Book 3, Chapter 58: Phantom Form

Chen Chuan sat down inside the tram. There weren’t a lot of people inside it. They cast him a few glances before taking a few steps away to keep their distance.

While Chen Chuan was dressed in casual clothes, he was walking around with a weapon in broad daylight. His intimidating pressure also made it clear that he was a martial artist.

Once the door closed, the tram started moving, and the news channel started broadcasting on the display screen.

「Hello, everyone. This is Luo Qi’s Show. Yesterday, yet another martial artist-related crime happened at Tree Album Street. This makes it the twelfth case this month.

「You heard that right. There is documented evidence that there have been

only

twelve cases. The government tabulated this data, so there’s

no

mistaking it!」

A City Patrol fleet rushed to a building on the screen. The cars in their way had to avoid them in a panic. One of the cars ended up crashing into a guardrail because it wasn’t able to avoid a City Patrol car. People jutted their heads out of their cars and began cursing up a storm.

「Look. Our City Patrol is heading to

yet another

crime scene.」

Playing behind the man were videos of cars rushing down the streets. There were so many of them layered over each other that it was hard to count them. At the end, Luo Qi slammed a hand.

The focus swiftly returned to Luo Qi’s face. His mohawk looked surprisingly pleasant to the eye.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

「I suddenly remembered a fact about the rats in the sewers that I bet you’ve never heard. When they see a dead body, they treat it like a surprise feast and gather around it to devour it. Once the corpse is gone, they wait for the next one.

「Of course, I’m not talking about our hardworking and professional City Patrol here. Do you remember what our

highly respectable

Chief Bao said?」

His voice turned low and quiet. 「‘Central City is huge, and we need to pay attention to many things. The City Patrol has to head to the next crime scene the moment they finish handling one. Most of the City Patrol only get to eat two meals a day.’」

Then, in a mocking tone, he said, 「‘Come on, we’re talking about your safety here. We’re skipping out on our meals for you...’」

Chen Chuan stared at the screen. Martial artist-related crimes happened every day. The niche channels sometimes had info on more than twelve cases a day. Most of them just never made it to the official channels.

Of course, since the security in the rich areas was higher, such cases were fewer there. The people living there didn’t feel threatened, while countless conflicts happened every day at the outskirts and various dark corners of the city.

The City Patrol could only deal with some minor problems. Gang conflicts, martial artist-related crimes, and people suffering from functional dysregulation syndrome were beyond what they could handle. They were just targets shoved to the forefront as the people’s emotional punching bags.

The tram stopped at a station, and Chen Chuan looked to his side. A person had sat down next to him.

There were plenty of empty seats in the tram, and most people didn’t dare to get close to him, so it was strange that this person sat down right beside him. That wasn’t all. He had a dazed look on his face and was mumbling something under his breath.

“Chen Chuan, this person’s biofield is a mess, and he has a lot of implants as well. He might have fright disorder,” Wu Bei said in a nervous voice.

Chen Chuan cast the person a glance. He was no longer sitting with his back against the backseat, but had turned it to Chen Chuan.

As if noticing his gaze, without moving his body, the person whipped his head 180 degrees around. Clearly, he had modified bones. One of his pupils was larger than the other, but their sizes kept changing.

Chen Chuan watched him calmly. While the person’s pupils kept expanding and contracting, his gaze remained empty and numb. The muscles under his cheeks were twitching while he mumbled nonstop. Chen Chuan caught some snatches of what he was saying.

“Give it back... Give it back...”

A moment later, the person started spasming, and his face twisted horrifically. He opened his mouth wide open, as if he wanted to lunge at Chen Chuan to bite him.

Chen Chuan placed a hand gently on his shoulder and sent a wave of refined force into him, immediately rendering the man immobile. He could only open and close his mouth. A series of snaps and pops came from his joints, and he started drooling from the corners of his mouth.

Since the noise from advertisements and the news filled the tram, the person’s actions didn’t stand out at all. The scenery outside kept flitting through the windows, and the passengers were too busy to notice anything.

No one realized what had happened here.

Chen Chuan contacted the tram’s platform through his Realm Pass. At the next stop, the City Patrol and the station’s master rushed into the tram.

They were experienced in dealing with such cases. With familiar ease, the City Patrol put restraining ropes on the person, while the medical team injected medicine into him. The man immediately slumped forward like a lump of mud.

The tram master started cursing up a storm. “These damn maggots. They put all sorts of secondhand implants into their bodies and receive random surgeries. They should just rot away in the slums.”

Then, he turned to Chen Chuan. “Thank you for reporting this, Sir.”

