City Hunter

"Did I really hit it?"

Not only was Shen Shikun stunned, but even Chen Jue himself felt a surge of excitement.

He had originally wanted to test whether his Lv5 [Hidden Weapon Throwing] could work on a target as minuscule as a fly; after all, it was his first time aiming at such a tiny object, and he lacked experience.

It was entirely because the green-headed fly was close by—only about 60 centimeters away on the edge of the table—and Chen Jue had only attempted the shot after the target had settled down.

He hadn't expected to hit it on the first try!

This brought Chen Jue quite a pleasant surprise.

From now on, whenever he saw annoying pests like flies, mosquitoes, or cockroaches, Chen Jue could eliminate them using this physical method.

Just then, the panel popped up with a notification:

[Ding~]

[Completed a micro-level hidden weapon combat, successfully killed one live insect.]

[Hidden Weapon Throwing proficiency +50]

Looking at the prompt on the panel, Chen Jue recalled the Pit Bull he had finished off with a single dart to the throat.

He had received a similar combat notification back then.

He hadn't expected that switching to a tiny target like a fly would yield such a large amount of combat proficiency.

Moreover, at Lv5, it should theoretically be twice as hard to gain 1 point of proficiency compared to Lv4.

No wonder it gave so much! With my current master-level hidden weapon skills, I really don't have much confidence in hitting a live target as small as a fly at close range.

That shot just now must have been a stroke of genius; luck played the biggest part, Chen Jue analyzed inwardly.

By this time, Shen Shikun, sitting across from him, had recovered from his shock and bewilderment.

He first looked at the green-headed fly pinned down by the toothpick, then at Chen Jue's ordinary face. He opened his mouth several times, hesitated for a moment, and finally asked, "Chen Jue... no, I should call you Brother Jue! You seem to be a year older than me!"

"Brother Jue! How did you do that just now?"

"That last shot was a fluke! I probably couldn't do it again," Chen Jue said modestly, seeing the other man's curiosity, and took the opportunity to tell the chubby guy that he had practiced international darts.

"International darts?"

"The kind with the needle tips?"

Shen Shikun had grown up abroad and had heard of this recreational sport.

But when he thought of the basin-sized target used in international darts and compared it to the grain-of-rice-sized head of the fly, Shen Shikun felt that his new colleague, who claimed to be humble, was a bit off.

"Brother Jue, are you one of those hidden City Hunter types from the internet? The kind that specializes in ridding the world of pests!"

Shen Shikun first grabbed a tissue to cover the fly skewered by the toothpick to avoid losing his appetite, then pulled out his phone and opened a video.

"City Hunter?"

"What's that?"

Chen Jue curiously leaned in to take a look.

The video was titled "A Slingshot Guy's Battle Against Rats." In the footage, a young man holding a slingshot, wearing a miner's headlamp, was searching for targets next to a foul-smelling trash can.

Upon spotting a target, the young man pulled back his slingshot, shouted "Go!", and with a thwack, struck a rat with a small steel ball.

After taking a hit from the ball, the rat twitched a few times on the spot and immediately GG'd, clearly having suffered critical damage with its internal organs ruptured.

Over the course of the video, the young man used his slingshot to take out a dozen fat rats roaming the dirty corners of the city.

"That's impressive!"

"Is this what you call a City Hunter?" Chen Jue couldn't help but exclaim.

He hadn't watched these kinds of niche videos before, but he found himself hooked after just a few glances.

The video was only a few minutes long, but the editing was fast-paced, accompanied by funny voiceovers like "The lights are on, time for your life," "Feeding you a peanut," and "Actor No. 1 has received his lunch box," making it very satisfying and stress-relieving to watch.

It was much more vivid and interesting than the amateurish stunt videos Chen Jue had filmed.

"This is City Hunter A-Fei! I've been following him for a long time."

"Brother Jue, since you have such amazing dart skills, why don't you film some videos?"

"A-Fei has over a million followers online; he makes a lot of money just by hunting rats!" Shen Shikun said with longing. As a 200-pound man, what he admired most were these nimble-fingered folk experts.

Chen Jue didn't comment, only saying that he wasn't at that level.

