Hu Shui stood on the roof of the CoolSpear Gang's warehouse and surveyed her empire.Empire was generous. It was more of a collection of bruised egos, shattered doors, broken bones, lots of recently waking unconscious people, and nine separate banners that had been torn down and replaced with a single one she'd designed herself. Pale red cloth with a hammer stitched into the centre by Long Ti's shaking hands. The stitching was crooked and the hammer looked more like a mushroom if you squinted. Hu Shui absolutely loved it.The Red Steel Hammer Sector of the Hu Clan stretched across seven blocks of the inner slums in a jagged territory line that made no geographic sense and followed no strategic logic. It followed the path Shui had taken over the course of forty-eight hours as she crashed through every gang headquarters between the western wall and the river district like a boulder rolling downhill and picking up speed with each building it flattened.Nine gangs that amounted to about one thousand seven hundred men and women based on Long Ti’s calculations… Which were suspect if she was to be asked about them.All the leaders of the gangs had thought themselves untouchable within their little kingdoms of mud, blood, terror, oppression, and stolen coin.Shui frowned deeply. She hadn’t been planning this when she had taken down her first gang. If anything, she already had enough forces to make it to the auction house and come out unscathed for the most part with the old beggars help and his entire sect. Yet… it only took seeing one atrocity after another before she could not stop herself. Her anger had gotten the best of her, much to her great displeasure and the likelihood of getting in trouble. Much bigger trouble than being late by Ancestor.Yet, what was she supposed to do? Watch as gangs kidnapped women and threw them into brothels? Families extorted? People killed like they were (...)