The expression on "Vagabond"'s face changed abruptly, his eyes flickering for a moment. He forced a smile: "Wha...what? You...you must have...have seen it wrong, right? What kid? This, this old thing looks like...like an old monkey, he's just small, not a kid, look."

As he spoke, he pushed the person in his hand in front of the girl. In an instant, the girl felt as if a faulty screen appeared before her eyes—the little boy, sobbing and gasping for breath, stretched and shrank, flickering into a phantom. One moment he was the lecherous old Vagabond, the next he was a crying child, shifting back and forth nonstop.

She frowned, took two steps forward, and tilted her head nonchalantly: "That's strange."

Seeing that she was fooled, "Vagabond" grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth: "See, I, I told you—"

Before he could finish, the girl suddenly pulled a liquor bottle from her bag and, with lightning speed, struck. The bottle collided with Vagabond's forehead, shattering to pieces, sharp shards of glass flying everywhere, the pungent smell of cheap alcohol exploding in the air. This bold woman grabbed the remaining half of the bottle, wiped the leftover lipstick from her lips, and spat: "Bastard, trying to fool your grandma?"

Liquor streamed down "Vagabond"'s head and face. His smile gradually faded, his eyes turning sinister and cold, radiating a murderous aura. Then, he tossed the child aside, his bones cracking all over, his whole body inflating and expanding, and in the blink of an eye, he became a burly man nearly two meters tall!

The once overbearing girl suddenly had to look up instead of straight ahead, momentarily stunned. She instinctively took half a step back: "You..."

"Vagabond" laughed, his mouth as wide as a palm, opening to reveal a bloody maw: "I knew it, turns out you're a brainless cripple."

As soon as the word "cripple" left his mouth, the girl's expression changed from terror to fury. She lashed out with a kick to the groin, and as he bent over, she grabbed his hair, forced his head down, and stabbed the broken bottle at his face—her moves were swift, precise, and ruthless, clearly a street-fighting veteran, a seasoned thug.

But the sharp half-bottle merely slid off the man's face, not even scratching the oily skin. His face was hard and pale, like some kind of metal.

"Vagabond" nonchalantly rolled his neck, gently grabbed the hand she was using to pull his hair, as if picking up a kitten, and caught the girl.

The bottle fell to the ground. The girl struggled in midair, staring in shock at that reflective face: "You...you're not human."

"Vagabond" showed a bizarre smile, his fan-like hand gripping her head, veins bulging—

At that moment, a strong light swept over, followed by three or four high-speed motorcycles diving down from the sky, clearly violating the "no high-speed vehicles within a hundred meters of the ground" regulation. The light arrived first, then the thunderous roar of engines, whipping up a whirlwind on the ground and sweeping over them.

"Vagabond" seemed to realize something, his face changed, and he immediately let go and tried to run.

The wind from the motorcycles knocked the girl off balance, sending her and her bag tumbling to the ground. She hurriedly scrambled to grip the wall with all four limbs.

The little boy who had been tossed aside screamed as the whirlwind swept him up into the air.

That monster-like "Vagabond" leapt up like a wild beast, landed briefly on the wall, and then, as a laser flashed across his body, vanished into the night.

The little boy flailed his limbs in the air, flying straight toward the nearby Black Bar.

Suddenly, the back door of the bar opened. A man stepped out, reached out, and caught the boy by the back of his neck.

The motorcycles landed in unison and fell silent. The girl, crouched in the corner by the wall, lifted her head and peered through her hair, now tangled like a mop by the wind. She saw that the man was tall and slender, his face obscured by the backlight.

He bent down and set the boy on the ground. In his other free hand, a spark flashed as he flicked cigarette ash.

"No need to chase, there's a spatial field, he ran off long ago," the man said calmly, "Next time you make an entrance, could you make it even louder? Best if people a light-year away are scared out of their wits."

Chapter 3

Three men and one woman got off the motorcycles.

The three men might have debuted as a group—their heads dyed bright red, green, and yellow, standing together like a perfect set of traffic lights. The woman, meanwhile, was dressed just like the little delinquent girl from before: a leather jacket thrown over her underwear. It seemed this outfit was the local female thug's winter fashion, quite the popular look.

The four of them descended from the sky, none looking like law-abiding citizens, but as they lined up behind the rickety Black Bar, each looked dejected, none daring to speak first.

They jostled each other for a moment, and finally, the "traffic light trio" worked together to push the only woman among them forward.

The fashion-over-warmth female biker braved the winter chill, but couldn't withstand the cold face of the man at the bar's back door. She shivered hard and hesitated before saying, "That guy had a strange jammer on him, we lost track of him..."