Chapter 404: True Target (Part 1/2)
The situation had undoubtedly grown big.
In a short few minutes, the people involved: the service personnel, the police, the medical respondents, and countless onlookers crammed into area A of Frost River Reality. It was so packed that not even a drop of water could get through.
Qiu Peipei had been sent to the hospital for critical care. Mo Han and Ruan Zihui went along to the hospital to look after her. The remaining people continued to stand in opposition in the luxury room.
It must be stated that the police had arrived quickly. The government increased the level of control by at least two-fold over public venues like this one after the incident at the other Frost River Reality. Luckily this was the case; if the police had been just a bit slower, then Ju Maoxun would had probably be sent to the hospital as well by the multi-function robots.
The culprit was confirmed, and Ju Maoxun had yet to be able to stand up straight from the punch that Xue Lei had unleashed. His internal organs were spasming, transmitting negative effects through the nervous system and into the brain. This made it so that Ju Maoxun always felt that he wanted to vomit. His head was dizzy and nauseous. Yet one couldn't tell that he was injured from looking at the surface.
There were far too many onlookers and people involved. The dispatched police didn't clear out the area for now. Instead, they had rushed into the private room to understand the situation.
The police inquiry was quite simple. They weren’t interested in the complex grievances and hate. This was a common law and order dispute, after all. The recordings and the like were quite complete. It wasn't difficult to make judgments.
The results of the hospital examination had yet to be released, so the dispatched police recorded the social privilege numbers of the people involved as a formality. They informed the parties of the process of mediating disputes and civil prosecutions, then notified the medical examination site and deadlines. This was pretty much the typical police process.
Then the few who acted—this included Mo Peng, Xue Lei, Yue Zheng, and Ju Maoxun—had to go to the police for recording. It didn't matter for Ju Maoxun, as he was already a legal adult, possessing full behavioral capacity. As for the other three, their guardians had to be notified as part of procedures.
The expressions of the three turned ugly in this instant.
Mo Peng and Xue Lei were just worried about being reprimanded by their parents. On the other hand, Yue Zheng's situation was more complicated. Actually, upon awakening from his trance of stupefaction, he really wanted to kill himself by slamming against the floor when he saw the personnel within the room.
Did God specifically decide to torture him tonight?
"We will give up the lawsuit and ask for mediation." It was Yue Qin who spoke. She and Turner had rushed inside, immediately expressing their stances. She took out their guardian's electronic authorization. "I am the sister of a person involved, Yue Zheng. My father already knows that our stances will be taken for this matter."
Yue Zheng blankly cast his gaze over. He practically didn't respond.
She saw how her brother was shocked down to his soul and grew angry and annoyed, but she calmed herself down. She was ten times stronger than her brother. She already saw that Hu Huaying and Xie Junping stood by Luo Nan's side with dark expressions. In fact, she expressed her stance primarily toward these two young masters to hear.
Wuyue Pharmaceuticals must not offend the Xie Family and the Hu family. They were even more unwilling to give them a bad impression that could cost them money.
Yue Qin was able to explain the situation in a short few minutes to their father and obtained authorization from him. She had already done her best.
Unfortunately, it appeared to have little effect from looking at the current situation.
Yue Qin did not double down and speak false words. After expressing her stance, she stood together with her brother and helped him tidy himself up a bit. She took this opportunity to observe the situation within the room.
She had met Xie Junping in the past, and she knew that he was a flowery young master. He was a first grade silk pants. She left aside his strange attire, and focused on the fact that he stood by Luo Nan's side. His appearance was subconsciously like that of a helper. He didn't look like the protagonist at all.
She seemed to have misjudged the direction that this situation was going towards from the very beginning.
In fact, it didn't matter whether it was Yue Zheng, Yue Qin, or Wuyue Pharmaceuticals. They weren't important. Yue Qin's statement was just a small interlude. There were few people who actually listened to it.
At most, she was met with Ju Maoxun's fierce and burning gaze.
Ju Maoxun was certainly the most restless one in the room. He saw that his no-good friends from the VIP room had come down and that they couldn't help at all. They could only raise the atmosphere, chattering with the police in 'discussion'. They weren't scared. They could be considered threatening.
But there was a lack of a certain crucial character in this room.
Ju Maoxun looked left and right, not seeing what he wanted to see. He could only ask a friend, "Where's Ju Ling?"
"Uh, seems like he headed back upstairs."
Only then did Ju Maoxun realize that Ju Ling had disappeared after Yue Zheng and him had gone down stairs. Ju Maoxun's mind immediately exploded.
Right now, the police were still unleashing a torrent of legal education. Ju Mauxun was getting furious listening. He gave a fierce kick to the high-back chair to his side, "Speak this shit to a fucking lawyer. I want to get my injuries checked out now!"
This movement of Ju Maoxun's was quite violent. His internal organs were already spasming, and his actions gave him an even more terrible experience than before. He body bent into the shape of a prawn, and the acidic juice in his stomach sprayed out of his mouth, burning his throat in pain as tears and mucus came choking out.
Xue Lei, who had dealt him the blow to his pain, didn't even give him a sidelong glance. He obediently accepted the police's inquiry. His attitude was over ten times better than Ju Maoxun's. He was at most a little bit worried because of his parents.
