For Jing Li to survive in Center City and build up a team, he needed brains in addition to connections. Wearing a protective suit like this, and you call him a martial arts academy student?
That fucking protective suit was something only corporate executives and government division chiefs could wear!
The intelligence had to be wrong.
There was definitely a skilled resonator backing him.
Now matters had become complicated. Cold sweat broke out down his back as his mind raced, desperately trying to figure out who was targeting him. Was it because of that shipment? Or had he left loose ends on some task an influential figure entrusted to him?
He didn't entertain any thoughts of reconciliation. The man had fought his way right to his front door—would he let Jing Li off? Don't joke. Once things had escalated to this point, even if Jing Li was willing to back down, the other side would never believe he would let the matter rest afterward. They had to see this through to the bitter end!
Either he was killed, or he killed them!
These thoughts flashed through his mind in a split second. His expression twisted into a savage scowl, and he barked out a venomous command: "Find a way to take him down!"
At his command, these team elites formed up into squad formations. The front row immediately raised their defensive shields and drew steel hammers and rods from their sides, while those behind brought out telescoping pole-forks. They closed in on Chen Chuan from three directions.
Meanwhile, Jing Li immediately snapped at the resonator beside him, "Find out his real identity!"
Knowing he had made a mistake earlier, that resonator silently began searching, but every time he pulled up data, it never matched up.
He knew the resonator backing his opponent was causing trouble. There wasn't much technical sophistication to it—just a massive bank of similar spoof data prepared in advance to substitute in—yet under the present circumstances, it worked remarkably well. Unless a non-active conscious entity aided his analysis, he was stuck. Cursing under his breath, he could only keep digging.
After waiting a moment, Jing Li grew impatient. He immediately used his boundary credential to contact other people and soon reached a resonator he frequently collaborated with in the past.
Once connected, red light flickered in his eyes as he said, "Do you see the man in front of me? Crash his boundary credential and his implants!"
Seeing these men encircle him, Chen Chuan lifted the Xuejun Saber slightly and stepped toward them. As he moved, he overlapped with his Second Self, and in an instant, everything around him slowed to a crawl.
Even with the upper hand, his martial artist's instinct kept him from charging head-on. Instead, he slipped past the forward shields and chose to flank and breach from the side.
Backed by blinding speed, a flash of blade light sliced two men apart. But when his third strike came down—clang!—a shield-bearer angled in just in time to block the blow.
And he was not the only one. In a mere split second, all the remaining team members shed their earlier sluggishness and were able to keep pace with Chen Chuan's movements.
This was because, once Chen Chuan vanished from their sight, intense neural stimulation prompted their internal implants to automatically inject specialized stimulants into their bodies, granting them an explosive surge in physical attributes for a short time.
These military-grade stimulants and implants were practically standard equipment for any elite squad nowadays. Otherwise, an exorbitantly funded team being wiped out in a single exchange against a third limit fighter would be a complete joke.
Jing Li's vision blurred, and the movements of everyone in the open space turned into indistinct smears, clearly exceeding what his eyes could track.
A chill of terror gripped his heart.
This was a fucking third limit fighter!
Every third limit fighter had to be registered with the Center City Public Security Department, and even their travel required reporting. That held true both domestically and internationally, because once such people were fully equipped, their destructive power was immense enough to pose a lethal threat to anyone in high office.
He snarled at the resonator beside him, "Haven't you found his identity yet?!"
"Just a little longer..."
The resonator felt utterly helpless. His opponent on the other side was cunning; leveraging their prior preparation, the rival refused to duel him on skill and focused purely on buying time. Although he was closing in bit by bit, it would clearly take a significant amount of time.
At that moment, the voice of the other resonator came through Jing Li's ear: "He doesn't have implants. I can't jam them."
"What about his boundary credential?"
"His boundary credential is only receiving a single channel. Every other function is turned off."
Jing Li cursed. Thinking it was unsafe outside, he gestured for the resonator to get back into the car with him.
Chen Chuan wasn't particularly surprised when these people matched his speed in the blink of an eye. He had encountered this before; people in Yangzhi City could get their hands on such gear, and doing so in Center City was even easier.
The difference was that, compared to those he had faced in the past, each man before him moved with remarkable coordination, and their level of tacit teamwork was astounding.
The moment the shield deflected his strike, a pole-fork thrust at him from behind it, while another man wielding a steel rod leveled a firearm at his head. Not a single person hesitated in the slightest over the grim fate of their fallen comrades.
Chen Chuan also noticed that not only this squad, but the two squads behind them had also rapidly adjusted their formation, sweeping in to encircle him.
Evidently, this team placed great emphasis on unit cohesion, and their combat capability was genuinely formidable. Yet he wasn't without solutions. Since their firearms posed no threat to him, the lack of ranged danger meant he had no need to rush forward. He could simply keep harassing them or wait out the duration of the drugs.