Besides, the lethality of a slingshot was high; at close range, its destructive power was almost on par with an air rifle, far exceeding the power of a normal person throwing darts.

As for whether Chen Jue could throw a dart with that much lethality, one only had to look at the Pit Bull he had killed to know it was certainly possible.

It was just that Chen Jue had been busy grinding attributes and developing new sports projects, and with the proficiency bar for his upgraded skills being so long, he hadn't seen much hope for improvement in the short term, so he hadn't paid much attention to hidden weapon combat.

He hadn't expected that coming downstairs for a work meal with this chubby guy would instantly open up so many new ideas.

Perhaps it was because he had shown off his skills at the cafeteria during lunch, but the way Shen Shikun looked at Chen Jue had become increasingly strange.

Beyond a hint of scrutiny and suspicion, there was now a touch of respect and curiosity mixed in.

After all, the image of that toothpick piercing a fly was still too fresh in everyone's memory.

"If I'd known, I would've taken a photo and posted it in the group chat for everyone to see! It might have even gone viral!"

"It's all my fault! My little obsessive-compulsive streak acted up again!"

After finishing lunch and returning to his workstation to rest, Shen Shikun slapped his thighs in frustration.

In this day and age, with work pressure so high, people are extremely enthusiastic about bizarre and entertaining videos, pictures, memes, and comments.

If that photo of the toothpick-pierced fly had been snapped and posted online, it might well have secured a top-tier comment in the thread of some internet celebrity.

As for Chen Jue, after hitting upon a new line of thought, he began searching for the account of the content creator known as City Hunter A-Fei.

He followed the account first, then clicked through a series of his videos.

Chen Jue discovered that besides being a City Hunter who gained fame for hunting rats, A-Fei's day job was as a wrestler and fitness coach.

He had a well-trained physique, with two arms used for pulling slingshots that were thick and powerful, covered in bulging muscle definition.

As for the city where A-Fei lived, the sanitary conditions were relatively poor, with many old streets dating back decades.

The trash stations and bins he filmed were basically overflowing with sewage, with rats, flies, and cockroaches visible everywhere.

This was completely unimaginable in a major metropolis like Hang City!

Because Hang City, as a newly minted first-tier city, had just finished hosting the Games and welcoming a wave of international guests, its urban image was maintained to an almost obsessive degree.

Every street was cleaned so thoroughly it was as if they scraped three feet of earth every day, let alone catching a glimpse of a rat.

However, just because they couldn't be found in the CBD didn't mean the city was free of the "Four Pests."

Because even the most glamorous places have hidden, filthy corners.

"Find a place with a high concentration of restaurants, lots of food waste, and poor sanitation—there are bound to be plenty of pests there!"

Chen Jue felt a surge of interest. For the rest of the afternoon, aside from auditing a few Class A clients assigned by the system, he spent his time thinking about the practical application of hidden weapons.

The reason he was focusing solely on the Four Pests was that there were too many protected animals these days.

You could get ten years just for raiding a bird's nest; Chen Jue didn't dare to act recklessly.

If he accidentally hit a protected animal and earned himself a pair of shiny stainless-steel bracelets and a multi-year "imprisonment spell," it would definitely be a net loss.

Because he had found a new source of amusement—watching the City Hunter's videos and looking up sports-related information—the afternoon of slacking off passed in the blink of an eye.

Since it was his first day on the job, Chen Jue intended to leave a good impression on his new colleagues, so he didn't leave early.

At 5:00 PM, after clocking out on his phone, he went to the restroom to change into his sportswear and left the 17th-floor Risk Control Department with a group of colleagues who were busy discussing what to eat for dinner.

He didn't squeeze into the elevator because the line was simply too long.

Hengtong Tower had 32 floors and over three thousand employees; during peak hours, the eight elevators were nowhere near enough.

It wouldn't be so bad if he were on a lower floor; he could just walk down a few flights.

But being stuck in the middle on the 17th floor was awkward—walking all the way down was a waste of time, so most people just waited for the elevator.

However, Chen Jue had already tried climbing the 17 floors that morning, and walking down was almost effortless for him.

