Chapter 25 The Street Gang Problem

The Iron Fang Gang problem crystallized over the next two weeks, not through a single event but through the steady accumulation of pressure that was Bao Zhen’s signature method.

It started with the traders. Brother Min, the taciturn formation components dealer, sent word through an intermediary that he was “taking a break from unusual acquisitions.” The message needed no interpretation: someone had leaned on him, and he was stepping back. Vendor Shu was more direct. She met Shen Wei at a tea house outside her usual territory and told him, in the blunt manner of a woman who had survived the gray market by never misunderstanding a threat, that the Iron Fang Gang was asking questions about high-quality natural materials and the people who supplied them.

“They came to my stall yesterday,” she said, stirring her tea with unnecessary precision. “Two enforcers. Polite. Asked if I’d seen any ‘unusual product’ recently. Natural-grade herbs, beast materials above normal quality. I told them I deal in standard goods and they should check the Middle District specialty houses.” She looked at Shen Wei across the table. “They’ll be back. Bao Zhen doesn’t ask once.”

“Did they mention specific materials? Specific sellers?”

“No names. But they described the product accurately enough—high Qi density, natural luminescence, preservation quality that suggests a fresh source rather than salvage. Someone who bought from one of us has been talking, either voluntarily or under pressure.”

Shen Wei nodded. The chain was working exactly as Old Chen had warned. Xu Ping, the confiscated trader, had been a dead end. The man had bought from a middleman who had bought from someone else, and the trail had diffused into the market’s natural obscurity. But Bao Zhen was systematic. He wasn’t tracing a single chain; he was casting a net, questioning everyone in the natural-materials niche, building a picture of the supply ecosystem from multiple data points. Eventually, the lines would converge.

“I’m reducing volume,” Shen Wei told Vendor Shu. “Nothing through Lower District channels for at least a month. I’ll contact you when it’s safe.”

“Make it two months,” she said. “Let the heat die down completely. It is always better to be more careful when it comes to dealing with Bao Zhen. The Xu Ping confiscation embarrassed him because it happened in his territory without his knowledge. He’ll want to understand the situation before he moves on.”

Shen Wei agreed and paid for her tea. A small gesture of respect that Vendor Shu acknowledged with a nod. He left the tea house and walked through the Middle District border zone, where the architecture shifted from Lower District concrete to the cleaner lines of professional cultivation society. The streets were wider here. The Qi grid was denser. The people moved with the slightly elevated posture of cultivators who had reached Foundation Establishment and considered themselves, by that fact alone, a cut above.

He observed the Iron Fang situation from every angle his analytical mind could construct. The gang’s interest was, at present, commercial rather than personal. They wanted to identify the source of high-quality materials because such a source represented either a revenue stream to tap or a competitor to control. They didn’t know about Shen Wei specifically. They didn’t know about the dimensional crossing. Their investigation was following market trails, not cultivation trails.

But the market trails led, however indirectly, toward him.

He could wait it out. Reduce operations or even go dark completely, let the attention fade, and resume at lower volume when the pressure eased. This was the safe option, the patient option, the option that prioritized concealment. But word would get out eventually, this time was Xu Ping, the next time it would be someone else and it will get back to the Iron Fang. And that second time, Bao Zhen wouldn’t let it go as easily.

Or he could address the problem at a higher level. Develop the Middle District channels Old Chen had suggested, establish a legitimate business framework, and move his commercial operations out of the Lower District entirely. This was the structural option, the one that solved the problem rather than postponing it, but it required more capital, more visibility, and more risk.

Or he could deal with the Iron Fang Gang directly.

This third option was not yet feasible. Bao Zhen was Foundation Establishment. His senior enforcers were Stages 7 through 9. Shen Wei was Stage 5 with combat training measured in weeks rather than years. A direct confrontation would end badly and quickly.

But “not yet feasible” was a temporal statement, not an absolute one. At his current rate of advancement, he would reach Stage 7 within three months. Stage 9 within six. Foundation Establishment within a year. At Foundation Establishment, with his superior foundation quality and hybrid techniques, he would be a match for Bao Zhen in raw cultivation. But at the end of this day, it would all be conjecture. Up to now he still hasn’t had any actual live combat experiences aside from fleeing.

The idea of confronting the people who terrorized Old Chen and taxed the Third Market and treated the Lower District like a personal revenue farm had an emotional appeal that transcended strategic calculation. It felt like justice. It felt like the third objective in his journal—”become powerful enough that no one can threaten the people who helped me build this”—given specific, targetable form.

But justice pursued recklessly was indistinguishable from suicide, and Shen Wei was not suicidal. He was patient. He was strategic. And he understood, with the clarity of someone who had mapped wind wolf territories and survived a Mist Serpent ambush, that the most important fights were the ones you prepared for long before they happened.

He chose the second option. The structural solution. The Middle district had a higher bar when it came to natural goods. While it was rarely seen in the lower markets, the Middle districts would still occasionally deal with them.

That evening, he walked through the Lower District one more time, past Old Chen’s shop (closed for the day, lights off, the old man probably counting his cash and worrying), past the Third Market intersection where the Iron Fang enforcers had stood that morning (empty now, the evening shift not yet arrived), past the stalls and the vendors and the people who lived and worked and cultivated in the narrow space between poverty and the wall.

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He watched a group of children playing in a courtyard, their laughter cutting through the ambient noise of the district. Two of them were Qi Condensation Stage 1. The barest flicker of cultivation potential, detectable only because Shen Wei’s Stage 5 perception was sensitive enough to read signatures that most people would miss. They had talent. In any other district, with any other resources, they might have futures as cultivators. Here, in the Lower District, they would probably plateau at Stage 3 or 4 and spend their lives monitoring pill furnaces or running errands for people who had been lucky enough to be born with better roots or richer parents.

Unless someone changed the equation.