Shawn trembled, dangerous emotions dancing right beneath the surface, threatening to burst out. A slight wind blew through the room. The man he hated most in the world stood before him, his savage red eyes staring at him.

The man smiled then turned his attention to Lin, disregarding him as insignificant and below his notice. His disguise had held up. Strands of Qi pooled below the surface of his skin ready to activate [Qi Enhancement] at a moment's notice.

It maddened him to no end seeing the man casually standing there, the urge to punch Dorian in the face was overwhelming. However, he knew he couldn’t follow his heart. Starting a scene in an environment like this would end poorly.

He shoved his clenched fists into his pockets and contented himself with staring a hole through Dorian. Almost as an afterthought, he clenched down on his Qi, not letting any of it leak out. If they were recognized this deep in enemy territory it would be disastrous.

Lin noticed his discomfort and stepped in front of him. “Forgive my bodyguard, he takes his job seriously,” she said.

Shawn took that as his cue to calm down. He couldn’t jeopardize the mission, if the meeting was successful the Scorpion’s Den would be in real trouble. Finger by finger he unclenched his fists. His revenge would have to wait, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t start preparing for their inevitable confrontation. He activated his Qi senses and inspected Dorian, searching for any hint of weakness he could exploit.

In a fraction of a second, an incomprehensible amount of information flowed into him. He cut away all the unnecessary information and focused solely on his Qi signature. This time it was more manageable: a distinct image of an arctic blizzard appeared before him. Lost within the dangerous swirls of snow, a man desperately stumbled, searching for a way out.

Shawn fought the urge to flinch as the cold washed over him. He cut off his Qi senses before he could suffer any backlash. Dorian was strong, his aura had proven it, the man had at least double his amount of Qi.

“It’s no problem. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you Ai, I’ve heard great things about you,” Dorian said in the picture of a perfect gentleman.

Shawn’s eyebrow twitched. The two different versions of the man clashed in his mind. On one hand, he remembered Dorian as a psychopathic killer who would do anything to get what he wanted, but this new side of Dorian was cool and refined, lacking any hard edges. It was frustrating for him to see this monster of a man hide in human skin.

“Likewise, I appreciate what you’re doing here. It’s about time someone took down those arrogant bastards at the Scorpion's Den.”

Dorian smiled brightly and shook her hand. “If you’ll excuse me I have other guests to greet. I hope you have a nice evening.” Lin nodded as he walked away.

Lin grabbed his hand and pulled him along. They passed various tables filled with snacks but didn’t stop. For the warehouse's rundown outwards appearance, it was surprisingly fancy on the inside. She stopped dragging him along once they reached a corner of the building away from prying ears.

“Are you alright,” she whispered to him? Shawn nodded. Lin didn’t know the extent of his relationship with the man, all she knew was that Dorian had attacked Tian and Shawn when they went out to get ice cream.

“I’ll be fine, but watch out for that guy, he’s dangerous.” They pressed their backs against the wall and watched streams of people enter the building. The Alliance had grown past its initial size of seven gangs. From what he had seen so far, there had to be at least twenty gang leaders attending the meeting.

Shawn pulled his cloak over his head as a familiar blue-haired woman walked into the room. The woman flourished her green cloak and ignored Dorian’s greeting. He sighed, it felt like half the people in the room had tried to kill him at some point. He would have to watch out for her, she had shown that her Qi senses were sharp when she chased him down the streets of the outer district. If anyone could recognize him it was her. He still felt a phantom ache of pain in his ribs where she had kicked him.

A bell rang, and Dorian announced the start of the meeting. Bodies slowly streamed into the basement of the warehouse and sat at a large round table. As one of the bodyguards, he didn’t have the right to sit at the round table, he was forced to stand behind Lin’s seat.

The room was dark, only illuminated by a couple overhead lights. In his opinion, it wasn’t the ideal location for a meeting, but he wasn’t an expert on criminal mastermind decor.

A tall blonde woman jittered nervously beside him. The battle-hardened bodyguards looked at her with annoyance before dismissing her as not a threat. Other than her, everyone looked perfectly at ease.

Normally he would offer someone in her position some kind words of support to help calm them down, but she was a high-ranking criminal, so in his mind, the blonde woman didn’t deserve any help.

Not wanting to draw any extra attention to himself, he tried to relax his facial features. Which was surprisingly hard to do with the amount of adrenaline in his system. He consciously controlled his face muscles, relaxing his jaw and forehead. He wasn’t in front of a mirror, so he couldn’t tell if the expression he painted onto his face was natural.

A blue box appeared and placated his fears.

Congratulations! Your skill, Deception has grown to level 8.

He had deemed [Deception] a useless skill when he had first gotten it, but now he was starting to reconsider. It still didn’t allow him to sell bold-faced lies, but the discovery that [Deception] wasn’t limited to speech changed everything. New uses of the skill occurred to him that he frankly felt stupid for not noticing. He could use the skill to make his feints more convincing in a fight.

Is it possible to change my Qi signature with [Deception]? Shawn closed his eyes and felt the skill dance along the flows of Qi in his dantian. He felt that with a little bit of effort he could change his aura. However, he wasn’t able to enter the deep mediation required to do that at the moment, so he limited himself to just using [Deception] to further restrain his Qi signature.

