Chapter 44: Clearing in the Shadows
About fifteen minutes ago, Donape had stumbled across a viral social media post tracking a convoy of police cars rushing toward the industrial sector.
Even though monitoring the gang’s movements online was surprisingly easy without professional intel tools, closing the physical distance was another story. He had to move before the police finished the job without him.
So, he ran.
He darted through the city’s narrow back alleys, completely avoiding the busy main streets—not out of fear of being spotted, but simply because the alleys offered a direct, unobstructed line.
Moving at speeds well beyond human limits—pushing sixty kilometers per hour—his surroundings blurred into a streak of concrete and neon lights.
Within minutes, he arrived at the perimeter where the precinct police and detectives had cornered the remaining gang members.
"Fuh...!"
Donape inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, shaking off his temporary fatigue.
No matter how much his body had improved beyond human limits, maintaining that kind of speed still took a genuine toll on his stamina.
However, entering a heavily guarded police containment zone through the front wasn’t an option. That left him with only one viable route: creating his own path from above.
"Damn... and here I thought this would be simple," Donape grumbled, looking up at the sheer brick facade of a five-story commercial building.
Despite his complaints, his execution was flawless. Applying the core principles of the Heavenly Martial Arts—where Softness overcomes Hardness—he didn’t fight against the wall or rely on rigid, brute force.
Instead, he yielded to gravity, yielding and redirecting his weight with effortless grace. Using every tiny ledge and brick crevice as a gentle pivot point, his fluid movements allowed his momentum to flow naturally upward, carrying him to the roof like a feather lifted by the wind.
Leaping cleanly across the rooftops of the commercial strip, Donape finally reached the edge overlooking the siege site.
He crouched low at the roof ledge, peering down into the floodlit alleyway. Among the sea of tactical vests and flashing blue lights, he instantly spotted Ji-Woo and Jin-Man taking up breach positions.
"Sigh... if only I had X-ray vision or something, assessing this mess would be a breeze," Donape muttered under his breath.
His Qi Perception was practically useless here; without internal energy or martial cultivation bases, normal civilians and street thugs didn’t emit readable Qi signatures, leaving him unable to sense people through walls. He needed a direct line of sight to act effectively.
Still, that minor drawback didn’t discourage him. Donape rolled his shoulders and loosened his joints, prepping his body to unleash the peak reaction speed, agility, and instincts he had painstakingly forged through the System the second the confrontation erupted below.
At the mouth of the alley, Jin-Man and Ji-Woo crouched low behind a precinct cruiser, stacked alongside a squad of tactical officers holding a tear gas launcher.
Five more patrol cars sealed off the surrounding alleyways, boxing in the abandoned industrial building ahead. Between the Violent Crimes Unit and local precinct backup, over thirty officers were deployed for this sweep—all targeting the cornered high-ranking leaders of the Black Viper gang and roughly forty remaining members who had congregated inside during the chase.
"Hold your fire! Stand down until I give the order!" Jin-Man barked into his radio, his voice strained.
BANG! BANG!
Muzzle flashes erupted from behind an overturned dumpster and a battered delivery van further down the corridor. Echoing gunshots shattered the quiet night as the gang sprayed the alley entrance with automatic fire.
Jin-Man ducked, teeth gritted in frustration. He wasn’t holding back out of pure altruism or deep care for his men—he was holding back because if a precinct officer got slaughtered under his watch, the official investigation would tear him to pieces. Even for a corrupt cop with dirty ties, a mass casualty incident on his record was career suicide.
"Team Captain, should we call in SWAT?!" Ji-Woo interjected over the deafening gunfire, his face pale as he clutched his service pistol tightly against his bulletproof vest.
Jin-Man hesitated, cursing under his breath. They had initially expected unarmed, fleeing thugs. Nobody anticipated the gang pulling out automatic pistols and submachine guns when cornered.
Calling SWAT meant waiting at least twenty minutes—time the gang could use to break the line and escape.
High above the alleyway, the night wind whipped against Donape’s hoodie as he crouched at the edge of the five-story roof.
Below, the high-stakes standoff was reaching its climax.
Without a moment of hesitation, Donape stepped off the ledge.
He descended smoothly, using his hands against the brick window sills and building ledges to break his momentum and control his downward trajectory.
The moment his feet touched the concrete alley floor, Donape yielded completely to the remaining force. Rather than fighting gravity, he allowed his knees and hips to bend like coiled springs, rolling his spine into a fluid, circular motion.
Whoosh—
A soft puff of dust rose from the alley pavement.
