Chapter 960 – Black Iron City

Mo Lan showed no mercy.

For this scum whose hands were soaked in the blood of the innocent, who made their living capturing slaves — death was the only fate they deserved.

Only after finishing all of this did Mo Lan walk toward the foul-smelling cells in the deepest reaches of the mine. She unlocked everyone’s shackles, distributed the food and clean water she’d found in the outpost’s storeroom, and then treated their injuries.

“Leave this place. The sooner, the better.” With that, she departed.

Black Iron City sat at the junction of winding mountain ranges and vast plains, serving as the most important industrial and trade hub in the northern reaches of the Kingdom of Loren.

Towering smokestacks belched dark gray smoke day and night, staining the sky a murky grayish-yellow.

The city walls were built from massive blocks of dark stone, their surfaces covered in the marks of age and pollution.

Long queues stretched from the city gates — ore-laden wagons, travel-worn merchants, ragged refugees — all waiting for the guards’ impatient inspections.

Mo Lan stood on a distant hillside, gazing at this great beast shrouded in steel and steam.

Her current appearance was that of Bedrock Hans, the outpost commander of Weeping Mines.

This level-17 shield warrior was known for his steady ruthlessness. Rumor had it he’d once single-handedly withstood the charge of a subterranean beast, earning considerable prestige within Ashen Claw.

On the road from the outskirts to the Anvil District where the Ashen Claw mercenary company was headquartered, Mo Lan continuously refined the details of this identity.

Hans’s characteristically heavy stride. The way his left shoulder tilted slightly forward from an old injury. The thick callus on the web of his right hand, worn there by his battle-axe. And his habit of pausing to deliberate before speaking.

She had even simulated the earth-attribute blood energy fluctuations within his body.

Faint, but enough to pass casual scrutiny.

When Mo Lan approached the stone building bearing the blood-red battle-axe insignia in Hans’s guise, several low-ranking mercenaries chatting by the entrance immediately straightened up.

“Captain Hans!”

“What brings you back in person? The mines—”

Mo Lan waved them off and spoke in Hans’s rough, deep voice:

“Emergency situation. I need to see the commander.”

She didn’t break stride, pushing straight through the doors.

The clamor of the first-floor Great Hall fell silent for a moment at her appearance.

Quite a few mid-level officers who recognized “Bedrock Hans” dipped their heads in respect.

The bald, portly man behind the counter looked up, and upon recognizing the visitor, a smile spread across his face:

“Captain Hans! What wind blew you back here? The commander and the others are upstairs on the Second Floor in a meeting!”

Mo Lan nodded without speaking. Her heavy footsteps ascended the wooden staircase, producing the familiar, intimidating creaks.

The oak door on the Second Floor was shut tight. Mo Lan knocked.

“Who is it?” Blood-Axe Balon barked.

“Hans. Urgent report from the mines.” Mo Lan spoke in a low voice.

“Come in!”

The door was immediately pulled open.

Mo Lan’s gaze swept the room. Commander Blood-Axe Balon, Vice-Commander Venomfang Kol, and every other surviving senior member of Ashen Claw — they were all here.

“Perfect, everyone’s present!” She shut the door behind her.

“Hans, you—”

An invisible wave of immense psychic power erupted from Mo Lan, instantly flooding the entire room.

Everyone present, Blood-Axe Balon included, went completely blank-eyed and slack-jawed.

Mo Lan’s psychic power was like countless threads — impossibly fine yet impossibly strong — piercing into their mental seas in an instant, suppressing all autonomous thought. They could still “see,” still “hear,” even still “feel” their own existence, but their minds had ground to a halt.

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Only the occasional crackle of firewood in the hearth broke the silence.

Mo Lan let out a soft breath and wasted no time.

She went to Blood-Axe Balon first.

Her fingertip hovered over the point between his brows as finer, more precise psychic tendrils probed deeper, beginning to violently and efficiently extract, copy, and sift through the commander’s memories.

Next was Venomfang Kol. This mage who specialized in poison magic had memories that were darker and more sordid.

Mo Lan spared no one present, extracting and storing their memories one by one.

When the last useful piece of information had been drawn out, Mo Lan’s psychic power turned razor-sharp in an instant, shredding their mental seas.

Their bodies swayed slightly, then collapsed completely.

With a wave of her hand, Mo Lan swept all eight corpses into a Spatial Card.

Then she walked to a corner of the room and, following the methods she’d gleaned from Balon’s memories, activated several hidden mechanisms and took everything of value.

When it was all done, she composed her expression, pulled open the door, and stepped out.

At the top of the stairs, two fully armed elite guards immediately looked her way. They were Balon’s personal guard, loyal to the commander alone.

Mo Lan glanced at them, her eyes calm.

The next second, both guards’ gazes went vacant.

“Follow me,” Mo Lan commanded in a flat tone.

The two guards followed her down the stairs like obedient puppets, arriving in the Great Hall below.

“Gather everyone in the Great Hall and shut the doors. I have an announcement!”

The guards sprang into action.

Once everyone had assembled, Mo Lan repeated the process and brought them all under her control.

The next morning, people from the mercenary guild came by, only to find the place eerily quiet.

They forced the doors open and discovered that the entire Ashen Claw compound was empty — all valuables vanished without a trace.

By noon, the news could no longer be contained. Every single person at the Ashen Claw mercenary company’s headquarters had mysteriously disappeared!

There were no signs of a struggle. It was as if they had all simply evaporated.

Black Iron City’s underworld erupted at the news, and speculation ran wild.

An enemy’s revenge? An internal power struggle? A mysterious powerhouse making a move? Or… had they offended an existence that should never have been provoked, and been “cleaned up”?

A few days later, adventurers discovered a large number of human corpses deep within the abandoned Weeping Mines outside the city. The bodies had been gnawed beyond recognition by wild beasts, but scraps of clothing and scattered equipment could still be identified as bearing Ashen Claw’s insignia.

When word got back, it only cemented the rumor that Ashen Claw had met a catastrophic end — every last member wiped out.

No one knew how those bodies had ended up in the depths of the mines. They could only conclude that Ashen Claw had provoked someone they shouldn’t have.

Just as the various factions in Black Iron City began carving up the power vacuum left by Ashen Claw, Mo Lan had already arrived outside the Traveler’s Rest in Three Forks.

One of the largest inns in town, it was a three-story wood-and-stone building with a spacious stable and courtyard, and business appeared to be thriving.

Mo Lan had reverted to her own appearance as a female mage. She paid for a room and requested a quiet one facing the street.

That night, she quietly made her way to the innkeeper’s room.

Before long, the residents and travelers of Three Forks heard that the always-smiling “proprietor” of the Traveler’s Rest had suddenly put the inn up for sale.

After a local merchant bought the establishment, the innkeeper departed the town alone. No one knew where she went.