Huo Zhaixing’s face visibly turned blue with rage.
He offered no retort. Instead, he rested one hand on the car window and suddenly curled it into a claw. Ji Tan felt an invisible hand clamp hard around his left wrist and yank him toward the Maybach.
“If you run once, I’ll chase you once. If you run a hundred times, I’ll chase you a hundred times!”
This time, President Huo skipped the extra nonsense and windup and rattled off all four lines of his signature declaration at once, speaking almost as fast as Xie Zhi had when issuing his prohibition during the jump from the roof.
As the final word left his mouth, the pulling force suddenly increased, lifting Ji Tan, a fully grown man, straight off his feet.
He shot toward the black car’s reinforced door like a cannonball. Ji Tan was terrified by this roller-coaster acceleration. If he didn’t slow down, he’d splatter like a raw egg dropped onto the ground, shell cracking and yolk spilling everywhere.
Ji Tan shut his eyes, but the expected pain never came. The instant before he struck the door, an arm in a silk sleeve gently hooked across his chest and acted as a perfectly timed “roller-coaster safety belt,” arresting his momentum.
Both feet landed firmly on the ground, and he was unhurt. “Phew!” Ji Tan exhaled a long breath, only to open his eyes and discover that Huo Zhaixing still had his wrist in a death grip. He immediately made the same noise someone would make after stepping in dogshit. “Eugh! Dogshit!”
Huo Zhaixing smugly gripped the wrist that the “Afanti coat” had warmed, then glanced sideways at Xie Zhi, who had followed along to serve as a cushion. He sneered. “I knew you could only forbid one thing at a time. Prohibitions are an ability you don’t get until A-rank. If you want to show off for Ji Tan, at least know your limits. Don’t use up all your favor-power and exhaust yourself like a dead dog. You won’t even be able to run away.”
Ji Tan frowned and quickly recalled the times Xie Zhi had used his powers during their escape. The prohibition on opening the door had come only after the thirty-second speed limit expired. Before jumping off the building, he’d also lifted the prohibition on the door…
But just now he’d forbidden anyone to get out of the car without setting any time limit!
Showing off could get someone killed!
Ji Tan had no more time to think. He swung a fist straight at Huo Zhaixing’s nose. “Let go!”
As an office wage slave with no fighting skills, the only move he’d ever learned from the internet was to aim for “the nasal bridge, the bone most easily broken.” Unfortunately, this ultimate punch from civilized society had no effect whatsoever when it landed on President Huo’s face.
Huo Zhaixing’s nose seemed to be made of stone. It didn’t bend or bleed in the slightest. He smiled unconcernedly and spoke in the deep voice peculiar to domineering CEOs. “Baby, I’m a C-rank domineering CEO. Hitting me is no different from tickling me. Still, I’ll have to teach you a lesson so you know who your master is. Drive!”
His iron-clamp fingers still circled Ji Tan’s wrist. Once the car started, Ji Tan would be dragged along like some unfortunate accident victim caught on a passing vehicle, suffering terrible friction burns and other injuries.
At the same time, several bodyguards sprang out of hiding, brandishing gleaming weapons as they charged toward Xie Zhi.
Xie Zhi sighed helplessly. “Be good, grandson. Don’t make trouble.” Then he snapped his fingers.
“Speeding is forbidden here. Speed limit: one mile per hour.” He paused, lifted an eyebrow at Ji Tan, then leisurely added the duration. “Ten minutes.”
The words took effect. Every bodyguard advanced in slow motion, while the car cruelly dragging Ji Tan “sped” forward at one mile per hour. Ji Tan had no choice but to walk alongside it. He, too, wanted to say, “Don’t make trouble.”
The proposal had fallen to the ground when he was yanked around. Otherwise, he could have given President Huo another smack with it right now.
Huo Zhaixing raised his other hand and made another clawing motion through the air. An invisible hand seized Xie Zhi by the throat, lifted him up, and tightened brutally. When Xie offered no resistance, Huo sneered. “So you really are only lower B-rank. Forbidding two things at the same time must be your absolute limit.”
The bodyguards, still approaching in slow motion, kept their chopping blades raised with dogged persistence. Once they reached Xie Zhi, who hung immobilized in the air, they would hack him to pieces. Just as one shining blade was about to slice into his leg, Xie Zhi snapped his fingers again. “Using chopping blades is forbidden here.” Every weapon clattered to the ground.
Huo Zhaixing visibly panicked for a moment. Then he noticed that Xie Zhi remained in his grip, blue veins standing out on his neck from the strangulation, and his confidence returned. “Heh. So forbidding three things at once is your limit!”
Now veins stood out not only on Xie Zhi’s neck but also across his forehead. He’d wanted to see what other tricks Huo had up his sleeve, but it turned out the man’s grand follow-up was nothing but more bluster. Xie opened his left hand and clenched his right into a fist, bringing the fist down against the palm with the finality of a judge’s gavel. His solemn, majestic voice rang out from above. “Invalid!”
Ji Tan felt the invisible shackles around his wrist vanish. Only the ordinary grip of Huo Zhaixing’s grown-man hand remained.
The force around Xie Zhi’s throat vanished too. Moving like a flash of lightning, he appeared beside the car in an instant, seized Huo Zhaixing’s index finger, and broke it with a sharp crack.
“Didn’t your grandfather tell you what a B-rank Autocrat is?” Xie Zhi hooked Ji Tan under one arm and pulled him away, then drove a hard punch into Huo Zhaixing’s nasal bridge. “It means you’re nothing at all in front of me.”
Ji Tan only heard President Huo squeal like a pig being slaughtered before his vision went black and he could no longer see anything. His thoughts wandered beyond his control, his mind automatically picking apart what Boss Xie had just said.
