Chapter 17: Being Tracked

The autumn wind gently blew by the Downtown Bridge as the sky darkened. Qing Chen was running as quickly as he could, his clothes blowing backward in the wind.

Maybe his mood changed. He felt like the chains that his family and environment had previously placed on him were loosening.

Qing Chen ran faster and faster.

Occasionally, other pedestrians on the bridge would gaze back at him. Everyone could feel that this boy was bringing an inexplicable youthful breeze, spontaneous and rich.

Yinrun Central Garden was a very well-off neighborhood and known as a famous rich area in Luo city.

Qing Chen was not surprised to learn that Huang Jixian, the son of a company executive, lived here.

The security here was rather strict, and everyone had to swipe entry cards before entering.

Qing Chen circled to the back of the neighborhood block, hoping to see if there was another way to slip in from there.

However, before he could think of a way in, he noticed an organized group of six men in black suits heading out of a narrow road near the neighborhood's back gate. They were dressed extremely neatly.

The six men walked at the same rate as if they had calculated exactly how far each of their steps should be.

Hold up. Qing Chen suddenly noticed someone among the six men. It was a teenager... Huang Jixian!

At this time, Huang Jixian looked like he was crazy, still muttering words like prisons, machinery, monsters...

The group quickly boarded the two black SUVs parked next to the streets. One of the men seemed to have sensed something and looked toward where Qing Chen was standing.

Qing Chen turned his head around immediately and pretended to play on his phone.

The man didn't seem to care much about him, and before long, the two SUVs rushed away under the cover of night.

In a daze, Qing Chen stood outside the neighborhood gate. He was still staring at his phone, unsure of what to do.

Who were those people?

Why was Huang Jixian being taken away?

Was it because they know he's a transmigrator?

It must be so. Qing Chen didn't believe in coincidences.

He turned around and headed home.

Along the way, he was still thinking about the men in black suits, but he soon realized that something wasn't right.

A young man in a black sweater had been silently following him for five blocks.

He seemed to have seen the person before...

Instantly, Qing Chen felt his muscles tighten, the invisible pressure was undermining his sense of security.

He was being hunted by a beast.

He remembered this person standing not far away from him in the Central Garden district, looking down at a phone, but his finger never swiped the screen the entire time.

Qing Chen couldn't analyze everything he saw every minute, it was too exhausting, but he was able to extract memories and look at them later when he needed them.

Thinking of this, Qing Chen casually pretended to pick up a call and stopped where he was. "Hey, I might be late for dinner again..."

He made sure that he hid his face under his cap so that the other person could not see.

After Qing Chen stopped, the young man in a black sweater kept walking and passed by him without hesitation.

Qing Chen looked at the person using his peripheral vision, but the person didn't turn back to take one extra glance at him.

This made Qing Chen a little puzzled. Am I being too cautious?

On the busy street, the man quickly disappeared from Qing Chen's line of sight. He put his phone away and continued to walk.

He felt relieved that he had changed into a set of old shirts and pants before he came out. Otherwise, the other person could instantly tell that he was from Luo City Foreign Language school.

Just as Qing Chen was calming his nerves, he noticed another familiar face in the crowd waiting to cross the street at the next traffic light at the intersection.

It was another person that was at the entrance of the Central Garden neighborhood.

It is not a coincidence.

It is cross-tracking.

Every person responsible to track down a target would only follow for a short distance so that they would not be found. If the target stopped at any point, the person would just walk away as nothing happened, and another team member would follow up quickly.

It was one of the most sophisticated and secure methods of tracking.

Qing Chen was very grateful for the seemingly useless books he read.

He finally understood that when the person on the SUV looked at him, he was already being tracked.

There were more than six of them who were there. Many more must be hiding in the corner.

Is this a secret organization? They are so well trained. Why are they interested in transmigrators?

Qing Chen had the uneasy feeling that he wasn't the first party of Earthlings to visit the other world. He could have been in the second or perhaps third group.

Otherwise, even if someone learned about the transmigrators today, one couldn't make such organized acts by night.

These people were prepared.

The teenager's eyes narrowed: the jogger running toward him, the elder man selling candied haws on the sidewalk, the slender lady in high heels, and the light of the yellow street lamp beside him.

He remembered every detail possible, knowing that he could not make any mistakes.

12 seconds left for the traffic light would change.

The young man in black probably already took a detour to get behind him to be ready for the next cross-tracking.

According to his knowledge of the area, it would take a normal man at least ten minutes to circle around Wangchunmen Street, Zhenghe Road, and Kaiyuan Avenue at maximum speed.

If he wanted to escape...

Now would be his chance.

When the traffic signal turned green, someone on the opposite side of the street began to cross, but Qing Chen abruptly turned around and went away.

The individual continued to cross the street in a casual manner, but he said in hushed tones, "The target stayed on the right side of the road. He turned around. Are you in your position yet?"

He seemed to be muttering to himself, but if anyone looked closely, one could see that there was a translucent earbud in his left ear.

"No, I still need two minutes before getting there."

The person whispering noticed that something was wrong. He tried to look for Qing Chen, but the target had long disappeared.

"Damn it. Lost him," the person sighed.

The young man with the black sweater, who was running wildly to get to his position, stopped and smiled, "What a shame. We can even track a boy down, and there's two of us."

"You're the one who wanted to track him in the first place."

"Do you think he discovered he was being followed?" the young man joked.

"I'm confident he did. He's a seasoned genius, "the voice in the earpiece said.

The young man in the black sweater thought for a while and said, "The boy seems to be around seventeen or eighteen years old, maybe a high school student. If he truly found out that he was being tracked, his abilities must be beyond our imagination. Did you notice how calmly he faced the situation? I didn't even know that he noticed I was tracking him when he first started calling. If I had noticed, I would've taken him down at all costs."

"I'm very curious, why do you want to follow him so badly? We still have much more work ahead of us. There's no reason to waste so much time on a passerby."

"It isn't a risky move. During the escort of target 009, I saw that he avoided making eye contact with the captain."