The Legendary Mechanic

Lu Gao'en left less than two hours ago, meaning that he must have received Norsa's intel just then.

Since Norsa had come directly to assassinate him, he must have tasked Lu Gao'en with reporting the information back to their organization. Lu Gao'en would definitely not have expected Han Xiao to know of him, so he would not see a need to deliver the intel with haste. Under such circumstances, the city pass that he would use would most likely be the one nearest to him—the Northwest Pass.

However, it was still possible that he would choose to use either of the further passes.

There was no way to tell.

"Ay, Han Xiao, we're here. What did you call us here for?"

Li Yalin, Zhang Wei, and Lambert arrived. They had managed to come on time thanks to Li Yalin's ride, a yellow convertible sports car.

"An emergency mission. One of Germinal's spies here acquired some important information. There's a chance that he hasn't left the city yet, but he could be at any of the three passes."

Li Yalin wiped the playful smile off her face upon hearing the severity of the situation.

"Do you have a picture of him?" she asked.

Han Xiao picked up some scraps of newspaper around him and began to draw out a rough image of Lu Gao'en from his faded memory. He then yanked the homeless guy from earlier on up and barked, "Look at this, does it look like Lu Gao'en?"

"The eyes should be lower… his nose is a little crooked… hair is shorter…"

With the man's help, Han Xiao was able to produce sketches of Lu Gao'en with a 70 or 80 percent resemblance. He then passed them to the trio and instructed, "Let's split up and get the security officers to keep an eye out for this person. Li Yalin and I will take her car to the furthest city entrance, while each of you will go to the other two."

Zhang Wei's face twitched as Han Xiao gave them the orders. 'Am I still the leader of this team?'

Nonetheless, he let it slide as it was an emergency.

As they set off, Han Xiao immediately hopped into the driver's seat of Li Yalin's car.

"Hey, it's my car!" grumbled Li Yalin immediately. "I'll drive."

"You drive too slow."

"You don't trust the driving skills of a top agent‽" Li Yalin was so outraged that her eyebrows were almost contorted upside-down. Unfortunately, she knew that there was no time to argue, so she grudgingly got into the passenger's seat.

"Tighten your seatbelt," reminded Han Xiao.

Li Yalin rolled her eyes at him, replying, "You must be joking. I'm a pugilist; I'll be fine no matter how fast you go."

"Suit yourself," replied Han Xiao with a plain nod as he stamped on the accelerator.

…

Half an hour later, a yellow sports car appeared at the South Entrance. Spinning almost full-circle, the car left four sizzling, black tire marks on the road as it came to an abrupt stop.

"Bleargh—"

"Hey, hey, I thought you were a pugilist?"

"You… don't talk to me n— bleeaarrgh—"

Li Yalin puked non-stop as she leaned on the car door.

"Half an hour, and 27 car accidents… or was it 28? My head's spinning so much that I can't even count.

"Who taught you to drive?"

Han Xiao raised an eyebrow.

"Does driving have to be taught?"

"D-doesn't it?"

"The first driver didn't have anyone to teach him, did he?"

Li Yalin gaped in the face of Han Xiao's perfect logic. She was about to shoot back at him when, suddenly, the urge to vomit kicked in again, causing her to throw her head back to the side.

"Really? I only drove a little fast, that's all."

"A little fast? I doubt the word 'brake' even exists in your vocabulary!"

"Fine, fine, let's stop wasting time."

As Li Yalin tried to get back on her feet, she lost balance and almost tripped into her own pile of vomit. Fortunately, Han Xiao was able to provide support in time. Shaking his head, he began to drag her along with him toward the sentry post.

As they neared the post, the stationed troop yelled out, "Stop! Show your ID!"

As Han Xiao reached into his pockets to take out his ID card, his expression froze as he realized that he had forgotten to bring them along. Without asking, he directly reached into Li Yalin's pockets to find hers.

Top pockets… none.

Bottom pockets… none.

"Where's your pass?" he asked.

As Li Yalin still seemed too dizzy to think straight, Han Xiao continued feeling around that dynamite body of hers for it.

