Feeling the sudden burst of air currents behind him, Xu Ziling was slightly startled. He instantly moved to dodge the surprise attack from behind.
But the white figure behind him seemed no ordinary person either. He was faster than Xu Ziling had anticipated, and with the attack coming completely out of the blue, Xu Ziling was still struck by the figure.
Then...
"!!"
Kevin drove his shoulder into Xu Ziling's waist. The scene he had expected—his tackle sending the criminal flying—didn't happen. Instead, he was the one left seeing stars.
Thanks to years of physical training and his extraordinary talent in this area, Kevin hurriedly adjusted his posture, preventing the rebound force from knocking him down and exposing an opening.
Realizing that he was actually inferior to this masked apparition in pure physical strength, Kevin quickly retreated a considerable distance. But he didn't flee outright. After maintaining a certain distance from Xu Ziling, he planted his feet and sized him up.
Xu Ziling, meanwhile, acted as if nothing had happened. He crossed his arms and looked at Kevin. Things had indeed gone beyond his expectations, but it seemed... they had also become much more interesting.
The two stood off against each other.
Klein had no idea what was happening and didn't dare say a word. For a moment, the only sound at the scene was Mobius' soft, drunken muttering.
"I'm saying... buddy, with physical ability like that, couldn't you go do something productive?"
After a long while, Kevin's gaze drifted toward Klein and Mobius, who were tied up in the alley, while he tried to change the subject with Xu Ziling.
"Look, I'm young and strong. I hit you with all I had, and you're completely fine. That proves you've got incredible physical talent!
"How about it? Would you consider abandoning the darkness and joining the light? Our school has a club that recruits athletes. Come to our school, and I'll look after you. How does that sound?"
Faced with Kevin's stiff attempt to change the subject, Xu Ziling, who had learned every conversational trick under Dog Boss' oppression before transmigrating, genuinely couldn't hold back his laughter.
Kid, that isn't how you change the subject. And even if you're trying to distract me, could you stop staring at the "hostages" and at least pull your gaze back a little?
Even an office drone clocking in at some company knew to sneak a glance from the corner of their eye at Dog Boss to see what kind of trouble he was planning today. But you? You're practically staring straight at them.
You've got a brain, but not much of one.
"Ha~ The passing Masked Prince, is there a chance... that I don't need to enroll at your school at all?"
Xu Ziling crossed his arms and smiled at Kevin.
"And, Prince Charming of Chiyu Academy, didn't anyone teach you that when hostages are still under a criminal's control, recklessly attacking the criminal can put the hostages' lives in danger?"
"Huh? You know who I am? Er... ahem."
Hearing how the other party addressed him, Kevin gave two strategic coughs before speaking.
"That makes things much simpler, then. Mr... er, criminal, since you know I'm from Chiyu, you should also understand that I, Kevin, am a man destined to become a 'hero'!"
As he spoke, Kevin was preparing to exaggerate with something along the lines of if you know what's good for you... But then he remembered that this man had taken his fully charged charge head-on and still looked perfectly fine afterward. His physical strength was simply unreasonable.
At that thought, the words reached Kevin's throat and became stuck there. After pondering for a moment, he quickly changed his approach.
"Ahem... People always make mistakes, and a hero should naturally be more forgiving toward the people he saves. Don't you agree? So, big guy, you should also know that what you're doing isn't exactly legitimate. Hurry up and abandon the darkness for the light. What's that saying from Shenzhou again... Oh, right: 'Put down the cleaver and become a lump on the ground.'"
"It's 'Put down the butcher's knife and become a Buddha on the spot.' Your language skills still need work, Prince Charming of Chiyu."
Xu Ziling waved the particularly conspicuous spatula in his hand, then lightly snapped his fingers. The spatula vanished in an instant.
"Whoa!"
Kevin's eyes widened. After carefully looking Xu Ziling up and down, he said,
"Seriously... that's incredible, buddy. That was such a long blade, and you made it disappear just like that? With magic tricks like that, you'd be outstanding even as a magician, wouldn't you? Surely you didn't have to resort to kidnapping?"
"Hmm..."
Xu Ziling glanced at the system-space panel in his field of vision, then forced his face to remain serious.
"Of course, magic can be one of my countless skills. But a person's life shouldn't consist of magic alone, don't you think?"
"Er..."
Kevin scratched his head.
