Chapter 41: Chapter 41 – What Kind of People Were Supporting Them?
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
When Ren Suo woke up early the next morning, he felt slightly unusual.
It was unusual in the sense that he felt particularly comfortable.
Under normal circumstances, a typical 22-year-old teenager like him who developed healthily and never met people who were perverts before in their lives would naturally feel the urge to empty their bladders when they woke up after a night’s sleep. At the same time, they would also feel a wave of laziness as they lazed on the bed unwilling to get up, even though they are refreshed and awake.
However, when Ren Suo opened his eyes that morning, he could feel his body jolt awake the moment he awoke and his limbs tingling as if urging him to get out of bed quickly. It was as if he had taken a walk down memory lane to a time when he was five years old and felt extremely excited that he was going to the playground in the morning.
It was as if he had barely slept but merely lay down while still being awake for a short time.
Ren Suo cupped his mouth with his hands as he breathed into his palm. The strong starchy odor in his breath confirmed that indeed he had not opened his mouth for 8 hours and resulted in the microbes fermenting in his mouth.
It was already 9:04 a.m. after Ren Suo had brushed his teeth and washed up. Just then, his mobile phone rang.
He took a quick glance at the caller identification displayed on his mobile phone screen and picked up the call.
“Hello, mom, what’s the matter so early in the morning?”
“Eh? I already came back yesterday, I’m at home now.”
“What? A blind date? What for, I’m already tall and muscular…Furthermore, didn’t you and dad tell me not to date at university? You were even coaxing sis repeatedly not to get into a relationship the last time I went back home…”
After a few minutes, Ren Suo finally put down his phone with a face of resignation.
He had never thought that his mother would urge him to go for a blind date just when he was about to graduate from university. She had already planned for him to get married the next year and have children the following year. She even told him that she preferred him to have one son and daughter each, in line with the nation’s two-child policy…
What nonsense, thought Ren Suo as he recalled that his parents had forbidden him to date all the way through college to university. As such, he had totally no experience nor ‘skill’ in dating and being in a relationship…
But of course, this was the last of Ren Suo’s shields from the truth. In actual fact, he had never bothered heeding the advice from his parents. How can they stop him in this aspect anyway?
Ren Suo had interacted with the girls in his class and co-curricular activity clubs before, but unfortunately for Ren Suo, he still felt that cybercafes were more enticing and interesting. Eventually, he found that his games and books were much more alluring than the girls…
He would never have thought that his mother would be so desperate for him to start dating a girl whom he fancied. Although he had repeatedly turned his mother down, saying that he had no interest in getting to know more girls, his mother remained persistent in arranging for him to make friends with the daughter of one of her old friends…He was just short of saying that he was a “coward” and was “still a child at interacting with girls”.
Ren Suo had been told that the girl was two years younger than him and was still a first-year student at a top-tier university in Lianjiang City. She was simply a young junior at her tender age. Most of the girls of her age would typically not be keen to go on blind dates, and neither would her parents be so desperate for her to get into a relationship, unless…with her looks, she needed some help to find a guy.
Nonetheless, his mother had not been very serious about it, and who would know if the entire plan would not fall through after she had sent the photo of him to the other party?
At such a thought, Ren Suo calmed down but soon realized that he had forgotten to tell his parents about him becoming a Practitioner.
Someone had already asked one of the instructors before, when they were still at the training camp, if they could talk about the techniques that they used to train and practice the utilization of Reiki, to which the instructor replied straightforwardly, “The higher-ups did not say that the techniques should be kept secret, but the location of the training is to be kept strictly secret. If anyone is found to have leaked the location of the training camp, they will be dealt with accordingly for leaking official secrets.”
“Of course, this is due to the fact that the location where you train at in order to activate your Reiki currents is the most important part, not the breathing technique itself. Practicing in such a training ground where there is a high amount of Reiki is a crucial part of the activation process. Practicing the breathing techniques alone would not be of much significance, so even if you all were to teach other people the breathing techniques, it would be highly unlikely that they can feel the presence of Reiki and continue their training, unless they are truly talented people with a skill level many times higher than all of you.”
