Mysterious Bounty

"Beauty! Want to meet?"

"I'm 1.85 meters tall, generously endowed, and great in bed. I guarantee I'll take you straight to heaven. If you don't believe me, you can..."

"Beep beep beep!"

A black cat sprawled boldly across the sofa, stretching itself out into a starfish shape. That alone was nothing strange, but what was truly bizarre was that it was holding a phone and tapping away with one paw in a nimble one-finger technique, typing at lightning speed. It was actually chatting with other people—and using only one finger, it could chat with several people at once, looking incredibly busy.

The WeChat profile picture showed a tall, taciturn-looking man with an air of abstinence about him. His body looked as though it had been carved according to the golden ratio, while his fair, translucent skin gave off the smooth, silky softness of white satin. His features could only be called ordinary, but the enhancement provided by his physique and skin had already erased that shortcoming.

He stood in the luxurious hall wearing house clothes, holding a black cat under his left arm and facing the camera. One paw of the cat rested against its face, and its eyes and expression looked extremely displeased.

Of course, anyone seeing such a profile picture would assume that the man was on the other end of the phone. No one would ever imagine that the one chatting with them was the black cat clamped under the man's arm.

Meanwhile, the black cat's Moments feed was filled every day with show-off photos of mansions, villas, gourmet food, and snapshots of its daily life, all brimming with the sensibilities of the leisured bourgeoisie.

The black cat's phone rang nonstop. Every so often, messages came from people with names like Baby 1, Backup 4, and Rich Lady 6. At that moment, the black cat's eyes shone brightly, its chubby little paws turning into afterimages as they jabbed at the screen, while all kinds of bizarre expressions constantly surfaced on its face.

"Don't send me red envelopes! Do I look like someone short of money? Aren't you insulting me?"

"I only want a woman who cares about me, not some woman whose every word is money, money, money!"

"Beep beep beep!"

"Wifey, you're so good to me. I've really been so tired lately, you know..."

"Baby, you're so sweet. I want to give you money to spend!"

Black Fiend had transformed into a thousand faces, chatting with each person in different tones and personalities. With gentle coaxing and step-by-step scheming, it used its superhuman charm to drag them down into the abyss.

"Beep beep beep!"

"Oh ho ho ho! Another foolish human has taken the bait!" Black Fiend's face turned sinister as it let out a strange laugh.

Just then, footsteps suddenly sounded, making Black Fiend sit bolt upright. It pretended to watch television, as though it had a guilty conscience.

"Black Fiend! Your package is here again. What did you buy this time? It's huge! Didn't you already have a phone? Why did you buy two more? And they're iPhone Xs?" Fang Xiu came in from the courtyard wearing slippers, carrying a mountain of boxes of all sizes: a computer tower, a forty-nine-inch 4K curved monitor, phones, game consoles, and more.

On top of that, Fang Xiu had received an enormous cat tree a few days earlier, along with a large, ultra-soft genuine-leather cat bed, premium cat food, canned cat food, and so on. This black cat knew how to enjoy life far better than Fang Xiu did.

"Where did you get so much money?"

Black Fiend snorted twice. "For a highly intelligent life-form like me, making money in foolish human society is simply too easy!"

Then Black Fiend held the phone in both paws, and golden coins immediately appeared in its eyes. "Soon, I'll rely on my wisdom to make a fortune, then use the devilish power of money to rule and enslave everyone!"

Ever since it had witnessed the power of money, the gate to a new world seemed to have opened before Black Fiend.

"Once you have money, you can have whatever you want and buy whatever you want!"

"Money is God!" Black Fiend raised its little black paw and shouted.

"You aren't doing anything illegal, are you?" Fang Xiu's eyes were full of suspicion. He had no idea that Black Fiend was currently using his name and appearance to do who-knew-what online.

"Meow? I'm making money with my wisdom! Wisdom, understand? Even you, Master, can't slander my noble character!" Black Fiend's eyes became incomparably clear. For a moment, even Fang Xiu felt as though he had been struck by its cuteness.

"Remember my warning, or you know what the consequences will be!" Fang Xiu stared suspiciously into Black Fiend's eyes. Only after a long while did he turn and walk away.

Black Fiend seemed to remember something. A chill ran down its spine, and its back-facing expression looked as though it were breaking into a cold sweat. It glanced at the profile picture on its phone. "Should I change accounts?"

Fang Xiu stacked the boxes beside the sofa, then returned to the courtyard. Recently, he had collected quite a few plants online and from nearby. He wanted to try and see whether the so-called Body Modification Technique could affect plants, and whether it could be combined with his Soul Domination talent and his ability to create souls.