"What you're saying feels really profound... Is this related to philosophy too? Oh, right, speaking of that, I recently happened to hear about a philosophy teacher. How about I introduce you two afterward? The two of you could definitely come up with a philosophical masterpiece renowned throughout the world!"
Go meet... myself?
Xu Ziling's brow lifted slightly. If he hadn't been that philosophy teacher himself, he might actually have believed Kevin's nonsense.
"Haha."
After laughing softly, Xu Ziling looked at Kevin.
"All right, Student Kevin. I'm no longer interested in your flattery. If there's nothing else, you should leave. I don't want to cause any more casualties, and naturally, I have my own reasons for doing what I'm doing."
"Huh? But..."
"But I have neither the reason nor the obligation to explain why I'm doing this to you... do I?"
Kevin hadn't finished speaking before Xu Ziling cut him off. Xu Ziling smiled at him and slowly continued,
"All right, Student Kevin. You've stalled for long enough. Continuing to stall won't change the situation at all. Even if your friends really can make it here to help you, how can you guarantee that they're stronger than you? Why assume that whoever comes will be your reinforcements rather than my next 'hostage'?
"That's enough, Prince Charming. You should go back. I'm not interested in you. And when you get back, try reading more books instead of always acting as Mei's bodyguard. After all, sometimes a person succeeds not because they persevere, but because they lack a 'Pleasant Goat' as a rival."
"You!..."
Kevin wasn't very intelligent, but his emotional intelligence was maxed out. Naturally, he could hear the implication in Xu Ziling's words. Worse, this masked monster, whose strength exceeded his own, had already noticed Mei. The person he loved had caught the attention of something dangerous, and Kevin immediately began to react instinctively.
But after taking a deep breath, Kevin ultimately held himself back. He gave Xu Ziling an open, generous smile and said,
"Er... so you knew all along that I was stalling for time... Then why didn't you stop me?"
"Because I'm lazy."
Xu Ziling was blunt.
"You're too weak right now. Never mind you and your friends together—even ten of you might not be my match. When a quantitative change can't produce a qualitative change, everything people do is merely futile and only makes them look ridiculous."
"Er..."
Kevin scratched his head.
"But if... buddy, I mean, hypothetically, what if we changed the 'quantity'?"
"You want to... change the person?"
Xu Ziling frowned slightly and asked Kevin,
"But that would be meaningless."
"Er, buddy, that's not what I meant."
Kevin scratched his head.
"What I mean is actually very simple. It's just... it's just... it's happening now! He's lowered his guard! Su! Get up there and bite him!... No, hurry up and run him over!!!"
"?"
"Beep beep beep!!"
Under Xu Ziling's slightly surprised gaze, a Didi car tore through the night with its headlights blazing and swept toward him. After witnessing Xu Ziling's unreasonable physical strength, the Didi car didn't slow down in the slightest. Amid the sharp screech of tires against the asphalt, it roared straight at Xu Ziling!
Xu Ziling was human too, and when he saw the Mud Truck Didi coming directly at him, he was genuinely shocked. He hadn't expected Kevin to go this far in pursuit of the justice in his heart by joining forces with Su. Even less had he expected to be hit by a truck in the middle of the night!
Could this be the "quantitative change" Kevin was talking about, directly changing the "variable"?
This guy actually grew a brain!
Unfortunately... Xu Ziling's brain was clearly more useful than Kevin's.
Facing the roaring truck, Xu Ziling made only one move—an extremely simple one—that destroyed the trap Kevin and his friend Su had painstakingly set up.
He jumped.
That was right. He pushed off with both legs and jumped straight up.
If one ignored the fact that Xu Ziling's casual hop sent him as high as a floor of a building, it was truly nothing more than an ordinary little action.
The target suddenly vanished from his field of vision. Su, the veteran driver of the Mud Truck Didi, froze for a moment, then immediately realized what had happened. He whipped the steering wheel around and charged toward Kevin. After brushing past him, he shouted,
"Get in! This opponent is absolutely not someone the two of us can handle as students."
"Huh? But a hero can't..."
Seeing Kevin about to start on his hero theory again, Su didn't waste words. He quickly opened the door, shifted into reverse, and turned the wheel. Focusing all the driving ability he had accumulated in his life, he performed a 180-degree drift on the spot and used the momentum to "load" Kevin into the car.
Then Su slammed the accelerator to the floor and sped away with Kevin.
