Chapter 60 Offbeat Path

Not long after Li Jing hung up his communication, Lu Yangcheng came out from the lower part of the apartment.

As he approached the car, Li Jing asked.

"How are things up there?"

"Not bad, Cao Yixuan didn’t notice anything."

Lu Yangcheng breathed a sigh of relief and turned his head to confirm.

"That white rat in his room ..."

"It must be the Rat Demon of the Evil Cultivators."

Li Jing nodded.

Lu Yangcheng was silent for a moment.

"So, are we off to a good start?"

"You could say that."

Li Jing responded.

"I’ve already reported this to Captain Dai, he said this case will be your merit."

"Merit?"

Lu Yangcheng raised his eyebrows, chuckling.

"It looks like my place in the Major Case Squad is secure? This is an unexpected gain."

With a jest in his remarks, he then turned serious.

"What are we going to do next? Any orders from Captain Dai?"

"He asked us to continue with our visits. If we find another Rat Demon around our next subject, we stop there. We try to contact the remaining subjects through other means."

Li Jing shared his speculations and relayed Captain Dai’s orders in full as they were.

Lu Yangcheng listened to everything and looked at him in amazement.

"You impress me, you just joined the Major Case Squad and you’re already adapting to their way of thinking. You deduced that the Evil Cultivators are experimenting with new potions from just seeing one Rat Demon. And you have evidence to back it up, I’m impressed."

"Some things depend on talent."

Li Jing shrugged.

"..."

Lu Yangcheng was at a loss for words, then laughed and scolded.

"Take it easy, man. But your speculation does make sense. If it were me, I’d have to think hard to grasp that connection. As for Yi Xiuzhu, let’s not even talk about it. His mind works in a different way from us ordinary people. He’s good at execution, but not so good at reasoning."

After pouring out his thoughts and making a subtle dig at Yi Xiuzhu, he fastened his seat belt.

"Now that Captain Dai has decided to make a big move and wrap things up tonight, there’s no time for a long-drawn-out battle. We are racing against the clock. For safety’s sake, choose one of the remaining nine revisit cases that lives farther away. We’ll go there and I’ll meet them alone. You stay in the car. If we confirm the presence of another Rat Demon, we’ll immediately go find Yi Xiuzhu and see what he has discovered."

In his words, Lu Yangcheng drove off from the compound, adding.

"We can’t mess up the raid. We need more successful cases if we want to gain merit, and we need to achieve that before the raid at midnight."

"Okay."

Li Jing agreed, selecting the next contact while he couldn’t help but feel a bit hopeless.

Lu Yangcheng was thinking about gaining merit.

He was thinking about the Rat Demon.

Previously, he at least had Chen Yuran, a proper second level patrol officer, by his side. Now, he was working with Lu Yangcheng and Yi Xiuzhu, both supplementary officers like himself, and it seemed unlikely that he could participate in the raid.

Even if he did, the risk was considerable.

If he encountered a Third Realm Evil Cultivator like before, he might barely manage to keep himself alive. But it would not be easy for Lu Yangcheng and Yi Xiuzhu.

Combat across realms was almost impossible to achieve.

Even though all the magic skills he had mastered were at the Great Perfection level, with the strength of the Third Realm, he still couldn’t compare with a legitimate Third Realm cultivator.

Li Jing never stopped exploring his own capabilities.

With the aid of spiritual power, the magic skills he learned were indeed much stronger than other cultivators at the same realm.

But their strength lies in the high energy efficiency of his spiritual power.

For example, his spiritual power could charge a mobile phone in an instant.

Other cultivators could only charge slowly.

Not because their Spiritual Qi was not abundant enough, but because under a given standard, the energy efficiency of Spiritual Qi fell far short of his spiritual power.

The same logic applied to magic spells in Li Jing’s hands.

Ignoring spell proficiency, formulating spell formulas with equal amounts of spiritual power and Spiritual Qi, he could easily overpower opponents at his level.

However, when facing a large realm difference, energy density is a major problem.

When Kong Wu faced a group of Second Realm opponents in the practical skills test, he dared to defend himself with nothing but self-protective Spiritual Qi. And that was not without reason.

His defeat at Li Jing’s hands, was another matter.

