——Where did... an Awakened... one... come from...
The tour guide from Shan Country let out a gurgle, the air from his lungs blocked by blood. His once-sharp eyes were now vacant and dim, his head twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees around.
His atlas vertebra had shattered. His own spinal bones had severed his nerves and trachea. His head dangled like a broken doll's; he was as dead as could be.
After all, with his neck twisted like that, even if he possessed some earth-shattering Secret Technique, he wouldn't be able to use it now.
"Sir?"
Moba, who was parking the bus, heard Ge'ang's final, faint cry. From the driver's seat, he instinctively pulled a gun from his waistband. But as he turned his head, before he could even get a clear look, a furious kick whistled through the air and struck him square on the chin—which he had turned just in time, as if offering it up as a target.
"Ugh."
His jaw took a savage blow. Even a professional boxer would have been knocked out cold by such a kick. Moba, who was just an ordinary man with some training, went into shock on the spot, collapsing to the floor, dead or alive.
The entire bus fell silent.
"Damn, that hurts... Was that Magic just now?!"
The young man's voice, laced with both pain and elation, rang out. Having dealt with the obviously suspicious tour guide and the equally suspicious driver, Su Zhou—his face flushed, his eyes watery from the headache—finally had a moment to catch his breath.
"So there really is Magic in this world!"
Even after taking a Spirit Secret Skill head-on, which made him see stars and nearly lose his balance, Su Zhou's face was a mask of ecstasy. "Hahaha! An Anomaly, a Kaidan, a real supernatural event! After all these years, I've finally found one!"
Then, he let go, allowing the guide's body to slump to the floor. Su Zhou took the deepest breath he could, steadied his nerves, and focused on bringing his vision—which had started to double, like a glitch in a video game—back to normal.
A moment later, the double vision faded, and the initial sharp pain subsided. Of course, Su Zhou still felt a little dizzy. 'How can I describe it?' It was a bit like the time during the ninth-grade entrance exams, when he'd gone days without sleep, cramming like a madman. There was a dull, throbbing ache between his eyebrows and deep within his mind.
"I can't believe it. Some random tour guide actually knows Magic!"
Su Zhou slapped his cheeks a few times. Unaware that his opponent had actually been a high-ranking local official, he felt his face flush. He wasn't sure if it was a side effect of the psychic assault or the simmering rage he felt after watching the man kill so casually.
Of course, the most likely reason was the sheer excitement of finally meeting another 'Transcendent'.
Su Zhou rubbed his temples and shook his head, trying to clear it. 'Was that a 'psychic blast,' like you see in manga and novels?'
Regardless, Su Zhou turned, crouched down, and expertly began to frisk the tour guide's body.
Sure enough, he had a gun tucked into his waistband too.
But compared to the gun, this secretive, strange fellow seemed to place more importance on, and be more skilled with, that bizarre and mysterious 'Secret Technique'.
'He had a gun and didn't use it. What an idiot.'
Catching his breath, his heart still pounding, Su Zhou paused to think before picking up the two guns from the guide and the driver. He expertly checked the safeties and ammunition, then stashed them in his pocket for self-defense.
He paid no more mind to the dead man and the unconscious one on the floor. Instead, he turned to the other man's corpse and sighed softly. "Sorry. I was careless and couldn't stop him in time."
"But I've sent him down to keep you company."
As he said this, Su Zhou stepped forward and, with a single, decisive stomp, snapped the driver Moba's neck. His voice was calm, almost cold. "A life for a life. It's the only thing I can do for you."
'I'm still too inexperienced.'
The moment he'd first felt that wave of drowsiness, Su Zhou knew something was wrong.
As a high school sophomore, he only slept five hours a night and was long used to it. He never got sleepy during the day unless he was faced with an entire book of advanced math problems. There was no way he'd feel tired right after lunch.
Besides, that strange sound was very similar to the various Spirit Sounds he could occasionally hear, the ones made by all sorts of ghostly apparitions. But unlike the sounds from those Ghosts, which were unnerving and terrifying, making one's heart race with a cold dread, this sound had a strange, sacred quality to it, as if it were designed specifically to lull people to sleep.
'If I hadn't been listening to those things for ten years, I probably would have fallen for it.'
Making a fair assessment of his opponent's Secret Technique, Su Zhou looked down again at the guide, whose head was twisted 180 degrees, and at the driver with the snapped neck. His expression grew serious.
'From what the guide said,' he thought, 'it sounded like they were planning to use us as 'offerings' for some evil plot.'
'So this wasn't some impulsive crime for ransom. It was all in service of some exceptionally important plan!'
'And most importantly, this plan is in motion right now! God knows how many people have already died because of it!'
Su Zhou knew, of course, that killing people at will was wrong. His father had told him time and again that the reason he'd had him train his body and learn combat skills wasn't for bullying ordinary people. It was to live up to his innate talents and to protect himself when in danger.
But as a member of a Noble Family with a long line of lawmen—his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and even his more distant ancestors had all been constables and guards—Su Zhou, possessor of a Superpower, had a moral compass that skewed more toward the 'Madmen' and 'Knights' of old.
When faced with villains who took innocent lives, killing them was perfectly justified—it was rooting out evil for the good of the people!
As the saying goes, when one carries a sharp weapon, the thought of killing naturally follows—and what more for a Superpower? Ever since he'd been able to see Ghosts and crush solid bone with his bare hands, Su Zhou had come to a resolution: he would not use his power for evil, but neither would he stand by and watch evil spread.
Of course, there were practical factors to consider as well.
'They're a whole organization, so there must be a lot of Transcendent people. Mmm, good thing I killed them first. Otherwise, how could a poor, helpless, ordinary high school sophomore like me—all alone in a foreign land and as fragile as a butter cookie—possibly win?'
Faced with armed kidnappers, with Madmen who dared abduct dozens of citizens from Zhengguo—an Asian Overlord and one of the world's two superpowers—Su Zhou had only one choice: act decisively and ruthlessly. He had to kill them all before their reinforcements arrived.
At this thought, Su Zhou couldn't help but feel a little "nervous"—he subconsciously clenched his fists, itching for a fight.
The 'mysterious power' that the now-dead tour guide had used, both while explaining the tourist sites and while resisting him—that real 'Magic'—was truly something else. It could actually devour a person's soul and assault their mind.
'So this is what real Magic is like?'
'If that's the case, how many people in this organization know Magic? Are they not afraid of the repercussions of kidnapping so many Zhengguo citizens because they possess some powerful Magic to fall back on?'