supposed to address her unless she speaks to you first."
Lingyun didn’t need merchants crowding Rouxi and announcing that he had murdered his way through the upper levels while she shopped. He hadn’t decided how to give her the market yet.
Maybe he wouldn’t tell her at all.
She could simply keep receiving things until she eventually realized the entire district jumped whenever she frowned.
Ooh... that sounded fun.
Han Zhi brought him a heavy ring of keys, two metal access tokens, and the carved black seal Luo had used to authorize restricted trades. The ledgers followed, along with maps of the underground tunnels and lists of private inventory hidden throughout the warehouses.
Lingyun flipped through the first ledger, recognized several storage codes from his previous life, and handed it back before anyone could notice how little explanation he required.
"I want every high-quality green core brought upstairs."
The inventory manager stiffened. "Every one?"
"The private reserves, emergency stock, merchant holds, and anything promised to elite buyers."
"There are agreements attached to those."
"Not anymore there aren’t. See rule ten if anyone has any objections," Lingyun announced.
"What is rule ten?" asked one of the women, confused as she looked around the room. Everyone else was shaking their heads like they didn’t know either.
"Rule ten: everyone gets one chance to kill me before I kill them," Lingyun announced with a bright smile on his face. "Aren’t I kind?"
A broker cleared his throat. "What compensation will the buyers receive?"
Lingyun glanced toward Luo’s body. "The opportunity to complain quietly."
No one asked a second question.
"I also want every report involving underground movement, missing scavengers, collapsed tunnels, coordinated zombies, or creatures healing by eating humans."
Han Zhi studied him more carefully. "How far back?"
"Everything you have."
"That could take time."
Lingyun thought of Rouxi downstairs, inspecting cores too weak to help her survive the Devourer.
"Then I suggest you start now."
The leaders dispersed quickly, but Han Zhi remained long enough to direct two staff members toward Luo’s private washroom and wardrobe.
Lingyun cleaned the blood from his face, changed into a black shirt close enough to his usual style, and wrapped his ribs beneath it. His shoulder still ached, and one eye remained red from the burst blood vessels, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.
He practiced his smile in the mirror.
Warm. Bright. Shameless.
Rouxi’s Lingyun stared back at him.
Perfect.
When he returned to the office, three employees were kneeling beside the desk with several locked cases open around them. Clear green cores filled the padded interiors, each one larger and brighter than the cloudy scraps being sold downstairs.
A woman held open a black velvet bag while the first massive core dropped inside.
Then another.
And another.
Lingyun’s smile became genuine.
Rouxi was going to love him the most when he brought all this to her.