Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Don’t Bring Her Back Right Away

From the moment Yiwen realized she was dealing with a spatial ability user, she knew this was going to be a painful fight.

And reality proved her right.

Because her enemies weren’t just limited to a space user—there was also a Spider-Man knockoff who shot webs from his butt and had six freakish clawed limbs.

Then, something completely unexpected happened.

As the enemy arrogantly revealed themselves, Yiwen immediately increased the gravitational pressure on them. But she underestimated them—only using about a tenth of the force she’d used back when fighting the man in black (girl in black).

The result? She ended up desperately performing CPR on the girl’s chest while pleading with her not to die.

Meanwhile, the failed man had already fled the scene the moment his spider-sense tingle, abandoning his comrade without a second thought.

“Internal organ trauma and you thought CPR was a good idea? Are you insane?” her comms officer said, exasperated. “Stop touching him! I’ve already called an ambulance. With modern medicine, he won’t die. You’re just making it worse. Don’t forget what you’re here for.”

“Oh, right. Where’s Xiaoliu?” Yiwen glanced around.

“You’re supposed to be tracking a Pseudo Human, damn it!” the comms officer finally lost his temper.

“I told you, I lost them,” Yiwen muttered, deciding she should go up the hill and give her truant desk partner a good scolding.

Only, as she walked, she somehow found the hill going down instead of up.

Now in Tian Xing Dao, word has already spread: if you ever run into White Whale, don’t panic—just juke them at a corner, and they’ll never find you again.

“Take the slope to your right! Right! The hand you use to hold chopsticks and a pen!”

“I can use both hands to eat and write at the same time!” Yiwen yelled, lifting off into the air in frustration.

People often said that, compared to her overwhelming power, her poor sense of direction was a negligible flaw—but hers was so bad that even flying didn’t guarantee she could reach her destination properly.

In relatively flat areas, it wasn’t too bad. Fly a bit higher, and she could orient herself by sight. But within a city, with towering buildings blocking every view? Hopeless.

That’s also why she hadn’t dared fly too high when she had the man in black (girl in black) with her. Unless she flew very high, she wouldn’t be able to locate the hospital at a glance. When the ambulance arrived, she’d not only waste time descending, but risk missing it entirely due to her lack of directional sense.

And that would be a disaster for whoever she was carrying.

The comms officer could only stare at the monitor, speechless.

So she really just relies on fate to stumble into criminals? How were her performance stats not tanking? Or maybe they already bottomed out?

And this was with his navigation help, no less.

Flying aimlessly, Yiwen somehow ended up outside the slums.

Golden wheat swayed in the fields. A giant wind turbine spun lazily in the distance. Yiwen began to doubt whether she was even in the city anymore—though the slums were close to the outskirts to begin with.

Looking back, she could still see the ramshackle buildings of the slums. From this high up, the distinct contrast was impossible to miss, so she shouldn’t get lost.

“The more I look at it, the weirder it seems. The slums might be full of homeless people, but they shouldn’t all look sickly and half-dead, right?”

From above, she could see that everyone was minimizing their movement. It looked like something out of a plague-ridden village in some historical TV drama—villagers waiting hopelessly for death.

“Maybe you should have the medics come and check the general health of the area?” Yiwen suggested.

No response.

For someone who usually never shuts up, the comms officer’s silence was definitely a red flag—just like the last time their signal was cut off.

But they hadn’t experienced any jamming like this while hunting down Pseudo Humans before.

She looked down—and there they were. The Pseudo Human she’d been chasing, the one with asymmetrical eyes, was now standing beside a shipping container, looking up at her.

The way it stared at her sent a cold shiver down Yiwen’s spine—even for someone who prided herself on being fearless. That uncanny valley effect—it was hardwired into the human brain.

Still, she descended in a straight line and hit it with a crushing gravitational force without hesitation.

It exploded like an overripe grape, fluids spraying up to three meters away. Thankfully, her current uniform had been upgraded—tighter-fitting, and resistant to most toxic substances coming into contact with her skin.

“Target neutralized,” Yiwen reported.

Still no response. So this thing was jamming the signal?

She stepped forward and crushed its disturbing face beneath her boot, then looked into the container—and frowned.

A girl was curled up on the cold metal floor, a strip of black cloth wrapped tightly around her eyes. Her breathing was faint but present.

Frankly, the whole thing looked like a textbook trap—like a kid’s bird-catching setup using a crate propped up with a stick and baited with rice. And of course, the girl was lying deep inside the container, right where she’d have to walk in.

