Chapter 53 The Sage is the "Father" of Everyone

"Wail~ Wail~"

The blue and red police lights spun urgently, casting a glaring, dazzling glow.

The police cruiser wailed its siren all the way, speeding like lightning along the emergency lane and drawing sideways glances from pedestrians on the roadside.

"What major case happened?"

"I was just watching a short video, and there are reports that the Prime Minister's wife was killed by That Which is Inevitable while taking bribes. They must be going to investigate that."

"Good riddance, those corrupt officials should all be wiped out. The Saint is still too merciful!"

"The Prime Minister should also resign and apologize, his job performance has been an absolute mess!"

"How can anyone believe rumors on the internet? I only trust the official announcements released by the Saint!"

The police cruiser left the people's chatter behind. Apache, a newly recruited officer of the Imperial Capital Police Department, sat obediently in the front passenger seat, his hands resting properly on his knees.

He had never imagined that he would, in such a short time, directly accompany his boss's boss's boss's boss, the Commissioner-General of the National Police Agency, Chen Zhiyuan, on a mission.

At this moment, Chen Zhiyuan sat upright in the back row, motionless.

His standard square face was filled with solemnity, his burly frame tightly encased in a crisp navy blue police uniform, layered over a white shirt and tied with an impeccably neat black tie.

On his shoulder boards, three silver-white star badges emitted a stern luster under the interior lights.

The atmosphere inside the car was suffocatingly oppressive.

Apache peeked through the rearview mirror a few times, finally unable to help himself, and asked cautiously, "Commissioner-General, what kind of case are we heading to handle?"

"The Prime Minister's wife was murdered by a member of That Which is Inevitable. According to reliable intelligence, her itinerary was likely leaked by a swindler."

Chen Zhiyuan's voice was low, containing suppressed anger. "And now, that swindler, Yan Mingyu, has also been silenced. Our mission is to locate and apprehend the culprit at the fastest possible speed."

For such a heinous crime to occur in the heart of the Imperial Capital was a blatant provocation and a direct slap to the face of the National Police Agency's Commissioner-General.

If he failed to swiftly solve the case and capture the criminal, he would lose all face before the Saint.

For Chen Zhiyuan, this was a result he could never tolerate.

It was not out of attachment to the power of the Commissioner-General.

He didn't care about the scale of the power in his hands; he simply wanted to be loyal to the Saint and share the Saint's burdens and worries.

Chen Zhiyuan had lost his father at a young age, and the children around him had often mocked him as a "fatherless child."

In his youth, he had fought with people countless times over this.

Until his mother told him: "Everyone under heaven is a child of the Saint, and the Saint is the father of all. Therefore, you are not a fatherless child; the Saint is your father."

From that moment on, he changed completely.

Originally intending to study hard and enter politics, he unexpectedly awakened a superpower and instead shifted his path to join the police force.

He chose not to join the military because soldiers were constantly training on bases and could not stay by their mother's side to fulfill filial duties.

Through a daring, fierce, and fearless drive in the police department, he rose all the way from the lowest-ranking officer to the position of Commissioner-General of the National Police Agency.

Everything he did was to prove his loyalty and capability to the Saint.

He clearly remembered every word of praise the Saint had ever given him, and even more deeply, the few times he had lost face before the Saint.

This time, what he craved was the Saint's praise, not a reprimand.

...

The police cruiser sped all the way, finally stopping in a narrow alley in the middle of North Forty-Second Street.

This was not a bustling commercial district, but a residential area.

After nightfall, the street always appeared exceptionally desolate, forming a sharp contrast with the brightly lit and bustling commercial street not far away.

Chen Zhiyuan pushed open the car door, stepped out briskly, and ordered Apache in the front: "Use your superpower to reconstruct the scene."

As a newly joined officer of the Imperial Capital Police Department, the reason Apache was selected and dispatched was precisely because of his extremely rare heterotypic superpower, [Retrospect the Past].

This ability possessed incomparable advantages when it came to tracking targets.

Apache swallowed nervously, nodded heavily, and said, "Yes!"

He squatted down, placed both palms flat on the cold asphalt pavement of the narrow alley, and concentrated on activating his ability.

Hum!

Ripples of pale blue waves radiated outward from his palms, rapidly spreading across the entire alley and then extending upward to form a pale blue curtain of light that enveloped the lane.

At first, the light curtain showed nothing unusual, displaying only the empty street scene.

However, as time was continuously rewound backward, amid shifting light and shadow, the phantom figures of pedestrians occasionally hurried past and vanished.

He rewound further.

The figures of two people clearly appeared within the light curtain.

One of them carried a suitcase, wore a somewhat exaggerated Taoist robe, and sported intentionally dyed silver-white long hair paired with his youthful face, putting on a pretense of otherworldly grace.

As for the other person, their entire body was wrapped in dull gray strips of cloth, leaving not an inch of skin exposed, and wearing a ferocious-looking pure black gas mask that completely concealed their features.

"Watanabe! Where is the person who was supposed to meet us?!"

"N-No..."

From behind the gas mask came a voice that clashed violently with his ferocious exterior—one that sounded even somewhat timid.

However, in stark contrast to this timid voice were his next actions: swift and merciless.

With a sudden wave of his right hand, Watanabe Jiro unleashed a surging, violent torrent of flames that completely engulfed Yan Mingyu.

The explosive temperature of the fire was terrifyingly high, incinerating Yan Mingyu and everything inside his suitcase into ashes in the blink of an eye.

The flames then vanished bizarrely in the next second, as if they had never existed.

Immediately following this, Watanabe Jiro executed a sharp, fierce kick, the generated gale precisely sweeping up all the scattered ashes on the ground and blowing them through a small hole in a nearby manhole cover directly into the sewer.

Having finished all this, he bent down, nimbly pried open the manhole cover, leaped downward without a moment's hesitation, and resealed the cover tightly from the inside.

Seeing this, the police car driver reacted with extreme agility, stepping forward immediately to open the heavy manhole cover, exposing the bottomless, pitch-black sewer entrance below.

Chen Zhiyuan's gaze turned sharp. Without a trace of hesitation, he was the first to leap inward.

With the Commissioner-General leading by example and paying no heed to the filth below, the rest of the officers hesitated no further, following closely behind and filing in one by one.

Inside the sewer, an indescribable stench hit them head-on, and the environment was dim and oppressive.

"Ira, open your sensory domain. Apache, continue using your ability to track. Old Guo, prepare for combat at any moment!"

Chen Zhiyuan lowered his voice and rapidly issued a series of directives.

The female officer named Ira immediately nodded, held her breath, and expanded her source power outward.

Centered around her feet, invisible sensory power spread outward like precision radar waves, clearly feeding back all movement within a radius of eight hundred meters.

This included the pipe structure, the sound of flowing water, and any biological life signs.

Meanwhile, Apache touched the damp wall, desperately trying to maintain his superpower while silently praying that the target would not run too far.

Maintaining high-precision retrospection for such a long time consumed a massive amount of source power. With his current mastery at the advanced tier, he could only sustain it for thirteen minutes at most.

If he failed to find the person within this period, it would likely become impossible to catch them.

The group moved rapidly through the intricate, stench-filled network of sewers.

Suddenly, Ira's footsteps came to an abrupt halt, and she said urgently, "Commissioner-General, detected! Eight hundred meters away, there is a superpower user with an extremely strong source power reaction. That should be the target we are looking for."

While reporting the discovery of the killer to the Saint via his phone, Chen Zhiyuan arranged: "Old Guo, protect Apache later. Ira is responsible for providing back-up support for me."

"Understood."

The two answered in unison.