Spicy assassin bullies young master Lu-Chapter 101: The Legend of the Apex

The silence in the bedroom was absolute, yet Mo Chou felt as though a deafening alarm was ringing in her ears. On the glowing screen of her laptop, the face of the man from the mall—the man she now knew was Liu Feng—stared back at her from a grainy surveillance still.

In the photograph, he looked younger, his jawline sharper, but the eyes were unmistakable. They were the eyes of a man who lived on the edge of a blade, eyes that had seen the light fade out of a thousand others. And yet, when Mo Chou looked at her own reflection in the darkened window, she saw the same cold, predatory spark.

She scrolled slowly through the dossier 007 had provided. The data was sparse, clearly scrubbed by someone who knew how to erase a soul from the digital world.

"Liu Feng," she whispered, the name feeling heavy on her tongue. "The Apex Predator."

According to the records, her biological father hadn’t been a criminal, but he had been something far more dangerous to the status quo: an anomaly. In a world of controlled interests, he was a variable that couldn’t be bought. When the Shadow Council—a conglomerate of the most ruthless competitors in the underworld—realized they couldn’t chain him, they decided to break him.

But Liu Feng hadn’t been easy to break.

Mo Chou’s eyes stung as she read a translated fragment of an intercepted communication from twenty years ago. It was a report on a failed ambush.

"Subject is aware of the surveillance on the pregnant female (Mo Li). Subject’s lethality has increased by 400% since the target’s pregnancy was confirmed. He is no longer completing missions; he is clearing a path. If he is not neutralized, the Council’s infrastructure in the Eastern sector will collapse within months."

Mo Chou leaned back, her heart aching for the woman her mother used to be. Mo Li must have been terrified, trapped in the center of a war she didn’t understand. And Liu Feng... he had done the only thing he could do to protect his family. He had "died."

He had staged a high-profile assassination of himself, a calculated explosion that left no remains, ensuring the Shadow Council would stop looking for him. He had handed his life, his name, and the woman he loved over to Liu Qiang—a man who, by all accounts, was the only friend Liu Feng ever trusted.

Liu Qiang hadn’t just married her mother; he had accepted a sacred charge. He had spent two decades playing the role of a harmless businessman, a "wife’s slave," and a doting father to a child that wasn’t his, all to provide a camouflage of normalcy.

And all that time, Liu Feng had stayed in the shadows. He had been the rustle in the leaves, the shadow in the mall, the silent guardian who ensured that every threat to the Liu family vanished before it ever reached their doorstep.

A cold, hard anger began to replace the sorrow in Mo Chou’s chest.

"Twenty years," she hissed, her grip tightening on the edge of her desk. "He lived as a ghost for twenty years so we could smile in the sun. And now you think you can use that against him, Madam Lu?"

Madam Lu’s plan was becoming disgustingly clear. She didn’t just want a business collaboration with Mo Li. She wanted to lure the "Ghost" out of hiding. By binding Mo Li to Phoenix, she was setting a trap with the most precious bait in existence. If Liu Feng saw his beloved in danger, he would have no choice but to reveal himself.

Madam Lu was trying to sell a legend to the Shadow Council in exchange for ultimate power.

Mo Chou stood up, her movements no longer those of a teenage girl, but those of a seasoned predator. She walked toward her vanity and pulled out the hidden compartment beneath the floorboards. Inside sat the professional-grade makeup kits, the high-density silicone prosthetics, and the heavy, layered clothing of the "Old Granny."

The transformation was slow. Mo Chou worked with a precision that bordered on the obsessive. She applied the adhesive to her jawline, smoothing over the prosthetic that gave her the sagging, aged appearance of an octogenarian. She meticulously painted the age spots onto her hands, the very hands that could snap a neck in three seconds.

As she worked, she let the "Mo Chou" persona fade. She buried the giggles, the coy smiles, and the youthful restlessness. She channeled the ancient, tired weight of a woman who had seen empires fall.

When she finally pulled the grey, coarse wig over her hair and adjusted the tinted spectacles, the girl in the mirror was gone. In her place stood a figure of mystery—the Granny. A woman who belonged to no family, no database, and no country.

She tested her voice, dropping it into a raspy, gravelly tone that sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave.

"The Lu family has forgotten who the real monsters are," she croaked to her reflection.

She picked up her phone—the one Reaper had modified—and checked the GPS coordinates for the tea house. It was a secluded spot, favored by the elite for its privacy. It was the perfect place for a secret meeting, and an even better place for a hunt.

Mo Chou took a deep breath, feeling the restriction of the silicone mask. It felt right. The world didn’t deserve to see her face while she did what was necessary.

She didn’t leave through the front door. Instead, she opened her balcony, moving with a silent, fluid grace that would have made Liu Feng proud. She disappeared into the night, a second ghost emerging to protect the first.

