Chapter 61: The Ability User from Outside the City

“The Headless Knight?”

After receiving Lu Xin’s call, Chen Jing seemed to suddenly become much more alert.

“Yeah.”

Lu Xin answered in the briefest terms: “I encountered him near the elementary school. I sensed ill intent. I wanted to apprehend him, but he was incredibly fast. I tried chasing him but couldn’t catch up… I finally fired my gun at the last moment, but didn’t expect that even without a head, he managed to scale the High Wall, got onto a pre-prepared Motorcycle, and drove off… His driving skills were exceptional!”

“Do not touch anything, wait for me!”

Chen Jing efficiently hung up the phone.

Around Lu Xin, the other soldiers, under their Captain’s orders, had already spread out, cordoning off the area and maintaining vigilance. They couldn’t hear Lu Xin’s conversation. Only the Captain, positioned slightly closer, caught snippets of it. Phrases like “lost his head” and “driving skills were exceptional” left him both deeply creeped out and utterly puzzled.

He still had no idea who Lu Xin was.

But he recognized Lu Xin’s credentials and knew the level of authority they represented.

Therefore, he could only rack his brain, trying to recall what he had seen clearly enough to answer the inevitable questions later:

He had indeed seen a Motorcycle speeding away into the distance. However, at that speed and under the lighting conditions, he couldn’t make out whether the rider had a head or not. Of course, this didn’t mean he actually believed Lu Xin’s account was unreasonable. When he had spotted Lu Xin atop the High Wall earlier, standing perfectly fine without any climbing gear, that had already felt completely unreasonable to him.

He also knew a special department existed within the Main City.

Brothers of his in the City Patrol Army were sometimes transferred to that mysterious department, after which it became difficult to ever see them again.

Moreover, those transferred fell into two distinct categories.

One type were the troublemakers, extremely difficult to discipline, or even those who had committed serious offenses, bordering on expulsion or already expelled.

The other type were the elite among the elite.

Furthermore, occasionally they’d hear about a City Patrol Army unit suddenly being mobilized to seal off an area, with orders to ensure no living thing escaped. Yet, these lockdown missions always came without explanation. And quite often, a mission that seemed critically urgent would, just as mysteriously, be abruptly canceled.

“So, this young man who looks pretty ordinary… he must be quite formidable, right?”

He silently speculated to himself.

Very soon, subsequent events confirmed his conjecture.

First, a squad of soldiers arrived, equipped far more extensively than their own, led by an officer whose rank clearly surpassed his. They were even armed with what they called “Maniac killers” – L-E Eclipse Series handheld plasma guns. Though these weapons fired only one plasma round at a time, their destructive power was terrifying – capable of vaporizing three or four people standing close together with a single shot.

Although their numbers weren’t large, only around twenty men, upon arrival they immediately assumed command over everyone present. They deployed meticulously in defensive positions around the area: the City Patrol Army formed the outer perimeter, while they guarded the inner ring. They offered no explanation for their presence.

However, they still did not approach the young man.

Not until a Helicopter arrived, its tremendous noise and bright lights flooding the scene.

He saw a woman in a black suit emerge from the Helicopter even before it fully settled. She was tall and slender, with short hair, her aura sharp as a blade. He immediately averted his gaze. As she passed by him, he snapped to attention and saluted. As a soldier who knew how to assess a person’s presence, he realized this woman was formidable.

……

“Where exactly did the head fall?”

After disembarking from the Helicopter, Chen Jing walked straight towards Lu Xin, skipping a formal greeting and getting straight to the point.

“It should have fallen somewhere around that direction!”

Lu Xin pointed based on his Memory.

Members of the Support Team, dressed in black Protective Suits and who had arrived ahead of Chen Jing, immediately moved toward that area. Because two separate squads of soldiers had already cordoned off the location, not even a stray blade of grass had been disturbed there until now.

“How did you first detect that he was abnormal?”

Meanwhile, Chen Jing pressed Lu Xin for details.

Lu Xin thought for a moment. “I was just walking down the road normally earlier, and he looked at me.”

Chen Jing frowned slightly. “Then?”

Lu Xin stated, “Then I shot him.”

Chen Jing’s expression visibly wavered: “Because he looked at you, you shot him?”

“No. First, I just turned around and looked back at him,” Lu Xin recalled, answering slowly. “He appeared in front of me three times. I was walking a straight line, and I never saw him follow me or overtake me. Yet, he suddenly reappeared right where I had just been, each instance after I had passed, and stared at me smiling. It felt like provocation, similar to the kind you often see on the streets of the Satellite City. So, I didn’t pay it much mind…” Lu Xin paused. “I just kept staring back at him until his smile vanished.”

“……” Chen Jing visualized the scene, her expression turning slightly strange. “And then?”

Lu Xin said simply, “And then I shot him.”

“……” Chen Jing seemed to be struggling to maintain her composure.

“I had a reason for shooting!” Lu Xin paused briefly before explaining: “I saw living threads, like roundworms, crawl out from behind him…”

“He probably thought I couldn’t see those threads, so he was perfectly at ease, just standing there laughing!”

“But when I saw those threads reaching towards my forehead, I was certain his intentions were malicious!”

“So, I fired.”

“……” Hearing this, Chen Jing let out a small, almost imperceptible sigh of relief. Logically, Lu Xin’s reaction seemed perfectly justified in the circumstances. Yet, listening to his account, she couldn’t shake the feeling something remained… off.

“And after that, you chased him all the way here?” Chen Jing composed herself and continued her questioning.

Lu Xin nodded. “I wanted to know why he was acting so strangely, so I kept chasing him.” He gestured towards the High Wall. “But his speed was incredible. Different from the kind of speed I have, or Gecko’s. I could see that he seemed able to extend strange appendages, like threads, latching onto distant objects. It was almost like he was flying. In areas crowded with buildings, I couldn’t catch up. I only got close here, just as he was about to scale the wall…”

“So, I decided to kill him.”

“……” While Chen Jing might have made the same decision herself in that situation, hearing Lu Xin state this so unequivocally still struck her as slightly peculiar. “Just because he seemed strange, you decided to kill him?”

“No.”

Lu Xin shook his head calmly. “It was because he appeared next to the elementary school.”

……

Lu Xin’s answer was delivered with quiet calm.

But Chen Jing suddenly grasped the core implication of his words.

He had developed a killing intent toward that man solely because the man had appeared beside the Red Moon Orphanage. In other words, even if the man’s actions had been directed at Lu Xin personally, they hadn’t triggered his lethal response. It was his proximity to the Red Moon Orphanage, signifying a potential threat to it, that prompted Lu Xin to decide the man’s death without hesitation.

She didn’t respond immediately, pondering it slowly instead: “You’ve only recently been recruited by us, and you’ve handled few Psychic Contamination Incidents. Moreover, each incident has been thoroughly concluded. So logically, you shouldn’t have made any enemies…”

“Looking back at your life before we recruited you… did you ever have contact with anything… unusual?”

“……” Lu Xin thought for a while. “No. I’ve always lived inside the Satellite City.”

Chen Jing’s brow furrowed slightly as if something had occurred to her, but she didn’t voice it immediately.

“The fact that he had a vehicle stashed Outside the City strongly suggests he was likely from Outside the City!” After a moment, she nodded quietly. “It’s probably another Ability User from Outside the City trying to stir up trouble.”

Just then, the Support Team returned from the distance: “We found it! The missing head!”