Cross-Tracking

As night gradually fell, a gentle autumn breeze swept across the Wangcheng Bridge. Qing Chen stretched his body as he ran, the wind blowing his clothes backward.

Perhaps it was a change in his state of mind, but he felt as if…

The shackles that his family and environment had once placed upon him were slowly being unlocked.

Qing Chen ran faster and faster.

Occasionally, pedestrians on the bridge would look back at him. Everyone could sense this inexplicable youthful energy, impulsive and abundant.

Yinrun Central Garden was one of Luocheng's most expensive residential areas, also a well-known affluent neighborhood.

Therefore, Qing Chen wasn't surprised that Huang Jixian, a second-generation rich kid, lived there.

The property management and security here were relatively strict, requiring card access for entry and exit.

Qing Chen circled around to the back entrance, wanting to see if there was any way to get in from there.

However, before he could figure out how to enter, he saw six men in black suits emerging from the path by the back gate of the complex.

Their backs were straight, and they looked as sharp and formidable as bayonets.

As they walked, the six men maintained a perfectly synchronized pace. The timing of their steps and the length of their strides seemed to have been measured with a ruler.

Wait, Qing Chen froze, because he saw that among the six men, they were supporting a teenager… Huang Jixian!

At this moment, Huang Jixian's expression was dazed, and he was muttering nonsensical words like prison, machinery, monsters…

They quickly boarded two black SUVs parked outside the back gate. One of them seemed to sense something and turned his head from the passenger seat to look in Qing Chen's direction.

Qing Chen immediately turned his head away, pretending to casually play with his phone.

The other party didn't seem to pay him much attention. The two black SUVs sped away into the night.

Qing Chen, however, stood stunned outside the complex, looking at his phone in silence.

Who were those people?

Why were they taking Huang Jixian?

Could it be because of his status as a Transmigrator?

It had to be this, Qing Chen didn't believe in coincidences.

He turned and headed home.

On the way, he pondered the identity of the men in black, but gradually, he realized something was amiss.

A young man wearing a black hoodie had been silently following him for five blocks.

A strange sense of familiarity… he had seen this person before.

In an instant, Qing Chen felt all his muscles tense up. An invisible pressure was eroding his sense of security.

It was as if he had been intensely targeted by a wild beast.

He recalled that when he encountered the men in black at the back entrance of the Central Garden complex, the person had been watching his phone not far away. However, while watching his phone, the person's fingers had not moved across the screen.

Qing Chen couldn't analyze everything he saw every second; it would be too mentally taxing, but he could recall memories.

With this thought, Qing Chen casually pretended to pick up his phone and stopped in place, looking down as if making a call: "Hello, I'll be home late for dinner…"

A baseball cap hid his face in shadow.

The young man in the black hoodie walked past him without stopping after Qing Chen halted.

Qing Chen's peripheral vision locked onto him, but the man didn't look back even once.

This made Qing Chen somewhat puzzled. At one point, he even doubted if he was being overly suspicious.

On the bustling street, the man in the black hoodie quickly disappeared. Qing Chen hung up his phone and continued walking.

Fortunately, he had changed out of his school uniform and put on a hat before coming home. Otherwise, the person would have known he was a student at Luocheng Foreign Language School just by looking at his uniform.

At this moment, before Qing Chen could relax, he discovered at the traffic light at the next intersection that a familiar face had reappeared among the crowd waiting for the light.

It was someone he had seen at the main entrance of the Central Garden complex.

This wasn't a coincidence.

It was a relay tail.

Each person responsible for the tail only followed for a certain distance, and each had to ensure they blended in like a passerby, unnoticed. If the target stopped, the person following would continue walking forward as if nothing had happened, while other members would take over from behind.

This was one of the safest methods of tailing.

Qing Chen was grateful for all the useful and useless miscellaneous books he had read.

He finally understood that when the person in the SUV looked at him, he had been marked.

There were more than six of them, and others were hidden in the shadows.

Was this some kind of secret organization, so well-trained and so focused on matters related to Transmigrators?

Qing Chen suddenly felt that he might not be the first batch of Transmigrators; perhaps he was the second, or even the third batch.

Otherwise, even if someone had learned about Transmigrators today, they wouldn't be able to react so quickly today.

These people were prepared.

The youth's black pupils were dense and deep. There were the night runners approaching on the sidewalk, the uncle selling candied hawthorn by the road, the slender woman in high heels clicking her way past, and the shifting shadows cast by the yellow streetlights beside him.

He recorded every detail, reminding himself not to make any mistakes.

The traffic light had 12 seconds left.

The man in black he had just brushed past was likely already taking a detour to get behind him, preparing for the next cross-tracking maneuver.

Calculating the route he would take – Wangchunmen Street, Zhenghe Road, Kaiyuan Avenue – it would take at most ten minutes for an adult running at normal speed.

If he wanted to break free from the tail...

Now was the time.

The light turned green. The person tailing him stepped forward to cross the road, and Qing Chen suddenly turned back.

The tail, acting as if nothing had happened, continued across the road and said in a low voice, "The target didn't cross. He turned back. How long until you're in position?"

It sounded like he was talking to himself, but if someone looked closely, they would notice a semi-transparent earpiece in his left ear.

"No, I still need two minutes to reach the tracking position."

In an instant, the tail crossing the road sensed something was wrong. He suddenly turned back to look for Qing Chen, but he couldn't find the youth anywhere.

"Lost him," the tail at the intersection sighed.

The young man in the black hoodie, sprinting in the distance, chuckled in response, "How embarrassing. Two people tailing one person, and you still lost him."

"You were the one who insisted on tailing him."

The young man in the black hoodie laughed, "Then guess if he actually noticed we were tailing him?"

A voice came through the earpiece: "I'm sure he noticed. He's skilled."

The young man in the black hoodie thought for a moment and said, "That kid looks no older than seventeen or eighteen, probably still in high school. If he could really detect us tailing him, that would be too abnormal. And did you notice how naturally he handled it? The first time he stopped to make a call, I didn't think he'd noticed me at all. Otherwise, I would have apprehended him right then."

"I'm curious, why did you decide to tail him on impulse? We have quite a few tasks today; there's no need to waste time on a passerby."

"It wasn't entirely on impulse. It's just that when the captain and the others were escorting Target 009 out, I noticed he avoided the captain's gaze."