Action

At six in the evening, Zhang Yuanqing left the office area right on time, taking the elevator reserved for Heaven's Punishment members down to the lobby of the bank building. Cutting through the crowded evening rush, he slipped into the public restroom to the left of the lobby. Once inside a stall, he transformed into a blond Caucasian man, took a suit from his backpack to put on, and stepped out of the restroom with brazen composure. He then followed the bustling crowd out of the bank building. Next, he made his way to the banks of the Hudson River—often called New York's economic lifeline—and sat down on a public bench, basking in the sunset's afterglow until night descended. By now it was seven in the evening, yet the evening rush hour was still far from over. Overtime culture was rampant in the Free Confederation as well. In this nation boasting the strongest terrestrial military on Earth, the grind of corporate burnout was equally prevalent. Zhang Yuanqing had once read a joke about a European company that hired an employee from the Free Confederation. That employee arrived on time every day and stayed half an hour late. After a few days, his colleagues couldn't take it anymore and said, "Dear God, heavens above, were you sent by the devil to torment us? You're stressing us all out. Please remember—we work to live!" The employee from the Free Confederation had scoffed, even mocking his colleagues for not understanding ambition and hard work. Until one day, a Chinese employee joined the company. Three days later, the Free Confederation employee went to him and said, "Dear God, were you sent by the devil to torment us? Please remember—we work to live!" Zhang Yuanqing waited another half hour before finally leaving the riverbank. In a secluded corner of the park, he summoned the Red Dancing Shoes, which hadn't seen the light of day in quite a while. Two streaks of dusky crimson light wove across each other and hit the ground, coalescing into a brand-new pair of red dancing shoes. The moment they appeared, without a second word, one shoe flew up into the air and kicked its owner squarely in the kneecap. Then came a second kick, a third, a fourth... *Thwack, thwack, thwack.* Heavy, forceful kicks resounded through the air. [Ding! Because you have not summoned the Red Dancing Shoes for an extended period, its favorability toward you has dropped drastically. It has officially launched a pursuit against you.] A Spirit Realm notification rang by Zhang Yuanqing's ear. At the same time, he finally understood how Elder Dog had felt back then. With his current status and power, the shoes' attacks felt barely stronger than a scratch—hardly painful at all. It was just that the "pursuit" function operated as a rule-based ability; aside from taking the beating, there was no way to stop it. As the thwacks echoed on, he lost track of how much time passed before another notification chimed: [The Red Dancing Shoes' resentment has subsided. It has ceased its pursuit. Solemn reminder: do not neglect items with self-awareness.] The Red Dancing Shoes stopped its assault, backed off to the side, spun around, and pointed its heels toward him in a sullen, cold-shoulder display. Zhang Yuanqing glanced left and right. Seeing no one nearby and no surveillance cameras, he said, "Shall we dance?" The Red Dancing Shoes ignored him. "Two dances?" The tip of the left shoe twitched, barely holding back. "Three dances!" The Red Dancing Shoes broke into a brisk, cheerful stride, clacking over to him. *If I told it right now, 'Haha, dummy, I tricked you,' it would probably hunt me for the rest of my life...* Zhang Yuanqing thought it over and wisely abandoned the daring notion. Man and shoes began tap dancing opposite each other in the secluded park. Occasionally a passerby walked past, but to ordinary eyes, Zhang Yuanqing was simply performing an awkward solo dance. Unable to see the Red Dancing Shoes, most onlookers merely scrutinized him for a few seconds before walking away. A few who tried to pull out their phones to record a video were met with Zhang Yuanqing yelling "fuck" at them, lashing out with sharp, caustic insults. His foreign language skills had improved considerably lately. While he still had a thick accent, when it came to cursing, his pronunciation was impeccably authentic. By eight-thirty, the park was completely deserted. Only then did Zhang Yuanqing take out the yellow test strip and tuck it inside one of the Red Dancing Shoes. The shoe froze for a moment, seemingly sensing something. A few seconds later, it sprinted off at full tilt. Zhang Yuanqing engaged Night Roaming and quickly gave chase, only to find it dashing toward the New York Bank headquarters building—the stronghold of Heaven's Punishment. *Is Beast Haas lurking near the Heaven's Punishment branch? Or did the Red Dancing Shoes lock onto Abner Carlyle?