【New book is out—please recommend, favorite, and keep reading. Let’s get the numbers up. I’m counting on you, brothers.】
The year 2126, a summer night.
Damp heat carried the halos of neon lights, spreading through the streets of Binhai City.
A young man stepped out of a ride-hailing car. He wore a blue shirt and casual trousers; his figure was tall and well-proportioned, around one meter eighty-five, his features handsome. He looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six.
Ji Tianhao dragged a heavy suitcase into the Starlight Hotel in the city center.
Sweat beaded at his temples. His fingers unconsciously rubbed the cold jade disc in his pocket—the item he had transported across borders this time.
“Hello. I reserved Room 1808.”
Ji Tianhao handed his ID card to the front desk.
The receptionist smiled as she processed his check-in, while Ji Tianhao’s gaze instinctively swept across the lobby. Without revealing a thing, the corner of his eye had already taken in everything there.
As an experienced bounty hunter, he could always keenly sense potential danger. The payment for this mission was absurdly high. His instincts told him that things would not be so simple.
Just as he received his room card and was about to take the elevator, a flash of red passed through the corner of his eye.
It was a woman in a red dress, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The sunglasses on her face covered most of it, and her figure was extremely fiery. Though it was only a hurried glance, Ji Tianhao’s heartbeat abruptly quickened.
“It’s her. The face is different, but that scent can’t be wrong. Thousand-Faced Fox. Why is she here? She came for me.”
A thought flashed through Ji Tianhao’s mind.
Thousand-Faced Fox, a mysterious thief famous on the dark web, known for appearing and vanishing like a ghost and stealing high-value items. Moreover, her appearance changed endlessly—body type, facial features, even male or female, she could disguise herself flawlessly. In the dark world, no one had ever seen her true face.
No one even dared to be certain of her gender.
Even so, Ji Tianhao was still certain that the woman in red he had just seen was, ninety-nine percent, Thousand-Faced Fox.
After all, he had crossed hands with her more than once or twice.
That scent could be smelled from ten meters away.
Ji Tianhao frowned slightly, quickened his pace, and rushed into the elevator.
At the instant the elevator doors slowly closed, he saw the woman in red standing in a corner of the lobby, whispering into her phone, the corners of her lips curving in a meaningful arc.
Inside Room 1808, Ji Tianhao placed the suitcase on the bed and swiftly double-locked the door.
He opened the suitcase. Inside was a set of precision lock-picking tools and several weapons.
Then he reached into his pocket and took out the jade disc.
Holding it in his hand, he examined it carefully.
The jade disc was not large, only about the size of a fist. In his palm, it was like a palm-sized treasure. Its entire body was snow-white, like flawless mutton-fat white jade. Carved into a jade disc, it was so perfect that one could not help but cherish it. If placed outside, it would definitely be a valuable ornament. Yet the true value of such mutton-fat white jade, compared with the payment for this mission, was utterly worlds apart. The bounty was several times, even a hundred times, the price of this piece of mutton-fat white jade.
After a brief moment of thought.
He quickly took out a USB drive wrapped in a specially made protective case from the suitcase. He removed the USB drive and plugged it into the encrypted laptop he carried with him. The screen lit up, and a string of complex code scrolled rapidly.
First, the screen went black, as if entering a blank state.
Ji Tianhao paid it no mind. His ten fingers swiftly tapped out a special password on the keyboard, one as long as eighty-one characters.
After he finished entering it.
The screen lit up, entering a mysterious website.
This was the exclusive website of the dark world, known to the outside as—the dark web!
Without a special key, there was no way to enter the dark web. That special USB drive was the key.
“As expected, there’s a problem.”
Ji Tianhao frowned.
The jade disc he had obtained already had a new bounty posted for it on the dark web. The price was ten times higher than the mission he had accepted before. Clearly, someone else intended to intercept it in secret. The mission description even stated explicitly that the Kunlun Jade Disc had already fallen into his hands. With such an astronomical bounty, who knew how many experts on the dark web would come looking for him?
For it to attract such great attention, it was obvious that this Kunlun Jade Disc was definitely not as simple as it appeared on the surface.
There had to be something about it he did not know.
Click!
Just then, a faint sound of footsteps came from outside the door. Ji Tianhao immediately shut down the computer, drew the Desert Eagle at his waist, and pressed himself behind the door. The footsteps stopped outside Room 1808. Immediately afterward, the door lock let out a faint electronic unlocking sound.
Ji Tianhao held his breath, ready to deal with whoever came in at any moment. The door slowly opened, and the woman in red walked in with great elegance, as if returning home. She paid no attention whatsoever to the gleaming Desert Eagle. She took off her sunglasses, revealing an exquisite oval face, her eyes bright as amber, a charming smile hanging at the corners of her lips. Her entire bearing said she was certain he would not shoot.
“Long time no see, great bounty hunter Ji.”
Thousand-Faced Fox’s voice carried a trace of teasing.
“What are you here for?”
Ji Tianhao’s muzzle remained aimed at her, his gaze cold.
Click.