At that moment, Fang Xiu's phone, lying on the sofa nearby, suddenly displayed a pop-up window. The deep-red window was packed with text, presented in both Chinese and English alongside pictures.

Black Fiend took a curious glance. "Tsk, tsk. This pitiful master who doesn't even have a single friend—could someone actually be sending him a message?"

"A-Rank Bounty!"

"Reward: Two Hundred Million U.S. Dollars!"

"Item: A miraculous Eastern pill capable of extending one's lifespan!"

"Details: The item is currently located at Yellow Goat Mountain in Wei Port City, Yubei Province... It will be transported to... one hour from now. Escort personnel..." Photos of Zhou Yang and Lin Shu from the Abnormal Investigation Team even appeared afterward.

Black Fiend nearly dropped its phone. In its eyes, it seemed to see money raining down from the heavens.

"Two... two hundred million U.S. dollars?"

At that moment, Fang Xiu outside also heard Black Fiend's voice.

Fang Xiu picked up his own phone. This was the one formerly used by the Deceitful Clown Demon. It was essentially a blank slate, with no login records whatsoever—basically an ordinary blank phone. Fang Xiu had thrown his original phone into a river and later started using this one.

The only difference was that it had several foreign banking apps and a client called Cross Bloodstain Web. The pop-up message had been sent through Cross Bloodstain Web.

This should only have been a push notification sent to members of the site located in Yubei Province. Fang Xiu's identity on it was probably similar to that of an assassin or mercenary. Once he clicked accept, his account would immediately be locked, indicating that he had accepted the mission. Fang Xiu thought it over, then immediately clicked reject, and watched the pop-up vanish from the screen.

"This is the website where the Deceitful Clown Demon ordered weapons. Sniper rifles, RPGs, bombs, grenades—you can buy them all, and they even handle delivery." Fang Xiu had thought the website was unbelievably badass back then. He had never expected that it could do more than sell weapons; it could also issue bounties.

"The Longevity Pill! Lin Housheng has already handed it over to the authorities? But information like this should be absolutely classified. How does Cross Bloodstain Web know about it? And why did it act so quickly? Why use a bounty? Does that mean the other party is also acting in haste, having only just received the news and not having had time to organize an operation?"

"Who exactly issued this bounty through the site? Two hundred million U.S. dollars?"

Fang Xiu had never imagined that his recent series of actions had already drawn many people's attention to the little city of Wei Port City. Yellow Goat Mountain's Three Goat Temple in particular had become the focus of countless eyes.

Fang Xiu frowned. He had thought they were merely a few ordinary pills and wanted to let other people try using them, while seeing whether the authorities could research anything unusual and provide him with information. At the same time, he wanted to lay some groundwork for the emergence of supernatural powers.

Fang Xiu's intentions had been good. He had thought that if something could be researched, it would not only help him, but might also advance medical science, solve some difficult illnesses or terminal diseases, and perhaps even promote human evolution toward greater perfection.

But as things stood, he had instead dragged many people into a bloody storm.

On the expressway leading to the provincial capital, an entire convoy of heavily armed vehicles traveled in tight formation toward the city at high speed.

The journey had been so smooth that everyone had begun to let down their guard. This was inside the country, after all, and no one believed anyone would dare attack such a heavily armed convoy. Yet halfway there, a violent explosion suddenly erupted.

Sky-high flames and the blast directly destroyed the entire road, sending several vehicles flying. A few rockets then roared toward the highway as well.

On the lane traveling in the opposite direction, a large freight truck carrying several tractors timed its move perfectly and crashed in. It suddenly turned while speeding, its entire body dragging a long trail across the road. It smashed through the railing and blocked the path of every vehicle behind it, cutting off the scene of the explosion ahead. The tractors on the truck were flung out one after another, slamming into the vehicles behind and causing a pileup.

Several vans charged in. Gunshots and explosions rang out without end, while smoke and flames kept billowing upward. The scale of the scene was like a battlefield straight out of a movie.

After a masked man with yellow hair used a timed bomb to blast open the armored vehicle's door, he took the boxes inside amid agonized groans.

Under the cover of smoke grenades, everyone scattered like lightning in different directions, taking various forms of transport or changing their clothes before vanishing.

The entire series of actions was unbelievably swift, completed in the blink of an eye. Every step, movement, and escape route seemed to have been planned down to the last detail long ago.

However, once the authorities reacted swiftly, all the people involved in the robbery were intercepted before they could escape the country or reach the open sea. Most of them were shot dead on the spot, and the stolen boxes were discovered aboard a fishing boat fleeing overseas at night and immediately recovered.