Chapter 90: The Prison’s Decision

Chapter 90: Chapter 90: The Prison’s Decision

Shortly after.

Three police cruisers pulled up outside the gates of Master Chang’s junkyard. The cops they’d been waiting on had finally shown up.

They clearly spotted the gang members trussed up near the entrance, though none of them looked particularly surprised. They moved quickly, loading the gangsters into the vehicles one by one.

Behind the cruisers came a few yellow utility vehicles and a white ambulance. They hauled away the van and cleaned up the body parts scattered near the factory’s back entrance.

In no time at all, they were gone, disappearing down the road beyond the junkyard gates.

Not long after the police left.

Master Chang drove back into the junkyard himself, and the moment he stepped out of the car, he headed straight toward the living quarters at a brisk pace.

His attention didn’t seem to be on Xiang Yi, but when he spotted him, he spoke up first anyway. "Already sorted things out with the farm supplier. They’ll deliver the animals tonight."

"I’ll handle setting up the new facility later too, so don’t worry about it. Just need a little time — I’ve got other things on my plate right now."

"Is this about what just happened?"

Master Chang hesitated for a moment, then said, "Not only that. The cops who came here earlier to deal with the bodies — I didn’t call them."

"The ones I contacted should’ve arrived a long time ago, and if they were the ones making arrests, they would’ve said something to me. But right now I can’t get through to any of my police contacts."

"You can’t reach them? Then who were those cops just now?"

"No idea. All I know is they’re not anyone I recognize."

"I wasn’t going to mention this to you in the first place, because they’re after me, not you."

No wonder Master Chang hadn’t said a word when the police showed up. With that kind of thinking, he was obviously planning to handle it himself.

Xiang Yi didn’t have much to add. If Master Chang wanted to deal with it personally, then Xiang Yi was happy to just stay out of the way.

"By the way, how’s the studying coming along?"

"Not bad. Picking it up pretty fast."

"Good. Sounds like the amnesia didn’t touch whatever you already knew. Keep at it — I’m heading out."

Master Chang grabbed some food from the house and left just as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving Xiang Yi alone in the junkyard once again.

Meanwhile.

Liuyun Star System Prison. Warden’s office.

The warden sat behind his desk, his complexion noticeably better than before.

He held up a document and addressed He Dong, who was standing in the room. "Good news. We’ve reconfirmed Xiang Yi’s exact location."

"The gang my informant contacted spotted Xiang Yi. Looks like he’s set up camp at a junkyard out in the Southeast Suburbs."

"A gang?" He Dong frowned. Xiang Yi had been in hiding for days now. The few times he’d been spotted, it was in the labyrinthine Southwest City District. How had a gang of all people managed to find him living at a junkyard in the southeast? "How’d they find him?"

"Stumbled into it, really." The warden said. "The gang had their eye on that Southeast Suburbs junkyard for a while and had been using some dirty tactics trying to force the owner out. When they showed up today, they ran straight into Xiang Yi."

"Seven of them are dead. The rest were taken alive. Fortunately for us, Xiang Yi doesn’t seem willing to deal with the police directly, so our people were able to bring the survivors back in one piece."

"So we move on Xiang Yi there directly?"

"We can. But keep the junkyard’s owner in mind — he’s a veteran, and he has connections to the government."

He Dong’s expression shifted the moment he heard the word "veteran." "A military officer? Are those gang guys out of their minds? How were they ever going to win that fight?"

"Normally they wouldn’t have a shot. But with the company leaning on things from above, it’s manageable. The gang boss knows how to read the room."

He Dong nodded. As an informant cultivated through the company’s own channels, of course the man knew how to leverage the company’s weight.

"Do you think there’s any chance this junkyard owner contacts the military and moves Xiang Yi out of reach?"

The warden put himself in Master Chang’s shoes for a moment, and given the potential Xiang Yi had shown over the past few days, he had to admit — it was entirely possible.

Even he could see that Xiang Yi was almost certainly someone who’d been set up to take the fall. That conviction was legally damning, but beyond that it meant nothing.

Which meant they really did need to act fast.

On top of that, word from the gang confirmed the veteran wasn’t at the junkyard right now. It was just Xiang Yi and his bodyguard.

Once that veteran returned, the whole situation would change. The man clearly had cybernetic implants, and there was a strong chance he’d undergone gene-seed augmentation as well. His combat ability would be nothing short of terrifying.

