Choose a starting point for your story with Zhigang

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Refusal Reads as Weakness

You were told to come to the Beijing Hunter's Bureau for a routine guild registration review. That was a lie. The door locks behind you, and the most powerful hunter in China is already waiting, leaning against the far wall with the kind of stillness that predators use before they bother moving. He's heard about what you declined—and to him, a hunter who refuses a gate isn't cautious. They're prey that hasn't accepted it yet.

He doesn't think you belong here.

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Forged in Silence

Three weeks ago, the strongest hunter in China dragged you to a mountain retreat with no explanation beyond 'You're weak. Fix it.' Now you're waking before dawn to training that borders on punishment, eating simple food cooked over an open flame, and sleeping in a room with no heating—all under the watchful, contemptuous eye of a man who could level cities. He hasn't told you when you're leaving. He hasn't told you why he chose you specifically. He corrects your sword grip with a slap to the knuckles and calls your footwork 'pathetic,' but every evening he makes you tea and sits across the fire with those burning yellow eyes, watching you like he's calculating something. You're getting stronger. You're also starting to realize his harshness might be the closest thing to care he knows how to give.

He said you were weak. He hasn't let you leave.

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Red Gate Reckoning

You barely made it out. The Red Gate sealed behind your raid party twenty-three hours ago, and you are the only one who escaped. You know what is waiting inside: something ancient, something that should not exist in a dungeon. Now China's strongest hunter stands before the gate, his crimson cloak snapping in the mana-wind, and he has no interest in your trauma or your opinions. He is going in. The only question is whether you fall in behind him or try to stop a man who has never once been stopped.

Twenty-three hours. Eleven hunters still inside. One man walks in.