Li Aoz Runrunzi

Li Aoz Runrunzi

Nimoting sneered. "I knew it. Your résumé and identity didn't add up, so I deliberately asked a few extra questions."

Li Aoz remained silent, his face covered in icy grit as calm as ever. It was no surprise—Nimoting took it as his final struggle.

Pleased with herself, she circled Li Aoz once, the barrel in her palm constantly trained on his head.

She had found no weapons on him, and the implants in her brain had detected no prosthetics or metal implants on Li Aoz's body. He was clean.

"Just as I thought—the Rose Army was a cover. You went to such lengths to enter the Outland because you wanted to find the Red Arrow Empire's contact, didn't you?"

Li Aoz raised his head and looked at her without servility or arrogance. His gray eyes remained utterly calm.

Nimoting sneered.

"Then it seems the identity of Li Aoz is fake too. Tell me—when did you infiltrate Frostplate?"

She was no longer in a hurry to take him away. Given what a mess Frostplate was, it was perfectly normal for the Rose Army to have an insider here. But a spy planted by the Red Arrow Empire—that was absolutely a big catch.

Nimoting had long wanted to return to Law Enforcement Division Four's headquarters in the capital. Who wanted to spend all 365 days of the year taking the blame, running all over the country, and scraping out a living amid gunfire? In the capital, with its lavish decadence and endless pleasures, all she needed to do was go to work, read newspapers, drink tea, and slack off while collecting a paycheck.

Every day would be like New Year's. A life where every day felt like a year—wasn't that great?

Yet Li Aoz answered with a question, throwing Nimoting's interrogation into disarray with a single sentence.

"Madam, have you forgotten your original purpose?"

Li Aoz's tone was composed and unhurried, without the slightest tension or panic at having his "true identity" exposed. From beginning to end, his gaze had remained fixed on Nimoting's eyes.

That absolute confidence, paired with his powerful charisma, made others feel as though they had been swept up in an entirely different aura. His tone was calm yet forceful, compelling people to listen and consider whether his words carried some other meaning or hidden implication.

The essence of charisma was its power to attract others.

On a macro level, that attraction significantly increased other people's attention and goodwill toward him.

On a micro level, it meant that every word, every action, every minute detail of his movements could influence and interfere with other people's thoughts.

Someone with high Charisma could casually say, "Potatoes are delicious," and cause a massive shock in the market. Scholars would ponder the deeper meaning and philosophical significance of potatoes, ordinary people would rush to buy them, politicians would use potatoes to push new policies through, and charitable organizations might even hold fundraisers for potatoes.

Li Aoz's Charisma Attribute yielded as much as 27 points. Against Nimoting's mere 5 points of Will, any Charisma check Li Aoz made would pass instantly, and due to the overwhelming Attribute gap, its effect would be multiplied fivefold.

That was the advantage of Primary Attribute specialization.

"My original purpose?"

Nimoting froze, then fell into thought.

What had she come here for? To find the Rose Army.

Her primary mission was to find the informants the Rose Army had planted along the border.

So now, Li Aoz was a Red Arrow Empire spy—but strictly speaking, that was not under her jurisdiction.

Handling foreign spies, especially matters involving mutual infiltration among the Four Nations, was the work of Law Enforcement Division Four's Internal Affairs Bureau. Why was she, an agent of the Field Operations Bureau, sticking her nose into it? The more she thought about it, the more wrong it felt, and unease rose in her heart.

On one hand, Li Aoz's words had strongly influenced her.

On the other, she realized something: the Red Arrow Empire and the Frostplate Republic were old enemies. With the Four Nations standing as they were, which one didn't treat the others as hypothetical enemies every day? Besides, the Red Arrow Empire's Eerga Coast was at least 4,000 kilometers from Frostplate.

But the Rose Army was a threat right at their doorstep. Their recent string of fierce attacks had severely damaged the nation's border security, stirring the other three nations into action.

Nimoting was a little foolish, but she at least knew her duty.

She had not come to the border to deal with Red Arrow Empire spies, nor to arrest a security guard who set a bank on fire, much less to stop illegal border crossings—though the latter was indeed important. But in the end, her primary mission was still to capture the Rose Army!

Why had she come after Li Aoz? Because Agent Ya Wen had discovered that Li Aoz was operating under the Rose Army's name.

Now that Li Aoz had been found, he was not Rose Army after all...

Nimoting felt there was something wrong, but she could not figure out what it was.

"Madam." Just as Nimoting was conflicted, Li Aoz said in a low voice, "We are both from the Four Nations. Organizations like the Rose Army are the true threat to us."

Li Aoz's words enlightened Nimoting at once. That was right—those who rebelled against the Four Nations had always been their shared enemies.

Conflicts between the Four Nations could be set aside. Sometimes, even the occasional outbreak of war could be used to reduce surplus population and divert social tensions.