The two of them working together — right now, on the entire planet of Anka Star, no one outside of the regular military or the Spiritual Ability Users of the Abnormality Strategy Department would be capable of taking them down.

This was the best window they were going to get.

But before the warden could reach a decision, his secretary walked in.

Seeing that only the warden and He Dong were present, the secretary spoke directly. "Warden, the recorded data from the Anka Satellite has been transmitted back."

"That fast?"

"The person handling it said the company’s stance has been shifting constantly. Now someone is apparently providing us with technical support, which is giving us a much better shot at accessing targets that were previously out of range."

"They said that while the Anka Cyber Security Bureau managed to kick them out this time, they left a backdoor in the network. There’s one last chance to hack back into the satellite."

The warden hadn’t expected a bonus like this. For the first time in days, a faint smile crossed his face.

"Give me what we’ve got so far."

The secretary had already compiled all the intelligence related to Xiang Yi into a separate file, organized in chronological order.

"The only thing is, they mentioned some of the data might be corrupted — after all, ripping this out of the Cyber Security Bureau’s hands wasn’t exactly clean work..."

The warden raised a hand to cut the secretary off and turned his full attention to the documents.

Shortly after Xiang Yi’s ship went down, the satellite had already picked him up moving through the abandoned districts outside the city.

But the sudden appearance of Dead Spirit Dust had blinded the satellite feed, making it impossible to capture what Xiang Yi was actually doing in the ruins.

Then, a few hours later, the Dead Spirit Dust cleared — and Xiang Yi had somehow made contact with a woman from a scavenging crew, and had an inexplicable bodyguard in tow.

The warden asked offhandedly, "Any chance this woman arranged the bodyguard for him?"

"On what basis? Just because he’s got a pretty face?"

"He’s decent-looking, sure, but a woman from a scavenging crew pulling strings to get someone a bodyguard? That doesn’t add up."

He Dong had always kept up with his research on Abnormalities, so he leaned toward a different explanation. "My guess is it came out of the Dead Spirit Dust. That bodyguard’s build matches one of the scavenging crew members. Honestly, this guy looks like a Corpse Ghost."

"A Corpse Ghost... yeah, that’s plausible. Which would mean he’s already gotten control of a Black Stone Fragment? What kind of luck does this guy have..."

The warden flipped through the satellite footage from the following days and suddenly pointed at the terminal playing back the surveillance recording. "Hold on — who are these people?"

The satellite had picked up a fully armed scavenging crew. They appeared to have located Xiang Yi operating inside an abandoned hospital and launched an assault.

Whatever happened inside, the warden had no way of knowing — but soon enough, the entire crew’s bodies were being dragged out by Xiang Yi and the scavenging crew woman he’d linked up with two days prior. That was unsettling to say the least.

It meant a fully armed crew of fifteen had been wiped out by Xiang Yi alone, with just the one bodyguard. That kind of combat ability...

He Dong suddenly had a thought. "Can we pass this information to the military?"

The warden went quiet, his expression unreadable. He wasn’t wrestling with whether it was possible — he was wrestling with whether it was worth doing.

After a moment, he nodded. "We can. I’ll arrange it. They stashed the bodies in a building somewhere — there’s bound to be a basement or something like that nearby."

"Tip off the military. Let them know about the missing personnel, and pass along the intel on Xiang Yi and the woman at the same time."

"And one more thing..."

The warden looked at the secretary. "Find out which satellites they can access."

"They’ve already made it clear — any satellite in Anka Star’s orbit is potentially on the table."

The warden’s expression flickered. Something had clearly just occurred to him. He lowered his head and sank into thought.

It seemed like an option had just opened up — one he hadn’t considered at all until now.

It was risky, though. Extremely risky. And if he used it, the chance of escaping punishment he’d only just discussed with He Dong yesterday would almost certainly disappear. But...

Five days. It had only been five days since Xiang Yi touched down.

And in that time, he’d already built working relationships with the local Southwest City District kingpin and the veteran owner of the Southeast Waste Recycling Station.

On top of that, he had a bodyguard — suspected to be an Abnormality Corpse Ghost — which meant he’d already made contact with the Black Stone.

What would things look like in another few days?

It was hard to even imagine how far Xiang Yi could go if given more time to work with the resources on this planet.

There was still a lot left unfinished on their end — but they really couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

Right now seemed like their best shot.

And if they were going to move, they might as well go all the way.

"I’ll have someone make an attempt on our end first. If it works, we won’t have to keep looking over our shoulders every damn day."