Chapter 54: Big Catch
The burly criminal felt explosive power surging through every inch of his body. He threw his head back and spread his arms wide, intoxicated by the sensation. "Hahaha! I'm invincible!"
Next, he lowered his gaze. Still laughing wildly, he locked onto Yu Xian and charged forward, his fists flying in a rapid barrage of punches. However, Yu Xian merely shifted left and right, taking no more than a single step each time to effortlessly evade the attacks. Oblivious to the fact that his every move was transparent to his opponent, the burly criminal was completely intoxicated by his newfound power, harboring the wild delusion that his punch could blow the world apart.
The burly man's name was Sun Youhu. Technically, he was a martial artist. As a child, he had been taken in by a master who spent years tempering his body and teaching him martial arts. Unfortunately, some people simply never appreciated what they gained easily and obsessed over what they didn't have. Sun Youhou was one of those people.
He had never cared about martial arts. What he wanted was money. Lots of money. And since he never took martial arts seriously and repeatedly snuck down the mountain to gamble, he was expelled from his sect upon reaching adulthood.
Afterward, he devoted himself entirely to the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. Using the physical edge he had picked up from years of half-hearted training, he terrorized ordinary humans to extort money from them.
Someone eventually reported him to the authorities, and the Combat Police ruthlessly crushed him. Although he had committed a robbery that netted him only a total of ten yuan, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
While being incarcerated, he met a group of like-minded scoundrels. After serving their sentences, the five of them immediately hit it off and began roaming from city to city, committing crimes together.
At thirty-eight years old, being only in Insect rank, Sun Youhu was nothing special. But after his companion had injected the mysterious drug into him, he felt as though he could punch a bull to death. The sensation was intoxicating.
After repeatedly failing to hit Yu Xian, Sun Youhu instinctively used the Tiger Fist he had practiced for decades, a martial art he had never truly mastered despite spending most of his life learning it. "Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!"
Faced with Sun Youhu's sudden change in fighting style, Yu Xian simply dropped backward onto the ground. A tiny spatial bubble hidden beneath him instantly expanded, and he passed through it before emerging from another bubble suspended high in the air.
After he appeared overhead, his foot landed squarely on Sun Youhu's head. Looking down at him, Yu Xian calmly asked, "What did you inject yourself with?"
If he weren't curious about the drug Sun Youhu had been injected with, he would have already killed him with a single kick.
Unfortunately, Sun Youhu had no intention of answering. Immediately, he reached his hands out toward his head, attempting to grab Yu Xian. But Yu Xian lightly pushed off and vanished. The next instant, before Sun Youhu could react, a kick slammed into the side of his face, and he crashed violently into a nearby wall.
Then, Yu Xian shifted his gaze to the several criminals who had injected themselves with the same drug. One of the shorter criminals immediately kicked off the wall and lunged at him.
Yu Xian frowned and created dozens of bubbles. One of the bubbles collided with the charging criminal. The man's eyes immediately rolled back, and he lost consciousness.
In the darkness of night, Yu Xian's spatial bubbles were practically invisible. Before the remaining three criminals could even understand what had happened, they too were struck by bubbles. Within five seconds, all three had lost their ability to fight.
Meanwhile, Sun Youhu struggled back to his feet from the collapsed wall. Scooping up broken bricks and chunks of masonry, he hurled them wildly at Yu Xian.
But Yu Xian vanished once more. The next moment, he appeared behind Sun Youhu and landed a kick squarely on the back of the man's head. Sun Youhu's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, unconscious.
During the fight, Yu Xian had already attached a microscopic bubble to the back of Sun Youhu's head. If he had wanted to kill him, he could have done so at any moment. The only reason he hadn't was that he had been using the criminals as practice targets.
He managed to squeeze the execution time of his teleportation down to less than a second. If he could reach his target of 0.01 seconds, his movements would become far more fluid and unpredictable, and countless new techniques would become possible.
Roughly ten minutes later, the flashing lights of Combat Police vehicles appeared in the distance. After stepping out of the vehicle, Zhang Kai first instructed his officers to load the unconscious criminals into the cars. Only then did he walk over to Yu Xian and Zhang Shou.
"Don't you guys ever sleep at night?" he asked.
Looking completely refreshed, Zhang Shou grinned. "Captain Zhang, with those dark circles under your eyes, are you really in a position to say that to us?"
