Chapter 332 – Honesty
The laser beam pierced through his chest, creating a scorched hole. Xie Zhao’s hand, which had been poised to unleash the [Space Cutting] ability, instantly went limp and fell to the ground, bouncing lightly before settling.
Tu Ran watched coldly, then kicked his waist. There was no response.
He was dead.
Tu Ran kicked him again, flipped his body over, and, with her back to him, retrieved a dagger from her space. She crouched slightly and drove it into the back of his neck, smoothly extracting the inner cores.
After wiping the blood off, Tu Ran simply threw it into her mouth.
Outside the window, there was the sound of footsteps approaching. Someone was coming. Tu Ran stepped over Xie Zhao, leaned against the wall, and carefully peeked outside.
A team of people dressed in pioneer outfits appeared.
The reinforcements Xie Zhao had called for were actually pioneers.
Tu Ran recognized a few familiar faces. Among them were Min Tao and Xiao Di, who had once completed missions with her in the Pandalin District. There were also second-generation pioneers like Shen Yunhe and Le Qin, whom she had trained for a few days.
Originally, Tu Ran had planned to use the reinforcements Xie Zhao called to practice her newly acquired powers, but after some thought, she decided to let them go.
She jumped out of the window, and with a “whoosh,” she vanished without a trace.
The others, who had only seen her afterimage, stood there in stunned silence.
Xiao Di asked, “Did someone just pass by?”
Min Tao replied, “It seems… like it was Tu Ran.”
Xiao Di hesitated. “Should we chase her?” though it was clear they wouldn’t catch up.
Min Tao thought for a moment. “Chase.” Not doing so would leave them unable to explain things to the commander. He turned around and called a few people, heading in the direction Tu Ran had gone.
Shen Yunhe didn’t follow. He glanced at the window where Tu Ran had jumped, then looked in the direction she had vanished. He was the first to enter the stairwell and started running upstairs.
The others quickly followed him.
The sound of boots pounding on the stairs echoed with a steady “thud, thud, thud.” As soon as they reached the top, the first thing they saw was a body lying by the window.
The wound on the back of its neck was bloody.
They had seen many such injuries recently.
The inner cores had been taken.
From the clothing, they couldn’t identify the person.
They had received orders from the commander to come to the black market and capture the rebel Tu Ran.
Beyond that, there were no further details. Even Zero, who had always been responsible for their affairs, was missing today.
Everyone was still adjusting to the absence of Zero, and they were now left feeling confused.
Shen Yunhe tucked his submachine gun behind him, approached the body, squatted down, and grabbed hold of the clothes at the shoulders and waist to flip the body over.
As the face of the corpse was revealed, everyone gasped in shock. Even Shen Yunhe remained half-squatting, forgetting to stand up.
Tu Ran had killed two of the Xie family’s heirs!
Their recently departed commander was dead!
“I’ll contact the commander,” Le Qin took a deep breath and quickly composed herself. “Leave some people to guard here, the rest of you go after Tu Ran. We must… capture her.” Her voice was weak.
Capture Tu Ran? How could that be possible? The current Tu Ran was not someone they could control. At this point, avoiding her notice would be enough.
…
Tu Ran had already left the black market.
Following the map that Zero had sent her at noon, she found the hovering car parked in the backyard of a prosthetic limb store. Sitting in the driver’s seat and staring at the various buttons in front of her, Tu Ran recalled what she had learned before. She quickly began operating the vehicle and soon had it rising smoothly into the air.
Once the hovering car was airborne, it was easier to control. Tu Ran freed one hand to remove the skullcap from her head and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Sweat covered her face, so she turned on the car’s cooling system. The temperature soon dropped, and the sweat on her forehead froze.
While dodging other hovering vehicles on the road, Tu Ran used her communicator to contact Xie Xu.
The call was quickly connected.
“Where is Zero?” Tu Ran asked directly.
“Zero’s program was altered by Xie Zhao. Certain functions have been temporarily shut down. It’s currently being restored and will contact you in half an hour.”
Tu Ran steered the vehicle to narrowly avoid a red speedster that was racing through the night. The driver of the red car shouted at her through a loudspeaker, cursing, “Can you drive?”
Tu Ran ignored him, focusing on driving her own car at a steady, controlled speed—not too fast, not too slow. “Xie Zhao is dead.”
There was a brief pause on the other end. “I know.”
“Did Xiao Jiu tell you?” She had noticed Xiao Jiu earlier, sitting on the doorstep eating noodles and watching the commotion.
“Yeah. He called me half an hour ago, saying you were under siege and needed support.”