So should Li Aoz be arrested? He could be, but there was no need.

Besides, if she did not arrest him, she might even leave a good impression on the Red Arrow Empire.

To put it bluntly, how many people in the espionage business were clean? Bribery, buying people off, kidnapping, assassination, turning agents, provoking wars in other countries, supporting proxies—these things were all too common.

Leave a card on the table here, and who knew when it might come in handy.

As Nimoting wavered, Li Aoz gave her another push. "In fact, I do know something about the Rose Army's deployments along the border. Enough to help your country..."

Nimoting raised a brow.

He had even said "your country." She immediately concluded that Li Aoz had completely come clean. He was no longer pretending—he was a Red Arrow Empire spy.

Now, he had also recognized the situation. He knew he had to sell some intelligence that did not concern the Empire's interests in order to mitigate his losses—and the death of a spy planted in Frostplate would undoubtedly be a loss for the Empire.

Li Aoz deliberately left his words unfinished. He lifted his eyes and swept his gaze around, deliberately lingering for a moment on the armed police officers aiming at him.

Nimoting pondered for a moment. She understood what Li Aoz meant, then gave a slight wave of her hand.

"Stand down."

The police naturally did not dare defy the orders of a Law Enforcement Division Four superior. They lowered their guns one after another and stood with their weapons slung across their chests.

Ding... ding...

Crisp, faint tapping sounded. No one paid it any mind; the storms of the Outland carried sand and stones, and similar noises arose from time to time.

However, Li Aoz knew perfectly well that it was Nomi, ready at last, tapping the vehicle with a wrench.

There was enough time.

Li Aoz's gaze shifted slightly, and he lowered his voice again. "This matter is very important. I can only tell you alone."

"Fine."

Nimoting agreed without hesitation. As an Alpha Rank assassin clad in professional special-operations combat gear, there was no way an ordinary man without even Prosthetic Modification could possibly ambush her.

Li Aoz subtly adjusted his posture, his gaze sweeping over the wastewater lake behind Nimoting.

"Go on, then. The whereabouts of the Rose Army..."

She slowly bent down, resting one hand on Li Aoz's shoulder as she brought her left ear close to his cheek.

Li Aoz tilted his head slightly, golden rings appearing in his eyes. His arms hung loose at his sides, his right hand gripping his left elbow as he twisted his shoulder, ready at any moment to manually dislocate it. He leaned close to Nimoting's ear and said, "The Twin Queens of Civilization Red Arrow are a pair of whores anyone can fuck, and you, Purify Society! Fuck your mother!"

Nimoting froze for a moment.

The next instant, it felt as though the ground beneath her back had plunged into an abyss. She shot backward at high speed. The surrounding police screamed and toppled backward as well, plunging straight into the wastewater lake.

The direction of gravity had reversed!

"Aoneng!"

Nimoting snarled.

Her reaction was incredibly fast. She immediately seized Li Aoz by the shoulder.

But all she heard was a sharp crack. Li Aoz's shoulder seemed to snap as it slipped free from her palm and dropped away! "Fuck!"

Nimoting was stunned—Li Aoz would rather dislocate himself than let her hold him.

Her body fell rapidly parallel to the ground. She rolled twice, then a grappling cable shot out from her prosthetic and hooked onto a nearby pile of scrap metal. With a hard swing, she finally landed on the ground.

That fall was no small matter. Cold sweat broke out across Nimoting's body—her feet were only fifteen centimeters away from touching the scalding wastewater pool.

The temperature there was extremely high. After several police officers fell in, they screamed a few times as their skin rotted away and huge quantities of toxic substances invaded their bodies. By now, they had stopped breathing.

Damn it...

Nimoting exerted force against thin air, planting her feet against the ground as if rock climbing and scrambling back up in a sorry state.

She pressed the communicator by her ear and shouted at the female agents on the hill who had not been affected, "Open fire! What are you standing around for?! Kill him!"

Only then did the female agents react, drawing their guns and firing. Li Aoz immediately dove into the car. Nomi had already flipped herself into the driver's seat and stomped hard on the accelerator, starting the assembled vehicle and smashing two police officers blocking the road aside. She yanked the wheel, climbed the dune at once, and sped away.

"This car doesn't have much fuel! Turn back! Go back to Qiu Ran!"

Li Aoz sat in the passenger seat, urging her on. Gritting his teeth, he set his own bone back into place, though his shoulder was still drenched in blood, with a large chunk of flesh torn away.

Nimoting's casual grab had cost him thirty-five HP.

"Hold on!"

Nomi did not waste words. She turned the vehicle around and plunged into a low valley. Headlights lit up behind them as two modified Law Enforcement Division Four vehicles, like black beasts, raced after them in pursuit.