"Stop! Don't run!"
"I'm going to shoot!"
Neither SWAT officer had expected Xi Nian to run so swiftly and decisively. One of them panicked and, regardless of the crowded urban area, immediately aimed his gun at Xi Nian's back and pulled the trigger!
Bang!!
The gunshot sent pedestrians near the street screaming.
"Hm?" Xi Nian looked back as he ran. He could clearly see the bullet chasing after him, even every spiraling groove on its tip.
Though he lived in America, a place people called "a shootout every day," this was his first time seeing a real bullet. He just hadn't expected it to be fired at him.
Ordinary people should have turned pale at the sound of a gun. After all, even the weakest modern handgun could be fatal if it struck a vital area!
Yet Xi Nian did not feel even a trace of fear.
Because, to him, the bullet was simply far too slow.
So slow that Xi Nian felt that if he kept accelerating, he could leave it far behind—so, naturally, the high-speed Xi Nian merely tilted his body slightly, and the pursuing bullet passed through his disheveled silver hair.
"Not good!"
Xi Nian had just easily dodged the bullet when he suddenly caught sight, from the corner of his eye, of vehicles waiting at the intersection ahead. After only a moment's hesitation, he shot out his empty left hand like lightning and actually caught the bullet that had passed him in his palm!
"What did he do?" "How is that possible?!"
The SWAT officers who witnessed it cried out in terror.
A faint pain and burning sensation came from his palm.
Xi Nian glanced back at the SWAT officers, tossed the bullet he had crushed into a metal button onto the ground, then turned and continued fleeing.
This time, neither SWAT officer made another sound. They stood there with their guns raised, like wooden stakes.
It was as if Pandora's Box had been opened. Tonight's ordeal had yet to reach its end.
It had only begun.
Xi Nian turned at a street intersection and happened to see three police cars roaring down the road ahead, clearly coming for him.
What was more, sharp police sirens could vaguely be heard from the roads to his left and right as well.
"I just want to go home. Is that wrong? And aren't they a little too efficient?" Xi Nian's mouth twitched. In movies and TV shows, whenever a robbery or crime happened, didn't the police always rush in to clean things up only after everything was over?
Why were they so fast when it came to him?
This wasn't scientific!
"Whatever. I can't stay out on the streets in a crowded area." Xi Nian did not want to accidentally hurt ordinary people either. He looked over the buildings by the roadside and quickly picked out a relatively short, four-story convenience store.
Xi Nian accelerated into a run, forcefully pushed off with the tips of his feet, and tried to leap onto the convenience store's roof.
But this time, unlike before, he used too much force.
A sudden wave of weakness swept through Xi Nian's body for an instant. He only rose about six meters before beginning to naturally fall without even reaching the building.
Below him was a police convoy racing in from every intersection.
"Fuck, don't mess with me now!"
Xi Nian flailed about in midair, feeling that familiar sensation of falling as he watched the rooftop grow farther and farther away.
Just then.
Ssh!
From Xi Nian's left hand, which he had absentmindedly swung forward, a rope glowing with golden light appeared out of thin air. Like a swimming dragon, it stretched and wound through the city sky. One end of the Golden Rope was firmly held in Xi Nian's hand, while the other extended forward like a lasso until it looped around the lightning rod atop the building ahead!
With no time to study where the rope had come from, Xi Nian yanked it with his left hand. His suspended body shot upward again, carrying him onto the rooftop of the four-story building beside the intersection.
"That was close."
Still shaken, Xi Nian retracted the Golden Rope. He pulled his gaze from the police cars that had missed him and used the surrounding high-rises as stepping stones to swiftly flee the scene.
On the road below, five or six police cars screeched to a stop where Xi Nian had jumped from moments earlier.
"What exactly was that person?"
A police officer got out from the driver's seat and stared dumbfoundedly at the footprints smashed into the pavement as he muttered to himself.
"Anyway, he's not normal," another officer getting out of a car replied.
"No shit." Quite a few officers were speechless. Catching bullets barehanded, moving at over a hundred miles per hour, jumping four stories high—calling him normal would be absurd!
"What do we do now?"
Just as the officers were feeling helpless, a wailing police car finally arrived late and stopped on the road alongside the others.
The door opened, and Officer George got out briskly. Looking over the officers, he quickly asked, "Where did the suspect go?"
"Reporting, Officer, he flew... no, he jumped away!" An officer at the scene saluted and pointed at the building more than ten meters tall.
"???"
It took Officer George five seconds to understand what "jumped away" meant.
After a brief moment of thought, Officer George said in a grave voice, "Immediately request helicopter support from the local police department. We can't let such a dangerous unknown individual run wild in this city!"
"Yes, Officer!"
Xi Nian moved rapidly across the densely packed skyscrapers. Though he still could not fully control the extraordinary physique his body now possessed, he had gradually become more familiar with it through his actions outside.
"So this is what flying feels like."
With the Golden Rope in his hand assisting him, Xi Nian leaped back and forth between the rooftops of buildings several to more than a dozen stories tall. Whenever he used too much force or began to lose strength, he used the lasso to pull himself toward another building, ensuring that he would not fall off a rooftop.
Xi Nian had no idea what material the Golden Rope was made of. It could extend and retract at will, and could loop around any object, such as railings, eaves, or laundry hung out to dry.
Then he made a shocking discovery.
Even if something was not a tangible object he could touch, but merely a plume of black smoke drifting up from a chimney, the Golden Rope could still bind it like a solid object and use it for leverage!
Xi Nian even suspected that he could use it to lasso clouds, or even things with deeper meanings, such as so-called souls!
Of course, that was assuming souls even existed in this world.
"I should have shaken them off, right?" Xi Nian reached the top of a skyscraper and stood near a railing that seemed almost suspended in midair. Looking down at the vehicles and pedestrians below, tiny as black dots, he still felt an instinctive chill in his heart.
"Time to head home."
With that thought, Xi Nian jumped hard once more. While in the air, he tried to throw out the Golden Lasso and pull himself closer to the building opposite him. But only after his left hand made the throwing motion did he notice that the Golden Rope that had saved him in the nick of time had somehow vanished into thin air again...
"You've got to be kidding me. You're messing with me again?"
Xi Nian's heart clenched violently, and for the third time that night, he was met with the long sensation of falling.
Newton would be ecstatic!
And so, the scene we first witnessed came to pass.
Xi Nian crashed diagonally onto the rooftop of a five-star hotel. Seeing the police helicopter pursuing him, he could only continue fleeing with his unstable strength.
Ten minutes later.
Even Xi Nian himself had no idea how long he had been leaping across high-rises. He only knew that he was getting farther and farther away from the part of the city where his home was.
He ducked once again into the shadow of a water tower atop a skyscraper and watched as the helicopter searched in the wrong direction, flying farther and farther away until it completely vanished from his sight.
Only then did Xi Nian let out a breath. The heat steaming off his body was enough to melt frost and snow, and exhaustion filled his eyes.
"Now I can finally go home, right?" he murmured softly.
It was like raising a flag.
The moment Xi Nian finished speaking, a figure appeared from nowhere and landed gracefully and lightly atop the rooftop water tower!
Before you continue