Perhaps using an A-rank ability came with restrictions, but Xie Zhi also had B-rank abilities, C-rank abilities… And what was an Autocrat, anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to be the district’s dictator? This was making his head spin…
The more he thought, the more confused he became. Just before losing consciousness, he vaguely heard Xie Zhi curse.
“I only used prohibitions because I didn’t want ordinary people getting hurt, you dumbass…”
When Ji Tan woke again, he found himself in a moving car. The leather seat beneath him was neither too hard nor too soft, and the ride was smooth and quiet. It had to be an expensive vehicle.
It couldn’t be the Huo family’s wide-bodied Maybach, could it?
Ji Tan jerked upright in alarm. Glancing around, he found Xie Zhi at the wheel and no one else in the car. The paper bag containing the proposal and his documents was safely nestled in his lap. He relaxed again.
The dashboard clock read eight in the evening. Less than an hour could have passed since he blacked out.
“Where’s Huo Zhaixing?” Remembering the scream and the smell of blood that had spread through the air, Ji Tan slowly turned toward Xie Zhi, who was concentrating on driving. The steering wheel bore the Maybach emblem. “Did you… kill him?” And then steal the Huo family’s car?
Xie Zhi glanced at him. “What are you thinking? His grandfather came and took him away. His family gave me this car as compensation.”
“Oh.” Ji Tan rubbed his bruised wrist, grimacing and muttering, “Why did you get compensated? I’m the one who was hurt.”
“Fine, it’s yours. You drive.” Xie Zhi was quite generous about it.
“No, no. I don’t have a City A driver’s license.”
“That’s all right. You don’t need a license to drive in City A.”
“How can that be all right?” Ji Tan immediately grew nervous, anxiously studying the rearview mirror and looking left and right. How many homicidal drivers must there be in a place where people didn’t have to pass a test to drive?
Xie Zhi said, “Don’t worry. District dictators follow the Code of Hammurabi: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. If you kill someone with your car, the driver gets beaten to death.”
Ji Tan: “…” Right now, he wanted to beat the district dictator to death.
Xie Zhi snickered under his breath.
Once the joking stopped, Ji Tan finally relaxed completely. He slumped in his seat and watched the crowded traffic and high-rises beyond the window. This city was far more extravagantly wealthy than he’d imagined.
Skyscrapers stood everywhere, each one with a different shape, as though prizewinning buildings from every world architectural design competition had been lifted wholesale and set down here. Every building vied with the others for attention, creating a dazzling spectacle.
At last, Ji Tan truly felt that he had arrived in another world. This really was City A, the city that existed in every fictional universe: the magical place where everyone was obscenely rich but no one used electronic payment and rich men only threw around cash, where no joke could make a young master smile for years, and lawyers and doctors were always available at a moment’s notice. And he, Ji Tan, was a rare species in City A: a poor person.
“Where are we going?” Ji Tan asked.
“The Central District is still in chaos, so I can’t take you there.” Xie Zhi explained quietly, his lips pressed together as if he were slightly embarrassed. “That Huo brat won’t give up easily. It isn’t safe for you to live alone. Why don’t you stay at my house in Beichen District for now?”
He also gave Ji Tan a quick geography lesson. City A had five districts, east, south, west, north, and central, named Dongjun, Nanwu, Xili, Beichen, and Central respectively. They were currently in the northern district, Beichen.
Ji Tan thought for a moment, then said firmly, “I want to go to the Western District and see what’s going on. The original owner of this body has an older brother who’s in poor health.” Since he’d taken someone else’s body, he had an obligation to shoulder that person’s responsibilities. Even the original owner, a frail young man, had managed to survive in Xili District. Surely Director Ji, with his skills and brains, could manage too.
Xie Zhi had already helped him a great deal. After his brother’s death, the bond between them had gradually grown more distant. He couldn’t keep troubling Xie merely because they came from the same place. Besides, Xie Zhi had just taken office and had plenty of difficult matters to handle. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said the Central District was still in chaos.
Xie Zhi said nothing.
“Do you think my brother might have transmigrated too?” Ji Tan asked.
Xie Zhi: “…”
After thinking about it, Ji Tan sighed again. “Probably not into this place. A-Qiang couldn’t even write novels when my brother died.”
Xie Zhi turned to look at him, his dark eyes filled with complicated emotions.
“I hope my brother transmigrated into a rich family, so he wouldn’t have to work while writing novels for money and exhaust himself to death,” Ji Tan murmured with his head down. “If I’d known he’d paid for that computer with the money he earned writing after staying up for two nights straight, I never would have accepted it.”
Perhaps time really could heal everything. When his brother had first died, even thinking about him had made Ji Tan feel as if his heart were being torn open. Now he could speak about it calmly.
“That wasn’t your fault.” Xie Zhi stopped at a red light, cautiously reached over, and ruffled the drooping, fluffy head. “The reason Ji Sinan stayed up for two nights was that he’d dragged me into playing video games for an entire week and only remembered he had a deadline when it was almost too late.”
Ji Tan: “…”
Unable to resist Ji Tan’s stunned expression, Xie Zhi ruffled his hair again.
The light turned green, and Xie Zhi stepped on the accelerator. Changing patterns of light and shadow swept across the black car as two strangers in a foreign land moved through this dazzling, dangerous city.
The car remained quiet for a long time. Finally, Xie Zhi exhaled slowly and said in an even voice, “I’ll take you back to the Western District.”
Then he pulled a folded sheet of printed paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to Ji Tan. “Take a look at this.”
Ji Tan unfolded the paper, which had been folded four times. It was a photocopy of a loan-shark agreement.
[Loan principal: one million, written in full. Disbursement at ninety percent, repayment at one hundred thirty percent. Monthly payment: one hundred thousand for thirteen installments. Borrower: Ji Sinan.]