Sam stared blankly at Qi Li, who had burst in out of nowhere.
Seeing Qi Li greeting him, he looked left and right, and only after confirming the man was indeed speaking to him did he stammer in confusion, "Do I... know you?"
Sam might have been spaced out, but the elderly white woman huddled next to him—who looked to be in her seventies or eighties and seemed to get along with Sam like grandmother and grandson—wasn't stupid in the slightest. In fact, her reflexes were astonishingly quick.
Without a second thought, she whipped a shotgun out from under the couch cushions, leveled the barrel at Qi Li with vigor that belied her years, and spewed a barrage of curses: "You ill-mannered, evil, goddamn yellow..."
Qi Li replied flatly, "I'd suggest you keep those last few words to yourself. Stick to your popular 'feisty grandma' persona. Otherwise, I'm genuinely worried I might cross my line again."
With that, he appeared before the old woman in an instant. His fingers effortlessly clamped onto the shotgun's barrel. With a light twist, the straight metal tube was wrung into a pretzel.
Before the stunned woman could utter a sound, he hoisted her, gun and all, and tossed her steadily onto a sofa not far away.
"Grandma!!"
Seeing this, Sam finally snapped out of his stupor. Rage flared in his eyes. Clenching his fist, he threw a devastating punch at Qi Li with a sonic crack that tore through the air.
*Crack!*
The floorboards beneath Qi Li's feet spiderwebbed outward, yet his left hand firmly clamped Sam's incoming fist.
He gave a faint smile. "Quite a punch."
Sam froze, looking at the sight in utter disbelief.
Someone had actually caught his punch.
"By the way," Qi Li asked with mild curiosity, "Sam, your grandma died a long time ago. How'd you end up with another one?"
Sam stared fixedly at his trapped fist, muttering reflexively, "She's my new grandma."
Qi Li nodded. "Good. At least your condition hasn't gotten any worse."
He had been genuinely concerned Sam was calling every person he met "grandma"—if so, that wouldn't just be mental illness, it'd call for a serious beatdown.
Before Sam could speak again, Qi Li raised his right leg and delivered a direct front kick square to Sam's chest.
*Boom!*
A visible shockwave blasted out where Sam had been standing.
In the blink of an eye, he rocketed backward like a missile, crashing clean through the cabin wall and "plowing" a trench over a hundred meters long across the field outside. He plunged headfirst into the forest beyond, snapping several large trees in succession before his body finally came to a halt.
A long dragon of billowing dust and smoke rose lazily along his trajectory.
Qi Li cast a final glance at the elderly woman on the sofa, who had been knocked unconscious by the shockwave.
Perhaps her meeting with Sam had been as coincidental yet fated as something out of a movie.
Perhaps the two could have lived peacefully as grandmother and grandson, finding redemption in each other.
And perhaps it could have ended like a feel-good film with a happy conclusion.
But what did any of that have to do with him?
Redemption or not, who gave a damn?
He wasn't the protagonist of their story.
Completing his own mission was top priority.
Qi Li strode out of the cabin.
Elsewhere.
Clutching his chest in agony, Sam pushed himself up from the ground.
He glanced at the sky and suddenly saw the blue heavens transform into vibrant cartoon colors. The clouds were smiling at him, and Grandpa Sun had sprouted a beard.
"Why are you coming out now? Go back! Get back in there!"
Sam pounded his head repeatedly, hunching over as he desperately pleaded with himself.
Inubaku, who had been waiting on the perimeter, saw Sam completely unguarded.
He hadn't expected such a stroke of luck. Pushing off the ground with all four limbs, he pounced like a rabid hound, landing directly onto Sam's shoulders.
"Get into the cage like a good little bitch!"
He clamped his legs tight around Sam's neck, raking Sam repeatedly with his sharp claws.
To Sam, it felt as though a puppet made of sackcloth was scratching at his head.
He shook violently, trying to throw it off, but couldn't dislodge it.
*So annoying!!*
Frustrated and enraged, Sam stomped down and launched himself straight up, blasting through the dense forest canopy.
"Fuck!" Inubaku barely managed to choke out a single word.
The next second, both of them became a speck above the clouds, tracing a massive parabolic arc before plunging rapidly toward the distant horizon.
When Qi Li arrived, he saw a crater nearly ten meters across, the ground fractured like a spiderweb.
He glanced toward the sky, rose aloft, and with a sonic boom, gave chase.
Behind him, the townsfolk could only watch in terror.
A minute later.
Qi Li descended slowly from the sky.
Not far away, Sam was pummeling his own head with one hand while pounding the ground with the other.
*Thud! Thud! Thud!*
Every blow blasted another deep crater into the earth.
In no time at all, the once-scenic landscape looked as though it had been carpeted by heavy artillery, pockmarked with craters.
As for Inubaku, he lay nearby, completely spent.
When Qi Li walked over, Inubaku's dilated pupils snapped into focus. As if seeing his savior, he reached desperately toward Qi Li, forcing out words from his throat with pathetic hope: "Save... save me!"
Qi Li looked down at Inubaku.
A fist-sized hole was punched clean through the man's chest, blood gushing out uncontrollably. Clearly, he possessed no self-healing ability.
Seeing Qi Li looking at him, Inubaku grew even more frantic, opening his mouth to plead once more: "Save—"
*Splat!*
Qi Li withdrew his gaze and brought his foot down, bursting Inubaku's head like a watermelon.
It was as effortless as crushing an inconsequential ant.
Without a second glance, Qi Li kept walking until he stood before Sam.
All the while, energy from Inubaku surged continuously into his body, bringing with it a new superpower.
Super smell.
Qi Li decided to test this new ability.
Taking a light sniff,
the entire world exploded around him.
Soil, vegetation, flowers, streams, animals, and even the freshly dead corpse behind him... Odors of every conceivable kind flooded his senses with unprecedented clarity and violent intensity.
There was the earthy release of moss spores, the bitter-almond scent of ant carapaces beneath pine bark, the fishy tang of scales in the creek, the sweat of a wild boar a kilometer away...
At that moment, the thousands of scents within a radius of several kilometers formed a constantly shifting, real-time three-dimensional map, rendered in microscopic detail within his mind.
After testing it for a short while, Qi Li decisively shut super smell off.
There were far too many pheromones and chemical signatures, not to mention a barrage of repulsive, overwhelming stenches assaulting his nostrils.
And this was out in the wilderness.
If he were in a city, just imagining the air choked with weed smoke, exhaust fumes, and sewage...
Qi Li completely understood why most people with heightened senses kept them turned off most of the time.
Still, even with super smell deactivated, having acquired the superpower meant his baseline sense of smell was significantly sharper than that of an average superhuman.
This worked out nicely. In the future, he wouldn't need to rely on unreliable partners to track targets.
In high spirits, Qi Li turned his gaze back to Sam.
Now, it was time to carry on Inubaku's legacy and wrap up the retrieval.
Chapter 71