Bat's-Eye View

Edel had already been arrested, and there was nothing left for Chen Xia to do here.

Patrol officers went to process the scene at the private residence and seal up everything. Chen Xia hadn't seen anything when he entered the house earlier, but in truth, there had been plenty.

It was all stored in a secret room, where piles of money, experiment notes, ritual materials, and more had been found.

This experience had shown Chen Xia that he still lacked strength. If not for Jiang Xinglan and the others, things wouldn't have gone so smoothly against those Evil Cult members and Edel.

Fortunately, he had obtained secret techniques during this operation. Paired with the Eternal Night Blood Scripture, they gave him more methods at his disposal.

"I'll have to study them when I get back!"

Chen Xia couldn't wait to go home.

Jiang Xinglan had been ready to send someone to escort him, but he didn't think it was necessary.

He sent a message to Xiao Qiang, who was waiting some distance away.

"Got it, Captain Chen. I'll be right over!"

A taxi was parked at a fork in a country road on the outskirts of Tongxin Village. Xiao Qiang had watched everything that had just happened.

He'd thought Chen Xia was investigating a missing-person case, but when he saw so many Patrol Inspection Office officers arrive, along with a Laser Flyer, he was dumbfounded.

Since he was responsible for following Chen Xia and hadn't received any orders, he'd stayed hidden and hadn't dared to move. Only after Chen Xia messaged him did he wake the sleeping driver and head over to pick him up.

"Let's head back first." Chen Xia got into the car. With the driver there, he didn't say much.

When the car pulled up outside Chen Xia's home, he got out.

"Captain Chen, I'll get going."

Xiao Qiang greeted him, looking a little tired. Chen Xia smiled. "Mm. We couldn't have done it without your help this time. I'll report your contribution, so don't worry."

At that, Xiao Qiang couldn't help laughing. "You're joking, Captain Chen. I was only tailing someone. It's not like I haven't done that before. It doesn't count as a contribution."

Xiao Qiang naturally didn't think much of it. He'd done this sort of thing at least hundreds of times since joining the Patrol Inspection Office. It hardly counted as a contribution.

"This time was different. Head back first; it's getting late." Chen Xia smiled but didn't explain.

Xiao Qiang could tell this case had been different, but he didn't know the details. Hadn't they just solved a missing-person case?

Only Chen Xia knew that Xiao Qiang had made a significant contribution this time. They hadn't merely cracked the kidnapping case involving the Brotherhood; they had uncovered something far more serious—the Night God Sect's attempt to summon the Blood God, which threatened the safety of all Yijiang.

Chen Xia got back at one in the morning.

He opened the door quietly so as not to wake his family, then returned to his room on the Second Floor.

His family's two-story home had roughly the same layout on each floor, except that downstairs housed a supermarket and a courier station. The Second Floor was barely a three-bedroom, one-living-room apartment, and Chen Xia's room was at the very back. His older brother and younger sister were both away, so he was practically living alone.

Sitting in his chair, he took a Red Book from the inner pocket of his jacket and began to read it carefully.

This book looked much like the one Chen Xia had obtained earlier in the Brotherhood's basement. Both had red covers and thick pages filled with densely packed text and illustrations.

Chen Xia skimmed through it and found that, as expected, it recorded two techniques.

Blood Shadow Bat and Blood Soul Bewitching Heart.

These two Spirit Techniques had no clearly defined ranks. But he'd seen Night God Sect Members use them before. As secret techniques of the Night God Sect, they required the Eternal Night Blood Scripture as a foundation, as well as sufficient Spiritual Power. Their power was still quite terrifying.

Chen Xia's Spiritual Power should have been sufficient, so he immediately reversed the two secret techniques.

[Blood Shadow Bat: Condenses one's blood energy into a bat for scouting, broadening one's field of vision. If the bat is struck down, the user's mind will be injured.]

[Negative Reversal: If the bat is struck down, it can be recondensed, strengthening Spiritual Power.]

[Blood Soul Bewitching Heart: Manipulates a target's mind to trap them in an illusion. If the target's will is too strong, the practitioner may suffer backlash and mental injury.]

[Negative Reversal: If the target's will is too strong, the technique will fail but strengthen the user's mental resilience.]

After the reversal, a dense stream of information and diagrams surged through the book in his hands and into Chen Xia's mind, allowing him to understand countless things instinctively.

It was as if he had studied the manual by heart long ago and knew it inside out. The secret techniques had also been upgraded, with no side effects.

According to the information in his mind, Blood Shadow Bat could transform the Yin Sha inside his body—which, for Chen Xia, was Blood Yang—into a bat imbued with his Spiritual Will. It could fly off to gather information and provide him with a better view.

Blood Soul Bewitching Heart was an Illusion Technique that could leave an enemy dazed or even control them, without causing any side effects to the practitioner.

"Now that I've mastered these two Spirit Techniques, I can be considered a practitioner. Combined with my Martial Force, I can not only defend against the strength of others at my level, but also force them to defend against mental attacks."

As Chen Xia understood it, Spirit Techniques could sometimes be far more damaging than Martial Force, and were extremely useful. Improved vision, for example, could help a martial artist learn about their surroundings ahead of time and avoid danger.

With that in mind, Chen Xia began learning the First Secret Technique: Blood Shadow Bat.

He took a shower, removed the makeup covering his face, tidied up his clothes, then returned to his bed and sat cross-legged. He circulated the Eternal Night Blood Scripture, drew on the Blood Yang in his body, and began visualizing the Blood Shadow Bat with his mind.

The process lasted two hours.

At last, as blood mist swirled above Chen Xia's head, a palm-sized bat gradually took shape. The sensation was incredibly strange. After several attempts, he finally managed to condense it, and then his vision changed.

Or rather, he now had two kinds of vision: one was the darkness of his own closed eyes; the other was a bird's-eye view, showing the top of his head and himself sitting cross-legged with his legs wrapped in a quilt.

"Go!"

At Chen Xia's thought, the bat above his head began flapping its wings. He wasn't very good at controlling it at first, and it bobbed up and down. Eventually, it reached the nearby window, slipped through a gap, and climbed into the sky.

In an instant, everything within a radius of several hundred meters came into view: clusters of low-rise buildings, three or four stories tall; crumbling walls, telephone poles, shadowy alleys, and even stray cats and dogs darting along the roads. It was dark, but he could still see.

"This feels incredible..."

Chen Xia finally understood why some people cultivated Evil Techniques. Without them, and without Spiritual Talent, mastering a secret technique like this would have been impossible.

The bat he controlled kept flying. At a distance of 230 meters, he could clearly feel it running out of strength, so he brought it back.

Chen Xia's face was a little pale. Using the technique consumed quite a bit of Spiritual Power. The upside was that using it more often would improve his mind. With enough time, he would grow more proficient, and his Spiritual Power would grow stronger too.

Too excited to sleep, Chen Xia spent several hours practicing Blood Shadow Bat, enjoying every moment of it.

Only after he could control the bat freely as it flew back and forth through the sky, and had gained a measure of proficiency, did Chen Xia lie down, exhausted, and get a proper rest. Four hours later, he woke early and continued practicing.

"Zzz..."

A Blood Shadow Bat, easy to overlook, flew out from the edge of the window. The images in Chen Xia's mind grew clearer.

By morning, the roads in the Old Town were already full of people coming and going: vegetable sellers, elderly men riding tricycles to collect scrap, workers hurrying off to their jobs. Everything was in view, yet no one noticed the little bat resting on a rooftop, silently watching everything around it.