Silver Horse Gym had three floors in total. The first was for regular members with monthly or yearly memberships, the second for VIP trainees under the gym's gold-medal coaches, and the third was a private area that required a card to enter.
The source of the hostility was the furtive gaze from the corridor on the third floor.
A man in a black suit looked down from above at Qin Shi in the lounge.
He rested his palm on the sturdy railing, his eyes cold.
"What should've been good business got ruined by someone. What rotten luck!"
"Boss, Coach Luo, Coach Li, and Coach Chang were all taken away by the inspection team. The head of the team ordered us to suspend operations for rectification. We can reopen once they finish investigating."
Heels tapped against the hardwood floor as the female secretary approached the Man in Suit.
"Oh, and the inspection team also found quite a few Nine Dragon Potions in the locker room that hadn't been disposed of yet."
You didn't pick a fight with the authorities.
Take a step back, and the world opened up...
The Man in Suit consoled himself as he slowly looked away.
But after thinking it over, he still couldn't swallow his anger. He cursed under his breath.
"Luo Hui, that idiot! Who knows where he recruited that new trainee from, but the kid caused a huge mess!
"Chen Yun from the inspection team has a powerful family background. She's a true-blooded member of the Chen Family.
"And that female teacher, Lin Yunqing, is the younger sister of Lin Xiaohan, head of the General Affairs Office at Qiguang Hengzhou University.
"They say the Chen and Lin families rule half the Metropolitan Area. Damn it! I've managed to offend both of them at once!"
Under ordinary circumstances, the Man in Suit considered himself a successful businessman and wouldn't have been this wary of the inspection team.
These days, who ran a business without connections or a powerful backer?
But his luck was just that bad. In a Metropolitan Area of tens of millions, he'd run into two obstacles he couldn't budge!
"Boss, please calm down."
Seeing how angry he was, the female secretary deliberately puffed out her chest, making her breasts look fuller.
"What should we do now? Should we report this to President Qin and ask him to think of something?"
The Man in Suit was tall, with an unusually thick neck and bronze skin. He looked like a black bear standing on two legs.
He glanced at the enticing cleavage she was displaying, but showed no reaction.
"First, take care of the problem. Keep Old Luo, Old Li, and Old Chang quiet. Tell them not to say anything.
"Also, do what we can to keep this from escalating. Refund people where we need to, and don't let anyone make a scene and draw more attention."
The female secretary took out a pen and paper and wrote down his instructions.
As she did, she bent over and swayed her hips, showing off her curves in every way she could. She might as well have hiked up her skirt.
"Right. Get Old Yan in here. This branch is shutting down, but the others will stay open as usual."
After dismissing the flirtatious secretary, the Man in Suit's expression turned to stone.
"Where'd they find that slut? She's only good for distracting me and getting in the way of my injections! I'll fire her later!"
He took a deep breath, retrieved three vivid green vials of concentrated potion from the safe, flicked each needle, and injected them under his skin.
The effects were almost visible. As the potion entered his body, the large muscles in his arms writhed and contracted, while his waist and abdomen swelled as if inflated.
"The testosterone the body produces on its own can't compare to the speed of a drug injection. As long as my muscles grow fast, women? They don't matter."
After years of injecting the "Nine Dragon Fusion Supreme Edition" from Smoke City, the Man in Suit had long since lost interest in women.
When the middle-aged man known as Old Yan entered the office, he asked, "Boss, you wanted to see me?"
The Man in Suit was immersed in the effects of the injections. His skin slowly reddened, then turned purplish blue. Veins rose beneath the surface and throbbed in time with his breathing.
His skin was extremely sensitive at that point and couldn't endure even the slightest friction, so he took off his suit and stood naked.
It took a full forty minutes for the pain to pass.
"Old Yan, I need you to do me the favor of killing someone again."
The Man in Suit let out a long breath. Ordinary painkillers had stopped working on him.
Only the expensive Bliss Patch from Smoke City could ease the pain.
"Who does the boss want dead?"
Old Yan looked ordinary, with thinning hair and a plaid shirt. He seemed older than his years, with the air of a weary office drone.
At a tech company, he might have been a top executive. But in Silver Horse Gym, where muscular men were everywhere, he looked entirely unremarkable.
"Old Luo, Old Li, and Old Chang. They may not know exactly where the drugs come from, but a lot of our best trainees are involved. If the inspection team digs too deep, the trouble will land on me again."
