A little over ten minutes later.
The helicopter landed on a street the police had already cleared.
There were no pedestrians anywhere nearby. Only SWAT officers in full tactical gear, armed to the teeth, hurried back and forth.
As soon as Yi Nanye and Jiang Yuan stepped off the helicopter, someone came over to meet them. After a brief exchange, Yi Nanye headed straight for a building surrounded by SWAT officers.
When Jiang Yuan saw the building, he was slightly taken aback. The ground floor was a supermarket, the first through fifth floors were shopping areas, and the floors above those were offices. A mixed-use commercial building like this had an incredibly high population density—at least ten times that of a residential building.
And this situation was different from the fire at the East Star Building. That fire had broken out at night, when there weren’t many people inside. But it was still normal working hours now, so the building was bound to be packed.
“Jiang Yuan, you’re temporarily under our custody now.”
While Jiang Yuan was looking over the building, two SWAT officers walked right up to him and aimed their guns at him. He was already used to this sort of thing, so he immediately raised his hands in cooperation and obediently went with them.
A little later.
Jiang Yuan was taken to the emergency command center. The police had borrowed a bank storefront and turned it into a command room. There were few bank employees inside now; only technicians carrying all kinds of equipment hurried anxiously back and forth.
“Captain Wang, we’ve brought him in.”
“All right. You can get back to work. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
The two SWAT officers brought Jiang Yuan before a middle-aged man with a close-cropped haircut. The man had a fierce-looking face, scars on his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth, and an especially intimidating gaze. He looked like someone who’d spent years working in counterterrorism.
“Jiang Yuan… I never thought a friendly-looking young man like you would become the world’s number-one terrorist in the future.”
Captain Wang studied Jiang Yuan for a moment. Jiang Yuan could only smile helplessly.
“It’s possible, but I don’t think I’m Codename Jiang.”
“True. You’re only a suspect, and it’s entirely possible you’ve been wrongly accused. It’s just that when one ordinary Esper can cause this much trouble, you have to wonder how we’d handle it if Codename Jiang launched a terrorist attack.”
Captain Wang thought that if one Zheng Chengjie could cause this much trouble, just how outrageous were the criminals the person from the future had specifically named? And Codename Jiang was the greatest criminal of them all—the one that person from the future had condemned with such grief and blood-spattered tears.
“I completely understand your concerns. In practical terms, the easiest thing would be to kill the suspects, swift and simple. Forget three people—even if there were three thousand suspects, killing them would still be necessary. Better to kill the wrong person than let one go. Honestly, I’m surprised I’m still alive myself.”
Jiang Yuan had accepted his fate and didn’t bother arguing. Don’t ask—he’d just agree.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I went astray myself when I was younger. I’ve spent these past years making up for it, and that’s how I got where I am today. So I can understand where the people upstairs are coming from. If Codename Jiang can turn over a new leaf, it’d be a tremendous blessing for all of humanity.”
Seeing Jiang Yuan put on airs, Captain Wang actually started lecturing him like a man who’d been there before, telling him to mend his ways. Jiang Yuan kept a straight face, but thought to himself, Do you really have to tell me that?
His attitude toward life was already super positive.
“Of course. Whether or not I’m Codename Jiang, I’ll keep striving to do better. But let’s not talk about turning over a new leaf—I haven’t even gone bad in the first place!”
Jiang Yuan insisted that, at present, he was just a perfectly normal model student and upstanding young man.
“That’s true. Honestly, instead of keeping you cooped up like this, I think it’d be better to have you join us in counterterrorism operations. Only when you’ve seen those things with your own eyes will you understand how awful terrorism really is.”
Captain Wang was every bit the seasoned adult. With one sentence, he hit Jiang Yuan right where it mattered. If Jiang Yuan took part in counterterrorism operations himself and saw the people displaced by terrorism, the people who’d lost their loved ones, he’d gain a much deeper understanding of just how terrible it was.
“I’ve already started to understand.”
Jiang Yuan turned to look through the window at the building opposite. People stood at its windows, anxiously watching the SWAT officers rushing about, their eyes full of fear and unease.
As he watched…
Captain Wang cried out. Jiang Yuan’s eyes widened too as a figure plummeted from the sky and slammed into the street. Blood even splattered across the bank’s glass window.
“Sigh…”
Captain Wang sighed and immediately picked up his radio.
“Keep the trapped civilians calm.”
He issued the order at once. Panicked civilians might do something dangerous, like foolishly trying to climb out the windows, but the risk was far too great.
Jiang Yuan stared at the blood on the window, then looked toward the poor person lying in a pool of blood not far away, their muscles still twitching. He knew they didn’t have long to live. They were facing death in unimaginable agony.
Jiang Yuan turned back, a trace of grief on his face. He had empathy—plenty of it—and he couldn’t bear to see this.
Seeing Jiang Yuan’s expression, Captain Wang was rather pleased with how he was reacting. That was how a normal person should look when faced with something like this. It showed that Jiang Yuan really was still an ordinary student.
“You can mess around on your phone. Just wait here.”
“Yeah…”
Jiang Yuan really had nothing to do right now, so all he could do was pull out his phone to pass the time. Even though a horrifying act of terrorism was unfolding right before his eyes, he couldn’t do anything about it.
Whether because he was a suspect or because he was currently too weak to fight back.
Online, things were as heated as ever. Discussions about Zheng Chengjie had topped the trending lists across major social media platforms, and TV stations around the country were broadcasting live. This incident had gripped the whole world.
It was the world’s first Esper crime, and the crime was so heinous it was practically a terrorist attack.
“Captain Wang, um…”
Jiang Yuan suddenly looked up, wanting to talk something over with Captain Wang. Captain Wang glanced up at him, signaling for him to go ahead.
“I… I heard…”
But as Jiang Yuan spoke, he started stammering. He didn’t want to betray Yi Nanye’s trust. There were things he wasn’t supposed to know, and the only way he could’ve learned them was if Yi Nanye had let something slip. Could that get Yi Nanye into trouble?
Seeing Jiang Yuan like this, Captain Wang very smoothly pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from his desk and handed them over. Jiang Yuan gave him a grateful look, then quickly began writing.
Once he was done, Jiang Yuan immediately turned the paper around to show Captain Wang.