The Shadow Council wanted an Apex Predator. Madam Lu wanted a bargaining chip.

Mo Chou was going to give them a nightmare instead.

---

The "Old Granny" did not move like a girl in a mask. As Mo Chou stepped out of the shadows of a back alley three blocks away from the Liu Mansion, her entire skeletal structure seemed to shift. She shortened her stride, adding a slight, rhythmic tremor to her right hand, and leaned into a polished wooden cane she had pulled from a hidden compartment in her getaway bag.

To any passerby, she was merely a wealthy, eccentric elder taking a late-evening stroll. No one looked at her eyes—which was her greatest weapon. Beneath the tinted spectacles, her gaze was as sharp as a laser, mapping out every CCTV camera and blind spot on the route to the "Jade Pavilion" Tea House.

The Jade Pavilion was an architectural relic of the old world, a sprawling wooden estate surrounded by a high stone wall and koi ponds. It was the kind of place where the silence was expensive and the tea cost more than a car.

As Mo Chou approached the outer perimeter, she saw the "Black Suits."

They weren’t the standard mall security she had dealt with before. These men stood with their weight on the balls of their feet, their eyes constantly scanning the horizon. They were Lu family elites—mercenaries from the Shadow Council.

"Amateurs," she rasped internally, her lips never moving.

She didn’t try to walk through the front gate. Instead, she circled to the north wall, where the willow trees that hung over the stone. With a grace that defied the sagging skin of her mask, she hooked her cane onto a sturdy branch and hoisted herself upward. In one fluid motion, she vanished into the canopy, her dark clothes blending perfectly with the shifting leaves.

She moved through the trees like a literal ghost, eventually reaching the roof of the private East Wing. Below her, through a set of half open windows, the scent of expensive tea drifted up.

And then, she heard the voice. It was smooth, aristocratic, and cold.

Madam Lu.

"The contract with Mo Li is a formality," Lu Wei was saying. Her voice lacked the warmth she had shown in the mall; here, she sounded like a queen discussing the disposal of a peasant. "The goal is the signature. Once her brand is legally absorbed by Phoenix, she becomes an asset of the Lu family. And Liu Feng does not let his assets be handled by others."

A second voice replied—a man’s voice, accented with a harsh, guttural tone that Mo Chou recognized from her deep-dive into the Shadow Council’s history.

"You are playing a dangerous game, Lu Wei," the man said. "Liu Feng has been a shadow for twenty years. The last time the Council tried to corner him, we lost three elite squads and a Director. Why do you think a simple clothing line will bring him out?"

Mo Chou held her breath, pressing her ear closer to the roof tiles.

"Because," Madam Lu replied, the sound of a porcelain cup clinking punctuating her words, "he didn’t just stay in the shadows to hide. He stayed there to watch. I’ve reviewed the footage from the mall. He was there. He followed his daughter. The ’Apex’ has grown soft with sentiment. He is no longer a predator; he is a guard dog. And a guard dog always barks when you kick its master."

The man laughed, a dry, rasping sound. "And if he kills you before he signs over his life?"

"He won’t," Lu Wei said confidently. "Because I have his son-in-law-to-be on a private island, and I have his wife’s future in my desk drawer. He is surrounded. By the time he realizes the trap is sprung, the Shadow Council will have their prize, and the Lu family will have the Council’s backing to expand into the Western territories."

Mo Chou’s fingers dug into the roof. The rage she had felt in her bedroom was nothing compared to the cold fury now freezing her veins.

Madam Lu wasn’t just baiting her father. She was using ’Lu Jinhai’ as a secondary insurance policy. She was willing to gamble her own son’s happiness and his life just to secure a deal with the Shadow Council.

"You’ve miscalculated, Madam Lu," Mo Chou thought, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses. "You think he’s a guard dog. You haven’t realized that the puppy you’re kicking has teeth of her own."

The man in the room spoke again. "The Council expects the first meeting with Liu Feng within forty-eight hours of the Mo Li signing. If he doesn’t show, the Lu family’s assets in the harbor will be... liquidated."

"He will show," Madam Lu whispered. "He’s already closer than you think."

Mo Chou froze. Did Madam Lu know her father was in the mall? Or did she know he was even closer?

Suddenly, a twig snapped in the garden below.

Mo Chou didn’t wait to see who it was. She melted back into the shadows of the roof, her movements instinctive and silent. She didn’t head back the way she came. Instead, she dropped from the back eaves, landing soundlessly in the damp grass of the servant’s quarters.

She caught a glimpse of a figure in the distance—a man in a baseball cap, standing perfectly still near the outer wall. He wasn’t looking at the tea house. He was looking at the window where Mo Li would have been sitting if she were there.

Liu Feng.

(｀_´メ)