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June first, Children's Day. The border defense station broadcast an announcement. [May 12, 3242. In the Lincheng Fate Bone theft case — the Fate Bone being a nationally first-class, vitally important controlled item — investigation confirmed that Comrade Lü Jinshan, station chief of the Ant Ridge border defense station, committed serious dereliction of duty in this case. The following notice is hereby issued...] In his room, Lu Zhao was drinking Lang Tequ and couldn't help laughing out loud. He hadn't managed to get the man formally disciplined and suspended, but a criticism notice like this would be written into his personal file all the same, and Lü Jinshan's future promotions would be stalled because of it. It still counted as winning a round back. Lu Zhao took out the detector and tested the results of these five days. [Life Force: 36.2] He tore a sheet of paper, folded it into a plane, and tossed it out the window. The paper plane caught the wind and rose. Five hundred meters. One thousand meters. One thousand fifty meters — and it vanished beyond the reach of Lu Zhao's senses. "Fifty meters more." Then he tried the strength of his telekinesis. He put rice in a small pouch, adding a little at a time until he reached his limit, then set it on an electronic scale: 41.5 grams. A full gram and a half more! Divine powers of the same kind carried different tendencies. Lu Zhao's was a control-type specialization, its precision with inanimate objects fine enough to work at the millimeter scale. He couldn't casually heft objects weighing over a hundred jin, but he could borrow firearms to unleash enormous lethality, so for him even a single gram's improvement was enormous. Take Federation 12.7mm anti-materiel ammunition: the bullet weighed 46 grams. Another 4.5 grams, and he would be able to handle an anti-materiel sniper rifle — a qualitative leap in his fighting power. Not to mention he had the cultivation method the old Taoist had given him; he didn't have to grind his divine power's growth forward with raw life force the way everyone else did. This plainly visible strengthening filled Lu Zhao with a sense of fullness he had never known before. ----- As he walked down the road, there was a touch more smile on Lu Zhao's face; he was no longer the cold-faced oddball of the past. The subtle change was like a pebble dropped into still water. Colleagues who had been no more than nodding acquaintances began raising a hand to greet him first. A few young women clerks he didn't know, catching the warmth showing at his brow and in his eyes, screwed up their courage to come over smiling and trade a few words with him. Atmosphere works on people in ways they barely notice. Back when Lu Zhao had been most popular, it was around the time he broke into the top thirty of his year. Back then, Lu Zhao had still loved to laugh. Then came insomnia from overdeveloping his psychic power, which indirectly gave him a pair of eyes with a "dead man's" air about them — as if he looked on everyone with aggression. When he reached the parking lot, a short-haired woman was standing in front of his beat-up police pickup. Liu Qiang was chatting with her, his face as red as a monkey's backside. Lu Zhao walked over. The two stopped talking, and the short-haired woman turned around. She wore a black uniform, her figure curved in all the right places; sculpted features paired with that short hair lent her an added edge of severity. Someone from the special investigation team. The moment Lin Zhiyan saw Lu Zhao in person, she pulled her gaze off Liu Qiang at once and fixed it on that handsome face. Neither servile nor overbearing, Lu Zhao saluted. "Hello, ma'am." "Lin Zhiyan." She held out her hand, the corners of her mouth lifting into a tiny arc, the chin she tilted up without thinking betraying a touch of pride. "A class-of-'36 graduate of Dijing University's psychic discipline. I wonder if Senior Lu has ever heard of me?" "Dijing University has a great many people. I couldn't possibly remember every one of them." Lu Zhao reached out and gave her hand a light shake — a touch, and they parted. Fine, smooth skin; a dry palm. June in Nanhai was scorching, which meant she either habitually wiped her hands down or used some means to suppress her sweating. A germaphobe, most likely. A crowd of useless details flashed through Lu Zhao's mind. It was his unconscious habit. Lin Zhiyan helped him remember: "In year '39, Senior, you substituted for classes as one of the university's outstanding students. I was one of the ones sitting in the audience. Or on the academic ranking boards — you should have heard at least a little of me." She said "heard a little," but she put heavy weight on the words. Lu Zhao could hear it. Flattering her now, pretending he did know her, might have been the smarter move. "I substituted for a lot of classes. I honestly can't recall." The trouble was, this woman was investigating him to begin with — why invite more contact than necessary? "..." The smile at the corners of Lin Zhiyan's mouth stiffened for an instant. Such utter forgetting, and honesty without one shred of currying favor, left her speechless on the spot. For the first time in her life, Lin Zhiyan ran into an awkward silence. From childhood on, people had always racked their brains to ingratiate themselves with her. Luckily she was no spoiled rich kid. She didn't blow up over it and quickly rearranged her expression: "Senior, you've been here four years. Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?" Lu Zhao answered, "The mountains are still mountains, the woods are still woods. Nothing amiss." "But for someone with your qualifications to stay in a border defense station this small — that's very abnormal indeed." Lin Zhiyan's clear eyes gleamed with light; even Liu Qiang off to the side stood staring, dumbstruck. A psychic charm. Lu Zhao felt nothing at all. As a psychic superhuman himself, he had his resistance. This junior schoolmate, whom he had never met, must have developed her psychic power inward — skilled in psychic attack and bewitchment, and in certain memory-searching abilities besides. He said, "The country needed me. So here I am." Lin Zhiyan tilted her head slightly, a trace of startlement in it. Then, knowing that psychic bewitchment and schmoozing were getting her nowhere, she came straight to the point: "Senior, you killed the Greenwood bandits. Did you find nothing else?" "That item is of great importance. It must not be lost. If you found it, Senior, I can put in for a commendation on your behalf with my superiors." Lu Zhao said, "You're welcome to read my reports." "..." Lin Zhiyan had nothing to say. She could only turn and go. Liu Qiang kept staring until Lin Zhiyan had vanished completely. Lu Zhao booted him in the rear. "Never seen a woman before? Hurry up and get in." "Heh heh heh — never one that pretty. Brother Lu, graduating from Dijing University really is different. Even your classmates are big shots." Liu Qiang climbed into the driver's seat, and as the truck pulled away from the border defense station he was still muttering, "If only I could land a wife like that. Too bad I haven't got Brother Lu's face." Lu Zhao said, "Even with the face it wouldn't help you. Families like that go by matched standing. If one of them comes knocking, it's only because she wants to play with you." Back at school he had heard, more than once, about the fates of Chen Qian's boyfriends. Maybe men didn't much care about their chastity, but whatever games an ordinary man could imagine, the upper crust had long since tired of — they played far wilder than the common run of people. Good looks were a scarce resource, but they could never become the capital that turned a man's fortunes around. As he drove out of the border defense station, Lu Zhao turned it over in his mind, replaying Lin Zhiyan's reactions from moments ago. The special investigation team suspected him, just as he had expected — but with no evidence, there was nothing they could do to him. If he hadn't been a border police officer, they could easily have taken him in for questioning first. And even if they dared try it, Zhang Like would never agree. As for rich rewards, Lu Zhao hadn't given them a moment's thought. What he had gained from the old Taoist was nothing power and influence could supply — while Lu Zhao himself now had the capital to gain power and influence. So long as his life-force development ran deep enough, power would gather to him on its own. The beat-up police pickup rolled along the national highway. A van passed going the other way; one glance at its tires told Lu Zhao it was overloaded. He wasn't a traffic cop, so he kept his nose out of it.