Book 4, Chapter 216: Chasing A Trail

After Lu Gao was led out of his office, Chen Chuan put on gloves and picked up the implant. He put it into the data processing station in the office.

A moment later, clear voices and a video showed up on his screen.

Whoever it was speaking to Lu Gao was clearly using a voice changer, so he wouldn’t be able to use voice comparison and locate the owner. While he had a face, the Fu-Mu Entity could not find a matching one in all of its records. It was likely that the man was a foreigner who had recently come to Jibei Road.

He had also performed a domain interference during his entire conversation with Lu Gao. Without targeted monitoring, Chen Chuan wouldn’t be able to track down the man.

However, Lu Gao was pretty skilled, because this wasn’t all the information he gathered. Aside from giving Chen Chuan the general location of where the person might be based on the location of their conversation, he provided another crucial clue that increased the likelihood of Chen Chuan finding the person.

Despite that, Chen Chuan wasn’t able to tell who exactly was behind the man.

However, he hadn’t forgotten that Gray Shell Office had once tried to use something to control him. This meant that whoever was behind this was likely to be a martial arts master.

But it was strange. Why would a martial arts master target him? Even if he was from the purity faction, they shouldn’t be acting this fast and in such an extreme manner. The question plagued him for a time until he settled on the idea that this martial arts master hadn’t come after Chen Chuan because he was part of the purity faction. Instead, they had some other goal.

Coincidentally, this method was similar to the trick from before.

If it was the same person, why would they want to track Chen Chuan? It was useless in Central City, because even if they knew where he was, they couldn’t do anything to him. Based on this, it was likely that the martial arts master wanted to attack him when he went to the merged space.

After all, martial arts masters needed to go there to train.

Could Chen Chuan use this and enter the merged space to lure out the mastermind?

He soon abandoned this idea.

First of all, he didn’t know who the person was and how much manpower they could mobilize. After Chen Chuan came back from the island nations, the public was no longer ignorant about him. Whoever this martial arts master was might just set up a plan specifically to target him. If Chen Chuan went with it, he would put himself in a passive position. It was wishful thinking to believe he’d succeed like that.

Second, Jibei Road’s Central City was his homebase. He had an advantage here, so he should be making use of it.

The best course of action now was to capture the man who spoke to Lu Gao. If Chen Chuan could make good use of the information Lu Gao provided to him, he might even be able to find the mastermind.

So, he tapped on his Realm Pass. After a while, the call went through, and he asked, “Are you free right now, Lao Xu?”

“I don’t have anything urgent going on, so I can spare some time. What do you need me to do?” Xu Chan asked.

“I have something here that only you can do. I’ll send something to you later,” Chen Chuan said and used an encrypted channel to pass some instructions to Xu Chan.

In the end, he said, “Don’t use anyone from the Resolution Department. I’ll have my team work with you instead.”

“Got it,” Xu Chan said.

This was mainly so that Xu Chan wouldn’t get exposed. Now that he was a lead investigator, he could use Safe Shield to make sure that no one could trace him, but that wasn’t the case for other people. The more officers he took with him, the more easily their mission would get exposed.

He could tell that Chen Chuan wasn’t just giving him this task directly for secrecy’s sake. He didn’t go through any procedures for it, which meant that he wasn’t issuing this task to Xu Chan as the director of the Defense Bureau, but as the branch leader of the purity faction. It meant that this was an important matter and might even be the competition between factions.

Once Chen Chuan made his arrangements, he waited patiently in his office.

Since this was an operation involving several Third Limit martial artists, there was practically no doubt that it would end in success. In less than two hours, he got his results.

He touched his Realm Pass and saw the insides of an abandoned factory on the large screen in front of his desk.

The ground was covered in guns and bullet shells, along with a large number of implant-enhanced combatants.

The middle-aged man in sunglasses was also there. At that moment, he was lying on the ground with his limbs spread, and all his implants were destroyed. Only his brain remained intact.

Yuan Qiuyuan and Qin Qingque stood at his sides, while Wei Changan took his group around to check for something. Chen Chuan couldn’t see many injuries on them, so it seemed like it had been hard to get this done.

Qin Qingque saluted him through the screen. “Director, we’ve investigated everything. These people were from an agent company that has a provisional business license. Based on their documents and communication records, they contacted Deputy Director Lu on orders from an unidentified client.”