“But if you do have such friends or relatives, please introduce them to us, even if they used to be famous entrepreneurs or billionaires. The nation is willing to give these people a place that lived up to their talents…as well as prepare them for their future!”
Despite what the instructor had said, Ren Suo was still keen on letting his relatives try their hands at feeling the presence of Reiki. However, the breathing technique did not appear to be very magical either and had some similarity to the “Qi Gong” scam from the 1980s; thus, it would not be easy for his relatives to believe this was the practice of the Practitioners to activate their Reiki currents…Indeed, it would require quite a bit of effort for Ren Suo to get his relatives to believe him.
Prior to activating his own Reiki current, Ren Suo could not feel the presence of Reiki unless he was on the training ground itself. It was only within the training ground that he could perform his breathing techniques and feel that his body seemed to have countless mouths all over his body, gulping down the Reiki present in every nook and cranny around the training ground.
As such, a normal person who was practicing the breathing technique would virtually be unable to feel anything different, unless the person was, in actual fact, a talent like the instructor had mentioned. For such a complex sequence of steps required to perform the breathing technique, if a normal person could not feel any positive feedback, the person would be unable to tell if the breathing technique was performed correctly and would naturally give up very quickly.
“Perhaps I should find a day to go back home and get them to practice, who knows if there could really be a talent in the Ren family…Eh?”
Ren Suo was stunned momentarily. He sat down quickly on the couch and began utilizing the breathing technique.
The next moment, his face lit up. It was as if he saw that his favourite game was on sale at 99% OFF!
Ren Suo could feel that the rate of absorption of Reiki into his body increased many folds. If the rate of absorption of Reiki could be compared to that of using a straw to drink, then the rate of absorption at the current time was akin to pan-frying and cooking the Reiki into a sumptuous beef steak and gulping it down in one mouth. The absorption rate was tens of times more than it had been previously.
Ren Suo recalled the lesson on Reiki during the training camp “…After the Reiki currents you generate pass the transformation phase and formally enter the cumulative development phase, a Reiki network will form throughout your entire physical body, due to the continuous flow of the internal active Reiki in your body. Hence, the rate of absorption of Reiki would reach the maximum capability of the Practitioner according to his skill level. As such, regardless of location and amount of Reiki present in the environment, the speed of practice for the Practitioner would not be hindered.”
In other words, before the Practitioner’s breathing current reached the transformation phase, the Practitioner was just like a student practicing the same type of problem over and over again, and regardless of the number of questions the student attempted, he would merely be getting better at the specific skill and not be acquiring new knowledge. In contrast, after the Practitioner’s breathing current passed the transformation phase, he would finally be learning new knowledge. All the new knowledge acquired would be accumulated and the student’s knowledge web would expand!
This meant that Ren Suo had finally become a true Practitioner!
But soon, Ren Suo smiled bitterly as he muttered to himself, “I only have a low skill score of 1.25 and I can already feel such a drastic increase in the rate of absorption of Reiki, how powerful would those people with high skill scores above 2 be…”
The time it would take for a Practitioner’s breathing current to develop from the maturing phase to the transformation phase varied from person to person. Even though practicing breathing techniques between this period would slightly shorten the maturation time, but the effect of it was still limited. This was also the reason why they had only five days at the training camp; they would be able to perform their duties as long as they were able to generate their own Reiki currents. On the other hand, the time at which their breathing currents passed the transformation phase would be up to their talents and fate.
Suddenly, Ren Suo’s mobile phone rang. It was only then that he realized that he had been practicing for close to an hour and that it was almost 10 o’clock in the morning. The adrenaline rush from practicing the breathing techniques made it easy for people to forget the time.
“Good morning, Mr. Ren Suo. I am calling from the Lianjiang Ministry of State Security, and I am pleased to inform you that you have been employed by the Countermeasure Office for Extraordinaire Criminals of the Ministry of State Security in Lianjiang City. More details will be told to you soon by your corresponding unit.”