Over the past few days, Zhang Shou had been pestering the doctors at Qilin into preparing a batch of painless medication to help reset his passive ability. By proactively refreshing his status right before midnight every night, he theoretically wouldn't even begin to feel tired until noon the following day.
Yu Xian shrugged. "We just happened to notice those idiots planning to commit robbery, so we came over to stake the place out. Although...I think we may have actually caught a big fish."
He told Zhang Kai about how Sun Youhu and the others had injected themselves with a mysterious drug and the fact that it appeared to increase their strength by roughly tenfold.
Zhang Kai's eyes widened. "Ten times? You're sure?"
Yu Xian nodded. "I was actually testing them out. Otherwise, I would've kicked that big guy to death a long time ago."
With his current level of strength, even if Sun Youhu's strength had increased twentyfold, Yu Xian was still confident he could have ended the fight with a single kick.
Zhang Kai's expression immediately turned serious. "Then this definitely needs to be investigated thoroughly."
The three of them decided to head back to the Public Security Bureau. Once Sun Youhu and the others woke up, they would properly interrogate the criminals to find out exactly where the drug they had injected themselves with had come from.
On the way back, Zhang Kai, in the driver's seat, still seemed unable to believe it. "Ten times...If that kind of enhancement works at every rank..."
Yu Xian, sitting in the back seat, remained calm. "I doubt it works on everyone. If it affected every rank equally, that would be completely ridiculous."
At lower ranks, a tenfold boost was already frightening. But if it worked on Tiger-rank or Dragon-rank powerhouses as well, the consequences would be unimaginably terrifying.
Before long, the group arrived at the Public Security Bureau. The five criminals were separated and escorted into individual interrogation rooms.
Yu Xian followed Zhang Kai into Sun Youhu's interrogation room.
Zhang Kai nodded toward the young officers of the Combat Police unit standing nearby. "Wake him up."
The officer immediately stepped forward and delivered several sharp slaps across Sun Youhu's face. By the time he was done, Sun Youhu's cheeks were swollen. On the bright side, he was awake.
Zhang Kai opened a file folder and selectively read from the criminal record inside. "Sun Youhu. Thirty-eight years old. Released from prison six months ago. Since your release, you've worked together with your former cellmates Zhong Fa, Kang Jimao, Wang Hao, and Xu Long to commit multiple robberies and thefts. You also seriously injured or permanently disabled fifteen witnesses. Did I get any of that wrong?"
Sun Youhu felt a burning pain across his face. He glanced at Yu Xian and let out a cold snort. "Since you already know everything, kill me or tear me apart. Do whatever you want."
Ignoring the bravado, Zhang Kai abruptly changed the subject. "The drug you used tonight, where did it come from?"
Sun Youhu stiffened his neck and refused to answer. Instead, he continued glaring at Yu Xian.
Yu Xian smiled. "With your financial situation, there's no way you bought something like that. So tell me. Where did you steal it from?"
Zhang Kai's tone turned stern. "Confess, and you'll receive leniency. You ought to know that we have zero tolerance for supernatural criminals. If you don't want us using other methods, you had best cooperate and keep your answers straight."
In an instant, Sun Youhu recalled the first time he had been brought into a Public Security Bureau. Back then, he had acted like a complete scoundrel and stubbornly refused to confess. He had assumed the authorities couldn't do anything without evidence, but the reality had been very different. The officers hadn't been interested in arguing about evidence at all. Even now, just remembering what happened afterward made his legs tremble involuntarily.
He immediately replied, "At-at the Cloud Warehouse in the Northern District."
"Which warehouse?"
"No. 35...No, wait. It's warehouse No. 32. We only wanted to steal some food. But there was a lot of equipment inside, really expensive-looking stuff. We didn't dare touch any of it, so we grabbed a briefcase and ran. The drugs were inside."
"Where's the briefcase now?"
"We threw it away."
"Where?"
"A dumpster on the outskirts of the Southern District"
"How did you determine what the drug did?"
"Chicken Feather...I mean Kang Jimao. He injected a dog with it, and the dog got stronger. The only side effect was that it became sluggish for a couple of days." [1]
After obtaining the answers they wanted, Yu Xian and Zhang Kai exchanged a glance. They asked Sun Youhu a few more questions, then quickly left the interrogation room.
1. "Chicken Feather" (鸡毛, Jīmáo) is a pun on the character's real name, 康吉茂 (Kāng Jímáo). They both sound the same. ☜