Book 3, Chapter 54: Threat

“He’s Martial Uncle Cheng’s mentee, huh?”

The man sighed. Cheng Zitong had left Central City, but his mentee had come to Central City and even defeated the strongest disciple of the current generation. At this point, was Cheng Zitong’s choice back then really wrong?

He cast a glance at the other spectators. They knew what had happened back then, and while most of them didn’t say anything, they looked down on Cheng Zitong’s choice in private. They even used him as a cautionary example to warn the younger generation not to do what he did, but now...

The man laughed. He believed that very few people would mock Cheng Zitong anymore. Otherwise, they would just be humiliating themselves.

Xiao Jing, however, didn’t care about that. She only looked worriedly in the direction Liu Yin had fallen. Never in her wildest dreams would she have expected him to lose, and so quickly at that.

I have to tell Liu Yin not to stand on the west side again,

she grumbled inwardly.

The disciples weren’t as greatly affected as their elders, but all of them felt upset and frustrated. They just couldn’t figure out what refined force Chen Chuan used. How could he speed up so suddenly and stay still after Liu Yin crashed into him?

Martial artists could only use a limited amount of mutated tissue in the first two Limits and could only focus on developing one group of them. That was why Chen Chuan’s performance was absolutely baffling to them.

Some of them turned to Big Sis Bai for answers.

After some thinking, she said, “It must be because his mutated tissue covers more areas of his body, which allows him to use all sorts of techniques. I believe that he’s actually best at Sanshou. As for the takedown and grappling maneuvers he used earlier, he only used them after seeing the perfect opportunity for them. It’s possible that he only knows those two moves he showed us.

“He did that to make you guys think that he’s good at these two fighting styles, thereby making you form the wrong strategies against him. As you can see, his strategy worked.”

Liu Yin was sitting in a chair with a dull ache in his chest. As he listened to Big Sis Bai, he accepted his defeat gracefully. Chen Chuan had indeed completely fooled him and given him a lesson.

After the disciples heard this, they finally understood what had happened. Chen Chuan had been putting up an act before them.

“He’s so sly!” one of them cried out indignantly.

To that, Big Sis Bai replied seriously, “It’s perfectly normal to employ such strategies in a duel. He had to fight so many of you all by himself, so this was the correct action to take and shows that he’s using his head. Learn from him. Don’t be rash when attacking. In real fights, you don’t get a chance to make mistakes.”

***

“That last move was pretty cool. You didn’t hold back at all. By the way, how did you do it?” Ni Qianqian asked while driving.

She was honestly curious as to how Chen Chuan managed to stay still during the last few clashes and even send Liu Yin flying. The two of them shouldn’t be that different in terms of strength.

“That? I learned some things from the technique lecturer the department recommended to me, and it’s really useful.”

Chen Chuan did not use his second self to the very end. What he used instead was the defensive technique Mr. Zheng had taught him to negate refined forces and attacks. Of course, the most important factor for his success was the fact that he could use more mutated tissue than Liu Yin.

When he couldn’t use some of his mutated tissue because they were busy negating refined force, he could use others to propel him forward. Once he did that, the first group would have already recovered, so he could keep on activating different parts.

The fact that his fascia, bones, and organs had become stronger recently was also part of the reason why he was able to do this; otherwise, he might have ended up tearing apart his fascia, breaking his bones, and overburdening his organs. Of course, since Chen Chuan had his second self, he didn’t have to worry about that, but now he had won without using him.

“Looks like the department needs to increase its assessment of you.” As Ni Qianqian drove faster, she tugged her goggles down. “I’ll transfer your reward once I’m back. I might also give you something else, so remember to pick it up. Anyway, are you interested in another sparring session?

“Don’t worry about kicking their asses. The harder you beat them up, the happier those old coots will be. The disciples didn’t look like they had accepted their defeat either. Should we go for a sparring session with weapons next?”

“You can set us up if there’s a chance for it. Anyway, you were saying that there’s a task?” Chen Chuan changed the conversation.

Ni Qianqian’s expression became more serious. “There’s an emergency less than five kilometers from this place. Someone attacked a famous martial arts school. I don’t know the details, but I think a lot of people are dead and injured. The City Patrol has already arrived, and the Resolution Department wants us to go over and take a look.”

All cases involving martial artists were within the Resolution Department’s jurisdiction. Since they were the closest to the martial arts school and were strong enough to handle the case, the department asked them to check it out. Chen Chuan could understand that.

While they were talking, they received the information the City Patrol had gathered in their Realm Passes.

Based on the images they sent, the crime scene was left in a gruesome state. The casualties had their limbs broken, heads split, and chests caved. Some even had their implanted spines yanked out.

The City Patrol gave a brief analysis at the bottom, saying that there should have been only one attacker, who was a powerful martial artist. He went in through the front door of the martial arts school and fought his way inside. All the people he encountered, he killed in just one strike.

