30: Chapter 30 Pruning

"To each their own. You reap justice, I reap bones."

After this thought circled in Yan Zheng's mind, he pressed it back down.

The timing wasn't right.

The Daredevil card had to be saved for the most critical moment.

The priority now was to thicken his own hand of cards.

From March 23rd to April 5th, two full weeks.

Yan Zheng closed the Antique Shop's front door, hung up a handwritten sign reading "Inventory Check, Temporarily Closed," and buried himself in the Underground Room.

By day, he recovered his Mental Power; by night, he took his creations out for night patrols.

In Hell's Kitchen, nights were never short of dead people.

Gang shootouts, drug dealer brawls, homeless people freezing to death under bridge arches, and occasionally finding a few processed "cargo" pieces in shipping containers at the docks.

Yan Zheng didn't let a single one go.

Fourteen nights, twenty-three ordinary human corpses, all collected and stored.

The increase in Mental Power wasn't a sudden jump; it was like running—if you run an extra hundred meters every day, after two weeks, you look back and realize you've run an extra kilometer.

April 5th, early morning.

Yan Zheng sat on a folding chair in the Underground Room, opened the system panel, and looked at the number in the top right corner.

[Mental Power Limit: 11 / 11.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˘ ꒳ ˘ )

"From nine to eleven, it's increased by two points in two weeks."

He slid his finger across the panel to pull up the control consumption table.

"The Stitched Brute takes three points, and each Skeleton Soldier takes one point."

"With eleven points of Mental Power, I can control one Stitched Brute and eight Skeleton Soldiers simultaneously."

"Or one Stitched Brute and five Skeleton Soldiers, leaving a three-point buffer for remote sensing and emergency response."

He picked up a fountain pen and wrote down a new combat force organization table on a blank sheet of paper.

"It's a tier stronger than two weeks ago, but to launch a frontal assault on The Hand's thirty-man stronghold?"

Yan Zheng put down the pen, leaned back in his chair, and folded his hands over his abdomen.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ꒳ ˘ )

"Thirty ninjas, ten Elite Ninjas, one Shadow-level Commander."

"Last time, five ordinary ninjas let the Brute take seven or eight slashes and cost a Skeleton Soldier an arm."

"The combat power of Elite Ninjas will only be stronger, not to mention the stronghold's terrain advantage and their numerical superiority."

"A frontal assault? That's suicide."

He stood up and paced back and forth in the Underground Room, his footsteps tapping out a steady rhythm on the concrete floor.

"But I don't need a frontal assault."

Yan Zheng stopped in front of the intelligence paper on the wall and pointed his finger at the line reading "Garrison Number: Approx. 30 people."

"Thirty people cannot stay huddled in the stronghold twenty-four-seven without ever coming out."

"The Hand is an assassin organization. They take orders, they execute, they need to go out on missions."

"Old Jack once said that half the time those big shots in New York attack each other, they get The Hand to do it."

"What does that mean?"

Yan Zheng turned around and spoke to the Stitched Brute standing silently in the corner, his tone like a lecturer teaching an intern.

"It means their troop strength is fluid."

"The stronghold is fixed, but the ninjas are mobile."

"Every time they go out to execute a mission, they do so in groups of three to five, leaving the stronghold's protection and entering open areas on the surface or in the underground tunnels."

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ¬ ᴗ ¬ ˵ )

"That is a lone prey."

He walked back to the folding chair, sat down, picked up the fountain pen, and wrote two words at the very bottom of the white paper.

"Pruning."

The pen tip paused on the paper for a second, then he added a line of small text below.

"Do not attack the main trunk; cut the branches first. Intercept and kill the outgoing squads one by one, eliminate three to five people, and collect the corpses to strengthen myself."

"I get stronger, they get weaker. As one grows, the other wanes."

"Once the stronghold's troop strength drops below fifteen and they've lost over half their Elite Ninjas, I will launch the final assault."

"Or, once their forces are depleted to a certain degree, I'll play the Daredevil card as bait to draw fire from the front while I flank from the rear."

Yan Zheng put down the pen, picked up his hot water cup for a sip, and the corners of his mouth curved into a faint arc.

"Guerrilla warfare, war of attrition."

"Chairman Mao once said: When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy camps, we harass; when the enemy tires, we attack; when the enemy retreats, we pursue."

"It applies just as well to ninjas."

Yan Zheng: ( ꉺ ᗜ ꉺ )

He opened the system panel, and switched to the remote vision sharing screen.

During the past two weeks of night patrols, he hadn't just been picking up corpses on the surface.

Every two days, he would send a Skeleton Soldier to infiltrate the abandoned subway station in the West District, following the tunnel he discovered last time to monitor movements in the direction of The Hand's stronghold from afar.

The Skeleton Soldier didn't get close to the sensory interference zone; it just crouched on the perimeter, recording the number of figures entering and leaving the tunnel and the times.

Fourteen days of surveillance data had been organized by Yan Zheng into a simple schedule.

"Every three days, between one and two in the morning, a ninja squad of three to five people departs from the stronghold, moves north along the tunnel, and eventually surfaces at the abandoned subway station exit on 39th Street."

"Two to three hours later, the same group returns the same way, with a few black cloth bags on their backs."

"A transport mission."

Yan Zheng's finger drew a line across the schedule.

"The last deployment was on the early morning of April 4th. Following the three-day cycle, the next one will be April 7th."

"Tomorrow night."

He stood up and walked to the unfolded underground tunnel map in the corner of the Underground Room, a simple map he had hand-drawn based on the Skeleton Soldier's reconnaissance data.

"From the stronghold to the surface exit, the total distance is about 1.5 kilometers, passing through three intersections."

Yan Zheng's finger traced across the map and stopped at a short segment of the tunnel near the second intersection.

"Here."

He drew a circle on the map with his fountain pen.

"Eighty meters north of the second intersection, the tunnel width narrows to less than two meters, and there is a nearly ninety-degree turn."

"The view ahead of the turn is completely blocked by the wall, and behind it are two dry drainage ditches, deep enough to hide a Skeleton Soldier."

Yan Zheng: ( ✧ ω ✧ )

"A perfect ambush point."

He turned to look at the creations in the Underground Room.

The Stitched Brute stood motionless in the corner, dark green phos-fire slowly flickering in its empty eye sockets. The petrified scales still bore the white scratches left by the ninjas' short blades from the last battle, though the scales in those areas had regenerated to be thicker than before.

Three Skeleton Soldiers were lined up along the base of the wall, the phos-fire under their hoods flickering eerily.

"Before one o'clock tomorrow morning, everyone get into position."

Yan Zheng walked back to the folding chair, sat down, folded the map and stuffed it into his suit's inner pocket, then picked up the hot water cup and drank it all in one go.

"The Skeleton Soldiers hide in the drainage ditches, the Brute hides behind the turn."

"The moment the ninjas enter the turn, the Skeleton Soldiers will pounce from both sides to entangle their legs, and the Brute will block the path from the front."

"In a two-meter-wide tunnel, they won't be able to utilize their movement techniques, and their numerical advantage won't be able to come into play."

"And my Brute will perfectly block the entire tunnel."

Yan Zheng placed the empty cup on the table, making a light sound.

He took off his gold-rimmed glasses to wipe the lenses, put them back on the bridge of his nose, and the lenses reflected the silent, waiting bone creations in the corner.

Yan Zheng: ( ꈍ ∀ ꈍ )

"Gentlemen of The Hand, see you tomorrow night."

He spoke the last sentence to the empty ceiling of the Underground Room, using that excessively gentle tone.

"I hope your transport squad can arrive on time."

"I hate it when people are late."