“You’re getting out?” The driver was startled and asked cautiously.
“Is there somewhere else you need to go? You can tell me, I’ll take you there...”
“No need,” Chen Ling said calmly. “I want to walk around this city.”
“...Yes, then I’ll have someone deliver your valuables to your room later. Please rest assured.”
The car passed through a street and finally stopped slowly at a crossroads. Chen Ling got out and watched the convoy, full of silver notes, drive away.
It was late at night, and the street was empty. Only the flickering streetlights cast dim yellow shadows on the road. Chen Ling walked with his hands in his trench coat pockets, treading on nothingness, step by step towards the narrow alley behind him.
“Damn it, they’re catching up!” Jian Changsheng turned around and saw several dark figures flash across the deserted street, gritting his teeth.
At this moment, both he and Heart of Nine had their abilities sealed, so they could only escape by relying purely on their physical capabilities. But those behind them clearly possessed divine powers, so it was almost inevitable that they would be caught if things continued this way!
“Ee ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Can’t you stop laughing?!” Jian Changsheng slapped Heart of Nine, suddenly feeling a bit of pain in his hand. *This guy... is his skin that tough?*
Heart of Nine finally stopped laughing. His eyes showed no fear, but rather increased excitement. “They’re chasing, so we run! If they catch us, we’ll just take them down with us!”
“Both our divine powers are unusable now; what are we going to use to take them down?!”
Jian Changsheng quickly scanned the surroundings out of the corner of his eye, spotting a complex network of old alleys. He grabbed Heart of Nine. “Follow me!”
The two plunged into the alley.
Five figures arrived at the alley entrance one after another. They were bodyguards from the Dinglu and Beidou conglomerates. Facing each other, they coldly sized up one another, seemingly hesitating whether to eliminate the other.
There were frequent frictions between the five major conglomerates. As divine power users cultivated for several years by their respective conglomerates, they had accumulated grudges. Some had been defeated by the opposing party, some had their companions secretly killed by the other side... Even though they were temporarily free from their conglomerates' control, they would never easily cooperate, nor would they be willing to share the bounty.
“Whoever makes the kill first, it’s theirs,” an older bodyguard finally said coldly, breaking the stalemate.
“Hmph, then let’s rely on our own abilities.”
With those words, the five immediately split into a group of two and a group of three, entering the alley from two different directions, chasing after the direction Jian Changsheng and the other had just fled.
This seemed to be an almost abandoned slum. The gaps between walls were very narrow, essentially allowing only one person to pass at a time. The paths were intricate, and most of the streetlights were not working, making it resemble a vast maze under the dark night sky.
After everyone entered this district, no one noticed a black trench coat silently standing in the void under the dark night sky.
Chen Ling stood above the district, seemingly merging with the night itself. Even if someone deliberately looked in that direction, it would be extremely difficult to discern his presence... From his perspective, however, he could clearly overlook everything happening in this district.
A faint blue light spread from his eyes. Under the activation of his secret pupil, Chen Ling locked onto Jian Changsheng and the other, who were frantically fleeing, and the bodyguards gradually closing in on them.
“...Such troublemakers.” Chen Ling sighed deeply.
He took a stack of memo pads from his pocket, then pulled out a fountain pen he carried with him, gently removing the cap...
The pen nib touched the surface of the memo pad, and ink as deep as the night silently spread along the paper fibers. With a thought, a line of small characters flowed smoothly onto the memo pad:
Dawn breaks, mist begins to rise.
“It’s getting foggy?” Jian Changsheng, who was rapidly moving through the narrow district, felt a faint mist rising before his eyes, and a look of joy appeared on his face.
Fog meant obstructed visibility. Coupled with the dim light, it would become much harder for that group to track them. It seemed his luck wasn’t so bad after all; at least heaven was still helping him.
As the two delved deeper, a tall, gray-black wall stood before them, like the outer wall of an abandoned steel factory, completely blocking their path, leaving only two narrow passages to the left and right.
“Fork in the road?” Jian Changsheng was startled, instinctively pointing to the left. “Should we go left?”
“Good! Then we go right!” Heart of Nine firmly pulled Jian Changsheng and plunged into the right narrow path without a word.
“Why???”
“I’ve figured it out, your luck is truly terrible. Just being near you brings misfortune.” Heart of Nine grumbled, “Anyway, whatever you say, doing the opposite is the right choice!”
Jian Changsheng: ...
Although helpless, Jian Changsheng seemed unable to refute; his luck had always been terrible.
Just ten seconds after the two left, a group of people arrived at this fork, namely the three from the Beidou conglomerate. They looked left and right, seemingly hesitating:
“How did these two run so fast...”
“They don’t seem to have divine powers, just ordinary people. If we catch them, it’ll be an easy take-down.”
“But none of us specialize in tracking divine powers... This time we’ll have to rely on intuition.”
“Which way should we go?”
“Let’s go right; that side just doesn’t look right to me.”
“Okay, then right it is.”
Just as the three were about to go right, a dark figure in the sky gently tore off a memo.
An old bolt fell from decayed equipment. The unbalanced equipment gradually collapsed its support, eventually falling from mid-air and hitting the ground with a crisp sound, immediately attracting the attention of the pursuers.
Bang—!
A loud noise suddenly came from the left street.
“No, over there!” One of the bodyguards immediately turned and rushed straight into the left street. The other two quickly followed.
Seeing the three being drawn in the opposite direction, Chen Ling in mid-air was incredibly calm, as if he had long anticipated all of this. He crumpled the discarded memo paper in his hand and looked in the other direction.
Between the dilapidated buildings, two figures were agilely leaping across rooftops, approaching Jian Changsheng and the other at astonishing speed...
“They’re about to be caught...” Chen Ling’s eyes narrowed slightly, and his pen nib quickly began writing on the memo pad again.
[5 seconds from now] Chapter 292: Approachers Die
[28 seconds ago] Chapter 390: Fu Wang
[38 seconds ago] Chapter 523
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