The criminal didn’t steal anything nor showed any signs of stopping. Hence, the City Patrol believed that he was there for revenge, though they didn’t rule out the possibility that he had functional dysregulation syndrome.

After all, once a person had an episode, they could do all sorts of crazy, illogical things.

As Chen Chuan stared at the wounds on the bodies, he noticed that all of them were inflicted by a blunt weapon. This was strangely familiar.

In less than two minutes, they arrived at the scene of the crime. Chen Chuan and Ni Qianqian exited the racecar. Even though it was just past midday, the sky was a little dark, as if it was about to rain.

When the City Patrol saw them, they scanned them with their Realm Passes to identify them before removing the barrier ropes.

Chen Chuan observed the place. The martial arts school was located in a detached building. The closest building to it was fifty meters away across the street.

The martial arts school still had a light show of two martial artists fighting while shouting loudly playing above it. As one of them was defeated, the words

True Will Martial Arts

popped up one by one in large, black font. They had a great impact.

Chen Chuan and Ni Qianqian walked in through the front door and checked the corpses the City Patrol had marked. They already knew that there were thirty-five people dead.

Among them were the owner, his son, the friends who came to visit him, the disciples, the janitors, and seven security guards. While this was a martial arts school, it was huge, so they needed someone to defend the property.

After going through everything, Ni Qianqian pointed out, “The information states that this happened half an hour ago, and only the owner’s youngest son, who wasn’t in the martial arts school during the incident, escaped death.”

“Where is he now?” Chen Chuan asked.

“He’s at Hell Pub. We’ve notified him, but he hasn’t replied. It’s a day off today, so he might still be having fun.”

Ni Qianqian seemed to be contacting someone while she was talking to him. After a moment, her expression became grim as she said, “The department has compared the data here with past accidents, and the results are out. There’s an 80% chance that Wei Wusheng is the murderer.”

“Wei Wusheng, huh...”

A flicker of emotion appeared in Chen Chuan’s eyes. He

had

gotten a sense of déjà vu about the whole thing.

“There was domain interference here, so no one saw Wei Wusheng coming in or leaving. He must have a resonator helping him. They even deleted his records. It’ll be hard for us to find him now,” Ni Qianqian said.

But Chen Chuan didn’t think that Wei Wusheng deleted the records to hide his crimes. He was a wanted man and wouldn’t care about getting this massacre pinned on his head. He was most likely just thinking about hiding his tracks.

Here was the question: Did Wei Wusheng show up just to kill the people in this martial arts school?

“Does Wei Wusheng have a grudge against this martial arts school?” he asked.

“He might have. Let me check... Yup. Someone from this martial arts school had a conflict with the Heavenly Pardon Gang ten years ago. It’s not impossible for someone to exact revenge for a grudge that old, but why now? Why do it while there’s a bounty on his head? Has he decided to throw all caution to the wind?” Ni Qianqian wondered.

Chen Chuan thought of another possibility. “Officer Ni, was someone from this martial arts school on Rhinoceros’ Horn recently?”

Ni Qianqian immediately had a colleague check the records, and the results were out a moment later. “There was. It’s the owner’s eldest. He was on the cruise ship that day to watch the match.”

She then turned to Chen Chuan and said, “I read the report you submitted, but the department hasn’t come to a conclusion about how the purpose Wei Wusheng mentioned works.

“But if he formed a conviction to kill all the martial artists in the arena back then, then this might just be a start. He might also come to find you, so you have to be careful.”

Chen Chuan nodded. It was possible, but he wasn’t scared. He had a feeling that Wei Wusheng wasn’t going to look for him just yet. If he really wanted to attack Chen Chuan, he wouldn’t have killed these people first and exposed his tracks. This just made Chen Chuan wary.

But while he wasn’t afraid, that didn’t mean that the others shouldn’t be worried.

So, he went aside and contacted Tan Zhi, Pan Xiaode, and Qi Huixin with his Realm Pass and told them to be careful. After all, they had been in the arena back then. If Wei Wusheng found a chance, he might kill them too.

Once he was back, Ni Qianqian cast a glance at the darkening sky and frowned. “There were so many martial artists on the cruise ship. We can’t possibly protect them all, not that they would accept our protection anyway, so we can only tell them to be careful. The best solution to this problem is to catch Wei Wusheng before he—Hmm?”

Halfway through her words, someone contacted Ni Qianqian, and she listened to the message for a while before she turned to Chen Chuan. “I have something else to tell you. The university management just had a meeting. Since I was outside, I asked an assistant to sit in on the meeting. She told me that Ling Jianxing just made a suggestion during the meeting. He wants all students with less than a 50% chance to reach the Third Limit to participate in the tournaments the university hosts as tutors.”