Ren Suo blinked his eyes as he vaguely recalled that when they were dismissed yesterday, You Xulong told them that they would be informed of their new allocations in the next one to three working days. Nonetheless, the call came out of a sudden and no contact number had even been provided…
Regardless, although Ren Suo had successfully been transferred to the Ministry of State Security, he was still a fourth-year university student! He still had one to two more months before he could start work officially, was there a need for such a rush…?
Ren Suo thought for a moment and figured that the Ministry of State Security seemed to be very short of manpower to carry out the necessary duties, judging from how the Ministry sent them for combined training urgently and immediately sent them back to their respective cities the moment the crucial training was completed…
“Whatever…I shall just open my treasure chest and start on the new game first!” Having just become an official Practitioner, Ren Suo was elated and refreshed as he decided to reap the benefits from his hard work before thinking about anything else!
————
In the conference hall of the Ministry of State Security, the projector screen was frozen at the instant that the Seeker had turned into light.
The door opened and Yu Kuangtu walked in. Following behind him were a few people clad in black vests who carried piles of documents. They distributed the documents to every person in the conference room.
Li Dan flipped open the document and took a look. He raised his eyebrows as he said, “Isn’t this the plan scheduled to begin next month…”
“Yes, as all of you can see, the Citizen Examination plan will be brought forward,” Yu Kuangtu explained preemptively.
All of them clad in the black vests looked blankly at one another. Someone said, “What about the supporting packages…”
“They have all been brought forward,” Yu Kuangtu said. He clasped his hands together and continued before anyone else had the chance to interrupt, “I know that the plans from hereon will require our full involvement, and we are short on manpower now…As such, all the civil servant Practitioners who had been sent back to continue their practice will be called back as soon as possible. All of you will form individual small groups and begin your work.”
“Is there a need for such a hurry?” someone asked.
“This is not the city’s instruction, nor is it the province’s instruction,” Yu Kuangtu said. He pointed upwards then behind at the frozen frame on the projector screen and continued sullenly, “This video, ‘A Strong Warrior Ascends 10,000 Meters’, was the last straw. The whole world now knows that this world…has changed.”
“With regards to the Heavenly Hitman in the previous video, we can think that he was an extraordinarily skillful and talented killer, and in the last scene we can say that he used some sort of special technique or computer effects…In this new video, if it was just fire sparkles and icicles, we can simply believe that they were special effects. But now, a real person appeared! Everyone would know that there is barely any logical scientific explanation for her disappearance, and no explanation we give would be satisfactory to the masses.”
“And yet, the girl in this video clearly had not slept or taken a rest for five consecutive days, and challenged what had been thought to be impossible. The implication of this is scarier than any extraordinary ability. The almost inhuman abilities could have been special effects, but the person herself…”
Yu Kuangtu sighed before he continued, “Whether or not she is really related to Practitioners is no longer important as ordinary people would no longer believe that she is not. Such incidents are happening more and more frequently and the higher-ups’ intention is to get hold of all the Practitioners in the entire nation as soon as possible. Other countries are also bringing forward their plans to train a pool of Practitioners seemingly in response to this new video.”
“All right, you may all go back to work.”
Yu Kuangtu turned to look at the golden-haired girl on the screen who was just about to turn into a ray of light and disappear. His eyes were filled with both desire and confusion.
He had a strong desire because he had never thought that the ability of humans could reach such a level…What happened to the golden-haired girl and how was she now? Did the girl become a higher level being? Or did she travel in time like what many people today fantasized about?
And confusion, because he felt that the “Naisser_Ren” who was behind the videos and did not appear to have anyone controlling him, seemed to be the voice of some unknown powerful entity.
To date, Xuan Nation still could not find any traces of the Heavenly Hitman.
And now, the sudden appearance and disappearance of this golden-haired girl who climbed 10,000 meters added to the confusion.
Where on earth did they come from?
What on earth did they want?
What kind of people…were supporting them?