Chapter 78: Accidental Injury

Chapter 78: Chapter 78: Accidental Injury

"Ugh..."

Xiang Yi wheezed in ragged, broken gasps. His chest hurt worse than when he’d actually been shot.

But at least he was still alive.

The middle-aged man didn’t seem to have any intention of killing him.

Xiang Yi coughed a few more times, spat out a mouthful of blood, and slowly answered, "I built it myself."

The middle-aged man let out a derisive snort. "Well, that’s something new — gangsters who can actually build things."

"Who... cough... who’s a gangster?"

"Then what were you doing skulking around here?"

"I just heard something going on nearby and came to take a look..."

The middle-aged man’s good eye was full of skepticism.

"Believe me or don’t."

"I don’t believe you built that gun, and I don’t believe you just wandered over for a look."

As he spoke, the middle-aged man stepped forward and yanked the face wrap Xiang Yi had been wearing clean off.

His mechanical eye contracted sharply, and his expression shifted to something almost surprised. "Well, I’ll be — it’s actually you. You’ve been stirring up quite a bit of trouble in the neighboring district these past few days."

"Now I believe you built that gun."

Xiang Yi feigned hesitation. "You know who I am?"

"You don’t know about your own bounty?"

The middle-aged man moved his hand, pulled out a personal terminal, tapped through a few screens, and held up the bounty listing in front of Xiang Yi — one Xiang Yi knew all too well.

The details were mostly the same, except the reward had climbed from two million to three million.

"Don’t give me any runaround, and don’t even think about running. I ask, you answer. That’s how this works."

Familiar words.

Though last time it had been Xiang Yi saying them to Chen Dong — now the tables had turned.

Xiang Yi’s eyes swept the area around him.

Open ground in every direction, and the middle-aged man in front of him was likely either a Spiritual Ability User or had some other special ability — his speed alone was terrifying.

Even with Shi Tie operating at full capacity, the odds of escaping this man were effectively zero.

And Shi Tie was currently pinned to the ground by several combat blades.

On top of that, both of Xiang Yi’s arms were broken — he probably couldn’t even run straight, let alone fast enough to matter.

For now, the middle-aged man didn’t seem inclined to just kill him on the spot.

So if he wanted to stay alive, he needed to play it smart and keep his head down — at least for the moment.

"Fine."

Xiang Yi gave a quiet reply and decided to swallow his pride for now.

The middle-aged man looked satisfied. "Name?"

"Xiang Yi."

"What did you do to get a bounty on your head?"

"I don’t know why the bounty was put out, but the charge against me is crimes against humanity."

The middle-aged man suddenly laughed. "You think you’re actually capable of something like that?"

"I don’t know."

If Xiang Yi had any idea how he’d ended up with a crimes against humanity charge, he would have already started working on a way to fight back. In the information age, something like that spread fast and wide.

Sure, if the prison pulled enough strings, they could probably scrub him from the networks of nearby Star Systems — but there would still be opportunities.

The problem was that he knew nothing. Surviving had been the question for the first two days. He hadn’t had the luxury of worrying about anything else.

Seeing that Xiang Yi wasn’t going to budge, the middle-aged man said, "The most recent crimes against humanity conviction was six months ago."

"A cult carried out what they called a ’sacrifice ritual’ — using environmental manipulation and psychological pressure to drive tens of thousands of people on a space station into mass suicide. Highly educated people were among the victims."

"How do you think what you did compares to that?"

"Say whatever you want. The fact is, crimes against humanity is my charge. Believe it or don’t."

"Fine." The middle-aged man’s tone turned heavier as he moved on. "The Abnormality outbreak at the prison a few days ago — was that you?"

"That was me. Needed the chaos to break out."

"What did you do before all this?"

"Before..."

Xiang Yi realized he had never really thought about that.

He tried to reach back, but no new memory fragments surfaced.

From what other memories he did have, he could vaguely sense that he had probably been a student at some point — maybe a recent graduate?

"Nothing comes to mind. I can’t remember."

The middle-aged man stared at Xiang Yi for a long moment, his mechanical eye scanning slowly across Xiang Yi’s face.

Up until now, the conversation had been relatively civil — but two answers in a row had left him unsatisfied.

Nothing showed on the surface, but there was a shift. He seemed irritated.

Not that Xiang Yi could do anything about it. Everything he’d said was the truth. What else was he supposed to do?

In the end, the middle-aged man let it go without pressing further.

"Alright, let’s keep going. Do you remember your ID card number?"

"That one I remember."

Xiang Yi recited a string of digits.