The Man in Suit's expression was cold.
"You've handled my problems for years, Old Yan. I need your help again this time."
Old Yan smoothed his sparse hair back, brimming with confidence.
"Don't worry, boss. I'll make sure they never get another chance to speak. But Old Luo, Old Li, and Old Chang were taken away by the inspection team, so it might be tricky. As for the fee..."
The Man in Suit made a generous offer without hesitation.
"Eight hundred thousand each. That's two point four million for three lives."
Old Yan thought it over carefully, then nodded.
"I should be able to handle it. Wait for my good news, boss."
The Man in Suit trusted Old Yan. When he'd first opened Silver Horse Gym and started expanding into a chain, he'd suffered heavy losses from vicious competition with other businesses.
Then he'd met Old Yan, the unassuming King of Assassins, who helped him win those "business wars"!
"By the way, boss, what about the student who reported us? Should we..."
Old Yan narrowed his eyes and drew a hand across his throat.
"Him? Find out where he lives and what kind of family he comes from. Once you know..."
The Man in Suit's expression grew solemn, as if he'd made up his mind.
"I'll go to his door myself! And ask him to take me on as his disciple!"
Huh?
Old Yan froze.
This wasn't how he'd expected things to go.
"Before Old Luo was arrested, he sent me a video. In the second-floor VIP room, in front of Old Luo and A Qiang, that kid injected himself with nineteen shots of Nine Dragons Integration in one go!
"It was only the regular version, not the Supreme Edition I use, but that's still incredible!"
The Man in Suit was serious and utterly sincere.
"And he took it orally, too. His organs digested and metabolized it, absorbing the effects without any pain... Old Yan, you don't understand. That boy is an absolute powerhouse in the fitness world, better than any bodybuilding athlete I've ever seen!
"I want to learn from him about body tempering and how he understands it! Is his surname Qin? Excellent. I'm joining the Qin Family Gate!"
There he went again.
Old Yan knew his boss was obsessed with building muscle. Running a chain of gyms and selling drugs was just a hobby; his real goal was to find every shortcut to becoming a muscle-bound monster.
He didn't try to talk him out of it. He agreed to keep an eye on the student, then left the office.
After leaving Silver Horse Gym, he took a cab back to his luxury apartment.
The middle-aged man looked like a computer programmer, but was in fact a cold-blooded killer. First, he sat down at his computer and inserted a carefully protected black Identity Card into the data port.
After authentication, he logged into the website, registered a new account and an anonymous email address with extreme caution, then encrypted the information so it couldn't be seen.
Only after making sure he'd minimized the risk of exposure did Old Yan open the "Kill or Not" app and place an order.
[Target: Luo Hui, Li Junqi, Chang Qing]
[Additional identity information...]
[Delivery location: Metropolitan Area Inspection Team]
[Delivery time: Within five days...]
[Payment: Six hundred thousand total for three targets...]
After a flurry of typing, Old Yan finished the order and clicked submit.
[Kill or Not is matching you with a rider!]
[Please wait patiently...]
"Money's getting harder and harder to make."
Old Yan didn't wait around. He closed the off-the-books gray-market app, erased all traces, and removed the unregistered Identity Card.
Then he took out a Forging Emblem he'd bought at a high price from Haizhou New Star. It was said to have been made by a Mechanical Apprentice. He set it in his palm and bowed his head in prayer.
"One bell, praise the gears; two bells, soothe the machine spirit; three bells, breathe life into it..."
About twenty minutes later, after completing the strange, almost religious ritual, Old Yan was drenched in sweat and nearly collapsed.
As a former top student who'd almost gotten into one of the Four Great National Universities, and a talented student of mechanical engineering, he knew all too well that in Hengzhou, he had to be wary of every electronic device. The more electrical power it consumed, the more dangerous it was.
"I guess I'm risking my life just to place an order."
Old Yan sat for a long time in the dim room. He heard none of the nightmarish humming or shrill howling, and only then did he finally relax.
Every night, as he lay in bed just before falling asleep, he remembered the huge explosion in the Old City District. In the roaring flames and rising smoke, a terrifying crackle of electricity had filled the night sky, cackling like a demon.
"Hengzhou should open its air routes, too. Once I've saved enough money, I'm getting out of here. There's no way I'm staying in this godforsaken place."
Before you continue