Chen Chuan gave him a nod and watched as they brought the person out. Once the tram started moving again, he asked Wu Bei, “Did that person appear in your field of vision before sitting down beside me?”

“No. He never did,” Wu Bei answered.

Chen Chuan pondered over it. Was it a coincidence?

It seemed like it was just an accident. When he arrived at his station, he returned to the Arcane Palace without any more strange encounters.

Unbeknownst to him, a person was watching him from a corner of the building diagonally across from the Arcane Palace. He stared for a little while longer after he went inside before leaving.

The next day, Chen Chuan had an appointment for a Radiant Light session at Oceanview Hall, so he left early in the morning.

Perhaps it was due to him getting higher assessment points, but not only did the university give him an extra hour from someone who didn’t go to their Radiant Light session last month, but he also didn’t get squeezed down to the next month on the waiting list this month.

Chen Chuan decided to put the Resolution Department and Cao Guiqi’s two hours into one session in order to make his session as long as possible.

Since what had happened the day before still bothered him, he kept in contact with Wu Bei all the way to Oceanview Hall.

He didn’t run into any accidents on the way and had his connection with Wu Bei severed once he entered Oceanview Hall’s restricted area. Since no one was allowed to use Realm Passes there, no one could use domain-related technology to stalk him either.

As for whether anyone could ambush him there?

While Oceanview Hall might be located in a secluded area, it had a security team and sentry posts all along the way to the hall. If anything happened, no one would be able to escape from this open, flat area, so Chen Chuan was sure that even if someone wanted to kill him, they wouldn’t do it here.

This time, he stayed seven hours at Oceanview Hall and left the place only at 7 p.m..

The sky had turned completely dark. There were no streetlights along the path, only the flickering red lights from the sentry posts in the distance. Sometimes, though, City Patrol cars passed by and stopped to ask him a few questions.

Without any accidents, Chen Chuan reached the tram station. After waiting for a while, he boarded the tram. At this hour, it was still relatively empty. Only a few people were coming in.

Two stations later, the tram left Oceanview Hall’s territory. Chen Chuan tried to reconnect with Wu Bei, but for some reason, Wu Bei did not respond.

Just then, he noticed that the lights were flickering, and the tram seemed to have entered a dark tunnel. The scenery outside became vague and dark. All Chen Chuan could hear was the tram moving forward, while his second self started blurring out a little.

Was it a supernatural being? Or was it...

A cold glare flickered in his eyes, and he turned off his Realm Pass, but everything remained the same. This didn’t seem to be a light show created by a domain.

Even so, Chen Chuan felt that something was off. Hence, he decided to turn on his Realm Pass and let his second self absorb the damage from the domain.

In an instant, everything around him disappeared.

Was something really wrong with his Realm Pass?

But he could still feel that he was being attacked, even though it was a vague sensation.

Chen Chuan pondered over it. It didn’t seem like Wei Wusheng’s style. Someone else had to be targeting him, and it was impossible for this to be the whole thing. There had to be something else.

If this was a targeted attack against him, then Chen Chuan wanted to see what other tricks the person would pull.

With that thought in mind, he stopped his second self from absorbing the attack from the domain. Instead, he let it attack him straight on. In an instant, everything returned to what he saw earlier.

Then, in what seemed like just the blink of an eye, a person wearing a skeleton mask appeared at the end of the tram and looked at Chen Chuan with empty, soulless eyes before moving toward him at an increasingly faster pace. A few steps later, he started running.

Chen Chuan could see his second self start to blur out even worse as the person approached him, so he decided to stop him. He brought the Frost King Saber up and flung it forward. The moment the saber touched the person, the man vanished.

Everything returned to normal. The tram continued moving forward, and the scenery outside appeared outside the windows while the neon lights spilled inside the tram.

Did the person retreat on his own?

Chen Chuan cast another glance at his second self. He was still blurred out.

***

In a dark house in Deep End District, a person was sitting hunch-backed in a chair. The walls were covered in holes with long branches resembling vines stretching inside and winding themselves around his body.

The moment Chen Chuan used his saber to flick away the person with the skeleton mask, his eyes flew open, and they became bloodshot. After looking around for a bit, he said hoarsely, “It’s done.”

He stood up slowly and went in front of a stone shrine. It had a strange statue. It was a standing raccoon with a protruding mouth and bulging eyes, who was holding a stone tray in its claws. The thing looked quite bizarre.

The man picked up a small knife and cut open his chest slowly. When the cut was big enough, he reached in and dug out a clump of fragmented mutated tissue before spilling it on the stone tray. Then, he took a few steps back and began kowtowing to the statue.