'I— I'm being taken advantage of‽'

"Ah! I found it," rejoiced Han Xiao. He then held the pass up toward the guard, who had been gulping at the show.

"Oh, you guys are agents. Come on in."

As Han Xiao took a few steps forward, he discovered that Li Yalin was still rooted to the spot, giving him a deathly stare.

"What's wrong? Hurry up."

Li Yalin took a deep breath to compose herself.

"Give me my ID back," she said stiffly.

"Why so fussy?" replied Han Xiao impatiently. He then casually walked back toward her and slotted the pass back into her rear pocket.

Li Yalin's eyes widened.

'I— I'm being taken advantage of again‽'

Han Xiao then strode toward the sentry post to give the military officer in charge of security the sketch of Lu Gao'en.

"Please wait a moment as the system performs a footage scan."

Li Yalin entered the sentry post still biting her lips. The way that Han Xiao had felt her up did not seem to contain any ill-intentions at all. As such, she was having a hard time even getting angry at him. She was just very unhappy, for some reason, and she continued glaring at him.

…

Lu Gao'en worked for an intelligence organization known as Storm Eye, one of the many sub-groups that were secretly under the wing of the Germinal Organization.

In most cities, Storm Eye had one 'head contact' in charge of relaying information back to the Germinal Organization, as well as a few covert agents who gathered intel and only reported back to the head contact.

One of Lu Gao'en's agents had reported seeing someone matching Zero's description in District 7. While at first unclear of Han Xiao's location, Lu Gao'en had discovered, after repeated investigations, that there was an area in District 7 that seemed to be cordoned off and watched closely by Division 13. It was most likely where Zero was hiding.

Upon finding out that transmissions leaving the city were being blocked, he realized that Division 13 must have gotten wind of him somehow. Hence, he decided to go offline and take his computer apart in order to prevent being traced before heading toward the city entrance to leave.

At present, Lu Gao'en was blended in with a crowd of people approaching one of the city's entrances.

'Norsa must have completed the assassination by now.'

Suddenly, the great metal-fenced gate before him closed up.

"What happened?"

"Why are we being stopped?"

"We have orders to temporarily seal the exits," announced a soldier, starting a commotion among the crowd.

'Why would they close the gates‽' Lu Gao'en was shocked. 'Did Norsa fail?'

Still, as he had been extremely careful for the past two to three years, he was not worried of being discovered.

"He's the one!"

The sudden shout from behind caused Lu Gao'en to turn around. There was a bunch of troops walking menacingly in his direction. They were obviously after him.

'Impossible!'

Lu Gao'en immediately looked around him to find an escape path, but it was too late. Not only was he surrounded by the crowd, there were simply way too many troops in the vicinity. As despair filled him, he allowed a soldier to pin him onto the ground without resistance.

As Han Xiao appeared at the scene, he sighed a breath of relief.

"We made it in time."

"You really did!" Li Yalin was amazed.

"How did you guys know it was me?" asked Lu Gao'en as he raised his head to look up at Han Xiao.

Han Xiao looked back at him plainly. In Galaxy, Lu Gao'en was the primary contact for all Germinal-allied players in the Western Capital.

As Lu Gao'en resigned to his fate, he decided to activate the poison sac stored in his tooth. He would rather die than divulge any information regarding the organization that he had dedicated his whole life to.

Suddenly, Han Xiao pulled out his handgun to fire a shot at Lu Gao'en's head, sending a trail of blood and brain matter spurting out.

_____________________

You have killed Lu Gao'en (Lv.12), gaining 3,500 experience.

——————————————————————

Han Xiao raised his gun up to blow off the smoke from its barrel.

'If you want to die, at least give me the experience.'

"Why did you kill him?"

Li Yalin was stunned by Han Xiao's sudden action. Division 13 could obviously have extracted a lot of vital information from him.

"There's poison stored in his teeth, his nails, and he even has some needles concealed in his clothes. We wouldn't have been able to stop him from killing himself."

Han Xiao shook his head.

In any case, Lu Gao'en's death was truly insignificant to him; he already possessed all the information that he needed. Nonetheless, things were getting a bit dicey.

'Looks like I'd better speed things up,' he thought.