After the sixth day of the new year, Chen Chuan and Gao Ming headed to the firm's office on Guangmo Street in the southern part of the city and signed an agreement with Ren Shu and his partners.
Seeing that he did not want an equity stake as a partner and was only signing a straightforward temporary cooperation agreement, Ren Shu and the others were surprised and a little worried. Under this arrangement, Chen Chuan could walk away at any time, which made them even more cautious in their phrasing and demeanor.
After signing the contract, Chen Chuan joined them for a meal. Over the dinner table, it took Gao Ming very little effort to piece together the background of every single person present.
Meanwhile, Ren Shu and his colleagues were thoroughly impressed by Chen Chuan.
They had little grasp of business and could not gauge martial prowess, but Chen Chuan was striking in appearance, with spirited eyes and an indefinable air of quiet resolve. His speech was calm, measured, and well-reasoned. Combined with what they had heard of his past exploits, he quickly won the respect and admiration of the young people around the table.
When the meal drew to a close and they parted ways with Ren Shu and the others, Gao Ming walked out beside him and remarked, "Cousin, those rich kids come from backgrounds that are anything but simple."
"Anyone who can put up that much capital to start a commission firm isn't going to come from ordinary means," Chen Chuan replied. "For now, we're strictly partners in cooperation."
Gao Ming smiled. "Cousin, I get what you mean. I won't overstep. It just reminds me of something a senior in the industry once said: talk feelings with the wealthy, and talk profit with the poor. It might not be absolute, but it's not far from the truth."
"Everyone has their pursuits," Chen Chuan said.
"Right, pursuits." Gao Ming looked toward the distance, where a clear river flowed beneath a bridge. "It drives everyone forward in one direction, whether willingly or not."
Chen Chuan followed his gaze. Beneath the sunlight, the water sparkled with rippling light, bright and dazzling. After watching for a moment, he said, "Let's go."
Gao Ming nodded, drove him all the way back to the constabulary residential compound, and bade him farewell outside.
"Cousin, I need to head back to the office. I'll dig up that information as quickly as I can. Just sit tight and wait for word from me—it shouldn't take more than a few days."
"It's still the holiday season," Chen Chuan said. "Don't rush yourself too hard, Gao Ming."
Gao Ming grinned. "Since I took on the job, there's no such thing as time off until the goal is met. I'm off. I'll give you a call later, Cousin." Waving a hand, he climbed into the car, gave a parting nod, and drove away.
Chen Chuan watched the car depart before walking back toward the house. But as he stepped into the courtyard, he paused. He realized that the blurring effect that had clung to the Second Self since the cinema urban legend had quietly vanished.
He turned the thought over in his mind. It had been about ten days. That urban legend was far more formidable than the Child in the Well, yet the aftereffects had lasted a shorter time. This confirmed his earlier theory: as the time he could sustain merging with the Second Self grew, his capacity to endure greater and more severe harm naturally increased.
Over the next few days, he continued to enjoy his break. He met up with old classmates he hadn't seen in ages, joined a few close friends at Ding Jiao's place to ride motorcycles, went hiking and skiing at Xiaoqing Mountain in the southwest part of the city, chipped ice to fish on the frozen lake, and went to see a few movies.
Even though he had already watched those films back at Lanxiang Cinema, watching them with classmates was an incomparably better experience than sitting through them with an urban legend.
On the tenth day, Chen Chuan accompanied his aunt and uncle's family to the Combat Arena at Wuyi College to watch the tournament's final semifinals and championship bout.
The contest was remarkably thrilling. The two finalists were evenly matched, trading blows back and forth. Until the very end, no one in the audience could tell who would emerge victorious.
In Chen Chuan's eyes, based purely on the force and technique with which they wielded their mutated tissue, the two Class B students were already on par with Class A students of the same year.
However, arena matches carried an element of entertainment and spectacle. Neither side pressed for fatal blows, and they tacitly drew out the fight. When one fighter showed off a flashy, theatrical maneuver, the other obligingly allowed them to complete it. This stoked the crowd's excitement even further, and that was precisely what people came to see.
After leaving the arena, the family remained swept up in the lingering excitement. His little cousin Nian Mo mimicked the moves from earlier, leaping and bounding ahead, brandishing a branch and lashing at the air while yelling at the top of his lungs.
Yu Wan walked slowly while carrying Nian Lu. "Chan'er," she asked, "those two students in the finals looked pretty impressive. How would they measure up against you?"
Chen Chuan smiled and offered a succinct reply: "I'd win."
Class B students were not trained to kill opponents, and some of their techniques were completely useless in real combat. If he stepped onto an arena stage, he might need a brief adjustment period to account for the rules; but in an actual fight to the death, even bare-handed, neither of them stood a chance.
Still, with targeted training, Class B students could certainly muster formidable combat power if necessary. After all, those possessing mutated tissue were vastly stronger than ordinary fighters—the two could hardly be mentioned in the same breath.
After returning home, another five days flew by, and the fifteenth of the first lunar month had already passed. While traces of the festive atmosphere lingered, the holiday spirit was gradually fading.
These past days had offered rare respite, but school would resume in just half a month, marking a fresh beginning. Chen Chuan reined in his distractions and focused on getting himself back into peak condition.
That day, he was practicing his boxing in the courtyard. Following the method He Xiaoxing had taught him, he was now completely on track, his mutated tissue steadily infiltrating and growing within his joints, sinews, and muscles.
According to the notes, reaching the absolute limit of his First Limit would require roughly three more months of uninterrupted, steady growth.
Yet he knew that this was only the limit of his body combined with the Second Self—it was not his true personal threshold. He still needed more training and stimuli to drive the growth of his mutated tissue.
