The Ninth Technician’s Revenge

“In this city’s deepest den of vice, people are weighed and priced like livestock. If you can leave with all your limbs intact, you’re lucky. Most people rot in that golden mire.”

Three months ago, my brother, who was about to graduate from police academy, vanished under mysterious circumstances. Three days ago, his body was found beneath the cross-river bridge. The police ruled it an “accidental fall into the river,” and our family had no choice but to accept it. No one knows what I saw when I lifted the sheet in the morgue: his fingernails had been torn out, and his Achilles tendons severed. Those were the “rules” only an insider would recognize, punishment for “prey that wouldn’t obey.”

Every clue pointed to a private club hidden underground in the heart of the CBD, one that served only top-tier members: Cloudtop Langya. It was a paradise for the rich and a slaughterhouse for ordinary people.

For the truth, and to make them pay in blood, I burned my medical school acceptance letter. I changed my appearance and my name, concealed every trace of my edge, put on a mask, and became the most taciturn of Cloudtop Langya’s latest “merchandise”: Technician No. 9.

They thought I was a nobody selling my body in the hope of climbing the social ladder. They had no idea I was a hunter, carrying a scalpel and infiltrating the wolves’ den.

“Honored members, the hunt is on. But this time, I decide who the prey is.”