Chapter 133: Specialized Ammunition for Martial Cultivators

Watching Gu Zixi leave, Xiao Kaitian was seized by an indescribable feeling. It made him deeply uncomfortable; his chest felt tight, and he could hardly breathe. Rarely agitated, he loosened the button at his collar.

There had to be something wrong. He wondered whether he should pursue them and stop them. He raised his head slightly, and beneath the setting sun, a glint flashed at the corner of his eye.

The glint was roughly two kilometers away. Xiao Kaitian moved in a blur. With a sharp whoosh, a bullet tore through the air, and the glass door of the café behind him exploded with a thunderous crash.

“A killer? A sniper rifle?” At such a distance, his divine sense could not detect the shooter. Stranger still, he could not sense the bullet’s trajectory. It must have been a specially crafted round.

Relying solely on the combat instincts honed over countless years, he leaped aside again on reflex. Bullets struck the concrete beneath his feet with a series of sharp pops, sending fragments of cement flying.

“High rate of fire. Exceptional accuracy.” That was Xiao Kaitian’s assessment of his opponent. This sniper attack was worlds apart from Red Carp’s attempt back then. In front of this person, Red Carp’s skills were no better than those of a kindergarten student.

The opponent had clearly locked onto Xiao Kaitian’s movements. The area was an open plaza, and there were no buildings nearby to provide cover. He was at a distinct disadvantage.

Three more bullets came screaming toward him. Xiao Kaitian spread his divine sense around himself and finally caught their trajectories—but by then, the bullets were less than ten meters away. He sneered and advanced instead of retreating.

The bullets grazed his body before burying themselves in the concrete behind him with a hiss. As he drew near them, Xiao Kaitian clearly sensed the four-dimensional power contained within. As expected, they had been specially processed.

Without his higher-dimensional divine sense, he would have been completely unable to detect such bullets.

His opponent was a bounty hunter—and a high-ranking one at that. Her targets were specifically martial cultivators. These were bullets designed exclusively for hunting them.

Once he realized this, Xiao Kaitian knew that simply retreating and evading was not his style. As his figure blurred, he shot toward the rooftop of the high-rise where his opponent was positioned.

A continuous volley of bullets came flying at him, but Xiao Kaitian had already seen through his opponent’s methods. The attacks no longer posed any threat, and he avoided them with ease.

The person on the rooftop seemed to realize that Xiao Kaitian could not be killed. The gunfire abruptly ceased, and the killer began preparing to withdraw.

But Xiao Kaitian would never let his opponent escape so easily. His figure transformed into a fading afterimage, and he sped forward at a velocity impossible for ordinary passersby to follow.

He had already reached the realm of a half-step grandmaster. The thirty-six-story building before him could not possibly stop him. Following the glass curtain wall, he flashed upward in a straight line like a ghost.

He landed lightly on the roof, as effortlessly as a roc. All that met his eyes were metal bullet casings scattered across the ground, gleaming strangely beneath the sunlight.

“Interesting. Your methods have improved.” Xiao Kaitian rubbed his chin, then took out a cigarette, tilted his head, and lit it. Exhaling a plume of smoke, he said, “Come out on your own, or I’ll make you.”

The rooftop before him was empty. Only the wind rushed past with a low howl. Yet Xiao Kaitian wore a faint smile as he stared at the vacant space.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll do it myself.”

He blurred forward and struck at a patch of empty air with the edge of his hand.

The light refracted slightly. The space in that area visibly warped. Xiao Kaitian drove his fist into it, and with a tremendous crack like shattering glass, the entire scene suddenly tore apart and fell away in fragments.

Behind it stood a foreign woman with golden hair.

“White Fox.” A faint curve lifted the corner of Xiao Kaitian’s mouth. The last time he had crossed paths with her was in Harbor City. Back then, she had retreated unscathed after failing to land a single blow. This time, at last, he had caught her. “We’re old friends now, aren’t we?”

White Fox clenched both fists. A flicker of hesitation passed through her reddish-brown eyes. She had never expected that even after using bullets specially designed for martial cultivators and a long-range sniper rifle, she would still be no match for Xiao Kaitian.

“You’re a grandmaster—or a martial cultivator at the peak of the Earth Realm,” White Fox concluded. “But how did you evade those bullets? With a martial cultivator’s true energy or internal force, their trajectories should have been impossible to sense.”

“I believe the defeated have no right to ask questions.” Xiao Kaitian smiled as his divine sense spread outward, allowing him to perceive White Fox’s every movement. “Answer mine first. Who sent you?”

“You know the rules of our profession. I can’t tell you. But if I refuse, you’ll probably kill me.” White Fox answered coldly. “I can only give you a general answer. An island nation.”

“The Kanto Branch of the Bounty Hunters’ Association? An international bounty?” Xiao Kaitian guessed immediately. If that was the case, then he and White Fox had no real grudge between them. They were merely employer and target, hunter and quarry. “What kind of bullets were you using?”

“Bullets designed for martial cultivators.” That was no secret, and White Fox answered at once. “They’re specially treated weapons. Once martial cultivators reach the grandmaster level, don’t they use them as well?”

So that was how it worked. It seemed his previous experience had been too limited. The use of four-dimensional power in this world was apparently quite widespread. He simply did not know whether these people understood what the power they wielded truly was.

“Since I’ve failed, you can kill me. That’s the rule of our profession.” White Fox had prepared herself long ago. Begging for mercy was not in her nature.

Xiao Kaitian shook his head. Constantly killing people was not a good habit.

“Let’s make a deal.”

“A deal? I refuse.”

“Killing you would be easy enough, but there’s something I want to ask you to do. Consider it another kind of assignment.” Xiao Kaitian had already made up his mind. He knew no one within the bounty hunter organization, but there was no denying that a force both righteous and ruthless could prove extremely useful at times.

“You want to borrow my strength?” White Fox asked in surprise. This was the first time she had encountered a situation like this.

“Yes. I want you to protect someone for a year. You only need to do it discreetly.” Xiao Kaitian named his terms. “Or, if you know any other bounty hunters, I can hire them as well.”

He understood his current situation. He needed allies and a force he could rely on.

White Fox fell silent. She studied Xiao Kaitian carefully, as though trying to determine whether he was telling the truth.

“I don’t have any friends in the trade. I work alone.”

“That’s fine too. What do you say? I think it would be a shame to kill you.” Xiao Kaitian straightened his expression. “Neither of us loses anything. As for the price, we can negotiate.”

White Fox found the situation almost absurd. Nothing about the way things had developed seemed right. She could not help laughing.

“However I look at it, these terms favor me. You can pay me whatever you think is appropriate. But since I failed to complete the contract on your life, the bounty remains open. Someone else will still come to kill you.”

“I don’t need you to protect me. I can handle my own affairs.” Xiao Kaitian shook his head.

If anyone else had said that, White Fox would never have believed them. But when Xiao Kaitian said it, she merely curled her lips.

“Who am I protecting?”

“Jiang Churan.”