Xie Junping and Hu Huaying stood up at this time. They were officers of Acumen College's Student Council. They had ample contacts. For them, conversing with the police was like how a long illness made a patient into a good doctor. They had ample experience in this. They were the best candidates for handling matters such as these.
Plus there was Tian Si, a communicative master. She filled in all the gaps. It appeared that everything was going towards an advantageous direction for them.
As for the few ability users in the room, they exchanged gazes with each other. It was still quite awkward.
Indeed, they had been gathered inside the room, studying the spell array, drinking alcohol, or something similar. They had some distance from the conflict that happened at the entrance. But to allow a delicate little girl be injured under their watch was a matter that greatly injured their pride.
Luo Nan wasn't in the mood to continue studying the spell array. He sized up Ju Maoxun, and recalled the past event back at Ocean Sky Cloud City. He was able to get a general judgment of the reason behind his actions, and he felt uncomfortable. He really wanted to find a way to fix things.
It was because of his concern that he heard the name Ju Ling through his mental senses. From reading Ju Maoxun's intense mood, it seemed that the situation was much more complicated than it appeared.
In fact, the current situation set the tone for the circumstances. Luo Nan couldn't help but ponder. However, he was useless toward what happen before, and it seemed like he wouldn't be useful for what would follow. The stifling feeling was uncomfortable.
His thoughts spun a few times before he grasped an opportunity. He pulled Xie Junping to him and asked, "Who is Ju Ling?"
"Ju Ling?" Xie Junping shook his head, "Never heard of him. He's not part of this circle. Maybe he is Ju Maoxun's relative?"
"Go ask." As he spoke, Luo Nan activated his living starry sky senses. He brought the entirety of Aurora Cloud City under his sensing range.
There were at least ten thousand people moving around in real time in Aurora Cloud City at the moment. To sort through the trajectories of these thousands of people would have been quite the painful process in the past, but today's Luo Nan, having mastered the first step in the warning senses in a closed system, could differentiate things according to threat level. This made things much easier.
His senses revealed much more subtleties in the circumstances.
The strongest malicious reaction didn't reside far. It was none other than Ju Maoxun. Luo Nan should have discovered this sooner. It was just that this person didn't really possess much strength, even though his ill intent was strong. The stimulation in his senses was quite weak. This coupled with the fact that he was immersed in studying the spell array, which made him subconsciously neglect Ju Maoxun.
The warning senses of the closed system, under a passive situation, was very likely to neglect a considerable portion of information.
Luo Nan had to pay attention to this point in the future.
Luo Nan continued to sort through the information and found two targets without spending much effort. They weren't malicious reactions, however, and they weren't even in Frost River Reality. They were on a floor higher.
What attracted Luo Nan to them was undoubtedly the special mapping of these two on the living starry sky.
Ability users! And one of them was on an impressive level. They caused clear distortions toward the surrounding starry space. Like the air being distorted by an invisible flame. If it was just two days ago before Luo Nan had yet to obtain the telescopic reinforcement when observing external forms, Luo Nan would probably only see a dark and fuzzy nebula mass.
Making a judgment from this level, this ability user should probably be at the B rank level.
There was something even more interesting, however. Though there was clear differences in strength between the two, the second person's constellation structure largely mirrored the first's. Plus, Luo Nan was quite familiar with it.
A regular tetrahedron of a Burner!
It wasn't surprising to see two Burners in Xia City. There were about three hundred of them according to the statistical data of the Society. Of them, more than half were in the military, while there was a small portion affiliated with Quantum Corporation. People had to come out, take a walk, and eat. It was quite normal to bump into some at Cloud City Water Village.
These two didn't seem to be connected with the conflict that happened below. Luo Nan didn't sense any malicious factors. The living starry sky clearly indicated that there were no substantial connections between those two and him.
Luo Nan didn't want to be mired by side issues. He just observed the powerful Burner he suspected to be B rank; the power this one could unleash ought to be shocking. Though the Burner's Format of Fire was contained, the pressure was able to penetrate the depths of the mental plane. Under the classical definition of the mental plane being divided into three zones, one region, and one realm, the pressure should be able to access the edge of the abyssal region.
If the ability user was mentally enhanced, then that would have been all right, but everyone knew that Burners were all physical enhanced. To achieve this sort of result through their secondary branch was already something on the level of Fairchild, the Ears of Truth.
So Xia City had a Burner on this level?
He Yueyin had explained to Luo Nan once before, but Luo Nan didn't remember it at all. Due to cautious consideration, Luo Nan had controlled his soul strength, maintaining a distance from the material plane and giving up observing things directly in reality. This was to avoid being captured in the opposite direction. That would place him in an awkward situation.
Luo Nan memorized the location and shifted his senses away. He didn't have any other discoveries. There seemed to be only this one exception.
However, the appearance of a B rank Burner was something he had to notify his companions about. This was avoid sudden incidents and influences. This was what his experience and his principles told him to do. A period of time ago, He Yueyin and the others had constantly emphasized such requirements when teaching him.
Luo Nan immediately announced this formation in the ad-hoc task window, "There's a suspicious B rank Burner and a C rank Burner. The two should be together. They are located above Frost River Reality."
"That's a high-end restaurant called Chief Liu Ge." Papercut filled in the details then gasped in shock, "B rank? That doesn't make sense. That’s already the highest level of a Burner, right?"