Dorian coughed, gaining everyone’s attention. “Thank you all for gathering here today. It means a lot to me. Like everyone else in this room, the Scorpion’s Den has wronged me. They've cut into my business and hurt my bottom line. Their rule of the outer district has gone on for too long, it’s about time we did something about it.” People at the table nodded in agreement. They all had a bone to pick with the Scorpion’s Den.

Dorian pulled out a bundle of papers from a briefcase. “I have a plan to completely destroy them, but before I reveal that I must confirm that everyone in the room is loyal to the cause.” He slowly looked around the room sensing everyone's Qi, searching for any hint of deception within them. Dorian locked eyes with him, a bead of sweat ran down his back. However, [Deception] did its job, and Dorian quickly looked away.

“These plans are top secret, if they get revealed we will lose the element of surprise, so it is imperative to not let our plans leak to the public. If you are not willing to do whatever it takes to win please leave the room. We have no room for cowards in this alliance.”

No one moved. They would cross any line if it would help them win.

“Good, let’s get started. As the Crimson Lotus Gang proved, the Scorpion’s Den is weak to surprise bombing attacks.” Dorian nodded at the leader of the Crimson lotus then unfurled a map. “The Scorpion’s Den has too much territory to protect all of it at once. All we need to do is find a single gap in their defenses."

Shawn’s blood ran cold, he doubted even the strongest man could survive getting blown up in their sleep. Even if the Scorpion’s Den upped the number of people they had patrolling the streets, Dorian was right, they had too much territory to protect. The Scorpion's Den had direct control of over a hundred buildings in the outer district. Not to mention, the thousands of which were placed under their protection. Eventually, a bomb would slip through.

His thoughts raced a thousand miles a second as he felt his increased intelligent stat kicking in. Why would Dorian want to destroy the Scorpion's Den? Why was he working with the gangs?

From what he remembered of the man, he had hated the criminal elements of the city. Dorian had claimed that he was beaten and battered by them at every opportunity, so it made no sense for him to willingly work with them.

Dorian seemed to be motivated by only one thing: regaining the information jade. Teaming up with the gangs he hated would only make sense if it would help Dorian regain the jade. Shawn sighed as he wondered why the man hadn’t taken it back yet.

He would have been strong enough to do it. The old him wouldn’t have stood a chance in a fight. It wasn't even a matter of his location being hidden. Through watching The Founder’s t.v show with Tian, he had learned that you needed to know your target's location to invade their dreams.

If Dorian knew where he was hiding, why didn’t he take the jade back by force? He could only think of two things stopping the man from acting. First, he was actively being hunted by multiple gangs, limiting the actions he could take publicly. Second, Shawn was protected by the Scorpion’s Den. Dorian would have to fight through an army of people to get to Shawn. Even someone as strong as Dorian would not be able to beat the entirety of the Den.

“Oh,” Shawn muttered. Is this war my fault? The extent to which Dorian had manipulated events from the background was unclear, but it was obvious that he had a vested interest in creating and maintaining The Alliance. It was entirely possible that Dorian had taken advantage of their conflict with the Crimson Lotus Gang to create an opening to retrieve the information jade.

He could be entirely wrong, but he felt that he was on the right track. Shawn focused back on the meeting, no longer ignoring what everyone was saying.

“Why go about it in such a roundabout way? We have the numbers advantage, why can’t we just bust the front door down and beat them with our fists,” a heavy-set man said.

“That old-fashioned mindset is why you never managed to beat them in the past. The Scorpion’s Den is strong, they’ll never lose a direct confrontation against a collection of minor gangs. We have to be smart about this.” The heavy man sunk into his chair, embarrassed at being chastised.

“I agree that we don’t have the raw power required to take them down in direct combat, but we also don’t have the materials to make enough high-grade bombs to defeat them,” the blue-haired woman who had attacked Shawn a couple nights ago said.

“That is true Liu.” Dorian pointed towards a large red circle on the map. Shawn quickly memorized its location. “That’s why we have to take control of this electronics factory in the Den’s territory. It has all the materials we need.”

“That makes sense. When should we attack it?” Liu asked.

“The sooner the better, if we can strike before they catch wind of our plan it is guaranteed to be successful.” Dorian flipped over his pile of notes and pulled out a new paper. “The plan is to send a small team to steal the materials we need. That way we have a better chance of remaining undetected.” The lights flickered, casting the room in total darkness for a fraction of a second.

Shawn limbered his muscles, that was their signal, Tian was in position. “I like the plan, but I’m not sure we can trust everyone at this table,” Lin said as she pulled out a picture from her purple cloak. She pointed at the heavy-set man. “He has been meeting with the Scorpion’s Den behind our backs. He is a traitor.” She held out a picture of the leader of the Falling Rain Gang meeting with Chule for everyone to see.

Gasps rang out around the table as everyone turned to the man. “What is the meaning of this? You dare insinuate that I would betray The Alliance! I would never do something like that.” Of course, the man was right, the picture was fake, he likely never would betray someone he considered a comrade.

Before anyone had the chance to inspect the photo the lights cut out, casting the room in darkness. For a moment the room was completely silent as all the gang leaders prepared themselves for a fight. A bomb detonated outside the warehouse, shaking the building. The room exploded into chaos.

Some people sprinted out of the room at top speed, while others engaged in a vicious melee.

“You pig, how dare you betray me!” Liu shouted.

“I didn’t do it you fucking moron,” the leader of the Falling Rain gang said as he dodged one of Liu’s kicks.

Their job done, Lin and Shawn both activated [Qi Enhancement] and ran out of the room at full speed.