Chapter Four: The Plan to Search for Espers

After graduating from the college entrance examinations, university awaited.

Because Xi Gu achieved excellent results, he had his pick among most of his preferred schools, and so he chose a top university in the provincial capital.

Entering university, he attended classes, left classes, joined clubs, and played games just like any other student, finding a certain enjoyment in these activities.

The biggest difference between him and other students was that he rented an apartment off campus by himself, instead of living in the university dormitory.

—After all, living under the same roof day in and day out was simply too dangerous.

Not for Xi Gu, but for his classmates.

Although he was confident in his self-control, getting too entangled in relationships with others was still a delicate matter.

The most important change after entering university was the greatly increased freedom.

As long as there were no classes scheduled, it was essentially a holiday. If one was clever in arranging their course selection, packing the schedule with elective credits that required no attendance, no assignments, and were trivial in content, it was possible to have four or even five days of free time each week.

During his freshman year, Xi Gu was still somewhat cautious, keeping most of his activities within the province.

But by sophomore year, on days with nothing planned, his footsteps began to traverse the country.

By the time he was a junior and senior, while other students busied themselves with internships and graduate exam preparations, Xi Gu had already traveled across the seven continents and four oceans, making the entire globe his playground.

Do not misunderstand—his love for travel was not for the sake of admiring natural scenery, but to search for others like himself.

—Others with abilities.

In fact, when he first acquired his powers, Xi Gu always believed there was a hidden world beneath the surface—just as countless novels described, with all sorts of gifted individuals fighting in the shadows, contending for power and treasures; major world governments maneuvering against each other in secrecy.

Against this backdrop, the silhouettes of mercenaries and shadowy organizations would surface quietly, even featuring the legendary ruins of Atlantis or the involvement of alien civilizations...

Yet no matter how hard Xi Gu searched, no matter how wide he opened his eyes in the darkness, he never found anyone like himself, nor any so-called “organization of the gifted.”

After entering university, Xi Gu strode out into the world. At first, he quietly searched the cities of various countries, hoping to find someone like himself, as eagerly as a Harry Potter fan waiting at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

When he found nothing, he shifted his gaze to remote regions and ancient ruins.

—In the temples hidden within the Himalayas, legends spoke of a centenarian monk who could “levitate,” even making it into the world’s unsolved mysteries.

But after careful investigation, Xi Gu discovered that the so-called “ability” was merely a magician’s trick, using the refraction of light between glaciers to create the illusion of levitation.

—On the European continent, a world-famous boy prophet was rumored to have foretold global events over the past decade.

But after infiltrating the boy’s home and conducting a detailed investigation, Xi Gu was disappointed to find that the so-called prophecies were “miracles” manufactured by wealthy backers behind the scenes.

By recruiting a handful of political science students to systematically analyze the possible directions of world affairs and then issuing a series of vague predictions, they could later hype up whichever prediction coincidentally aligned with a major real-world event. With vigorous online promotion, they manufactured the reputation of a “prophet.” That was the truth behind it.

—There were also bizarre tales of the pyramids, mysterious ruins in East Africa, ancient civilizations in the Pacific, a mind-reading monk in a Southeast Asian temple, a living avatar of Shiva in India...

All of it—lies!

As he grew increasingly disillusioned by the fabricated miracles of superpowers in human society, Xi Gu turned his gaze toward the magnificent and mysterious natural world.

Legends spoke of wild men, true dragons, UFOs, immortals from antiquity... In Shennongjia, a place more legendary than the SOS Brigade from Haruhi Suzumiya, Xi Gu traversed it in half a day and found nothing.

Even so, he did not give up. He spent several more days meticulously searching every plant and blade of grass, yet still found nothing that defied common sense.

—Though there were indeed species not yet recorded in existing biological catalogues, none were connected to the extraordinary.

Then Xi Gu went to the Bermuda Triangle, a name perpetually among the top three of the “world’s unsolved mysteries” since last century. But even after diving thousands of meters below the surface, aside from encountering some particularly large octopuses, he came back empty-handed.

—Where were the wormholes?! The ghost ships?!

Gradually losing hope, Xi Gu, in utter boredom, continued to explore one legendary site after another, shattering the lies of each so-called “unsolved mystery.”

—Loch Ness, Heaven Lake atop Changbai Mountain, Death Valley, Kunlun Mountains, the ruins of Lop Nur, the bottomless boreholes...

Yet.

All.

Lies.

Xi Gu was in despair.

No—there was still hope.

Pulling himself together, he set his sights on the most important and secretive of all places.

—The intelligence agencies of the world’s nations.

Even for someone like Xi Gu, relying on individual power alone would not necessarily allow him to see the world in its entirety.

But if he could somehow consolidate the information major countries held on “mysteries” and “the extraordinary,” gathering the core secrets of today’s great powers, perhaps he could finally grasp the true reality of the world?

So Xi Gu thought.

However, there was an important problem to consider.

Compared with his previous investigations into so-called “superpowers” in human society and explorations of “mysterious regions” in the natural world, the intelligence held by national governments would be stored in places of utmost secrecy, guarded by armed soldiers, powerful weapons, and the most advanced surveillance and security technologies.

Iris scans, infrared sensors, DNA verification, ground mass detectors, x-ray penetration—these would all be standard, not to mention the rest.

Though, for Xi Gu, relying on sheer force alone, he could now stand above the world—if he so wished, in a single day, he could annihilate all humanity with the shockwaves of his power and unmatched speed.

—But he had no desire to stand in opposition to the world’s order, nor to expose himself as a solitary villain, bearing the terror and loathing of billions.

Therefore, the crucial thing was not to be discovered while infiltrating these areas.

—First, evading the naked eye, which was simple enough.

With his agility, neural reflexes, and heightened senses, Xi Gu could easily exploit the “blind spots” of human vision.

He could stand less than a meter before someone and still “vanish” before their eyes.

—Next were the other obstacles. To evade infrared sensors, he needed to suppress his body heat. This, too, fell under his domain of bodily control.

After several days of practice, Xi Gu successfully added this to his repertoire, and through the combined use of his heightened senses, he gained the ability to regulate his surface temperature and thermal emissions anywhere between 0 and 50 degrees Celsius.

—Then there were the omnipresent surveillance cameras, but these posed no difficulty—his extreme speed rendered him invisible even to cameras shooting thousands or tens of thousands of frames per second.

By sensing the smallest changes in the camera systems, Xi Gu could use these fluctuations to become effectively invisible to surveillance.

—Other challenges included controlling the disturbance of air currents around his body, manipulating his weight upon the ground, adjusting the minute movements of his muscles, altering his hormone secretions, even the rhythm of his heartbeat...

At last, having achieved mastery over every subtle detail, and realizing he could now deceive almost every surveillance device in the modern world, Xi Gu finally revealed a satisfied smile.

—It was time to begin!