Still, he had no intention of just waiting. Taking a step back, without moving his arm, he gave a slight flick of his wrist. The blade parried outward, sweeping the thrusting pole-fork aside.
Though the man managed to halt the fork in time and tried to disarm him, Chen Chuan flicked his free hand. Several pebbles flew out, striking the heads of several men opposite him. Even through protective helmets, the tremendous kinetic force was no different from a savage blow from a sledgehammer.
Before they could regain their senses, a tumbling flash of blade light tore into their ranks. As his figure swept through the squad, those previously whole men dissolved into scattering severed limbs.
To the unknown resonator observing the battle, these men had appeared capable of confronting Chen Chuan just a moment earlier, only to be hacked to pieces in the blink of an eye. The transition from life to death was so abrupt that it created a jarring sense of cognitive dissonance. After freezing for a brief moment, he washed his hands of the affair and quietly withdrew without a word.
Having dismembered one squad, Chen Chuan did not halt. Turning, he met the remaining two squads. Once he had found the method to counter them, the rest was merely repeating what he had just done.
Sitting in the car, watching the elite team he had painstakingly assembled and poured a fortune into get wiped out so effortlessly by Chen Chuan, Jing Li trembled all over. Beyond shock and fury, his heart was filled with terror.
Without waiting for the final outcome, he urged the driver in front, "Drive! Drive..."
By this time, Chen Chuan had dealt with every threat in the yard. Sweeping his gaze over and seeing the car start up, he sprinted forward and kicked the rear bumper, sending the entire vehicle drifting into a violent spin.
Bounding after it, he planted a kick right into the center of the undercarriage. The entire car flipped into the air, landed, rolled twice across the asphalt, and came to a stop upside down in the middle of the street.
The world spun around Jing Li. Pain wracked his entire body, and blood trickled down his forehead. Sensing the external trauma, his implants promptly injected stimulants to keep him conscious and functional.
In his inverted field of view, he saw a pair of feet walking unhurriedly toward him. Fumbling frantically, he released his seatbelt and let himself drop, then scrambled toward the other side, felt around to pop the door, and crawled out. As for the resonator in the back seat, he couldn't care less about him.
Once outside, before Chen Chuan reached him, he crawled away while babbling in panic, "Stay back! Don't come any closer! I have a Class C defense agreement with the Urban Security Defense Department! They're already on their way! If you kill me, they'll arrest you!"
Wu Bei's voice sounded in Chen Chuan's ear: "Little Brother Chen, he's telling the truth. I just intercepted the signal he sent. He has a Class C agreement with City Security. Once an active request is made, an urban defense team deploys quickly. In fact, they've already dispatched, and they'll be on-site within ten minutes."
He swallowed hard. "Little Brother Chen, the urban defense teams are specifically tasked with handling violent incidents in Center City. Their combat capability is extremely formidable..."
Unmoved, Chen Chuan walked past the front of the car. Seeing Jing Li scramble up from the ground and attempt to run, he drew his Wuji pistol and fired several consecutive shots at his spine and head. Jing Li clearly wore a protective suit, and the bullets failed to penetrate, while the shots to his head were stopped by a hardened skull implant, leaving him miraculously unharmed.
His expression impassive, Chen Chuan threw a pebble. With a sharp crack, the back of Jing Li's head was struck as if by a sledgehammer, sending him crashing to the ground again, convulsing.
Chen Chuan stepped up, seized one of Jing Li's legs, dragged him back a few paces, then scooped up his entire body and slammed him against the car.
With a heavy thud, the undercarriage caved in, embedding Jing Li into the metal. Fragments of internal organs and implant tissue spilled from the corners of his mouth alongside blood, and the red light flickering in his eyes died out.
Several kilometers away, a column of pitch-black armored vehicles was speeding down the road. At that moment, they received a prompt from the non-active conscious entity:
"Class C security service client detected deceased. Squad, please determine subsequent actions at your own discretion."
The security captain first scanned Chen Chuan's identity through a nearby boundary point. This time, Wu Bei did not substitute it with any dummy identities, so Chen Chuan's updated information was immediately transmitted to his boundary credential.
First, they saw Chen Chuan's status as a student of Wuyi Academy. Next came the credentials he held: "Weapons license, armor license, unlimited defense license..."
Finally, his background record...
Upon scanning, however, a flashing red notice popped up, indicating it involved state secrets of Great Shun and notifying him that he lacked the clearance to view it...
Seeing this, the security captain practicedly purged the data, muted the communications channel, and issued a retreat order.
Less than half a minute after Jing Li's death, this security team made a U-turn midway and pulled back without hesitation.
After all, a Class C security agreement was only responsible for the client's life. Now that the man was dead, they naturally had no obligation to fulfill.
And after the service concluded, the company dispatched a message to the deceased Jing Li:
"If the client has any objections to the current service, we suggest upgrading your security agreement or purchasing the following packages... City Security Company: providing you with the most secure defense services."
Chapter 244