There was no deafening thud. No sound of boots crashing into stone. Donape landed five stories down as soundlessly as an autumn leaf touching the surface of a still pond.
Springing up from his crouch without a single creak in his joints, Donape melted into the deep shadows at the rear of the industrial building.
Just three meters in front of him, the gang’s rear sentry stood oblivious, his rifle trained toward the police line, completely unaware that a shadow had just fallen from the sky right behind him.
’If he fires that rifle, the police won’t be able to push forward,’ Donape reasoned silently. ’Time to move my body.’
Donape closed the distance without making a single rustle of fabric. He didn’t use a swift, forceful strike or a heavy tackle.
Instead, he reached out with fluid, effortless precision, placing one palm lightly against the gunman’s wrist and sliding his other hand under the man’s elbow.
The man felt a sudden, phantom weight touch his arm and reflexively tried to jerk back with brute force—bracing his entire upper body to swing his gun toward the intruder.
That rigid counter-push was precisely what Donape wanted.
Rather than resisting the gunman’s heavy swing, Donape yielded. He guided the man’s violent momentum in a smooth, circular motion, completely bypassing his raw muscular strength.
Swish—
The gunman felt as though he had struck empty air. His own forceful swing pulled his balance completely off-center. Before he could process what was happening, Donape gave a gentle, rotational flick of his wrist against the pressure points in the man’s forearm.
Click.
The rifle slipped out of the gunman’s numb fingers as smoothly as butter on a hot pan, caught mid-air by Donape’s off-hand effortlessly.
Deprived of his weapon and completely off-balance, the gang member stumbled forward. Donape didn’t slam him into the pavement.
Instead, he simply redirected the man’s falling weight into a gentle, flowing pivot, pressing two fingers lightly against the carotid artery on the side of his neck while guiding his body down.
The sudden shift in blood pressure, combined with the complete disorientation of having his own momentum used against him, made the man’s eyes roll back instantly.
Thump.
Donape caught the unconscious thug before he hit the ground and slid him silently against the brick wall.
The entire encounter had taken less than two seconds. Not a single shot was fired, not a word was uttered, and the remaining gang members nearby hadn’t noticed a thing.
Donape looked at the rifle in his hand. With practiced ease, his thumb pressed the ammunition release, catching the dropped magazine in his palm, before quietly pulling back the charging handle to eject the single live round from the chamber into his shirt pocket.
’Playing games really does have its benefits.’ Donape thought, a genuine sense of marvel washing over him. He surveyed his surroundings from the shadows.
Scattered throughout the alley mouth, seven heavy shooters were crouching behind two battered delivery vans and a pair of industrial dumpsters, holding down the police line with a heavy barrage from automatic pistols and SMGs.
Every few seconds, one of them would lean out, blind-fire a volley down the street, and duck back with a nervous curse.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The deafening muzzle flashes illuminated the alley walls in strobe-like flashes of orange and white. The thunderous noise echoed down the corridor, completely masking every subtle sound behind them.
’Taking down these seven heavy shooters should open up the alley. After that, I’ll slip inside the building and deal with the rest,’ Donape thought, melting into the dark nook between two brick pillars.
He didn’t rush. Speed without harmony was just clumsy force—Hardness trying to overwhelm Hardness.
Instead, Donape tuned into the rhythm of the gang’s gunfire, matching his footsteps to the exact moments their weapons roared.
One by one, the seven perimeter guards were taken down swiftly and soundlessly—so quietly that the remaining thugs inside didn’t even realize their outer line had collapsed.
At the alley mouth, Jin-Man noticed the relentless wall of heavy suppressive fire suddenly dying down. While gunshots still echoed from deeper inside the building where nearly forty armed Black Viper members were holed up, the immediate barrage locking down their patrol car had abruptly vanished.
"What happened to the heavy shooters?!" Ji-Woo asked, peering cautiously over the hood.
"You’re asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?!" Jin-Man grumbled, thoroughly bewildered by the sudden gap in their defense.
"Should we move in?" Ji-Woo pressed, gripping his service weapon tightly. "SWAT is still going to take time to get here, and this entry is way too narrow for a massive tactical sweep anyway."
Jin-Man considered it for a fraction of a second. He didn’t know if the sudden opening was a trap or a desperate retreat, but with forty armed thugs holed up inside, this was the only window they were going to get to take the alley.
"Fine. We breach on three!" Jin-Man’s voice barked into his radio headset. "Keep your eyes sharp—the perimeter fire slowed down, but there’s still a whole horde of them waiting inside!"