As he finished a sequence of forms taught by He Xiaoxing, footsteps sounded outside the courtyard. A boy of twelve or thirteen poked his head in and said, "Brother Xiaochuan, someone outside is looking for you."
Chen Chuan drew in his breath, finished the stance, and thanked the boy. Stepping out to the mouth of the alley, he saw an off-road vehicle parked there. Ren Shu was standing beside it, rubbing his hands together in the cold.
"What brings you here, Mr. Ren?" Chen Chuan asked.
Seeing him, Ren Shu looked somewhat embarrassed. "Mr. Chen, we really didn't want to disturb you during the holiday, but..."
Chen Chuan said seriously, "Mr. Ren, since I signed the agreement, I'll uphold my duties. Coming to find me at a time like this means you must have a commission. Let's get straight to business."
"Right, right." Ren Shu glanced to both sides and lowered his voice. "We just received a commission from the Municipal Administration related to that Flying Head Cult we discussed before. They want us to handle it as soon as possible."
Chen Chuan's gaze sharpened. "In the urban district?"
Meeting that gaze, Ren Shu felt an involuntary tightness in his chest. He nodded vigorously. "Yes. It's not within the city proper, but it's not far. Considering there might be a flying head urban legend involved, we came specifically to ask for your help, Mr. Chen."
"Wait here a moment. Let me grab my things," Chen Chuan said.
He returned inside, retrieved the Xuejun Saber, strapped on the Wuji pistol, and quickly came back out. "Mr. Ren, please lead the way. We can talk details in the car."
Ren Shu hurriedly agreed and rushed to open the door for him. Once Chen Chuan was inside, Ren Shu took the front passenger seat and told the driver, "Wujia Town, north of the city."
*North of the city again?* Chen Chuan thought to himself.
In truth, it made perfect sense. The urban center was densely populated; while it offered places to hide, any disturbance would be noticed immediately, prompting the constabulary to deploy at a moment's notice. The northern outskirts, on the other hand, covered a vast area, populated by insular locals and riddled with gangs, making it fertile ground for trouble.
Moreover, the northern outskirts bordered the mountains to the north. If anything went wrong, one could slip straight into the wilderness, where no number of pursuers could easily track them down.
Ren Shu rummaged through his bag, produced a commission order, and carefully turned around to hand it to Chen Chuan in the back seat. "Word came in that a flying head was spotted at the ancestral hall in Wujia Town. A large number of townsfolk were making offerings at the time, and many of them fell under its influence on the spot. Although the town has a security squad, only a handful of lucid people managed to escape.
"Quite a few commissioners from other firms have already rushed over, but none of them are confident they can eliminate the flying head. Since the information we filed indicated we had a specialist for handling urban legends, the Municipal Administration assigned the task to us."
Chen Chuan took the document, skimmed through it, and gained a general grasp of the situation.
He had already learned from Cheng Zitong that a flying head urban legend could be resolved through physical force. The real difficulty lay in the fact that it could fly at extraordinary speeds, and once agitated, it exerted an overwhelming psychological influence on human sanity. Consequently, any confrontation within its range of effect could not be prolonged, lest one succumb to madness.
Cheng Zitong had warned him that if he found himself in that situation, he had to maintain his breathing technique, regulate the flow of his qi and blood, keep his emotions in check, and withdraw immediately if things went south to rethink his approach or ingest medicines that calm the mind and focus the spirit.
Chen Chuan, however, had no need for such precautions. The Second Self could absorb external influence and damage, rendering ongoing psychological effects largely harmless to him. In that regard, he was uniquely suited to counter certain urban legends.
Roughly half an hour later, the vehicle arrived at a small town on the city outskirts. Most of the buildings here were low-slung brick-and-tile houses, their roofs still blanketed in unthawed snow, though several structures clearly converted from watch-forts and warehouses left over from the Great Expansion stood out conspicuously.
Because of its proximity to Yangzhi City, the town's roads were paved relatively flat and broad, flanked by streetlamps. Peering into the streets, one could see overturned tricycles, goods scattered across the ground, and many storefronts shuttered tight.
Just outside the entrance to the town, about twenty vehicles were parked, likely belonging to commission firms that had arrived ahead of them. A crowd of townsfolk stood gathered around them, talking anxiously.
Farther off, small clusters of onlookers who had clearly come from other areas to watch the spectacle stood at a distance, pointing and gesturing toward the town. They truly had nerve.
As their car pulled up to the intersection, a burly middle-aged man broke away from the townsfolk and ran over. "Is that Mr. Ren? Has your firm's specialist arrived?"
Ren Shu rolled down the window, only to be struck by a blast of chilly air that provoked a brief cough. "He's here! He's here!"
The middle-aged man beamed with relief. "Thank heavens you're finally here!"
The commissioners from the other firms perked up as well, stubbing out their cigarettes one after another. With that flying head lurking in the town, none of them had dared make a move for fear of losing their minds like the villagers. Having an expert take charge was a welcome relief.
Once the car came to a complete halt, the door opened, and Chen Chuan stepped out carrying the Xuejun Saber. The middle-aged man blinked, momentarily taken aback by how young Chen Chuan looked. But the moment his eyes took in the long saber and met Chen Chuan's calm, steady gaze, his heart skipped a beat.
He quickly stepped forward to shake Chen Chuan's hand. "I'm Wu Dajin, captain of the town security squad. You must be Commissioner Chen. A pleasure, an absolute pleasure."
The members of the other commission firms looked on with grave respect. For someone so young to walk around armed, he was clearly no ordinary figure—and more importantly, he was an expert officially recognized by the Municipal Administration as capable of handling urban legends. That alone commanded their utmost regard.
Chen Chuan shook Wu Dajin's hand, glanced back at the assembled crowd, and said, "Captain Wu, hello. What is the current situation?"
Chapter 108