17. Cross Tracking
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The night fell gradually, and a cool autumn breeze swept over the Royal City Bridge, stretching Qing Chen's body as he ran, with the wind blowing his clothes behind him.
Perhaps it was a change of mindset, but he felt as if...
The shackles given to him by his family and surroundings were slowly coming undone.
Qing Chen ran faster and faster.
Occasionally, pedestrians on the bridge would look back at him, everyone could feel this inexplicable youthfulness, impulsive yet rich.
Silver Sheen Central Garden is one of the highest-priced residential areas in Los Angeles City, and a well-known wealthy neighborhood.
So it wasn't surprising that Huang Jixian, being a second-generation rich kid, lived here.
The property management and security here were relatively strict, and access required a swipe card.
Qing Chen circled around to the back door to see if there was a way to get in.
However, before he could figure out how to enter, he saw six men in black suits walking out of a small path at the back gate of the complex.
These men were ramrod straight, each looking as sharp and unstoppable as a bayonet.
As they walked, the six men kept in step, their timing and distance when lifting their feet as if measured by a ruler.
Wait, Qing Chen was stunned because amongst the six, he saw a youth being carried... Huang Jixian!
At that moment, Huang Jixian looked blank, muttering nonsensical phrases—prison, machinery, monsters...
They quickly climbed into two black SUVs parked outside the back door, and one of them seemed to sense something, turning his head to look towards Qing Chen from the passenger seat.
Qing Chen immediately turned his head and casually played with his phone as if nothing was amiss.
The men did not seem to pay much attention to him, and the two black SUVs sped away into the night.
Qing Chen, on the other hand, stood frozen outside the gate of the complex, silently staring at his phone.
Who were those people?
Why did they take Huang Jixian away?
Could it be because of the his identity as a transmigrator?
It must be that, Qing Chen refused to believe in coincidence.
He turned and headed home.
All the way, he pondered the identities of the men in black, but gradually, he realized something wasn't right.
A young man wearing a black hoodie was silently following him, having trailed five blocks already.
An inexplicable sense of familiarity... he had seen this person before.
In an instant, Qing Chen felt all his muscles tense up, an invisible pressure eroding his sense of safety.
It was as if he had been fiercely marked by a wild beast.
He remembered, when he had encountered the men in black at the back gate of the Central Garden, that person was nearby, looking at his phone, but his fingers never once slid across the screen.
Qing Chen could not analyze every single detail he saw every minute, it was too draining, but he could retrieve memories.
With this thought, Qing Chen casually pretended to pick up his phone, and then stopped in his tracks to make a call, "Hello, I'll be home late for dinner..."
The baseball cap cast his cheeks in shadows.
The young man in the black hoodie kept walking past him without stopping as Qing Chen came to a halt.
Qing Chen's peripheral vision stayed locked on the man, but the other person did not look back even once.
This puzzled Qing Chen, and for a moment he even wondered if he was being too paranoid?
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Amidst the bustling streets, the man in the black hoodie quickly vanished after hanging up the call and continued walking forward.
It was fortunate that he had gone home to change out of his school uniform and put on a hat, otherwise just by seeing the uniform, they would have known he was a student from Los Angeles Foreign Language School.
Before Qing Chen could relax, at the next intersection's traffic lights, he noticed a familiar face among the crowd waiting to cross—someone he had seen at the main entrance of the Central Garden complex.
It wasn't a coincidence.
It was coordinated surveillance.
Every person tasked with following him only tracked him for a short distance, each ensuring they blended in like a passerby to go undetected. If the target stopped, the follower would keep walking nonchalantly as if nothing happened, and others would take over from behind.
This was one of the safest tracking methods.
Qing Chen was thankful for all the useful and useless books he had read.
He finally understood that when the person in the off-road vehicle looked at him, he had been marked.
There were more than six, with additional people hidden in the shadows.
Was this some secret organization, so well-trained and so focused on matters related to transmigrators?
Qing Chen suddenly felt that he might not be the first batch of transmigrators; perhaps he was the second, or even the third.
If not, even if someone learned about transmigrators today, they wouldn't be able to respond so quickly on the same day.
These people were well-prepared.
The youth's black pupils were dense and deep—facing him on the sidewalk was a night runner, an uncle selling rock-sugar gourds at a stall, an elegant woman clicking along in high heels, and the changing light and shadows cast by the nearby yellow street lamp.
He took note of every detail, reminding himself not to make a mistake.
There were 12 seconds left on the traffic light.
The man in black who had just brushed past him could very likely be taking a detour to position himself behind for the next round of surveillance.
Based on the detour he would have to take through Wangchun Gate Street, Zhenghe Road, and Kaiyuan Avenue, an adult running at a jogger's pace would need at most ten minutes.
If he wanted to shake off the surveillance…
Now was the time.
The green light came on, and the stalker lifted his foot to cross the street, while Qing Chen suddenly turned around and went back.
The follower crossed the street as if nothing were odd and spoke softly, "The target did not cross the street, he turned back. How much longer till you're in position?"
It looked like he was talking to himself, but a closer look would reveal a semi-transparent earpiece in his left ear.
"No good, I still need two minutes to reach my tracking position."
In a flash, the follower crossing the street sensed something was off, and he quickly turned back to look for Qing Chen's figure but couldn't find the young man anywhere.
"Lost him," the tracker at the intersection sighed lightly.
In the distance, a young man in a black hoodie running at full speed laughed in response, "How embarrassing, two people tracking one and you still lost him."
"It was you who insisted on following him."
The young man in the black hoodie laughed, "Then do you think he realized we were tracking him?"
A voice came through the earpiece, "I'm sure he did, he's skilled."
The young man in the black hoodie thought for a moment and said, "That boy didn't look more than seventeen or eighteen, still probably in high school. If he really noticed us tracking him, that would be quite something. And did you notice? He handled it very naturally. The first time he stopped to make a call, I didn't even think he noticed me. Otherwise, I would've taken control of him right there."
"I'm curious, why did you decide to follow him on a whim? We had a lot on our plate today, and there was no need to waste time on a passerby."
"Not exactly a whim. Just that when the team was escorting Target 009, I noticed he avoided the boss's gaze."