Chapter 66 : Chapter 66
Chapter 66: Growth-Type Talent
To Old Madam Ma, Zhao Jinhe’s words were a perfectly placed, devastating blow.
It was no less than being struck by five bolts of lightning.
Li Mu was actually a Junior Wolf Guard?
Since when??
How long had it even been since he left the Li family, and Li Mu had already reached the rank of Junior Wolf Guard?
If all of this was true, then Li Dayong and Li Zhi were utterly finished!!
And not just them.
From Zhao Jinhe’s meaning just now, he intended to turn the entire Li family upside down in the investigation!
What family did not have filth under its backside?
Not a single family could withstand a real investigation!
And now Zhao Jinhe was using the attempted harming of military family members as a pretext to investigate the Li family?
Then over eighty percent of the Li family’s businesses had illegal records!
The moment an investigation began, all of them would have to shut down!
And more than half of the Li family would be implicated. Nearly all of them would end up in prison!
Although Old Madam Ma considered herself clever, and she and some of the women in the family were relatively “clean,”
they were not the ones who managed the family businesses.
If all the people who actually ran the Li family businesses were arrested,
then the Li family would collapse!!
She had never imagined the other side would be this ruthless!
They were trying to drive the Li family to death!
Unfortunately, crying and screaming was useless. Old Madam Ma and the others were forcibly dragged out of the Li family and taken back to the Law Enforcement Bureau.
...
Back at Jinshi Forge, when the neighbors saw Yang Suying and the others escorted back by several military vehicles, they were all dumbfounded.
They had guessed that Li Mu now had some influence, but they had never imagined he was this formidable.
Zhang Zhiwei and Lu Chenfeng arrived soon after.
Yang Yourong and the others first thanked Auntie Lin from across the street.
Then they kept Zhang Zhiwei and Lu Chenfeng at the forge for the whole afternoon.
Especially after learning that Lu Chenfeng’s arm had been injured by Li Mu, Yang Suying insisted on personally preparing a full table of good dishes to entertain them.
At the dinner table, the thing everyone was most curious about was naturally how Li Mu had obtained the rank of Junior Wolf Guard.
What they really wanted to know was what kind of merit he had earned in such a short time
to be promoted to Junior Wolf Guard.
This time, Li Mu truly could not avoid it anymore, so he had no choice but to recount what he had experienced over the past few days.
Of course, he concealed the part where he lost consciousness.
He did not want Yang Suying to be unable to bear it.
Chen Jiaqi and Chen Jiafeng had already completely begun worshipping Li Mu as their idol.
They drank until after ten at night before host and guests alike were fully satisfied.
Zhang Zhiwei and Lu Chenfeng were sent away by their driver, while Chen Jinshi and Yang Yourong had both drunk a little too much as well.
Watching his dizzy mother go back to her room to rest, Li Mu returned to his own room too.
He found himself thinking that he ought to arrange a place in the Military Residential District for his mother and the others.
With his current rank, his mother and his aunt’s family all counted as military family members.
But in truth, they still did not qualify to move into the Military Residential District.
Having rank alone was not enough for Li Mu. He also had to hold an actual military post.
Once he had a post, the Military Residential District could provide one free residence.
And the standard and location of that residence would correspond to the level of the military post.
That thought made Li Mu remember the materials Wang Longcheng had given him yesterday.
Taking the documents out of his Storage Ring, Li Mu began reading them carefully.
The more he read, the more confused he became.
These materials were actually classified investigative records.
The contents were records from the past ten years of people whose talents had mutated after a talent transfer.
There were around a dozen files in total.
For example, one of them recorded a case where, after an A-Grade Talent holder and an E-Grade Talent holder exchanged talents,
the E-Grade Talent had gained some strange additional functions.
There was another case where, after a D-Grade Talent holder and an S-Grade Talent holder exchanged talents, the D-Grade Talent began to mutate.
Once it upgraded into a C-Grade Talent, although it was still a life-related talent, it was nonetheless astonishing.
But after flipping through all a dozen or so files, Li Mu found that these mutated talents had only gained some odd special traits, without becoming dramatically stronger.
Li Mu was puzzled.
Why had Wang Longcheng given him these things?
He thought about it for a long time.
Then, all at once, he caught hold of a line of thought.