Way too suspicious.

Yiwen looked around—nothing obviously dangerous. She used a flashlight to check the inside and confirmed it was empty aside from the girl. 

Then she used her power to levitate the girl gently out, avoiding any risk of the door being slammed shut on her.

She glanced at the girl’s face but didn’t remove the cloth over her eyes. If she remembered correctly, this was the one the man in black (girl in black) had spoken to before—a girl suffering from photophobia. 

She wasn’t supposed to be outside until proper treatment had been administered. A police-appointed nurse had been caring for her—why hadn’t the comms officer told her she’d gone missing?

This girl was clearly tied to the man in black (girl in black). Last time, a Pseudo Human had attacked her directly—and her body was never recovered. Considering this obvious trap, could it be that the girl had survived?

The hospital wasn’t far, so Yiwen made a call. Moments later, she heard the sirens approaching.

Not everyone had gravitational powers, after all—they didn’t have to spend half an hour getting lost on the same street.

Far away, in a wind turbine control tower, a woman named Shen reclined in a chair, adjusting her holographic visor with an annoyed sigh as she watched Yiwen rescue the girl known as Beibei.

“What’s with Riels’ daughter, always messing things up for me…” she muttered, typing rapidly on her laptop, which was connected to a mess of external devices.

She’d already extracted everything from the blind girl using a special incense, even got her in-game account info. But that player with the ID “Xue’er” hadn’t logged in for ages—and outside of the game, the two had no contact whatsoever.

Beibei should’ve been useless by now. But Shen was still curious.

Curious whether Mi Xiaoliu would act like some hot-blooded anime protagonist—risking everything to save someone she barely knew. After all, that was the age for irrational heroics.

But Beibei had been rescued early by the current White Whale. The show Shen had set up never got the chance to play out.

She’d even stationed numerous sentries near the hospital, hoping to lure Mi Xiaoliu back again. But the cold-hearted brat never came. Her sentries were then somehow sold out by a bunch of shoddy backup scouts and wiped out cleanly by Foboler’s forces.

“Are there other virus-type users in the city screwing with me?”

“None of your sentries picked up anyone who looked like Mi?” a voice asked through her headset.

“They got wiped before they could do anything,” Shen said, staring intently at her screen. “If you guys had saved a blood sample from Mi, I could find her in under three minutes.”

“Well, they got eliminated for a reason. Those things of yours, you deploy too many and it’s a city-wide extermination risk… Oh right—when you recover Mi, don’t bring her back right away. Try seeing if the virus can affect her mind. We need testimony from her about a few things.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just bring him back and ask?” Shen asked, puzzled. “You’re all so scared over just one ‘Flame’?”

“Yeah. Because this isn’t just any flame… I have a bold theory about her ability. Until it’s confirmed, don’t bring her back.”

“What theory?”

“It involves terms outside your medical wheelhouse—you wouldn’t understand.”

“Heh…”

Shen stopped replying and focused back on her computer.

Hard to believe—what she was doing now was just trying to hack into a game account.

Ever since the rise of ability users, facial recognition and real-name systems had become something of a taboo. You never knew if the guy cursing you in-game might suddenly start yelling your real name—along with your parents’—in the next breath.

There used to be underground services that could help track online accounts.

Powers equivalent to top-tier hackers weren’t rare among ability users. There were plenty of them worldwide.

So, governments began recruiting their own cyber-ability users, fortifying the web layer by layer until digital security was finally restored.

Even so, some outliers always slipped through—like that recent data saboteur who not only corrupted critical records but also strengthened game data encryption, crafting an undetectable cheat that actively targeted script-users and smurfs.

Either an arrogant genius or someone working with Tian Xing Dao. In either case, probably young. Still, dealing with such a brat wouldn’t take much effort.

In fact, the core reason Tian Xing Dao thrived in its early days was due to one god-tier cyber-user, who—before dying—left behind a powerful program. A tiny USB stick with it could still crush today’s prodigies like nothing.

Now watching the loading bar on her screen, Shen’s lips curled into a smug smile.

But then, she glanced at her comms signal—and her heart sank.

“Hey, can you hear me?”

No response.

Something nearby had jammed her signal. Her comms gear wasn’t some budget junk like Foboler’s—it should be immune to regular interference.

Standing beside the bed, she noticed a Pseudo Human outside the tower—one that wasn’t hers.

It was staring straight up at her with those disgusting, rotten tuna-like eyes.

And worse… It had already led White Whale here.

“F*cker!”