* The fluid on the test strip had been scraped from Carlyle's body, so it was bound to carry Carlyle's genetic material. Consequently, the shoe's tracking was very likely homing in on Carlyle himself. This was precisely why Zhang Yuanqing had waited until Heaven's Punishment members finished their workday before acting—Spirit Realm walkers could see the Red Dancing Shoes. Keeping tight on the shoe's heels, Zhang Yuanqing forcibly broke off the tracking command once it came within three hundred meters of the bank headquarters. It was unmistakable now: the shoe had locked onto Carlyle. It hadn't shown the slightest intention of turning, running in a beeline straight for the bank building. An evil class could never enter that premises—not even a Dominator like Catherine could pull that off. Zhang Yuanqing recalled the Red Dancing Shoes, snapped his fingers, and used Star Escape to return to the quiet park. With no one around, he summoned the shoe once more and tried to communicate: "Other than that person just now, who else can you lock onto? There should be nucleic acids from two people on that strip." The Red Dancing Shoes gave him the silent treatment. Zhang Yuanqing pondered for a moment and sighed. "Two dances!" The shoe clacked cheerfully. And so, man and footwear resumed their awkward dance. Once the two dances were done, Zhang Yuanqing didn't trigger the tracking command immediately. Instead, he pulled the test strip out of the shoe and returned the item to his inventory. Next, he retrieved the Daluo Astrolabe, sat cross-legged in a blind spot out of reach of any park cameras, and began stargazing. The night deepened. The riverside park was entirely devoid of life, cold lamplight washing over the greenery in dead silence. Sitting cross-legged beside the foliage, Zhang Yuanqing tilted his head back, a dreamy starlight surfacing in his eyes. Ten-odd minutes later, as the stellar alignments shifted, an image projected into his mind. It was an old district packed with three-story, earthen-yellow low-rises. The streets were dilapidated and congested, marred by widespread illegal construction, exuding a palpable sense of decay and poverty. *Kings County, or the Bronx. Judging by how deteriorated the buildings are, it's more likely the Bronx...* Zhang Yuanqing opened his eyes, having formed an educated guess about the vision revealed by the stars. Such cramped, rundown urban areas in New York could only be found in those two major districts. Kings County and the Bronx were both renowned for being run-down and predominantly Black neighborhoods. When it came to crime rates, it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. These two districts had naturally become strongholds for the evil classes, teeming with gangs and crawling with lackeys and lookouts for the evil faction. Teams from Orderly organizations wouldn't dare venture deep into either district with fewer than ten people. Even when they did, they would call in substantial numbers of federal police—partly to keep the evil classes in check, and partly to rely on federal officers to gun down ordinary street thugs. Zhang Yuanqing took out the Red Dancing Shoes, slid the test strip inside, and whispered, "Find him for me. Don't go back to the previous place." The Red Dancing Shoes hesitated for a few seconds. Once it locked onto the scent, it broke into a brisk, light-footed dash, clattering away. Zhang Yuanqing slipped into Night Roaming and followed behind. The shoe phased through walls at times and climbed up surfaces at others, maintaining a strict straight line at blinding speed. In just half an hour, it cut from Manhattan across Queens and arrived in the Bronx. The deeper they went, the older the buildings became. Half a century ago, the Bronx had been a residential area for local New York natives. Later, as the architecture deteriorated and fell into disrepair, local white residents gradually moved away—common folk migrated to Queens while the wealthy relocated to Manhattan—leaving the area to be gradually populated by Black communities. Another ten-odd minutes later, Zhang Yuanqing reached the neighborhood he had seen during his stargazing. He promptly canceled the tracking command, morphed into a Black man with broad pecs and tight glutes, and danced awkwardly with the Red Dancing Shoes in an alleyway to pay the toll. He couldn't let the shoe keep tracking. Its pursuit led straight to the target's face; left unchecked, it would stomp right onto Beast Haas's mug. Beast Haas himself was nothing to fear, but there was no telling if a Dominator was present in this area. While Zhang Yuanqing wasn't afraid of Dominators either, if one showed up, he wouldn't be able to handle the matter under his identity as Jumang. No matter how strong Jumang was, he shouldn't be able to defeat a Dominator. Besides, Zhang Yuanqing could