Roadmap to the Boundless Sky-Chapter 100Book 3, : Going Missing

Based on the fight and the time he needed to accumulate energy, Chen Chuan believed that he could only have a sparring session once every three days.

While he was thinking, Hongfu said, “Your privacy option is in effect. The record of the spar can be deleted. After deletion, the record cannot be restored. If you need it, please keep a backup yourself.”

After some asking around, Chen Chuan learned that after picking the privacy option, he could delete the record of his spar straightaway. Even Hongfu herself wouldn’t remember the sparring session.

However, Chen Chuan could keep a record of the domain information. If he ever thought that it was necessary, he could hand it over to Hongfu during the next sparring session or when he requested other services. That way, Hongfu would remember that they had sparred before.

He pondered over it. His spars with Hongfu were going to be a continual process. In his push to reach the Third Limit, he had to keep improving, so Hongfu had to keep adjusting her strength to his while fighting against him. This service was actually amazing. While Chen Chuan could retain his information, other people would be unable to peek at his data.

Hence, with Hongfu’s guidance, he deleted his information, only leaving behind the domain traces that could let Hongfu remember what they had done the next time she connected with him.

When he was done, he received a few messages on the platform. A quick glance told him that they were all advertisements for the tournament. The official students were invited to watch it for free. All they needed to do was to confirm that they were going, and they would get the right to watch the fights.

Chen Chuan took a quick look. The time of the tournament was listed down below, and it even told him that the students from other Central Cities were also coming. They might have some form of exchange with the official students in Jibei Road’s Central City. The ones who were interested could join it and get assessment points.

Getting extra assessment points was an attractive idea to most students, but the extra marks were just one or two points. It was meaningless to Chen Chuan, so he denied it.

After logging out of the platform, he went back to planning his schedule. Since he was going to spend most of his time training over the next two months in order to get to the Third Limit as soon as possible, he had to first get his schedule from the department. The best case scenario would be being able to reject all the tasks assigned to him. For that, he could make use of the agreement he had signed earlier.

So, he contacted Ni Qianqian and asked her whether the department had any plans for him. He told her that his mutated tissue seemed to have reached another period of rapid growth, so he needed some time to focus on training. He wanted the department to give him some time for training, just like they had promised to do in the agreement.

“Got it. If that’s the case, based on what we’ve usually done in the past, we’ll postpone your tasks for... a month. Will that be enough?” Ni Qianqian asked.

“I might need a little bit more time,” Chen Chuan said.

“Okay. I’ll try to get more time for you. The department is usually willing to make an exception for students with potential like you. As for the exchange, those guys wanted me to extend another invitation to you, but I’ll help you reject them,” Ni Qianqian said with a hum.

Chen Chuan thanked her and said, “Didn’t you say that the department has plans to capture Wei Wusheng’s junior brother? Did they make any progress on that front?”

“We didn’t manage to capture Wei Wusheng, but we did make progress when it comes to his junior brother. The two are indeed in contact, and the department is chasing after his trail. The superiors want us to capture Wei Wusheng before July, since the tournament is going to start at the end of June, but I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.

“Anyway, go back to training and forget about the department’s problems for now. I’ll submit your application later.” With that, Ni Qianqian ended the call.

It was already June.

If Wei Wusheng had actually attacked Chen Chuan that day and managed to run away, Chen Chuan could use the supernatural raccoon to attack him.

But after some thinking, Chen Chuan came to the conclusion that the supernatural raccoon might not be able to kill Wei Wusheng now, considering how strong he had become. At most, it could injure him severely. Wei Wusheng’s mastery over body hardening meant that he might also be able to recover in just a few days.

Hence, Chen Chuan needed to focus on reaching the Third Limit. Once he became stronger, then even if Wei Wusheng refused to look for him, Chen Chuan could track him down on his own.

Since it was noon, Chen Chuan took a few tubes of nutritional paste, rested a little to recover, and read some news from the niche channel until after 2 p.m.. Then, he lit up the incense again, took his medicine, and meditated.

***

After being on duty for an entire night in Oceanway District, An Cheng changed shifts with the next officer-in-charge, and sighed long and hard.

Recently, he felt as if he had been assigned more tasks. He was tasked to be on duty, to patrol areas, and to solve various violent crimes for the department, causing him to travel all over the place and not having even a bit of time to stop and rest. He was almost unable to find the time to train.

And he had a feeling that such busy days were going to continue for some time. Since Wei Wusheng had yet to be captured, the department was forced to tighten security.

A lot of people had come to Jibei Road’s Central City because of the tournament too. Most of them were martial artists, to boot, which led to plenty of violent crimes. Most likely, An Cheng wasn’t going to have any free time over the next two months or so.

He walked into a restaurant that specialized in chicken rice balls for fishermen. It was a food famous from Baliu Peninsula, an island nation located southwest of the Great Shun Republic. The rice was cooked in chicken soup and mixed with sliced, fresh chicken slices, making it tasty and easy to carry around.

