"Don't overthink it. The pressing matter is to confirm whether the scope of the name 'Huang Tian' has expanded..."
Huang Tian suppressed his inner excitement and looked toward another voice, one completely unfamiliar to him:
Mild morning sunlight came through the stairwell windows, drawing several bands of light of varying lengths across the floor. The air carried a faint smell of cooking smoke, along with the scent of milk and bread.
The stairwell was especially quiet now; only the distant sound of car horns could be faintly heard.
Tap, tap~
Light footsteps sounded. Two men, one thin and one burly, walked in the stairwell.
The thin one wore a dusty gray hoodie, the hood pulled over his head and face, walking with his head down.
The burly man wore a loose courier uniform, a black cap and a mask, and carried an empty cardboard delivery box in his arms. His massive build was a silent threat, enough to make the residents who occasionally passed up and down the stairs instinctively avert their eyes.
The two reached the third floor and stopped in front of Room 306.
The thin man quickly crouched down at the door. The burly man naturally turned sideways, just blocking him from view while listening warily for any movement on the floors above and below.
"Huang Tian, hurry it up," the burly man said in a very low voice.
"Relax, I scouted it out already. At this hour, almost everyone on these three floors has gone to work."
The lean, wiry man named Huang Tian took a strange tool from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
His movements were extremely practiced and light, producing almost no clink of metal. In the quiet stairwell, only his faint, careful breathing could be heard.
The burly man held the delivery box and swayed it slightly, as if impatiently waiting for the recipient.
In just over twenty seconds, a very faint click came from the lock cylinder.
Huang Tian's mouth curved up slightly, and his right hand gently pressed the handle.
The door opened a crack, without a sound.
The two slipped inside quick as loaches. The burly man reached back and eased the door shut with hardly any noise at all.
Inside, all was quiet.
Morning light poured in through the balcony window, revealing tiny specks of dust floating in the air. The living room was fairly tidy, but it showed the haste with which the owners had left for work that morning: a throw pillow had fallen to the floor by the sofa, and the dishes on the dining table hadn't been cleared away.
"Split up and search."
"Got it."
Huang Tian headed straight for the bedroom, glanced around, and fixed his eyes on the dressing table and the nightstand. He quickly went over to search for gold and silver jewelry and small items that looked valuable.
The burly man took the living room and the study. He quickly rifled through the TV cabinet drawers and the compartments of the desk, stuffing the laptop, phones, and some cash he found into the empty delivery box he had brought.
The whole process was quiet, swift, and highly efficient.
There was only the soft sliding of drawers pulled open and pushed back, and their stifled breathing.
A few minutes later, Huang Tian came out of the bedroom, holding a few pieces of jewelry and a small stack of cash, and quickly dropped them into the box the burly man had already half filled.
He gestured to the burly man, who nodded and took one last look around to confirm that no conspicuous valuables had been missed.
Huang Tian walked to the door and first carefully pressed his ear against it, listening closely for any movement outside.
Once he was sure it was safe, he slowly turned the handle, opened the door a crack, and peered out.
The stairwell was still empty.
He immediately slipped out sideways, the burly man following close behind with the now-heavy "delivery box" in his arms.
Huang Tian pulled the handle from the outside and gently closed the door all the way. Then the two went down the stairs one after the other, perfectly composed, walked out of the building, and quickly vanished into the growing morning crowd of people and traffic.
"Bold as brass, and skilled with it. Only bad luck for the family that got robbed—they've lost a fair sum of money..."
In his apartment, Huang Tian silently considered whether to call the police and catch those two thieves, but a moment later he gave up the idea.
It was simple: from the license plates he had seen on the street in that third-person view, he realized the burglary had taken place in Su Province.
But he was in Gan Province, a thousand li away. How could he possibly know that a burglary had happened in an unremarkable residential compound in Su Province?
There was no explaining it.
"If the cameras in the stairwell and the compound aren't broken, there's a decent chance of catching those two."
Huang Tian stopped thinking about it. He picked up the bottle of mineral water on the nightstand and gulped down a few mouthfuls, rested a moment, and then continued looking along the other threads of voice:
He saw a teenage boy named Huang Tian dozing off in class, woken by the teacher, standing up blank-faced and answering at random, setting off loud laughter among his classmates.
He saw a retired old man named Huang Tian playing the erhu in a park pavilion, utterly absorbed. The tune was melodious and lilting, drawing a crowd to watch and take pictures.
He saw a girl in a white dress named Huang Tian sitting before an easel, quietly painting with a brush in hand.
He saw, on the other side of the ocean, a young man named Huang Tian leaning over a motorcycle, the bike tilting slightly to the left as it carved through a curve, the tires screeching against the road with a teeth-grating shriek, and then shooting off like an arrow released from the string, piercing the stifling night air of the city...
Men, women, old, young... every Huang Tian's life was different, each with its own brilliance.
For a whole day, apart from the necessities of eating, drinking, and the bathroom, Huang Tian used his superpower to watch other people's lives.
It gave him a dreamlike sense of unreality.
Of course, the mental drain also made him sleep extremely deeply.
The next day, when Huang Tian groggily opened his eyes, he instinctively turned on the "signal" switch—only this time what came to his ears was no longer voices calling him.
It was a buzzing, zzz-zzz-zzz.
Like an old radio on the fritz.
"Lagging?"
"Bad reception?"
He snapped fully awake at once.
This superpower concerned his future; even the smallest change drew his intense attention.
Yet the whole day long, that buzzing never went away, leaving Huang Tian somewhat gloomy.
He guessed it might be another evolution of the superpower, but he also worried that it was slowly failing. The conflicting thoughts left him restless and uneasy.
Then, at eight that night, the streetlamps outside his window lit up with a dim, warm yellow glow, and a few old men in tank tops strolled slowly along the road.
Huang Tian drew the curtain, leaned back half-sitting on the bed, and closed his eyes slightly. At last, the sound in his ears changed.
"Zzz... Thick Earth Sect... dharma lecture... you all..."
Huang Tian's expression shifted slightly, and he listened intently.
"Zzz, zzz... My name is Mo Qiu. I am the instructor of you outer-sect disciples, tasked with explaining the first chapter of the Huang Tian Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture..."
"Wait, this is also Huang Tian?"
In the pitch-black night, his bright eyes glittered with a mix of astonishment and delight.
Chapter 3