Watching Xia Yu sitting on the bench with an unlit cigarette in her mouth, Pei Yan plopped down beside her, pulled out a lighter, and lit her cigarette, asking softly, "What's going on?"

Xia Yu took a drag on her cigarette, exhaled a long plume of smoke, and after a while, began explaining the events of the day.

From her words, Pei Yan and the others learned the whole story. As it turns out, there have been a series of vicious murders in the center and surrounding counties of a city in the Northwest Region of the country, causing local panic and growing discontent toward the police's incompetence, with various negative public opinions rampant.

Local police couldn't possibly neglect such major cases, but the leading officers were utterly perplexed. Except for the first one or two cases, all subsequent victims were killed at home, in high-rise buildings with no signs of forced entry on the doors or windows. In some crime scenes, the door was even locked from the inside, only discovered when neighbors smelled the stench of corpses and reported it, breaking in to find the bodies.

Could this be a high-IQ locked-room murder case from a novel?

However, the conclusions from the site inspections showed the perpetrator was actually very unprofessional, leaving behind a plethora of evidence at the scenes. Yet, precisely because of this, local criminal police were even more puzzled. According to footprints at the scene, this person somehow walked through walls to enter the room and disappeared from beside the wall!

When the criminal police team reported all this to the provincial department, it quickly caught the investigation department's attention, leading to Ye Jiumu's team inspecting the situation on site. Upon inspection and monitoring, it turned out to be another case involving a supernaturally gifted criminal.

Initially, things should have ended there. Due to the tense situation and absence of a team leader, their presence was solely to conduct preliminary investigations, with subsequent capture missions requiring a squad to lead.

But just as they were about to return to the department, stopping at a local lamb restaurant for dinner, they coincidentally ran into the suspect.

The suspect made no effort to conceal his internal aura, alerting Ye Jiumu upon entering the restaurant. Observing him glaring lecherously at women entering and leaving the restaurant, he even cast his obscene gaze upon Xia Yu and Xue Buli.

Qi Weidong couldn't hold his anger at the time, contemplating whether to detain him first, but Ye Jiumu held him back by the arm. Several people subtly paid attention to this young man while eating.

The man, seemingly finding it difficult to act with so many people around, followed another girl out of the restaurant after she finished dining.

If they hadn't encountered him, there wasn't much they could do. But since they did, ignoring it would be negligence if anything happened, not to mention there was only one person that couldn't pull off any tricks. However, to be safe, Ye Jiumu reported the situation to the department, and after receiving orders to stay on target and report anytime, they paid their bill and quietly followed.

As they continued to pursue, the more they tracked, the more suspicious the man appeared. He obviously had his eyes on the girl who had previously left the restaurant, sneakily following her back to her residence and lurking downstairs for quite some time before leaving.

At this point, Ye Jiumu feared alerting him and decided not to follow further. According to his prediction, the man was scouting the area, likely to commit a crime within the next couple of days. After discussion, they decided to lie in wait for him to catch him red-handed.

However, what they awaited wasn't a little rabbit, but two man-eating sharks.

The lustful devil indeed lived up to expectations; as soon as night fell, he returned. Just as they were waiting for him to commit a crime and catch him in the act, two more figures emerged from the darkness. Upon seeing these two, the suspect trembled like a leaf, standing there motionless with fear, allowing one burly bald man to beat him mercilessly without uttering a sound, while the red-haired youth beside the man coldly directed his gaze toward Ye Jiumu and the others hidden in the darkness inside their car.

Ye Jiumu and his team were greatly alarmed to see the newcomers. They didn't recognize others, but the bald man was none other than Wang Xishu, the Divine Desire Northwest District leader on the department's new wanted list!

His discovery was thanks to Pei Yan and the others. They gathered this latest intelligence from the memory of Deng Shufa, captured during the pursuit of Han Lihu. Though Deng Shufa hadn't attended the meeting that night and wasn't very familiar with the appearance of other leaders upstairs, he was responsible for receiving and transporting Zhao Liben and Wang Xishu during Han Lihu's banquet, hence remembered their appearances.

Upon seeing Wang Xishu appear, Ye Jiumu knew things had changed, and the situation was beyond their handling! After sending an emergency notice to the department, they prepared to drive away and await backup!

By this time, Xia Yu had already finished two cigarettes. As she narrated, she leaned back on the bench and slowly closed her eyes, and soon after, she fell asleep with gentle snores.

"She's exhausted!" Jiang Feiyang remarked as Pei Yan got up, took off his jacket, and covered Xia Yu.

Liang Qian took Pei Yan's previous seat, cradling Xia Yu's body to let her sleep more peacefully, then gestured to the people around her.

The group sensibly tiptoed out to the hallway, where Jiang Feiyang covered his face with his hand, wiping away his tears, and gritted his teeth, whispering, "Actually, besides Jiumu and Weidong, Xia Yu was the most seriously injured tonight, yet she relied on her strong self-healing ability to endure until the end of the battle."

"Then what happened?" Pei Yan clenched his fist and asked.

"What else? That red-haired bastard! The damn son of a bitch found us right as he arrived at the scene!" Peng Lang cursed fiercely, pounding the wall.

"Keep your voice down," Jiang Feiyang hushed his emotional colleague before continuing, "Then came the forced battle in Jiezhi Space, the previous suspect was trash, not even worth fearing. But Wang Xishu and that red-haired guy were overwhelmingly strong!"

"Yeah, it was almost a one-sided crush!" Xue Buli murmured with his eyes swollen from crying.

Jiang Feiyang shook his head in anger and sorrow, "If there was only one of them, though we wouldn't be their match, we could barely manage to escape, but that red-haired guy's abilities were too abnormal! When the two joined forces, Xia Yu was the first to be wounded. The ensuing fight was mainly focused on finding ways to escape Jiezhi Space. When we finally broke through their Space Lock and prepared to flee, Jiumu and Weidong were already seriously wounded, so to...."

Jiang Feiyang paused here and didn't continue, while Xue Buli lowered his head and sobbed, "They were hurt so badly because they came back to save me, trapped by Wang Xishu!"

"It's not your fault. No matter who in the team gets trapped, we'll risk our lives to go back for them!" Peng Lang patted Xue Buli's head and comforted him deeply.