Once he ordered the food and the chicken rice balls were served, Sun Rao walked in and sat down in front of him. “You’re a little late.”

“I was taking care of some things,” Sun Rao said.

An Cheng huffed. “You won’t ever be able to finish your tasks. By the way, I heard that you worked together with the newbie a few days ago. How was it?”

Sun Rao looked An Cheng in the eye and said, “He’s polite and doesn’t annoy me with his presence. He’s not arrogant either.”

An Cheng rolled his eyes. “If you want to criticize, just say it. Don’t bother going around in circles.”

He bit into his rice ball, took a bite of chicken, chewed on both of them, and swallowed. Then, he asked, “By the way, didn’t he come with you this time?”

The chicken rice ball Sun Rao ordered was brought to the table. Sun Rao picked up his chopsticks and said, “I heard that he has other tasks. If it weren’t because of the special circumstances that had us working together, the department wouldn’t have paired him with me. It’s hard to say whether we’ll get to work together again in the future. No matter what, his potential is far greater than ours. The department won’t use him like a normal backup law enforcer.”

“Is that so?”

An Cheng huffed. Clearly, irritation born from refusal to admit defeat still burned in him.

Sun Rao took a bite of the rice ball and nodded. “It’s not bad. I’ll come again next time. Have you been keeping up with your daily training?”

“Of course. No matter how late I go back, I still spend time training. If I don’t, how can I chase that newbie away?” An Cheng declared and cast Sun Rao a glance. “Don’t you end up being the one eliminated now.”

“I won’t,” Sun Rao said with great certainty.

“You won’t? Why are you so sure?” An Cheng asked while staring at him.

“Because I’m a much better sniper than most of the people in the department. There are plenty of Second Limit martial artists there, but few have my skills with a gun,” Sun Rao answered calmly.

An Cheng had to admit that Sun Rao was right. He was a great shot, and after he took medicine while using a powerful gun, he could even threaten the life of a Third Limit martial artist. It was true that the department wouldn’t give up on him.

When Sun Rao chose guns as his weapon, An Cheng had scoffed at him, but now, An Cheng was the one who was the most likely to be eliminated, and he began to feel pressured.

Just then, he heard someone contacting him and telling him that a case had appeared in their district. He was then told to take care of it with Sun Rao.

They wolfed down their food before rushing into their armored patrol cars and heading to the crime scene.

***

In the blink of an eye, more than ten days passed, and it was the end of June.

On this day, soon after Chen Chuan finished training with Hongfu, Qi Gao contacted him. “What’s up, Mr. Qi?” Chen Chuan asked.

“I’ve been keeping an eye out for anomalous events, and I found one recently. You might want to take a look, Chen Chuan,” Qi Gao said.

Since Qi Gao wouldn’t contact him unless the anomalous event was special and had a great impact on its surroundings, Chen Chuan said, “Take your time with the details, please.”

Qi Gao sent a photo over and said, “It’s this hotel.”

Chen Chuan took a look. The hotel seemed like a heritage one that was about ten stories tall. Nothing about its appearance suggested that something was wrong with it. “The anomalous event is in the hotel?”

“There has always been something wrong with the hotel. The people who stayed in it would sometimes disappear. Sometimes, when a family stayed there, one of them would go missing after they checked out. Even stranger, after the person went missing, their family and friends would completely forget about them, as if this person had never existed in their lives before,” Qi Gao answered. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

“If that’s the case, how did anyone come to know about this?” Chen Chuan asked.

“Apparently, a photographer needed photos of heritage hotels, and this hotel fit his requirements. Due to bad weather and various other reasons, he had to take photos of the hotel over a span of more than ten days. While he was organizing his photos, he noticed that the number of people going in didn’t correlate with the number of people leaving.

“Upon realizing this, he paid attention to the hotel for another month or so before proving his theory. Then, he went inside to compare the number of people he saw with the number of people in the register, only to find that a large number of people had gone missing. Over the past three years, around three hundred people have gone missing. On average, one goes missing every three days. The missing people vanished entirely from the world. No one remembers them.”

Chen Chuan pondered over this. By the looks of it, the missing people only vanished from other people’s memories, while the evidence of their existences wasn’t wiped out. Based on this, he couldn’t tell whether this was an anomaly or a ritual.

Qi Gao then continued, “Later on, the photographer uploaded this case on various platforms and stirred up quite a lot of interest, but no one has been able to solve the mystery.

“Then, last month, things changed. All those who went into the hotel never came out again. Even when someone stuck a notice on the hotel telling people not to go in, most people passing by still entered without even realizing it. A colleague of mine also went missing when she passed by the hotel. I remember her only because I did a ritual on myself that makes me immune to psychosomatic effects from anomalous events.

“Now, the entire street is empty. But since that place is in Roaring Victory District, in other words the lower city district, the authorities don’t care about it.”

Chen Chuan’s expression became more serious. “I’ll put aside some time to check it out.”