Xu Ziling lightly descended from the air and watched the car disappear into the distance. After sighing softly, he said,
"Wouldn't it have been better to do that from the start, Student Kevin?"
"All right, back to the matter at hand. My hostage, Klein, after witnessing the strength I just displayed, you should understand what sort of villain is standing before you... Hmm?"
After Xu Ziling finished speaking, he received no response for a long while. He looked around and discovered that the alley was eerily quiet.
Xu Ziling turned around and saw that the drunk Mobius had fallen deeply asleep, while Klein had also passed out... But compared to Mobius' drunken, unresponsive sleeping face, Klein's expression after falling asleep looked more like she had suffered some kind of mental shock, or had had her nerves pierced by fear and fallen directly into a psychological coma.
Don't ask why Xu Ziling understood such a complicated expression. Before transmigrating, whenever his naive colleague learned that Dog Boss was going to dock their pay again, that was exactly the expression on their face.
In other words... Klein had been scared unconscious?
Had his single jump, which reached as high as a building floor, overturned her understanding of humanity and become the final straw that broke the camel's back?
But that didn't seem right... An ordinary person who saw something superhuman like this should only be amazed. It shouldn't be enough to frighten them unconscious, should it?
Xu Ziling was completely baffled.
"Hmm?"
At that moment, Xu Ziling sensed something. He instinctively turned his head and looked toward the entrance of the dark alley.
"Rustle... buzz..."
The old streetlamp flickered on and off like a dying old man smoking the last cigarette of his life, trying to experience the joy of his youth one more time, yet unable to stop coughing.
Of course, that description applied to the streetlamp.
Beneath it stood a figure who had appeared there at some unknown point. His head was lowered. He said nothing, and he wasn't looking at Xu Ziling either, yet Xu Ziling could somehow feel that this strange figure who had suddenly appeared was "watching" him in a manner beyond ordinary understanding.
That indescribably eerie sensation made Xu Ziling extremely uncomfortable. Looking at the figure who had suddenly appeared beneath the alley's streetlamp, he spoke.
"Hey! Friend over there, could I trouble you to forget what you saw tonight? Otherwise, haha, I'm afraid you'll put me in a difficult position."
The figure beneath the streetlamp remained silent, his head still lowered. That eerie sensation of being watched continued to linger in Xu Ziling's heart.
"You... You're..."
After a long while, the figure beneath the streetlamp spoke in a hoarse voice, like air rushing through a broken bellows.
"You... stole my mask?"
"Mask?"
Xu Ziling froze, then remembered the gray-white mask he had picked up casually by the roadside to make his disguise easier. He had assumed that since it was sitting on top of a trash can, nobody wanted it. He hadn't expected it to be a mask whose owner was still looking for it.
But... the mask clearly wasn't the main issue.
Xu Ziling didn't believe that a normal person would come after him over an old mask placed on a trash can. Nor did he believe that an ordinary person could visually track his speed and movements in the night.
At that thought, Xu Ziling's expression became subtle. He looked toward the figure beneath the streetlamp, took off his own mask, and said,
"So this belongs to you? Sorry, I saw it sitting on a trash can and thought nobody wanted it. If you want it, I'll give it back."
The figure beneath the streetlamp froze. He apparently hadn't expected Xu Ziling to agree so readily. After thinking for a moment, the figure slowly moved away from the spot where he seemed to have been nailed beneath the streetlamp and approached Xu Ziling.
Once he drew near, he didn't immediately reach for the mask. Instead, he suddenly said,
"So beautiful..."
"Hmm?"
Xu Ziling looked at the strange man, who had kept his head lowered the entire time. He silently glanced at Klein and Mobius behind him to confirm their position, then asked,
"What exactly are you referring to?"
"Your face... It's so beautiful."
The strange man who refused to raise his head spoke blankly.
"I... I don't... you... But you... Can you... tear this face off and give it to me?!!!"
The next moment, the strange man abruptly raised his head. His face, which had remained hidden in the darkness, finally entered Xu Ziling's view. Xu Ziling's pupils suddenly contracted.
It was a face riddled with holes, as though it had been ravaged by a virus. Savage, terrifying muscles and strange, twisted purple veins had formed patterns across it like trenches left behind by bombardment. Beneath eyes as silent as hollows and deep water, despair had given rise to a horrifying smile, one propped up by grotesque purple lines.
Before you continue