Given Wang Longcheng’s ability, even he had only managed to uncover around a dozen such records.
That meant cases like this were indeed extremely rare.
Every year, there were countless people transferring talents!
Yet in ten whole years, only a little over a dozen cases of mutation after transfer had appeared.
And even then, the mutated abilities had not grown much stronger.
Yet Li Mu had told Wang Longcheng that his Immobilization Art and transformation ability had both come from talent mutation.
What Wang Longcheng had wanted to tell him was...
that words alone would not be enough!
That explanation could fool ordinary people.
But the higher Li Mu climbed, those who ought to be suspicious would still be suspicious.
In other words...
Wang Longcheng had never believed his lie at all.
But he was willing to protect him, and had even warned him!
If Li Mu wanted to conceal the abnormality of his strength, then he had to create documentary evidence that could withstand scrutiny.
Only then would he be able to block all future suspicion in advance.
Only then could he transition smoothly and naturally into being seen as a “genius.”
Otherwise, one day, with an extremely abnormal F-Grade Talent, he would display overwhelming strength in front of certain high-level figures.
And if someone asked about it, and he simply answered, “My talent mutated,”
then if any of those big shots happened to be his enemies, who knew whether he would be heavily cultivated or dragged away to become a lab specimen?
He had to turn something traceless into something traceable.
The moment that thought settled in his mind, cold sweat broke out all over Li Mu’s back.
Fortunately, the first person to grow suspicious of him had been Wang Longcheng.
The only question was how he was supposed to prove it.
After thinking it over again and again, Li Mu felt he ought to go have his talent tested one more time.
Maybe that would give him some angle to work with.
As it happened, he needed to buy some medicinal herb seeds tomorrow and cultivate his Field of Blessings.
He could go test his talent while he was at it.
Now that he had thought it through, Li Mu put the materials away, turned off the lights, and went to sleep.
The next morning, Li Mu spent nearly all the tens of thousands he had left.
He bought a huge pile of medicinal herb seeds.
Then he headed straight for the Abyss.
Talent testing was an extremely energy-intensive national event of great importance.
Every half year, it was held only once nationwide, and anyone who had turned eighteen could participate.
As for those who had already awakened their talents and merely wanted to retest them, that did not require nearly so much energy.
But it still cost a fair amount of money.
The Abyss-Suppressing Army also had institutions for this kind of testing.
When Li Mu arrived at the testing facility, there were not many people there.
Generally speaking, very few people who had already awakened a talent came back for another test.
Unless, of course, they needed some sort of talent certification for a special reason.
Once Li Mu showed his identity, the staff promptly and eagerly led him into an observation room.
The spacious, brightly lit observation room had glass walls on three sides.
In the center stood an enormous energy stone.
On the other side of the glass, someone was connected to a computer.
“Junior Wolf Guard Li, please place your palm on the energy stone and channel True Qi into it,” one of the staff said.
Li Mu did as instructed and began slowly feeding True Qi into it.
On the other side of the glass, the two staff members started chatting.
“An eighteen-year-old Junior Wolf Guard. That’s seriously impressive!”
“Such a pity he has an F-Grade Talent.”
One of them gestured with his chin toward the file on the computer showing Li Mu’s registered information after awakening his talent.
“You don’t know? This guy used to be the young master of a family.”
“He originally awakened an S-Grade Talent, but it was later changed into an F!”
The other man, annoyed, clicked open the detailed information in Li Mu’s file.
It showed that Li Mu’s original talent had been S-Grade and was later changed to F-Grade.
“Holy shit! That actually happened?”
The first man’s eyes widened.
“That’s why I keep telling you to watch fewer Abyss livestreams and more social news.”
“The Abyss is our lifeblood. There’s already more life-and-death news than we can keep up with. Who has the energy left to care about gossip?”
While the two of them chatted, the energy stone in the observation room suddenly began to hum and shine.
But the moment they saw the color of the energy stone, both men froze on the spot!
If Li Mu really had an F-Grade Talent, then the energy stone ought to have glowed purple.
But instead, a deep cyan light shot skyward from the stone!
That was the color corresponding to a D-Grade Talent!!
Sure enough, the intensity generated by the energy stone was quickly measured as well.
A crisp mechanical voice echoed throughout the observation room.
“Talent: Overheavy Strike. Grade: D.”