When he’d signed the confidentiality agreement back at the prison, the paperwork had included that information.

He’d committed it to memory — even his original home address.

"Twenty-three. Still pretty young." Having gotten the ID number, the middle-aged man muttered to himself and then said, "Wait here. I need to make a call."

He left Xiang Yi where he was and walked roughly twenty meters away, pulling out his terminal again.

At that distance, Xiang Yi should have been able to catch some of what was being said.

But the middle-aged man seemed to anticipate that — he put on a pair of what looked like high-end noise-isolating earphones, cutting off all sound completely.

Then he kept walking another ten or so meters, putting the idea of eavesdropping entirely out of reach.

Still, forty meters away...

Xiang Yi started weighing his chances of making a run for it right now.

The combat blades pinning Shi Tie’s joints to the ground were already being pushed loose by its regenerating flesh.

If there was ever a time to run, this was it.

But the moment he thought about how fast that man had moved, and what he was capable of...

Xiang Yi figured Shi Tie throwing itself into the fight could buy twenty seconds at best. Twenty seconds wasn’t nearly enough ground to cover — he’d be caught before he even got close to clear.

He also doubted the middle-aged man had dropped his guard for even a second.

Better to wait. See if something better came along.

Shi Tie needed to have a real shot at holding that man back before Xiang Yi had any genuine chance of getting away.

Even as he walked away, the middle-aged man kept his gaze fixed in Xiang Yi’s direction. One move and he’d be back in an instant.

But Xiang Yi stayed put, so the man stayed where he was, tapped the terminal twice, and made a call.

It rang for a long time before anyone picked up. The middle-aged man spoke first. "That busy?"

"Government business piles up fast, and we’ve got people dragging their feet on top of it. Watch yourself out there lately — some folks aren’t playing by the rules."

"Noted." The middle-aged man had just dealt with a whole group of gang members who’d shown up on his end, so he had a decent picture of how things stood across the city right now.

"Alright, to the point — what do you need from me?"

"I need you to run a background check on someone. I’ll send you a photo and an ID number."

He tapped through a few more screens and sent the photo to a contact in his terminal listed simply as "the official."

He was about to send the ID number too when the official’s voice came through the line. "Don’t bother with the number. I recognize this one. You remember the ship crash from a few days back?"

"Yeah," the middle-aged man replied. "What about it?"

"He’s the only one who survived."

"Him? So the bounty on him was posted by one of Iron Shell’s prisons?"

"That’s right. We’ve known about it, we’ve just been letting it sit for now — no bandwidth to deal with it. Iron Shell itself is the bigger problem."

"Ever since the crash, they’ve been jumping around like something lit a fire under them, throwing all kinds of little moves at us. It’s been a headache."

"Anyway, I’ve looked into this person before. His name is Xiang Yi — graduated from the mechanical maintenance program at the ’Liu’ Core Star System Group Public University, then apparently spent two years just sitting at home after graduation, before suddenly ending up in a prison out in Liuyun with a crimes against humanity charge on his record."

"A genuine crimes against humanity charge?" The middle-aged man sounded surprised.

"Hard to say. His record is strange."

"Strange how?"

"Based on everything in his file, there’s no way this person is capable of crimes against humanity. His evaluations — from his university, from his advisors — are all excellent across the board."

"And he’s an orphan. Once his scholarship ran out after graduation, he had no income, and without employment he wouldn’t have qualified for any government assistance either. There’s no way he was just sitting at home for two years."

"You think the latter half of his record was fabricated?"

"That’s what I’m getting at."

"On top of that, there’s no way he actually committed something on the scale of crimes against humanity, and his profile doesn’t suggest anyone would have specifically targeted him. The only explanation is that he got swept up in something during those missing years."

"Kid got into a university that good at seventeen. Should’ve had his whole future ahead of him. Hard to understand how he ended up like this."

"What made you ask about him all of a sudden? Did something happen?"

"Hold on."

The middle-aged man suddenly realized something was off. "So based on his academic record, there’s a real chance that Xiang Yi is just some ordinary guy who got caught up in the wrong situation?"

"Isn’t that exactly what I just said? Though ordinary doesn’t mean harmless — anyone who can break out of prison and survive afterward clearly has both the skills and the nerve to pull it off. And there’s a good chance he’s already awakened Spiritual Energy."

"So what actually happened to him? How’d he end up running into you of all people?"

"..."

The middle-aged man went quiet.

He could hardly admit that Xiang Yi had apparently just been passing through the area and ended up getting the hell beat out of him for no real reason...