Jun Qingcheng had no intention of running. Escape was for the hunted; she was the huntress.

  ?Zhou Qian’s panic was, ironically, the perfect smokescreen. It led the kidnappers to assume Jun Qingcheng was merely a tag-along friend who had stumbled into a hornet's nest. They grew complacent.

  ?“Let her go,” Jun Qingcheng said, her voice smooth as silk, playing into their misconception.

  ?The day was deceptively beautiful—warm sunlight and a gentle breeze. Boss Qian, the head of the Mighty Tiger Gang, had been enjoying a midday tan on the cliffside. The landscape was breathtaking: gnarled pines clinging to the precipice, a winding river snaking through the valley below. It was a fortress of natural beauty, a place where many would-be assassins had come to die, their bodies lost to the heights.

  ?“Oh? Sisterly devotion. How touching,” Boss Qian sneered, pushing himself up. He was balding and soft around the middle. To Jun Qingcheng, influenced by Xiao Ranran’s residual trauma, the mere sight of him was nauseating. He looked like a maggot in expensive silk.

  ?Qian was already calculating. He’d bag the girl, frame her for something heinous, and make her pay. But a shadow of doubt flickered in his eagle-like eyes. Does Xiao Yuan know she’s here?

  ?Xiao Yuan was a ghost that haunted every criminal in the province. No one moved against the Xiao family without weighing the cost of his retribution. That was the only reason Xiao Ranran had survived as long as she had—fear of the patriarch.

  ?“I’m betting your father has no idea where you are,” Qian tested, leaning in to catch any flicker of fear on her face.

  ?Jun Qingcheng offered a thin, enigmatic smile. She didn't say a word. Even the butler would need days to track her ghost-trail; Xiao Yuan, thousands of miles away, was irrelevant to this moment.

  ?“Wait,” Qian’s eyes narrowed as a cold realization hit him. “How did you get up here?”

  ?The Zhou girl had been abducted, but this one... she had simply appeared. Had his perimeter become a sieve?

  ?Jun Qingcheng had no interest in small talk. Before he could blink, she flicked her wrist. A silver needle hissed through the air. Qian instinctively raised an arm to block it, retreating with a hiss of pain.

  ?“What the hell is this? Some kind of toy?” he spat, clutching his arm.

  ?Without a word, Jun Qingcheng unleashed a spray of needles toward the guards. Two sharp stings followed by a sudden, hollow silence in their ears. Their vision smeared into black, and they collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.

  ?Boss Qian tried to point at her, his mouth working to form a scream that wouldn't come. He hit the ground, frothing at the mouth, his nervous system short-circuiting in seconds.

  ?Zhou Qian’s jaw dropped. “You... you knocked them out? That’s incredible!”

  ?“Knocked out?” Jun Qingcheng murmured, retrieving her needles with surgical precision. “Something like that.”

  ?These needles were custom-forged—one of a kind. She couldn't afford to leave them behind. [Yan Ling chimed in: "You have three hundred of those in the starter space! Since when is 'three hundred' a limited edition?"] Jun Qingcheng ignored the banter. The toxin she used was a masterpiece of lethal chemistry: within seconds, it would saturate the bloodstream, sever the neural pathways, and stop the heart. It wasn't sleep; it was an eternal silence.

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  ?“His men are everywhere outside,” Zhou Qian stammered, the adrenaline finally hitting her. “What do we do? They have guns. We’re trapped.”

  ?The weight of her insignificance hit Zhou Qian like a tidal wave. She had thought herself smart, but in the face of raw, violent power, she was nothing.

  ?“Call your father,” Jun Qingcheng said calmly. “Tell him Boss Qian kidnapped you and you need immediate extraction.”

  ?“But he’s two hours away! They’ll turn us into swiss cheese by then!”

  ?“Call him,” Jun Qingcheng repeated, her tone brook no argument.

  ?As Zhou Qian dialed with trembling fingers, Jun Qingcheng leaned over Boss Qian’s cooling body. She used his thumb to unlock his phone and found a contact: Liu Er.

  ?She typed a brief message: Qian is dead. The Tiger Gang is yours. Come sweep the wreckage.

  Signed: The Shadow who contacted you three days ago.

  ?Message sent. She dragged Boss Qian’s plush chair over, sat down, and gazed out at the mountain range. She wasn't an assassin who would carve a bloody path through a hundred men; she was a strategist who understood the internal rot of an organization.

  ?Three days ago, she had reached out to Liu Er, the gang’s second-in-command. Boss Qian was a paranoid, stagnant relic who stifled talent and invited unnecessary heat from the police. He was a liability.

  ?Minutes later, Liu Er arrived with a squad of loyalists. The area had already been cleared of Qian’s personal cronies. Liu Er, a man in his thirties with a buzz cut and eyes that betrayed a sharp intellect, stopped dead when he saw her.

  ?“You’re... the one?”

  ?The "Shadow" was a seventeen-year-old girl. Xiao Yuan’s daughter. He couldn't wrap his head around it.

  ?Jun Qingcheng rose from the chair with effortless grace. “I am the one. You can call me Xiao Ranran.”

  ?Liu Er’s face was a mask of conflicting emotions. He hated Qian, and he had helped orchestrate this coup, but there was still a shred of gangland pride stinging at the fact that a schoolgirl had taken down his boss.

  ?Jun Qingcheng caught the glint of resentment. Thicker than thieves, but twice as bitter, she thought. She wouldn't hold his pride against him; she had bigger fish to fry.

  ?“I believe you have work to do, Boss Liu,” she said. “As for Miss Zhou, I’ll leave her in your capable hands to return to her father. Keep our pact, and the Tiger Gang might actually have a future under your leadership. I’ll take my leave.”

  ?She was handing him a golden bridge. By returning the Police Chief’s daughter, Liu Er could wipe the slate clean and start a new era of "legitimate" cooperation.

  ?Her final condition was simple: Liu Er was to arrange a fatal "accident" for her next target—a close associate of the late Boss Qian. She would be the witness; he would be the executioner.

  ?Eight names crossed off. Eighteen left on this list.

  ?As she walked away from the cliff, Jun Qingcheng felt the weight of the fifteen years she had been granted in this world. There was plenty of time. The fire was just starting to spread.