Thousand-Faced Fox casually shut the door, then sat down unhurriedly on the sofa and crossed her legs. “Don’t be so tense. I’m just a little interested in that jade disc. The bounty is one billion. U.S. dollars. This is a huge job that might not appear even once in ten years on the dark web.”
“Impossible.” Ji Tianhao’s tone was resolute. “This is my mission. No one should even think of taking it.”
“You think you can protect it? Do you know how much trouble the Kunlun Jade Disc will bring you? Ten million is enough to cost several lives. One billion—can you shoulder that? Do you really think that just because you’re a bounty hunter with a hundred-percent success rate, you’ll be able to take it down?”
Thousand-Faced Fox said with a light laugh.
“If I can’t shoulder it, don’t tell me you can.”
Ji Tianhao looked at Thousand-Faced Fox with a faint smile. His left hand opened, revealing the snow-white jade disc. His five fingers moved, letting the jade disc spin naturally in his hand. Thousand-Faced Fox’s eyes almost instinctively fell on the jade disc, following its rotation back and forth.
“How about this? Tell me the secrets you know about the Kunlun Jade Disc, and perhaps we can share it.”
A strange look flashed through Ji Tianhao’s eyes as he spoke with deep implication.
The Kunlun Jade Disc was definitely no ordinary object. He was very clear on that point. Bringing it back from overseas this time had not been simple at all. He had only become the one who brought the jade disc back, not someone truly involved in fighting for it.
The jade disc was said to have been salvaged from an ancient sunken ship by a professional shipwreck explorer overseas. At the time, no one had paid too much attention to it, and the explorer himself did not understand it very well either. It was only during an exhibition of his collection, when it was displayed to the public, that news of the jade disc was exposed.
Then, before long, that explorer was gone.
Literally—his whole family was gone.
After that, a battle for the jade disc began.
The employer who contacted Ji Tianhao had not asked him to participate in the fighting. Instead, they had directly dispatched a mercenary force of over a thousand men to attack an extremely hidden secret base. At the time, the battle had been extremely intense and equally tragic. Even watching from the shadows had made one’s heart pound with fear.
So after obtaining the jade disc at the target location, he had turned and left without the slightest delay.
He had returned to the country as fast as possible.
At the time, his existence had been a hidden card. Up front, there had been several open cards providing cover. Those open cards would almost certainly be sacrificed. As for that, he could only express respect.
He had not expected that as soon as he returned, the news would already have spread across the dark web.
From this, he could also understand the importance of the jade disc. He had even guessed who the employer that hired him this time was. To be honest, he did not dare take possession of the jade disc outright, but his curiosity about it was still extremely strong.
So strong that he could not resist probing this old opponent before him.
To see if he could obtain any information.
“I’d be a fool to trust you. However, it’s not as if I can’t tell you. You have to let me take a look at the jade disc. I don’t dare take this thing, but looking at it first and studying it a little should be fine.”
Thousand-Faced Fox rolled her eyes. Clearly, she had self-awareness. She could not control the jade disc and did not dare seize it at all, but if she took a look at it, perhaps she might gain something.
“Fine. I agree.”
Ji Tianhao agreed decisively.
The jade disc was in his hands. As long as he had not turned in the mission, it was still under his control. Being a little flexible was perfectly normal.
“No one knows the origin of the Kunlun Jade Disc. All that’s known is that the jade disc may be related to allowing people to become transcendent.”
Thousand-Faced Fox spoke solemnly.
There was not the slightest hint of joking in her words.
“Transcendent? You mean the jade disc can let people obtain special abilities?”
A trace of surprise flashed through Ji Tianhao’s eyes as he asked.
“I don’t know. In any case, that’s the information circulating on the dark web. As for whether it’s true, no one knows. There are all sorts of rumors. Some say the jade disc can allow ordinary people to awaken special abilities. Some say it can allow ability users’ own powers to transform and grow. Others say the jade disc contains cultivation methods. In short, there are all kinds of claims. Isn’t that why I’m curious too?”
Thousand-Faced Fox did not hide anything. She knew that without giving him something real, she would not be able to get the jade disc.
As someone from the dark world, Ji Tianhao naturally knew there was another world beyond that of ordinary people. In that world, there were not only ability users, but also cultivators and genetically modified humans. Among them, practitioners of guoshu truly killed—they did not perform.
All these things were hidden beneath the ordinary world.
Ordinary people might live their entire lives and die without ever knowing.
In this world, those who could step into true transcendence were few and far between. They were only a small minority.
As long as one possessed abilities that ordinary people did not, it belonged to a different kind of extraordinary.
For example, Thousand-Faced Fox could change her appearance. And Ji Tianhao himself likewise possessed a special ability.
“If this jade disc is really that important, then I’m in trouble next.”
Ji Tianhao could not help but give a faint bitter smile.
Rumble!
Just then, a sudden roar rang out. The entire hotel began shaking violently without warning. Ji Tianhao and Thousand-Faced Fox staggered before regaining their footing. From outside the window came waves of screams, one after another.
“What’s going on?” Ji Tianhao rushed to the window and saw enormous cracks appearing one after another on the street. The ground was rapidly collapsing.