As the armored transport rolled to a halt within the Wolf's compound's main entrance, Li Xinjie and Sun Lixia braced themselves for whatever reception still awaited them. Ren Zirui spared them both a final, loaded glance through the rearview mirror before throwing open her door and surging out in a combat crouch - ready to neutralize any immediate threats with surgical prejudice.
What greeted them proved far more insidious than outright hostility.
Five identically-clad figures stood arrayed before the looming entry portal, faces concealed behind sleek polymer masks as featureless as a cobra's hood. Slowly, they fanned outwards in an unmistakably ritualized phalanx - revealing the man who could only be the master of this den of snakes himself emerging from the shadows behind them.