Clues

After settling his second uncle's family in and telling them to wait for news at the Chen family home, Chen Yiming went out alone.

He first went to Xu Yuanzhao's home to ask where his cousin had been sent on a mission that night.

Xu Yuanzhao belonged to another city patrol squad. His squad and Chen Yiming's had carried out missions in the same urban villages several times, so they knew each other fairly well.

Chen Yiming soon learned that the incident had happened in Ma Village, east of the city.

Ma Village was nearly fifteen kilometers from the city center. It could hardly be called an urban village anymore.

He then returned to the city center and paid a hefty sum to hire a private detective to investigate the scene with him.

Ma Village stood near the city wall.

There were no streetlights in the area. Everything was pitch-black, and they could only see the road by moonlight.

Dense woods stretched into the distance, while lush green fields of flowering vegetables lay nearby.

It was a thoroughly rural scene, without a trace of city life.

At the turnoff leading to Ma Village stood a middle-aged man with a shoulder bag. Behind him was a young man in fitted clothes, his build lean and balanced.

They stood side by side, looking toward the nearby village.

For some reason, there was not even a dog barking inside. The silence was almost unnatural.

"There have been too many unexplained disappearances in the villages around the city lately. Most of the cases go nowhere," Deng Hu said.

"What's going on?" Chen Yiming asked.

The Chen family had long since moved out of an urban village, and he had not taken a household registration check in ages. He knew nothing about the recent situation.

"Even a city patrol squad has fallen victim. Whoever's behind this is acting in broad daylight. There must be more to it than meets the eye," Deng Hu explained.

Chen Yiming took the matter a little more seriously after hearing that.

When he had undergone three Body Metamorphoses, he had been able to fight Tang Zhenfeng, who had undergone five, though he had benefited from Tang Zhenfeng's injuries.

Now his swordsmanship talent had risen another level, and he had developed Chen-Style Swordsmanship, which suited him better than Mantis Snake Swordsmanship.

He had also reached six Body Metamorphoses. Even without accounting for his still-unfamiliar beginner sword body constitution, he should be stronger than someone who had undergone eight.

As for how he compared with someone who had undergone nine Body Metamorphoses, he had never met one and could not say.

A person with eight Body Metamorphoses was already a formidable figure in East Lake City.

So he was not particularly worried about his safety while investigating the village.

"How about this? If you find a lead, I'll pay you another hundred thousand as a bonus," Chen Yiming proposed.

Without an extra financial incentive, he worried that Deng Hu would back off at the first sign of trouble instead of investigating further.

"Very generous, Mr. Chen. For that extra hundred thousand, I'll turn the place upside down tonight and give you a satisfactory answer," Deng Hu said, readily accepting.

With that, he headed toward Ma Village.

Chen Yiming nodded and followed.

Deng Hu did not take Chen Yiming through the village entrance. Halfway there, he stepped off the road and into the fields.

There were plenty of cornfields. The tall stalks blocked the view and concealed their movements.

They stopped beside the courtyard wall of a house on the edge of the village.

Deng Hu leaped over the wall and landed softly on the other side.

Chen Yiming followed close behind.

The village was silent. Every house was dark, making it impossible to tell from a distance whether anyone was inside.

"If you have questions, don't make a sound. I'm starting," Deng Hu instructed.

Then he lay facedown on the ground.

After a few seconds, his nose visibly swelled.

Is that the legendary Dog Nose Technique? Chen Yiming thought.

The Dog Nose Technique was a martial art that specifically tempered the nose, making it as sensitive as a dog's.

Deng Hu sniffed in every direction toward the village.

Then he climbed on all fours to the third floor of a house and looked down over the village.

The house's doors and windows were in disrepair, and it was clearly unoccupied. Deng Hu did not have to worry about alerting anyone inside.

Once he was ready, Deng Hu quickly came back down.

"Follow me. Don't make a sound," Deng Hu whispered.

One behind the other, they searched the village for clues.

Before long, Deng Hu led Chen Yiming over another wall and into a courtyard.

"This is the first place where I picked up a lingering smell of blood," Deng Hu indicated.

Chen Yiming scanned the courtyard but saw nothing unusual.

Deng Hu lay down again and made a circuit of the courtyard, stopping in one corner.

He took a folding shovel from his shoulder bag.

With a few strokes, he dug through the soil.

He soon pulled the buried items out one by one.

Two long blades, two longswords, an axe, a handgun, and some scraps of torn clothing.

"A handgun?" Chen Yiming asked quietly.

It was the first time since crossing over that he had encountered a firearm outside the military.

"It was probably the squad leader's. You can keep it if you're interested," Deng Hu said softly.

"No. I'm just surprised they still came to harm when they had a gun," Chen Yiming replied.

"That's not so strange. In a village full of obstacles, a handgun isn't necessarily more useful than a melee weapon," Deng Hu explained.

Chen Yiming nodded.

A martial artist's speed and reflexes far surpassed an ordinary person's.

With obstacles nearby to use as cover, dodging bullets was indeed not difficult.

"Let's go straight to the next site," Deng Hu said.

Deng Hu then led Chen Yiming to two more places where incidents had occurred.

Using the same method, he dug up items belonging to the squad from the soil.

"My preliminary judgment is that they're still alive."

Squatting beside the hole, Deng Hu examined the items he had uncovered and gave his assessment.

Chen Yiming nodded. He thought so too.

"What do we do now?" Chen Yiming asked.

They knew the people were still alive, but not where they were being held.

"Let's search around the village," Deng Hu decided.

They quietly left the village and searched the surrounding fields for traces.

Deng Hu's judgment proved accurate.

It did not take them long to find signs that someone had trampled through the crops.

"They're no longer in the village. They were taken somewhere else."

Deng Hu crouched before a cornfield where a path had been trampled through the stalks and examined it closely.

Chen Yiming looked at the cornfield, his thoughts drifting.

As long as they were still alive, he had a way to rescue them.

He was no longer the man he had been over half a year ago, when he had needed to think carefully before acting even in secret.

What he had to decide now was which identity to use to rescue them.

Should he do it openly, or save them quietly from the shadows?

After reaching six Body Metamorphoses, he had already planned to find an opportunity to reveal the strength of someone who had undergone three.

He had realized that anyone below three Body Metamorphoses was considered to be laying the foundations of martial arts. The martial arts world's conflicts rarely involved people at that level.

Only those who had undergone at least three Body Metamorphoses were qualified to take part openly. Those who had undergone at least six were the central players in many of those conflicts.