Chapter 578: Black Eats Black

He went down and looked, Bai Lang let out a laugh, the distant city still bustling and noisy, and those gilded, resplendent buildings gave Bai Lang an inexplicable sense of familiarity. "America? Las Vegas? MGM Grand Hotel?" He wasn't in the city center, and while standing on the upper floor he hadn't noticed. "I've been only thinking about my own affairs, not paying proper attention to this city." It's because Bai Lang is just too powerful in this world, that he's become rather careless.

Originally blown here by the battle between the thief's strategist Fu and the thief's bald demon monk, Bai Lang was fuming, so his arrogance and overbearing attitude were understandable. The city center could be called a sleepless city, but its commercial facilities couldn't stay open all night. Bai Lang pulled open the mall's back door, easily slipped past security and onlookers, and entered a menswear shop—after all, he didn't need any high‑end goods; a simple T‑shirt, a jacket, jeans, and sturdy sneakers were enough.

In the supermarket's electronics section, Bai Lang briskly used a razor to tidy himself—shaving his beard short, trimming his hair a bit, and grooming his eyebrows. Then he swept through the whole mall, pocketed just under a thousand dollars, and at every spot where he took something he left a gold button. After exiting, Bai Lang made a few jumps and merged into the city's crowd.

The city's inhabitants come from all corners, every sort of person, a flourishing metropolis in the desert; the better part is that the density of malevolent spirits here is relatively low—there's now a pattern: the older and more populous a city, the more bizarre hauntings it harbors, especially those once historic, extremely prosperous, but later partially abandoned steam cities are the most prone to malevolent spirits. Thus Chicago, Philadelphia, and even New York have become a shared paradise for spirits and humans…

Las Vegas, on the other hand, is an emerging city with constant traffic; it has ghost casinos but no particularly formidable spirit haunts. So people keep pouring into the city; the growing population and deteriorating security gradually give rise to brand‑new spirit sites. Bai Lang quite likes the atmosphere here, so he exchanged a thousand dollars worth of chips and easily won ten thousand dollars.

It's not that he couldn't win more, but this amount is enough. Bai Lang still wondered when he could return, though all this would take a little time. Since the decoupling, Asians in America have fared poorly; other Asians are tolerable, but Chinese are met with hostility—white ghosts and your buddies can't tell who's who, and anyone who looks Chinese is shunned. New McCarthyism runs rampant, and many Chinese scholars are persecuted.

Even so, many first‑generation immigrants still refuse to return home—because that would mean their lifelong choice was completely wrong. By contrast, many native second‑ and third‑generation people go straight back to their ancestors' homeland. The Chinese who stay here wildly protest against their ancestral country, as if that would earn them the approval of the white ghosts and your buddies on this new land. Bai Lang, as an Asian walking through this city, also faces a bit of discrimination.

The casino doesn't discriminate against him, but the rag‑tag poor ghosts on the streets do. Though he has a room at the casino hotel, Bai Lang still wants to experience the city's night… He'd seen this metropolis in many movies and TV shows, but being robbed after walking only a short distance felt rather fresh to him. In front of him, three or four "Niger" thugs surrounded Bai Lang, clearly looking to beat him up and rob him.

He wouldn't kill anyone, because there's no need; the thugs are after money and venting, not looking to murder themselves into prison—America still can't claim that you can just kill its Chinese citizens without it counting as homicide; murder remains murder, robbery remains robbery, only the former draws more police attention, while the latter is often ignored if the victim is Chinese.

Bai Lang wouldn't indulge them; Black Lives Matter is ineffective for him, so he swiftly kicked them with a Shadowless Kick into a side alley—so as not to draw attention, he kicked in a dead body. Bai Lang has no interest in looting these petty thugs; what property could a robber after twenty bucks have? Those big gold chains aren't even gold‑plated.

While Bai Lang snored soundly on the hotel's big bed, two experts from the Las Vegas Forensic Laboratory had already begun their investigation. Both ends of the alley were cordoned off with yellow tape; the forensic assistant had arrived first, and two police officers guarded each end. "Hey, David," one expert said to the forensic assistant crouching on the ground. "Hey, Nick. Hey, Sarah," the assistant replied, looking up.

"Death occurred about three hours ago. After you finish filming, I'll take them to the morgue," the two experts began photographing, but aside from the sliding marks where the bodies hit the ground there were no other traces. "Did this come from above?" one expert gestured at the marks, then looked at the alley entrance. "There are footprints on the clothing." The other pulled out a transparent sampling tape and lifted the footprints.

In the lab, the four dead bodies were dissected; their clothing was taken for meticulous trace analysis, and one expert had the police retrieve surveillance footage, but unfortunately that angle captured nothing—these thugs are seasoned robbery experts and know exactly where to strike without being recorded, yet this time they chose the wrong victim. "Ribs are broken, organs ruptured by a massive impact, the heart is shattered, indicating they were already dead when thrown out. Death was extremely swift." The senior forensic doctor shone a light on the sutured surface, revealing a distinct black‑purple footprint, "Or I should say a kick‑to‑death, kick‑to‑flight—what you're after might be an elephant with human feet."

Nick, wearing a surgical gown and standing aside, looked at the corpses, then at the forensic doctor, shaking his head. The computer simulated a parabola; based on the ground marks they could locate the point of force—the spot where a single kick both killed and propelled the person there. Unfortunately they found nothing at that point. From the footprints they deduced the superhuman who did this was a roughly two‑meter‑tall hulking man, though such hulks are common in present‑day Las Vegas.

The hulking men captured on surveillance here, both before and after, they also spotted several, but it's hard to pin down their identities.

Bai Lang re‑entered the casino during the day—he needs some money to figure out how to return to the mainland, and as for the malevolent spirits about to appear here? Sorry, Bai Lang has no interest in dealing with that.