Only around forty minutes after Luoshan Zi left, someone knocked on the door of the temporary apartment of Gloria and her friends. Gloria went and accepted it. Following the instrus left by Luoshan Zi, she got the delivery without an issue - it was a stack e envelopes, tied together using a red ribbon.

  “Thank you for doing business with Chef Tang’s Noodle Shop.” The delivery man was young but still looked experienced: “Please be advised that this is the final delivery of this Take Out Delivery request, for anything more you would o tact our shop again. Hope you enjoy your delivery, and may you put everything to good use.”

  “Thank you.” Gloria the young man before closing the door.

  It was three envelopes stacked together, all of which were of simir thiess. For this many years Gloria had dealt with the noodle shop, this was by far the biggest pile of intelligence from them yet.

  “ we take a look?” Tae Kuo asked.

  “Just don’t damage anything, we should be fine.” Gloria shrugged: “She asked us to accept it, so she must be okay with sharing that intelligeh us.”

  Even so, Gloria was the oo cut open the envelopes with her fiips so that she could save others the liability. Ihe first envelope , cut into nine smaller portions and folded up. When put together, it became a very detailed blueprint of the deserted underground tuhe big map showed electric circuits, stairs and ptforms, and even post fuards and

  The sed envelope tained another map - a smaller one, but with some additional pages and notes ohe guard posts were, how to spot them wheering from the mairance, and where their blind spots could be.

  The third envelope tained only files - a stack of dossiers on different mythic martial art artists. All of them he st firmed day of sighting - these were missing kung fu masters from the past, and none of them seemed to be the upright kind. Some of them were assassins, some of them were gang leaders, some of them were spies for the city or the unity collective, and some of them were leaders of some evil underground s, and many of them fell into more thaegory.

  “This is - this is a lot.” Sue frowned: “And so much detail! Holy crap how effit are they?”

  “Apparently extremely so.” Ouyang Turner sighed and shook his head: “This ’t be cheap.”

  “Let her worry about that.” Gloria smiled: “And if her pn works, the noodle shop would owe her more than she owes them.”

  “Okay - there’s a lot of guard posts here.” Sue frowned as she stared at the seap on the ground while holding a dossier in her hand: “And looks like not a lot of them are temporary. How did they evehis?”

  “I guess many posts might be from before.” Tae Kuo shook his head: “Two of the official reasons, at least the ones released to the public, was that it did not pass some public hearing and the project’s running out of money. So if they were expeg sabotage, they would have something like that built in. ”

  “But if this map is accurate, then no one would have any opening going in there. The erance is covered by at least three lines of fire.” Sue poi the entrance location on the map: “Uhey - they have smoke bombs or something.”

  “Maybe her old friends could get some for her.” Gloria shrugged. This was indeed an issue, when Luoshan Zi came back she would surely raise it.

  “Wait.” Tae Kuo walked up to the seap: “These guard posts - they’re not - not without a pn.”

  “What do you mean?” Ouyang Turner and Sue asked at the same time.

  “They’re in specific ritualistic positions, if I’m not mistaken.” Tae Kuo poi a feosts he entrance, and three further into the tunnel: “I - I don’t know what this arra is for. But it looks awfully like a talisman - ”

  “Some kind of evil repelling talisman?” Sue asked.

  “Yeah, but it would require - it would require some material in it for it to work, like abar, blood ink, or jade or ems.” Tae Kuo shook his head: “Or if they’re going big, then at least a few trees, wooden pilrs, stone pilrs, buddha statues - ”

  “Or people?” Gloria narrowed her eyes.

  “I like and hate that your mihere.” Tae Kuo let out a long sigh while scratg his face: “But - I don’t think it’s very likely. Because this is likely a defealisman’, so it should be from a time earlier than the abdu of the sages and schors. I am not sure they would have pnned everything that far ahead. So - I guess what I’m trying to say is - these spots might not be occupied by actual people - guards, but are positions where some kind of blessed items are pced.”

  “That’s a good thought.” Gloria nodded: “And it would be great if it were the case.”

  “This guy - ‘Jade Fal’ Wang Duan. Master of Fal d the Cloud Walker’s Oath Style.” Ouyang Turner frow one dossier in his hand: “I think I’ve heard of this guy. Wasn’t he still on the wanted list a few years ago? Oh yeah - head of the ‘Predatang, kinda on the nose name - and an elder from the now defunct ‘Green Ridge ’. Last firmed public appearance was five years ago. Has anyone heard of him?”

  Everyone else shook their heads, including Gloria. She was quite well acquainted with the se, but still had not heard of the names. It must be really old, or deliberately obscured. The style of mythig Fu, oher hand, was familiar.

  “‘Hands of Hellfire’ Luxing Ke, head of the ‘Crimson Abyss ’ gang, traitor to the now defunct ‘Fming Cloud’ . Master of the Hellfire Palm Art and Amber Meditative Methods. Last firmed public appearance seven years ago.” Turner Ouyang frowned as he picked up another dossier: “‘Purple Scorpion’ Yun Lusong, former elder from the ‘Scorg Rainbow’ gang. Master of ings of Purple Scorpion Fingers Art. Last public appearance six years ago.”

  “I’m back. Open up.” Luoshan Zi’s voice came from the other side of the door.