“Ah…”

Jiang Yuan let out a garbled, strange sound, then slumped to the floor. His whole body stiffened and began twitching bizarrely.

Yi Nanye stared at Jiang Yuan with the look of someone watching a helpless idiot, her expression full of exasperation.

The whole ordeal lasted for a little over ten seconds. Only then did Jiang Yuan return to normal. He sat on the floor, pale as a sheet, gasping loudly.

“Th-this is Neural Punishment?”

“That’s right. It’s both a punishment and a nonlethal way to restrain you in a pinch. All the other Esper criminals under supervision wear collars too. They disrupt brain signals in an instant, rendering their abilities useless.”

After Yi Nan finished speaking, Jiang Yuan slowly looked at her arm. She was only wearing a wristband.

“The punishment for you supervisors is a lot milder than mine, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it just gives you a little shock. It doesn’t hurt much. So tell me, did you bring this on yourself or not?”

“Fine, I admit it. I really am an idiot!”

Jiang Yuan understood now: Yi Nanye really hadn’t gone easy on him. If she got punished, the severity would be completely different. For the same offense, she’d get a smack on the head, while he’d get a few hard slaps across the face.

“But I still think I did the right thing. Overusing your ability damages your nerves, which affects your mental state, right?”

Jiang Yuan remembered what Zheng Chengjie had been like. Zheng Chengjie had already lost control back then; even his words came out in a whimper.

“That’s right. The more unstable someone’s mind becomes, the stronger their ability gets. One of the main reasons I couldn’t handle Zheng Chengjie was that his mind had already collapsed the night he committed his crime.”

Zheng Chengjie was only so powerful because he was burning himself up. His flames were flames of madness. If left alone, that mad fire would eventually destroy him too. Still, stopping him before he caused even greater damage was a good thing.

“This wristband… it can monitor your mental state and prevent you from losing control, right?”

“That’s right. It’s technology from the future. In the future, every Esper will have to wear one.”

“Then I really did the right thing. You’d already pushed yourself too far earlier, and your mental state was in bad shape. Getting shocked then must’ve been rough. I was fine, though.”

Jiang Yuan was determined to take credit for it. Yi Nanye could only smile helplessly. There was no getting through to him. She hadn’t wanted him to take the hit, but he’d insisted on stepping in anyway. He really was an idiot.

Still…

Personally, she quite liked people like that. At least, he was someone she could trust.

“I’m going to take a shower. You should get some rest too. This punishment is random, so take it easy over the next three days.”

“Mm.”

Jiang Yuan nodded with a smile, then headed to the kitchen to find a drink. He was clearly in a good mood. Yi Nanye turned away with a smile, but her expression instantly turned deadly serious, with a hint of anger.

The truth was, she’d been putting on a brave front.

If Jiang Yuan hadn’t come, she might really have died.

She’d reported that Zheng Chengjie had lost control and was difficult to handle, but the people above her had said they could remove her restrictions on losing control.

She hadn’t known how serious the consequences of losing control were. She’d thought it might just leave her mentally exhausted and dizzy for a while. But after seeing Zheng Chengjie’s body with her own eyes, she understood what losing control really cost.

As soon as the Superpower Management Bureau received word of Zheng Chengjie’s death, they’d immediately insisted that his body be handed over to them. That meant the bodies of people who’d lost control must have some valuable use. And those terrorists had practically been trying to push Zheng Chengjie into losing control.

The people from the future had definitely meant well. They sincerely hoped humanity could change its tragic future.

But how much information the people from the future had kept hidden was anyone’s guess.

Yi Nanye believed—she believed that the governments of every country, even the terrorists, sincerely wanted human civilization to survive.

It was just that their methods and the future they wanted to preserve might be different. Just like Codename Jiang: he might be guilty of every crime under the sun, but he was still leading a group of people in pursuit of something. Even in that terrible future, if humanity truly faced extinction…

There was no doubt that Codename Jiang would show up and face the gods on humanity’s behalf.

As she soaked in the bathtub,

Yi Nanye kept turning over her reasons for doing all this in her mind. Everything that had happened over the past few days had forced her to seriously reconsider. At first, she’d only wanted to quickly deal with the suspect believed to be Codename Jiang and nip the problem in the bud.

But Jiang Yuan’s good behavior, along with the Superpower Management Bureau’s baffling actions, had genuinely made Yi Nanye uneasy.

She wasn’t blindly loyal.

To put it plainly, she’d joined the Superpower Management Bureau only because it let her get close to the suspect believed to be Codename Jiang.

If they couldn’t even be honest with their own people, they couldn’t blame her for growing resentful. She wasn’t some convenient tool they could use up and throw away!

She might talk tough, but deep down, she’d truly started to accept Jiang Yuan. She and Jiang Yuan trusted each other—so what was the Superpower Management Bureau doing?

After showering, she cleaned her wounds and trimmed and fixed her singed, curled hair.

Yi Nanye came out of the bathroom and found Jiang Yuan lying on the floor, twitching. It was strangely funny to look at.

She knew at a glance that Neural Punishment had kicked in again. Of course, that wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst part was that Yi Nanye’s wristband had started blaring an alarm. She raised her wrist to check.

Good grief!

Jiang Yuan’s blood oxygen was frighteningly low. She hurried over and rolled him onto his back. Jiang Yuan looked at her pitifully, a few streaks of pale black liquid at the corner of his mouth. A sweet smell drifted through the air.

Clearly, Neural Punishment had kicked in while Jiang Yuan was drinking soda. His ability to swallow had shut down instantly, and the soda had blocked his airway, making it hard for him to breathe.

“Didn’t I tell you to take it easy?”

“Hah… ah… hah…”

Jiang Yuan tried to speak, but he couldn’t make a sound. He could only look at Yi Nanye with tearful eyes, pleading for help.

“You really are unlucky.”

Helpless, Yi Nanye placed a hand on Jiang Yuan’s chest and pressed down. His throat gurgled as he tried to cough up the liquid blocking his airway. But in his current state, he could barely draw in any air, so he couldn’t cough hard enough to force it out.

They just stared at each other. Jiang Yuan was utterly speechless. The timing was just too perfect. If it had happened a second earlier or later, it wouldn’t have been this bad. It had hit at the exact moment he swallowed.

Yi Nanye thought for a moment, then immediately placed her palm over Jiang Yuan’s lips. She bent down, leaving a small gap between her fingers, and blew into his mouth. But after a few tries, she couldn’t get any air in.

Jiang Yuan’s pupils were already starting to dilate. Yi Nanye’s wristband vibrated wildly, and her phone started ringing too. The people at the Superpower Management Bureau were getting frantic.

“Tch…”

Yi Nanye covered her forehead and sighed. This was seriously getting annoying.

“Jiang Yuan, you owe me another life today!”

With that, she lifted Jiang Yuan’s head, bent down, and breathed directly into his mouth.