Chapter One Hundred: Prelude (Part One)

The next day.
13:00.

Yang Luo stepped out of Yaji Hotel with a steady stride.
The sky was clear, no cloud in the blue.

He lifted his head and let his eyes drift along the skyline between the high buildings, as if searching for something. Only when Xu Jingyuan’s voice reached him did he turn.

“Mr. Yang, we may depart now.”

Xu Jingyuan extended his hand and wore an immaculate smile, guiding Yang Luo toward the open car door at his side.
Though he came from a prominent family and, though still so young, already held real power, he could lower himself to the role of a mere porter. Yang Luo could not help but look at him a few extra times.

“No need to trouble yourself,” Yang Luo said mildly.

“Once Mr. Yang eventually travels north to the Capital, he will be an honored guest of the Xu family. If I fail to receive him properly here, my housemaster will surely accuse me of losing my courtesy,” Xu Jingyuan said with a smile.

His words were smooth, yet beneath them lurked the intention of binding Yang Luo and his family ever more closely together.
Yang Luo no longer refused. He laughed and climbed into the car, and Xu Jingyuan followed with another smile, sitting beside him.

With the quick click of the doors closing, a long line of cars moved along the road, keeping the vehicle carrying Yang Luo and Xu Jingyuan in the center, like guards encircling a commander.

Yang Luo glanced out the window, raised his brows in mild surprise, and turned back to Xu Jingyuan.

“From what I know, such a grand display hardly fits the temperament of a secret unit like Section Eight.”

Xu Jingyuan met his gaze with a knowing smile.
“This is not Section Eight’s work. The Xu family has some enterprises in Qingjiang Province, so I only mobilized a little local resource. I did so because I noticed, Mr. Yang, that you seem to prefer something more bold and unrestrained.”

How could he have been that precise? Yang Luo lifted an eyebrow, slapped his palms together, and laughed heartily.
“Director Xu, I find I like you more every day.”

“It is my honor.”
Xu Jingyuan nodded with a contained elegance.

Meanwhile, near the Provincial Headquarters hotel.

Boxes of food were delivered into the hotel, while piles of black garbage sacks were kept outside, guarded and handled by designated staff to ensure nothing went wrong.

Inside a room, Jiang Chaoan watched in disbelief as Lin Heng swallowed mouthfuls of carefully prepared compressed biscuits and high-energy drink. The kind of rations that could fill an ordinary person for half a day in just a few hundred grams—he had already eaten over a hundred kilograms and wasn’t finished yet.

Jiang Chaoan could not help but shake his head.
“It’s fortunate our country has only two Supernaturals. If everyone here were supernormal, our annual food consumption would increase by thousands of times. Even if we devoured all the food produced on the whole earth, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

Lin Heng gave a faint, almost shy smile, shook his head, then lowered his eyes and returned to the documents in his hands.
“It only happens during the beginning of bodily transformation. Once the transformation is complete, his daily energy intake is only at most dozens of times that of an ordinary person.”

“Even that is terrifying,” Jiang Chaoan sighed.
Though he commented, he seemed not entirely present. He watched Lin Heng quietly, who kept flipping through file after file with astonishing speed—fast enough to seem like he was reading at quantum pace—yet around him hung an unmistakable air of seriousness.

After a long while Jiang could no longer restrain himself.
“Officer Lin, you already know the full truth of the 8-12 case. Why have you returned to the Provincial Headquarters, specifically to pull those files?”

His eyes held puzzled bewilderment.
That morning, Lin had told him he wanted to go out and retrieve some materials at the Provincial Headquarters. Jiang had gone with him and even produced the Ninth Bureau’s secret credentials. Yet when they faced the archly respectful archivists, Lin took nothing else at all—only copied a stack of these very case files.

And why this?
It could not be, of course, that he had some occupational compulsion that required dossiers for comfort.

Without turning around, Lin said,
“These are not just the 8-12 case files. There is much more—far more.”

“Oh?” Jiang looked at him, his brows tightening slightly.
But Lin gave no further answers and kept going through the pages.

15:45.

Qingxia City Railway Station, departure platform.
The train going north today was a special express. Apart from Yang Luo, Xu Jingyuan, and the relevant staff, there were no other passengers.

The whistle sounded; the signal to depart. Attendants, smiles in place, stood by the open doors of each carriage, waiting for today’s travelers.

Yet at first, no one boarded.

Everyone’s eyes fixed on Yang Luo and Xu Jingyuan. Xu, too, turned to Yang with a questioning look.
If he did not board, nothing would depart today.

And yet Yang seemed unaffected by all those eyes. He lifted his head and looked toward the sky’s edge, as if he were waiting for something.

For a long time, only when departure time was nearly upon them, he finally lowered his head, a trace of disappointment and coldness passing through his eyes, and then strode straight onto the train without another word.

Whether attendants or other staff, all of them stared, baffled, and then hurried aboard as well, urging the driver to make the train depart quickly.

Among them, only Xu Jingyuan, moving at an unremarkable pace beside Yang, had already guessed something.
He frowned, quickly and quietly.

“It can’t be…”

Though if events unfolded as he feared, he—who stood to profit from deep cooperation with the nation’s only Supernormal—could gain still greater advantage through both the Ninth Bureau and the Xu family.
But profit also meant risk.

A high cliff draws every wandering arrow; a tree that stands out in the forest is the first to be brought down.
And moreover, that outcome—reducing our number of Supernormals from two to one—would surely harm the nation’s long-term strategy and hinder the Supernormal Plan.

Whether for himself, for the Ninth Bureau, or even for the Xu family, that would be the worst of outcomes.

Not to mention each time he walked beside Yang, he felt a danger clinging to his back like hidden thorns.

Having read through Yang’s past in detail, Xu Jingyuan knew exactly his instability. If Yang were given a truly unique position, he would become too precious to be priced. And with no faith anchoring him, perched far above all others, such a man could do anything.

Xu Jingyuan thought it through in silence, praying inwardly that his fear was wrong, that today could pass without incident and that once they arrived safely in the Capital, the Supernormal Program could proceed smoothly.

—Then, by relying on Yang Luo’s transformational power, the Ninth Bureau would surely surpass the Eighth Bureau in the advance of the Transcendence Era Plan, where the only bodily-transformed Supernormal was still only one in number.

(End of the chapter)