“Are all the participants here?” Chen Chuan asked.

“These people’s implants have a piece that allows them to be controlled remotely, but we performed a domain lockdown before coming here and sent another unit to track the signal down,” Qin Qingque answered.

“Is anyone injured?” Chen Chuan asked after a nod.

“No. They’re only using decommissioned weapons. Most of their implants were second-hand or defected trial versions. They weren’t strong, so we didn’t have a problem capturing all of them.”

“Okay,” Chen Chuan said. Just then, the other unit sent word back. They captured three resonators. According to them, they were hired to wait and get rid of all the agents inside once they received a signal. They didn’t have any more information.

This made it seem like the trail had gone cold. All the people they captured were just hired hands and had nothing to do with their client.

But Chen Chuan didn’t grow frustrated. He continued waiting.

***

A man dressed like a regular blue-collar worker got out of a second-hand rented car once he reached a certain part of Oceanway District. He lit up a cigarette by the side of the road and leaned against the wall while observing his surroundings.

A while later, he stubbed out the cigarette and went to a dirty alley. He then tapped his face, and it instantly changed. He then removed the loose uniform. By the time he walked out of the other end of the alley and reached the main road, he had become an office employee.

This was the latest facial biomodification technology. Through adjustments to synthetic muscle fibers and micro adjustments of the synthetic bones, they could change the entire bone structure, thus allowing the person to change their appearance. The man also made use of a neural activity modulator to change his movement habits and gait.

He put on sunglasses and combed his hair a bit. Just as he was about to leave, he heard someone speak behind him. “That’s some neat technology you’re using, but I hope you weren’t thinking that you can actually escape with just this.”

The man froze before turning around slowly and seeing Xu Chan standing behind him. “How did you find me?”

Xu Chan didn’t answer him. He was only able to find him because when Lu Gao contacted the man a second time, he registered his biofield into the independent implant in his temple. No matter how a person changed his appearance, they couldn’t change their biofield.

The man in the sunglasses back in the factory and the others were just sacrifices and bait.

Honestly, it was obvious. A regular person wouldn’t dare to take up a job requiring them to communicate directly with the deputy director of the Defense Bureau while also scheming against a martial arts master. Not that they had the ability to do so. Hence, if the client wanted this to work, they would need to find someone suitable to do the communicating while hiring other people to serve as bait.

The man removed his sunglasses and tugged off his dress shirt to reveal the embedded lines of implants. Dazzling lime colored light shone on his stomach, armpits, neck, and collarbones, as if there was some sort of liquid flowing through him.

This was a sign that he had nutrient and calorie-dense nutritional fluid in him. It was the latest technology in the industry and could provide implant-enhanced combatants with powerful combat abilities.

Xu Chan looked at the man for a bit before walking toward him and grabbing his shoulder. The moment Xu Chan’s fingers touched the man, the lime-colored light shone more brightly, and he moved in a blur.

It was as if he had suddenly sped up. Even the light turned blurry. He bypassed Xu Chan’s arm and moved to his side before swinging a colorful “whip.”

It was a hyper-condensed bioliquid blade. Through the use of his biofield, he had gathered countless symbiotic microorganisms together to form a stable hyper-condensed structure. When he flung it, the microorganisms entered an active state and formed a powerful and sharp blade.

However, before the blade could hit anything, Xu Chan smacked his wrist. The tiny thorns on the man’s wrist didn’t manage to serve their purpose as a shield. Then, a fist slammed into his face. Powerful refined force charged into his body, and all his implants shattered with loud cracks as he flew back.

The sight that followed surprised Xu Chan. While the man was thrown back, all his damaged parts, regardless of whether it was his mutated tissue or bones, recovered quickly. The lime-colored light rapidly dimmed, though.

This should be an effect of the calorie-dense nutritional fluid in him, along with the blood essence in his heart. All of it told Xu Chan that he had managed to catch a big fish.

Once the man crashed on the ground, he tumbled forward and vanished from the spot. This was due to his shapeshifting skin allowing him to perfectly blend with his surroundings.

However, after just taking a few steps forward, he felt the remaining refined force in him explode. His bones let out loud cracks, and he lost all strength and ability to remain upright. He fell forward and started spasming violently on the ground.

Xu Chan walked up to him slowly and stopped next to his face. Then, he put his hand on his Realm Pass. “I got him, Director. I’ll bring him back right now.”

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