The Second Realm magic with the level of Great Perfection was already on the threshold of the Third Realm.

If not defended properly, the Third Realm couldn’t withstand it.

Even so, if Li Jing used all his strength, he still wouldn’t necessarily cause any substantial harm to Kong Wu, at most making him feel a bit uncomfortable.

Put simply and rather bluntly, it’s about the disparity in tangible power.

Until one reaches a level of solid power, technical skills like those of Dai Hong merely serve as icing on the cake.

Only when one’s tangible power is up to the mark, do technical skills and tactics become the key to breaking the binding limitations of magic.

...

Over half an hour later, Li Jing and Lu Yangcheng arrived by car at the dwelling of the most distant person of the nine they intended to revisit, located furthest from Cao Yixuan.

After locating the residence, Lu Yangcheng went to attempt contact at the doorstep, while Li Jing waited in the car.

About twenty minutes later, Lu Yangcheng returned.

Once he was in the car, Li Jing asked.

"What happened?"

"There’s a Rat Demon in the house."

Lu Yangcheng replied.

"We can’t make progress through this revisit approach anymore, we can only rely on Yi Xiuzhu to see if he has made any progress."

Confirming that there was also a Rat Demon at this place, Li Jing nodded and tried to reach Yi Xiuzhu with the communicator.

"Xiuzhu, how are things on your end?"

"The returns at the moment are limited."

Yi Xiuzhu responded swiftly, then asked.

"It’s still before noon, is something wrong that you’re reaching out to me all of a sudden?"

"Yes."

Li Jing affirmed and detailed the situation in full.

After understanding the details, Yi Xiuzhu provided an address.

"Come find me at this address, we’ll discuss further upon meeting."

"Alright."

Li Jing responded, then shared the address with Lu Yangcheng, who hadn’t brought a communicator to ease the interaction with the revisited objects.

As the two men again set out in the car, Li Jing reported the situation to Dai Hong.

...

It was another half an hour’s drive.

Following the address provided by Yi Xiuzhu, Li Jing and Lu Yangcheng drove up to the entrance of a high-end club in the bustling North City district.

On discovering that the place was a high-end club, both men exchanged glances.

Yi Xiuzhu’s so-called personal connections and entertainment preferences, be they low or high class, allowed the two men to get a vague idea.

But seeing the truth firsthand was simply...

Parking the car on the side of the road, Lu Yangcheng stared at the flamboyant women at the entrance of the club, swallowed hard, and turned to say.

"Although I somewhat expected this, honestly, I never really thought that Yi Xiuzhu, with his thick eyebrows and big eyes, could have such a wild side. Gorgeous women standing at the entrance in broad daylight, it is clear what kind of place this is to anyone."

Li Jing grimacing, remained silent.

Yi Xiuzhu’s way of doing things was indeed quite wild.

A high-end club just for a meeting.

Obviously, his family was in this line of business.

Raising his hand to turn on the communicator, Li Jing connected with Yi Xiuzhu.

"Xiuzhu, Yangcheng and I are here; our car is parked outside the club."

"Alright, I’ll come out and find you."

Yi Xiuzhu’s voice came back from the communicator.

Swiftly, he walked out of the club’s main entrance.

The glitzy girls by the club’s entrance all stepped aside when they saw him, as if they were scared of him.

Seeing this from the car, Li Jing muttered.

"Looks like Xiuzhu here is a prince like you."

"No! How can this be linked to me?"

Lu Yangcheng frowned, saying.

"My family runs a legitimate business, and I have two older brothers who are currently abroad. I won’t be inheriting our family business, I’m not some prince."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Yi Xiuzhu opened the car door by the roadside and got in.

Once settled in the car, Yi Xiuzhu gave Lu Yangcheng a cursory glance.

"The nature of clubs nowadays can’t simply be categorized as legitimate or illegitimate, times have changed, and unorthodox business practices cannot survive. As for certain circumstances, it’s not the decision of the operators, but of the clients."

"Er, is that so?"

Lu Yangcheng coughed and laughed awkwardly, turned and glared at Li Jing.

The moment Yi Xiuzhu entered the car, he picked up where he left off, clearly someone had activated his communicator and deliberately led him on.