They say, "Beat the young ones and the old ones show up," but today, Jill Young was after the big boss from the start. She’d been holding back all the way, and sure enough, she lured out the "old one."
The man vanished in an instant, using some pretty slick tricks. He didn't just disappear—first, he dialed down his own presence, slipping out of everyone’s attention, and only then did he go full-on invisible. So even though a living, breathing person just poofed, the folks around barely noticed anything odd.
Just talking about his sneaking skills alone, this guy could run wild in the city.
Next thing, Jill heard his whisper all around her—threatening, creepy, swirling like the wind, circling her ears in every direction. No way to tell where it was coming from: "Someone’s been messing with me all day, and I’ve been hunting for you. Finally found you."
Jill stood her ground, not bothering to look around for the voice. Her gaze shifted, spotting a few shady-looking guys lurking nearby, slowly closing in. No surprise—they were clearly this thief’s crew, here to back up their boss.
But this little scene was nothing to her. She just snorted, "Your little minions are a real handful. One look at their cocky faces and I knew someone big was backing them up—turns out I was right. So, I’ve been looking for you all day too, and now I’ve finally found you. And look at that, you’re a pro thief. No wonder you’re always up to sneaky business."
"Foolish brat! What, you wanna play superhero and stick your nose in for justice or something?" The guy’s voice was weird—like sandpaper scraping together, obviously altered to hide his identity. "Looks like you only survived the Other Shore World by pure luck."
As soon as he finished, the air turned hostile. The wind shifted, a chilly gust whipping Jill’s hair—like the breath of death itself creeping closer, stirring up the tatters of a ghost’s dress.
"You and I never crossed paths before, no beef, no grudge. But since you stuck your neck out, today’s your last day." Hidden in shadows where no normal person could see, the man stepped toward Jill, suddenly whipping out a dagger from his belt. "Ordinary folks always try to act special. The truly extraordinary just blend in. Guess you never learned that lesson—!"
He stopped talking, stopped moving—then lunged with his knife!
Just his assassination skills alone could land him in the Heavenly Ranking's top 4,000!
But in the very next instant, Jill—who’d barely moved—suddenly raised her left hand, fingers spread, and grabbed. Still as a statue one moment, lightning-fast the next; she looked ordinary standing still, but when she moved, it was like the weather itself changed. A flash of dragon shadow flickered between her fingers, and the pressure of her Chosen-tier physique crashed down like a tidal wave.
It felt like getting hit by a shockwave—the man froze, his bones and muscles trembling like a frog facing a snake, totally out of control. Terror flooded his mind, screaming at him that he’d messed with the wrong person. Beg for mercy or you’re toast!
But his mind went blank—he couldn’t even twitch a smile. No reaction, no time to scream. The next thing he knew, his chest was seized in a vice grip. Jill had him by the collar, yanking him out of stealth. Her left arm jerked, crackling with explosive force, and the guy went limp like a boneless noodle.
She didn’t even give him a chance to talk, didn’t bother with her other hand. Jill flicked her finger—bam, right between his brows. The guy’s eyes went wide, staggered back two steps, then dropped flat on his back. Eyes rolled, foam at the mouth, thud—out cold. Only now did that look of utter shock and terror finally freeze on his face.
"You call that showing off?" Jill flicked a few pebbles, knocking out the petty thieves who tried to run, then dusted off her hands. She’d work her magic so none of them would spill the beans, then dump the whole bunch at the police station. Case closed.
"Still, the guy wasn’t totally wrong."
She thought of the so-called masters and wizards she’d met today, the half-grown kids from the Charm Society, and her cousin Kathy Yang: "The more ordinary someone is, the more they want to stand out."
She remembered Lu Yide, who’d rather forget everything and just be a regular vet, and all those question marks on the Heavenly Ranking: "The truly extraordinary folks are the ones working hardest to hide it."
She thought of the vanished magician and the superhero no one could ever find: "The more someone plays by the rules, the easier it is for them to get targeted and pushed down, stuck living a tough life."
She glanced at the guy lying on the ground: "If you want to get rich quick, odds are you’ll end up taking the path of robbery. Go too far down that road, and you’ll lose control and crash hard."
"In today’s world, hiding is a pretty solid way to keep yourself safe, but it doesn’t actually solve anything." Jill pulled out her phone, focusing on the guy foaming at the mouth. "So I’ll stick to what I know—just keep making miracles the honest way."
Click—her phone camera snapped a clear shot of the guy’s face. This hometown patrol had given Jill a lot to think about.
Jill turned to head home, but let’s shift our focus for a moment—from her to her phone. Just now, her camera had captured the thief’s photo, and the image was instantly processed into digital data. Then, without anyone touching it, that signal shot out of her phone and sped off through the network.
This chapter isn’t over yet ^.^—click next page to keep reading!
The signal zipped through base stations, joined by countless similar signals from all directions, weaving a massive net across the sky. They shot up to satellites, got packed and compressed with millions of others, and then dove down into a special antenna array. That array? It’s the net’s drawstring.
And whoever gets caught in the net ends up right at the end of that string.
Blazing-fast fiber cables pumped the info into servers, which decoded, reconstructed, and filtered everything at lightning speed. Smart programs tossed out most of the junk, but even the leftovers needed a hundred screens just to display.
Each of those hundred screens had someone sitting in front of it. Hundreds of people, all serious-faced and lightning-fast, scanning the images and videos streaming to their stations. The endless flicker of screens gave the hall an oppressive vibe, and at the back, The Attendant silently oversaw it all.
This was a secret facility—one of the newly built special department’s hidden bases.
It’s not exactly "one person’s rise lifts the whole crew," but after the Shanghai Massacre, The Attendant rocketed up alongside Cobra. Now, he’s a supervisor in this secret department. The title "supervisor" sounds like a middle manager, nothing special—but The Attendant’s different. He’s got the power of life and death.
Most of the time, he could skip the legal red tape and do stuff like "shoot first, collect bodies later, file the paperwork last." Like right now, he’s leading the charge in monitoring every phone user in the country. Technically, that’s totally unconstitutional, but trust me—nobody’s coming after him for it.
After two hours of hardcore surveillance, the team leaders handed off the filtered data to The Attendant for review. He gave it another once-over, then strode out of the hall with the files. Marching down a long corridor, he stopped at a steel gate with serious sci-fi vibes.
After a complex ID check, the gate hissed open. The Attendant stepped inside—a not-so-big room. Inside, Cobra was spinning in his chair like a bored kid, mumbling to himself so quietly nobody could make out the words.
"Boss, here’s the last eight hours of results." The Attendant plugged a storage drive into Cobra’s console, and the screen instantly filled with data—names, locations, suspicion levels, and overall assessments. Plenty of names were stamped with a big red mark: "Recommended for immediate arrest."
If this info ever got leaked, it’d cause a total uproar among the Chosen Ones—top secret, no question.
But Cobra was barely interested. Done spinning, he propped his chin and started nodding off: "Yeah, yeah, got it. You handle it. Oh, right—time’s almost up, gotta catch the livestream!"
Suddenly remembering something, he perked up and twisted a knob on the console. A deep hum filled the air, and the wall opposite Cobra started to move.
Turns out, that black wall wasn’t a wall at all—it was a giant pane of glass. Some kind of device behind it had looked black before, but now it was spinning, and if you had super eyesight, you’d see it moving.
With a hiss, a brightly lit room slid into view for Cobra and The Attendant. Inside, a huge metal frame held a young man, locked tight.