only handle early-to-mid Level 7 Dominators. If he ran into a late Level 7 or even a Level 8 Dominator, he would be forced to take it lying down. Once the dance concluded, Zhang Yuanqing put away the Red Dancing Shoes and strolled openly through the quiet, late-night streets. Public security was dreadful here, and even the locals feared their own kind. Once darkness fell, hardly any pedestrians were visible aside from speeding cars on the road. Even when someone did appear, it was usually prostitutes protected by local gangs, scouting for clients in the dead of night. Aside from them, the streets were mostly populated by vagrants and drunks—the sort of crowd even the gangs looked down upon. The district was neither overwhelmingly huge nor particularly small. Finding Beast Haas here would normally be quite difficult, but Zhang Yuanqing was a Dream Master; he could hunt down Beast Haas through dreams. If Beast Haas was hiding here, the place was very likely a stronghold of the Biological Alchemy Society. And wherever there was a stronghold, there would certainly be Transcendent stage Toxic Chemists. All he needed was to find those Toxic Chemists, and he would discover Beast Haas's whereabouts. If a full sweep yielded no trace of Beast Haas, it would mean this wasn't a stronghold after all. Without a stronghold, there was no need to worry about Dominators, and he could simply bring out the Red Dancing Shoes to track him directly to his face. Zhang Yuanqing's pupils turned transparent as bizarre, kaleidoscopic dreams surfaced across his vision. Entering these dreams, he took control of the slumbering minds and interrogated them about Beast Haas's whereabouts. Before long, Zhang Yuanqing secured a lead. From the dream of a Black Toxic Chemist, he extracted Beast Haas's address and uncovered the layout of the area: it truly was a Biological Alchemy Society stronghold. However, there was no Dominator stationed here; it was a medium-sized outpost overseen by six Saints. Beast Haas liked coming here to indulge himself because the Biological Alchemy Society operated a brothel of immense scale here, employing over sixty women in the sex trade. Beast Haas was a man driven by lust. Robust and relentlessly voracious, one or two women could never satisfy him. He always gathered five or more women to romp together in a large room. Having pinpointed his target's location, Zhang Yuanqing withdrew from the dream world back into reality. Entering Night Roaming, he quietly stalked toward a building two hundred meters away. It was a two-story building with a small courtyard. Under a shaded canopy in the yard, three Black men sat around a circular table drinking. Both the first and second floors were brightly lit. In two bedrooms on the ground floor, three men and three women were fooling around in each—some lying on beds, some kneeling on the floor, some bent over tables—with diligent Black men standing behind each woman. Zhang Yuanqing didn't rush inside. Instead, he leaped onto the roof of the adjacent building and focused his attention on the second floor. The curtains of the second-floor master bedroom were half-drawn, revealing only a corner of the bed. Upon the crisp white sheets lay a tangle of naked, exhausted bodies, both Black and white. The bed was trembling faintly as someone engaged in vigorous activity, though the curtain blocked his view. *Six Saints are nearby. Hmm, my understanding of a Toxic Chemist's abilities is limited to theoretical knowledge from files—I've never faced one firsthand. I'm also in the dark about Beast Haas's items and trump cards. To be safe, I should have Guan Ya and the others come over to deal with the underlings...* Zhang Yuanqing had full confidence in himself, but he refused to be arrogant. Even a lion uses its full strength to catch a rabbit; if he had companions to coordinate with, why not use them? He pulled out his phone, sent his coordinates to the Saints other than Yuan Ting, and laid out his hunting plan along with the enemy's specifics. Then he lowered his phone and waited quietly. Throughout the wait, the action in the bedroom never ceased. The shapely women were soon overwhelmed by the relentless pounding, prompting the men in the yard to escort a second batch of women upstairs. The first batch of women, guided by members of the Biological Alchemy Society, limped away while supporting one another. Just as the second batch was being worn down to complete exhaustion, Zhang Yuanqing's phone vibrated with a message from Guan Ya: "We are one kilometer out, ready to support at any moment." Having grown thoroughly impatient, Zhang Yuanqing typed his reply: "Move!" He pocketed his phone, raised his hand, and snapped his fingers with a crisp *crack*, dissolving into starlight. The very next second, brilliant starlight flared within the bedroom behind the half-drawn curtains.