Night raced backward beyond the car windows.
"Cousin, since there's something fishy about that janitor's identity, hasn't the Destiny Bureau gone to arrest him yet?"
Hugging the Mental Meditation Method, Gu Yuan asked casually.
"You think arresting someone is child's play?"
Shen Tingxue gripped the steering wheel and shot him an exasperated sidelong glance.
"We don't have any solid evidence, and our target is very likely a Warlock in the Alchemist Realm."
"Not only would a rash move alert him, but if we corner him and he goes on a killing spree in a busy district, who'll take responsibility?"
She paused, her tone turning more serious than ever.
"The higher-ups already know about this. Someone will be assigned to handle it. You just need to burn this into your brain—until school starts, you are absolutely not to go anywhere near First High School!"
"Got it, got it. I'm not an idiot, Cousin."
Gu Yuan waved his hands repeatedly, shaking his head like a rattle drum.
As if! A master in the Alchemist Realm!
If he really was that powerful, then his cousin, a Body Tempering Realm martial artist, and himself, a rookie at the peak of the Blood Tempering Realm, wouldn't even be enough to fill the man's teeth if they combined their strength.
Whoever wanted to wade into that mess could go ahead. Gu Yuan certainly wasn't about to get himself killed.
When he opened the front door, a melodramatic TV series was playing in the living room.
Gu Yuanzheng and Shangguan Yi sat on the couch, engrossed in it.
"Son, you're back! Have you eaten? There's still hot food in the pot."
Hearing the noise, Shangguan Yi leaned out from the couch.
"I ate, I ate. I had dinner at my cousin's place. Mom, I'm heading to my room!"
Gu Yuan answered dismissively as he changed his shoes. Before he'd even finished speaking, he had already dashed into his bedroom and locked the door behind him.
He rushed straight to his desk and set the Mental Meditation Method down on it.
The pages had yellowed. On the title page, the name "Sun Miaomiao" was written crookedly in delicate handwriting, with a half-eaten steamed bun doodled beside it.
Sister Miaomiao really was a bona fide foodie.
Gu Yuan kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the bed. Following the book's instructions, he sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and tried to sink his consciousness deep into his mind.
At first, his thoughts were still all over the place.
But gradually, his mind grew exceptionally clear.
The obscure passages he hadn't quite understood in the book seemed to break down and rearrange themselves in his mind, becoming easy to understand. This was probably the mental power attribute he'd snatched earlier at work.
Three hours later.
Gu Yuan's eyes flew open.
He carefully sensed the changes in his mind.
His mental power did seem to have improved by the tiniest bit.
That's right, just the tiniest bit.
Gu Yuan's mouth twitched.
He did the math. He'd been sitting there for three hours, his legs had gone numb, and the mental power he'd gained wasn't even a thousandth of the boost he got from observing Sun Miaomiao once and plucking an attribute from above her head!
At this rate, he'd be faster digging a tunnel with his fingernail.
"What's the point of training like this?"
Gu Yuan decisively tossed the Mental Meditation Method onto his pillow.
Who in their right mind would cultivate on their own?
Gu Yuan reached for his phone and opened the browser.
He opened a website he knew well.
The Martial Artist Forum.
A discussion site made especially for martial artists, full of all kinds of trades and knowledge.
Of course, you had to decide for yourself what was true.
He'd never had a clear idea of just how powerful a person in the Alchemist Realm was, or what they could do.
If one really went on a killing spree in a busy district, what would happen that made the Destiny Bureau so cautious?
He typed "Alchemist Realm Warlock real combat footage" into the search bar.
The page loaded for a few seconds, then a jumble of links appeared. Most were misleading movie clips or boastful forum posts.
Gu Yuan scrolled down.
At last, in a corner of the page, he clicked on a video that had just been uploaded.
The video title was written in bold red text on the phone screen.
[Alchemist Realm Warlock vs. Astral Force Realm Martial Artist: Real Combat Footage from an Abandoned Salt City Factory! Secretly Filmed, Leaked from the Inside, Thrilling and Intense!]
Gu Yuan's eyes lit up as soon as he saw the title.
He lay on his side, found a comfortable position, and tapped play.
The image shook violently at first, and the resolution was poor. The person filming was clearly far from the battlefield, and his hands were trembling badly.
"Holy crap! Old Li, what the hell are you filming for? Immortals are fighting! Run!"
A voice, so terrified it cracked, came from offscreen.
The person filming was clearly the kind who valued money over his life. Not only did he ignore the warning, he even moved a few steps closer to the factory.
The camera finally steadied.
At the center of the frame stood an abandoned chemical plant, with rusted steel frames and collapsed factory buildings.
Gu Yuan spotted two figures in the distance.
On top of the factory's rickety water tower stood a middle-aged man in a gray robe.
He stood with his hands behind his back, the hem of his robe snapping in the wind. The distance made his features impossible to discern, but pale green vortices visibly swirled around him.
This must be the energy field formed when mental power was materialized and released!
On a pile of rubble on the factory floor, a bare-chested, burly man stood with his head tilted back, glaring fixedly at the Warlock on the water tower.
A layer of dark golden light covered his skin, like a heavy suit of invisible armor. The muscles in his exposed arms bulged, veins standing out, and he looked immensely powerful.
"Is that astral energy armor?"
Gu Yuan stared at the screen and muttered to himself.
He'd studied the characteristics of Astral Force Realm martial artists in his theory textbooks, but the written descriptions were nowhere near as vivid or shocking as the dark golden film before his eyes.
In the video, the martial artist struck first.
He stomped down hard with his right foot.
"Bang!"
The rubble beneath him instantly exploded into powder, and he shot forward like a cannonball.
Rubble flew, and dust billowed.
His target was the Warlock atop the water tower.
The Warlock obviously wasn't going to let a martial artist get close.
The gray-robed Warlock held his right hand like a sword and pointed downward.
A dazzling white light suddenly flared between his brows.
In the next moment, the air within fifty meters of the Warlock plummeted in temperature.
The sheet metal covering the water tower groaned sharply, and thick white frost spread across it like a living thing.
The footage clearly showed a thick layer of frost rapidly forming over the tower's metal surface. The moisture in the air instantly turned into countless tiny ice crystals.
The martial artist's charge abruptly stalled in midair.
From the knees down, thick ice bound his legs tightly, like two prisons carved from ice.
The ice continued to creep upward at a visible pace. In the blink of an eye, it had passed his waist, then his chest. In just a few more seconds, it would seal his entire body inside.
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