Tu Ran recalled the scene from half an hour ago. Her long-range attack abilities had been sealed, and it had been a dangerous moment. She couldn’t help but sigh, “Xie Zhao really is powerful.”
“Yeah,” Xie Xu replied simply.
Tu Ran shook her head. “If I were even a little weaker, I wouldn’t have been able to defeat him.”
Xie Xu: “…”
“I’m going to find your father now.”
Xie Xu: “…You don’t have to report everything to me.”
Tu Ran glanced down at the control panel. There were no other cars on this stretch of road, so she increased the speed by one level. She then lowered the window slightly, and the wind rushed in, lifting her hair, which was halfway between short and long.
“I’m notifying you. Also, there’s one thing I don’t quite understand. Xie Zhao was good to you. You two have always seemed to have a good relationship. For you to ask me to kill him—this doesn’t make sense. I need to know the reason.”
Earlier, in the Wanle Temple, Xie Xu had agreed to let her kill Xie Heng, which was clearly to pave the way for Xie Zhao. With Xie Heng dead, Xie Zhao would become the rightful heir of the Xie family.
This aligned with the memories of Xie Hong she had accessed at the Sankar arsenal.
In Xie Hong’s memories, Xie Zhao and Xie Xu had been inseparable since childhood. Although the Xie family’s three sons didn’t share the same mother, the brotherly bond between Xie Zhao and Xie Xu far surpassed that of Xie Heng. They even had a sense of mutual dependence, as if they had been each other’s only support through hard times.
But now, Xie Xu had handed Xie Zhao’s life to her.
This contradictory behavior made Tu Ran feel that Xie Zhao’s death wasn’t as simple as it appeared.
Xie Xu had hidden something from her—something that she should have been told.
There was a long silence on Xie Xu’s end, a mix of doubt and probing. “You haven’t accessed my memories?”
Tu Ran’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, and she suddenly understood.
Xie Xu had indeed intentionally kept certain things from her.
When she had first left the Threshold, all her abilities had been accessed, and those abilities would have been transmitted through certain channels, eventually reaching Xie Xu’s ears.
He knew that she had the ability to [Memory Reading] so he suspected that she had already accessed his memories. To verify this, he deliberately concealed certain things to observe her reaction.
Tu Ran scoffed lightly. “I haven’t had any contact with you recently. How could I read your memories?”
“And before that? In the underground space, when I was training you,” he asked, referring to the times they had engaged in close combat, their fists often making contact.
“No, at that time, I was focused on learning,” Tu Ran replied calmly.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the communicator. It was unclear whether he believed her or not.
“You could still alter my memories and control my thoughts,” Xie Xu said softly. He clearly hadn’t anticipated that Tu Ran possessed so many strange abilities.
Upon realizing these powers, he immediately began reflecting on whether he had ever let his guard down in front of her, allowing her to exploit an opportunity. He pulled out his work diary and compared his current behavior and objectives with those before he had encountered Tu Ran, checking for any inconsistencies.
He meticulously examined every detail but found no abnormalities—everything was progressing slowly and according to plan.
Tu Ran knew Xie Xu was referring to [Illusion Realm]. She had indeed used it on him once, at the Sankar arsenal. The purpose were: to erase his witness to her abilities and to alter his subconscious defense against her, making him trust her.
At the time, she had been careful, worried that Xie Xu’s sharpness and her overly obvious use of abilities might arouse his suspicion. She had kept her actions subtle.
Therefore, she was confident that Xie Xu still wasn’t sure whether she had used [Illusion Realm] on him.
“Memory modification is not as simple as it sounds,” Tu Ran said, as she maneuvered the hovering car to land and turned off the engine. She leaned back in the seat, deciding to take a brief rest while waiting for Zero to recover.
“Everyone’s brain is built around a coherent logical system. If you carelessly alter a memory, it creates a series of inconsistencies that can’t be easily explained. These inconsistencies vary depending on the strength of a person’s logical framework. You’re a smart person, so you’re more likely to notice these flaws, and more likely to use them to deduce the true sequence of events. I wouldn’t take such a big risk.”
Instead, she had subtly guided his subconscious. The subconscious was inherently vague, unfounded, and not easy to detect.
As for modifying his memory, she hadn’t done anything elaborate. She simply cut out part of his memory of watching her fight with Zhao Yan—quick and easy.
Her explanation of “logical systems” was something she had just made up. There was no real basis for it; it was purely the result of her personal insights gained from using [Illusion Realm] for so long. She had managed to make it sound convincing, and in her mind, Tu Ran silently gave herself a thumbs-up.