Moving with a mix of walking and jumping, it took him about five minutes to descend from the 17th floor to the basement in one go.

However, because the physical exertion wasn't high enough, the panel didn't provide any prompts this time.

"12 minutes to get to work, 5 minutes to get home." Opening the calendar progress app he had just downloaded, Chen Jue recorded the time it took to go up and down today.

He planned to climb the stairs like this every day and compare the time spent, which would allow him to intuitively see the progress of his Climbing speed.

Compared to the comprehensive attribute values on the panel, such time variations were easier for Chen Jue to use for before-and-after comparisons.

"I'll record the number of attributes I farmed today before I go to sleep, and then I can build a data model to improve efficiency!" Chen Jue calculated in his mind.

He couldn't let his Master-level Risk Control data skills go to waste.

He drove away from Hengtong and didn't return to the talent apartment where he lived, but instead circled around the nearby city center.

After spending over ten minutes, he finally found a small hardware store tucked away in a corner outside an old residential complex.

"Boss, do you have any nails for sale?" Chen Jue pulled his car over to the side of the road and walked into the shop.

"We have nails! Are you using them to nail into a wall or hang something?"

"Do you want to just buy a hook instead?"

The hardware store owner put down his calculator. Seeing Chen Jue's delicate, fair-skinned appearance, he knew this young man wasn't a contractor.

He figured he was just a nearby office worker, so he started pushing the adhesive plastic hooks used for daily tasks.

Young office workers who came to the city to work couldn't afford large apartments; their rooms were cramped with little usable space, so aside from buying power strips, they mostly came to hardware stores for these kinds of hooks.

"No thanks, I just want to buy nails."

"Preferably something about the length of a finger, the cheaper the better," Chen Jue said, holding up his index finger to gesture the size.

"That would be 3-inch nails. Will carpenter's nails work?" The shop owner grabbed a small box from the shelf and went back to calculating his accounts.

Chen Jue opened the box and weighed one in his hand. The 3-inch iron nail had decent heft; it was lighter than the darts or iron chopsticks he had bought, but it would barely suffice. He asked the owner if there was a wooden board in the shop to test the quality.

The hardware store owner was a practical man. He pointed to a piece of plywood hanging in the corner and was about to ask if Chen Jue needed a hammer to test the nail's durability.

Before he could, Chen Jue caught him off guard. With a flick of his arm, he launched the nail with great force, and with a loud thud, it embedded itself into the plywood three meters away.

"What the hell was that noise?" The hardware store owner, still looking down at his calculator, didn't register what happened. Thinking something had fallen off the shelf, he hurriedly looked up and glanced around.

"Not bad!"

"I'll take this kind. Give me 10 boxes!" Chen Jue nodded in satisfaction as he watched the [Hidden Weapon Throwing] proficiency +1 prompt pop up on his panel.

"You want to buy 10 boxes?"

The hardware store owner was stunned; he hadn't expected this young white-collar worker to buy so many at once.

He rushed to the back shelves to retrieve 10 boxes. The total came to only 90 yuan, far cheaper than the darts Chen Jue had ordered online.

"Forty pieces per box, less than 20 cents a piece. Using these nails for practice is much more cost-effective!" Chen Jue paid happily, grabbed the large plastic bag, and drove off.

He left the hardware store owner looking suspicious. Suddenly, the man slapped his forehead as if remembering something, turned back, and walked over to take a closer look at the plywood.

He saw that the nail was buried more than halfway into the wood.

"Good heavens!"

"He drove it in without even using a hammer?"

"How did he do that?" The hardware store owner scratched his messy hair, beginning to question his reality.

First update~

This flu is truly something else; my whole family has been struck down. I seriously suspect whether those Americans have been messing around with their bioweapons again.

Today is another miserable day. The medicine isn't helping, and I spent most of the day lying down and sleeping, so the update is late again.

Thankfully it's Saturday, and all you esteemed readers are out enjoying yourselves, so please allow Pianfeng a moment to recover.

I'm not sure if the second update will be out later. If it doesn't appear, everyone can just wait until tomorrow!

I'm really feeling awful, especially with this sore throat, coughing, and chills. Being this groggy is really affecting my ability to write.