The instant he read those words on the tablet, Jiang Qi felt as though a bucket of icy water had been dumped over his head. A chill swept through him from top to bottom.
After a brief moment of shock, he forced himself to steady up, putting on an act as though he had noticed nothing unusual at all. Casually, he typed a reply into the tablet.
"There's someone outside? You're sure?"
[Of course. My visual system is top-tier.]
[Although if you didn't know, does that mean he really is a peeping tom?]
[Do you need me to take care of him for you?]
"No, no, wait," Jiang Qi hurriedly typed back. "How much can you actually see? Do you know what he looks like?"
[My field of vision is limited, so the information I can gather is also limited. At present, the following can be confirmed: the subject is male, approximately 35–40 years old, East Asian, but with comparatively high melanin levels, so his skin tone should appear light brown. No obvious internal electronic signals are present, so he likely has no cybernetic augmentation. Faint traces of evaporating alcohol can be detected around him, so he was probably drinking not long ago...]
As Jiang Qi watched line after line of data continue popping onto the screen, the corner of his mouth twitched.
And you call this limited information?
And seriously—what kind of black-tech nightmare was Yunting using here? One visual module alone could scan and analyze all that?
Still, having so much information turned out to be a good thing. Jiang Qi quickly confirmed that this man was not any of the Flying Crow Gang people he knew.
The age didn't match Homa or Ruoke. The ethnicity didn't match Bauer. Taken together, the rest of the details didn't line up with any of the scavengers Jiang Qi was familiar with either.
And with the detail about having recently been drinking, that only left one likely group.
The Flying Crow Gang.
Jiang Qi's face darkened.
This was the situation he had feared most.
Glaxia's existence absolutely could not be discovered by the Flying Crow Gang.
He had hidden her so carefully all this time. So why was someone peeping into his home today of all days?
He was a grown man. What was there to peep at?
He had never heard of anyone taking an interest in spying on his place before.
Could it be because he had become Old Homa's apprentice and had attracted attention that way?
No, that didn't make sense either. Several days had already passed. If that had been the reason, why wait until now?
While Jiang Qi's expression shifted between light and dark, a new message appeared on the tablet.
[He seems to have noticed that something is wrong. He appears to be preparing to flee. What should I do? Let him run?]
The moment he saw that, cold sweat broke out all over Jiang Qi. He immediately typed back:
"No! He absolutely cannot be allowed to get away!"
[Understood.]
After that brief response, Glaxia instantly raised the one arm she still had left intact.
With a faint mechanical hum, the fingertips of her hand shifted and transformed. In the blink of an eye, they had become a spiral-shaped energy muzzle.
Then a white flash flickered at her fingertip.
There was a sharp hiss—
and immediately afterward, the sound of something heavy crashing to the ground came from outside.
[Done. Target eliminated.]
Jiang Qi stared at those few words on the tablet and swallowed.
Eliminated?
Just like that?
So suddenly...?
He turned to look behind him.
At about head height in the corner of the room, there was now a small, blackened hole.
He got up, stepped outside, and followed the direction indicated by that hole. There, sprawled on his back on the ground, lay a somewhat familiar figure.
His face was frozen in terror.
He was already dead.
Jiang Qi recognized him.
Natuba—a minor Flying Crow Gang leader, and one of the town's most notorious simps.
The first time Jiang Qi had gone to the bookstore, he had even crossed paths with the man on his way out.
Other than the woman he was hopelessly chasing, Natuba rarely showed anyone else a decent face. And because he spent all his money on his pathetic romantic obsession, he loved squeezing extra profit out of scavengers whenever he could. Most scavengers avoided him like the plague.
And yet this same arrogant bully, who strutted around town on a daily basis, had now died right in front of Jiang Qi in a manner so absurdly casual it almost felt unreal.
At the dead center of Natuba's forehead was a charred black hole, as though some extremely high-temperature beam had burned straight into him.
The hole had not punched all the way through his skull. It had simply, with terrifying precision, destroyed the central functions of his brain and taken his life in the cleanest way possible.
There wasn't even any blood.
In that moment, Jiang Qi's understanding of Glaxia was overturned yet again.
And with it, his understanding of this world's top-tier technology.
A complete weapons system was built into Glaxia's arm. What she had just used was only the tiny energy emitter integrated into her fingertip.
And that thing wasn't even purely a weapon. According to the information from Appraisal, its primary function was high-temperature cutting.
Even so, Jiang Qi had no doubt that if he fully repaired Glaxia, she could wipe out the entire Flying Crow Gang using nothing more than that tiny fingertip emitter alone.
At that point, if Glaxia still wished to maintain a cooperative relationship with him, then Jiang Qi really could live however he pleased in Deadwood Town.
But right now, obviously, that wasn't possible.
Natuba's death was clearly going to be trouble.
The good news was that Natuba staying alive would have been even more troublesome.
Since Jiang Qi had already been spied on, the current outcome could actually be considered the better one.
But why had this bastard been snooping around outside Jiang Qi's home in the first place?
Jiang Qi turned to look at his house—and suddenly clicked his tongue.
He understood.
The man had most likely been drawn here by the light leaking from inside.
It was the middle of the night. Other than the occasional person with night-vision equipment heading out for late scavenging runs, most scavengers in Deadwood Town lived on very regular schedules.
And Jiang Qi lived right in the scavenger district.
Having a light on at this hour was bound to stand out.
Natuba must have noticed the light leaking from Jiang Qi's shack while wandering along the town's outskirts, and curiosity had drawn him over.
At night, strong winds swept across the Wasteland. The sheet metal and plastic cloth used to build the houses often rattled loudly in the wind. With all that noise as cover, Natuba's footsteps would have been very hard to notice.
That was why Jiang Qi hadn't heard him.
As for why Natuba had been wandering around the edge of town at this hour in the first place, Jiang Qi had no idea.
And as for the issue of light leaking from the house...
In truth, Jiang Qi's shack was fully enclosed. To be safe, he hadn't even put a window in it.
But the problem was that the conditions under which it had been built were simply too poor.
Calling it a house was generous. It was really just a shack assembled from scavenged metal frames, patched over with sheet metal and plastic tarp. Given the conditions in town, that was what all the scavengers' homes were like.
Jiang Qi believed his own shack had already been sealed up very thoroughly. Wasteland nights brought brutal winds, and if a house wasn't built solidly enough, it simply wouldn't survive. For that reason, he constantly reinforced it whenever he could.
He also regularly checked for cracks where light might leak through, patching them immediately whenever he found any.
But the same two problems remained:
The conditions were limited, and the night winds in the Wasteland were savage.
His shack was still fundamentally made from scavenged materials cobbled together. After one bad windstorm, plenty of places would end up warped. The areas that had already been reinforced multiple times were one thing, but there would always be sections he hadn't yet gathered enough materials to strengthen properly—and those spots could easily develop new gaps.
Such gaps were hard to notice during the day.
But at night, with a light on inside, they became glaringly obvious in the darkness.
Jiang Qi searched around and quickly found the crack Natuba had used to peep through.
He was certain that the last time he had maintained the house, that gap hadn't been there. It had most likely appeared only within the last couple of days.
He looked at the black night around him, then at the corpse on the ground, and let out a long sigh.
At this rate, it looked like he'd have to make a trip to the garbage mountain tonight after all.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 135)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter67)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter85)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 60
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 65
From Junkman to Wasteland 50
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 35
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 40
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 37
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