"Who was that? So nimble. And in an instant, I felt my body turn incorporeal."
"This is the first time I've ever lost control of my body in an instant. Even my feet sank into the ground."
Zhu Dalong smacked his lips, struggled to pull out his hammer, and smashed it against the ground. Only after a great deal of effort did he pull his feet free.
He seemed used to this sort of thing.
The Land of Exiles was unlike Sky City.
The Dawn Blade and the Nobles controlled almost all the Awakened there, but in the Land of Exiles, nearly every major faction had some Awakened of its own.
Moreover, with such lax oversight, some Awakened from elsewhere hid among ordinary people.
"Officer Zhu, are you all right?" A young member of the Heart of the Order Keeper in a black uniform hurried over.
"First, don't call me Officer Zhu. It sounds damned unlucky. Call me Officer Long."
"Second, with your reaction speed, if anything really had happened to me, you'd be looking at my corpse by the time you got here."
The young man paused. "Captain Shen said that if you died, I could take your place."
"?"
Zhu Dalong swore under his breath. "That old pervert. Hmph. Find anything?"
"A baby girl, less than a month old." The young team member carefully picked up the baby, holding her somewhat awkwardly, as though she were a bomb.
"The woman's still alive, but the man making the deal had already killed himself with poison when we found him. We're looking into their identities."
Zhu Dalong glanced at the baby girl. Pink and tender, she was sleeping soundly. He felt as though he could kill several babies like her with a single punch.
He sheepishly looked away and walked