Chapter Thirty-Four: Black Jack

Chapter Thirty-Four [BLACKJACK]

Chen Xiao felt as though he was hallucinating again.

The silver Ford sedan glided slowly before his eyes, and it seemed as if everything around him suddenly moved in slow motion. That single moment stretched out endlessly, every detail magnified. Chen Xiao could clearly perceive the arc of the car as it lifted off the ground, as well as each minute change in the shattered glass of its headlights.

The sensation was unnervingly subtle. It was as if something flickered in his mind—a flash of insight, a fleeting understanding he could not grasp. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart, so loud it nearly drove him mad. Each beat resounded like a drum, and with every thud, his blood seemed to surge through his veins like water from a pump!

He nearly twisted his neck, his gaze tracking the car as it veered off toward the side. He could even hear his own breath, every bubble of air in his lungs shifting with exquisite precision.

In that moment, Chen Xiao felt himself transformed into a finely-tuned instrument. Every heartbeat, every breath, every shard of glass flying past his eyes—all of it appeared before him, sharpened and vivid as if the world had been rendered with the crispness of a high-definition image.

What… did I just do?

It seemed… the car was rushing toward me, and all I did was raise my arm…

Yes, that must be it…

Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud…

His heart thundered!

At last, this strange sensation of time dilation came suddenly, and vanished just as abruptly.

Boom!

The car crashed headlong into the flowerbed beside the road, slamming violently between two trees lining the greenbelt. One of the trees snapped in half under the force. The car's front wheel was lifted by the broken stump, spinning uselessly.

A moment later, with a loud pop, the front airbags deployed. The drunken man inside was covered in blood and had already lost consciousness.

Chen Xiao felt all his strength ebb away. An irresistible weakness swept over him; his body swayed as he tried to steady himself, but his legs gave way and he collapsed to his knees. Darkness crept into his vision, and the outlines of his surroundings blurred. At last, he lay prone.

Before losing consciousness, his mind clung stubbornly to that question.

What did I just do?

•

If the world were reduced to the microscopic, then at this moment, inside Chen Xiao's body, every cell was undergoing rapid mutation! Some unknown stimulus—perhaps the instinctive urge to save someone, born of impulse when he dashed in to push the lady aside—had triggered his body.

When faced with an oncoming car, a person’s adrenal glands might flood the body with hormones under the strain of tension, excitement, or fear, awakening some dormant substance within Chen Xiao…

Nuclei split and expand, the resulting force like the first domino toppling, sparking a chain reaction. Every drop of his flesh, every cell, was rapidly dividing and recombining. By now, Chen Xiao had already fainted… Had his eyes been open, he would surely have terrified everyone.

For beneath his eyelids, his eyeballs and pupils seemed to be suffused with an indelible, eerie blue!

Blue as…

Purification serum!

•

The commotion finally drew the security guards and neighbors of the community. People rushed over, and minutes later, police cars and ambulances arrived.

A crowd of startled residents surrounded the accident site.

A wrecked car, three injured, all unconscious. The only difference was that the lady’s knee was bleeding, as was her head—when Chen Xiao pushed her aside at the last moment, she rolled to the edge of the lawn, striking her head against the concrete curb and losing consciousness. In a way, that spared Chen Xiao much trouble later.

The drunken driver was naturally out cold. Chen Xiao lay alone on the ground, but oddly, he bore not even the slightest wound—not a scratch.

Not only was his skin unbroken, but even his clothes showed no sign of damage! This puzzled the medical staff greatly.

In the ambulance, they examined him; he was free of injuries and broken bones. Fearing internal bleeding, they rushed him to the hospital, but after a thorough check, found the young man perfectly intact—not even a hair missing, though he remained unconscious.

Chen Xiao’s blood was drawn for testing. The sample was taken to the lab by a nurse and placed with other samples awaiting analysis. In the busy emergency room, no one noticed: a woman in a nurse’s uniform, her face hidden behind a medical mask, casually walked past the lab bench, quietly pocketing Chen Xiao’s blood sample and replacing it with an identical one.

The nurse swiftly moved down the corridor, entered the janitor’s closet, and shed her white coat, revealing a red suit beneath.

Glancing at the vial, Red Seven smiled—a faint, introspective smile that held an indescribable meaning.

“As expected… he has evolved.”

Purification and evolution differ by only a single character, but their meanings are worlds apart.

Red Seven secured the blood sample, pulled out a tiny earpiece, and pressed it, sighing, “It’s done. The target’s blood sample hasn’t leaked. I swapped it with an ordinary sample, matching his blood type.”

On the other end, a man’s relaxed voice sounded—it was Thunder Fox: “Excellent. Keep following the target. Under no circumstances can he leave any blood or other samples in a public hospital.”

“Send someone else next time,” Red Seven replied lazily. “This kind of task is so boring. Besides, you know I hate hospitals—the smell of medicine always brings back unpleasant memories.”

Thunder Fox laughed in her earpiece. “Finish this job, and you’ll be promoted when you return.”

“JACK, you promised not to monitor him. You know deceiving such an innocent kid is unethical,” Red Seven said bluntly, ending the call.

•

Far across the world, on the other side of the planet, in a Spanish-style villa, Thunder Fox sat quietly on a lawn chair, a cigar clenched between his teeth. He listened as Red Seven hung up, a complicated smile appearing on his handsome, pale face.

“Red Seven, you don’t understand. If our suspicions are correct, this kid may become the strongest among us all,” he said, snuffing out his cigar, the smile growing bittersweet. “…And also the weakest. Fate is truly bizarre, somehow blending two diametrically opposed traits perfectly within a single individual…”

He stood, his Latin-inspired shirt immaculate, though his boots were drenched in blood.

The sun shone brilliantly, and the villa exuded an exotic charm—but all around Thunder Fox, the expansive lawn had become a slaughterhouse.

The emerald grass was stained deep crimson by blood. All about him, dozens of corpses lay strewn, every one clutching a gun—long or short.

More chilling was the fact that these bodies bore no visible wounds; instead, their mouths and nostrils were filled with congealed, cold blood, as if some force had drawn every drop from them through their faces.

On the table before Thunder Fox stood several large crates, each packed with bags of white powder.

“Sigh, I hate missions steeped in blood,” Thunder Fox murmured, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the blood from his boots, then tossing it onto a corpse’s face.

“Blame yourselves for your endless sins, and for choosing the wrong partners. You shouldn’t have colluded with the ‘Club’,” his voice remained calm, but his gaze was ice-cold. “You drug lords have drained the blood of countless people. Now that you’ve tasted your own blood drawn dry, you have only yourselves to blame.”

He drew a thin, strange card from his breast pocket and slid it into a crack in the table.

It resembled a sheet of paper, but glimmered with a faint metallic sheen. Its size matched that of a business card.

But this card bore no name, no contact information.

The only printed image was a playing card—BLACKJACK.

—The Jack of Spades!

—

(Dear readers, please remember to add this book to your bookshelf. A new novel needs your support, so please shower it with votes~)

—

—