The steam visibly rising from Chen Jue's sweat left the three soldiers present-and the short, dark-skinned pickpocket pinned to the ground-utterly stunned!
"Sir, were you practicing qigong?" one of the soldiers couldn't help asking. The other two kept sizing up Chen Jue in amazement. Though their hands still held the pickpocket down, their attention was no longer on him at all.
They couldn't help it!
Seeing white steam pouring off Chen Jue in broad daylight completely defied everything they thought they knew!
In winter, it would have been understandable. After strenuous exercise, sweat might condense into mist, and even an exhaled breath could turn white. That was nothing unusual.
But it was late summer. Aside from the white steam rising from boiling water, when had ordinary sweating ever caused such a spectacle?
"Qigong?"
"No, no!"
"Just ordinary martial arts." Realizing the soldier had misunderstood, Chen Jue hurried to explain.
Still, even he was a little surprised by the change in his body.
When he had practiced in the countryside, he had occasionally felt the pores all over his body contract and close on their own, but he had never sprinted several hundred meters without releasing any of that pent-up energy.
Only after catching the thief, when he felt he could no longer contain the heat surging inside him, had Chen Jue used the closing movement of the Eight Immortals Stance to cool down. It was like throwing open a tightly sealed valve, releasing the heat and sweat that had been held back for so long. The resulting steam was simply too conspicuous, drawing everyone's attention.
The principle seemed simple enough, but actually mastering it was extraordinarily difficult.
"Ordinary martial arts couldn't possibly be that impressive!"
"The three of us are the fastest sprinters in our regiment, but even after chasing you all that way, we couldn't keep up. You just kept pulling farther ahead! Sir, you're incredible!" The soldier shook his head, clearly unconvinced by Chen Jue's explanation. Chen Jue merely smiled and said nothing more.
After resting briefly, they finally caught their breath. The three soldiers discussed what to do next. One took out his phone and called the police, while another stood ramrod straight, apparently reporting the incident to a superior.
Soldiers and police officers had different duties. Catching thieves and questioning them ultimately had to be left to the police.
Within five minutes, two patrol cars from the nearby South City Police Station arrived.
After learning that a pickpocket had stolen from someone on a bus and had been caught in the street with the stolen goods by three passing soldiers, even a deputy chief of the South City Police Station had been alerted, given the soldiers' involvement.
"Thank you for your efforts! I'm Zhou Qin, deputy chief of the South City Police Station. We'll take care of everything from here!" Zhou Qin got out of the car and saluted the three men.
The soldiers returned his salute. "Hello, Chief Zhou! Actually, this gentleman who practices martial arts caught the thief first. We only caught up afterward and helped out."
"A gentleman who practices martial arts?"
Looking at the men drenched in sweat, Zhou Qin felt a little puzzled. He then glanced at Chen Jue, who stood nearby, unsure whether to leave or stay, and said, "How about this? You've all worked up quite a sweat. It's scorching out here, so come sit at our station and have some water to cool off. We can take a brief statement while you're there. It won't take much of your time."
The three soldiers nodded. The proper procedures still had to be followed. They handed the pickpocket over to the other two officers, who put him in handcuffs, then followed Deputy Chief Zhou into a patrol car.
After being told that he also needed to give a statement, Chen Jue climbed into the same car.
As for the red plastic bag the pickpocket had dropped while fleeing, it contained the woman's wallet and phone. The responding officers had retrieved it, photographed it as evidence, and brought it back to the station as well.
The South City Police Station wasn't far from the scene. They arrived after a five-minute drive.
After getting out of the car, Chen Jue went into an office and spoke briefly with the officer taking his statement. He described the incident in detail, left his contact information, and then departed.
His brave capture of the pickpocket counted as stepping up to help someone in need, earning him a few words of praise from Deputy Chief Zhou and the young officer taking his statement. There was no reward money or certificate, though. After all, he had only caught a thief, and the amount involved was just a few thousand yuan.
These days, people rarely carried large amounts of cash when they went out. The middle-aged woman had only brought some because she was heading to the city's wholesale market to buy stock. Her phone was also worth a few thousand yuan.
When she learned that her wallet and phone had been recovered, the middle-aged woman made a point of thanking Chen Jue and the three soldiers.
What Chen Jue never could have imagined was that, shortly after he left the station, the surveillance footage of him sprinting over five hundred meters to catch the thief would cause quite a stir throughout the South City Police Station.
"Yun! Come take a look at this footage!"
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing serious! It's just that this guy ran a little too fast!"
"Isn't running fast perfectly normal? How else would he have caught the thief?"
Inside the police station, two officers responsible for gathering evidence were watching surveillance footage assembled from several cameras. It clearly showed Chen Jue climbing out through the bus's rear window, overtaking the three soldiers, leaping over a strip of landscaping, and sprinting several hundred meters before tackling the thief.
He performed the entire sequence in one fluid motion, never pausing or slowing down. It was like watching an action blockbuster.
What intrigued them most, however, was that they both knew the stretch between the bus and the spot where the thief had been caught. It was nearly six hundred meters, yet Chen Jue had covered it in less than a minute.
More importantly, this was a city street with complicated terrain, not a synthetic running track. That worked out to just over ten seconds for every hundred meters!
That was the sprinting ability of a nationally ranked athlete!
And the crucial point was that Chen Jue hadn't run just a hundred meters. He had sprinted more than five hundred meters in one go, without slowing down once!
If he brought that performance to an Olympic four-hundred- or eight-hundred-meter race, he would surely be contending for gold or silver!
"Could the timestamps on the footage be wrong?"
"No! Yun, I've checked and adjusted them several times!" The two officers marveled over the video for a while before reporting their findings to Zhou Qin, who was overseeing the case.
Ordinarily, a minor theft case wouldn't require a deputy chief's involvement. But with three soldiers involved, the nature of the case was different.
At that moment, Deputy Chief Zhou was in his office receiving a military officer who had just arrived from a post on the outskirts of town.
Upon learning that his subordinates had crucial video evidence to report, Zhou Qin smiled and invited the military officer to watch it with him.
If the case was handled well, they could even invite the local television station to cover it or get a story in the newspaper, showcasing cooperation between the military and police in An County and their joint efforts to promote social harmony.
But after they watched the footage of the thief's capture, not only did Deputy Chief Zhou look astonished, the military officer invited to learn about the incident wore an equally peculiar expression!
Before you continue