Chapter 52 - 45: City Hunter

"Did it really hit?"

Not only was Shen Shikun completely dumbfounded, but even Chen Jue himself was a little excited.

He had just wanted to see if his Level 5 [Hidden Weapon Throwing] would work on a tiny insect like a fly. After all, it was his first time trying to hit such a small target, and he had no experience.

He only tried because the green-headed fly was close—about sixty centimeters away, halfway across the table—and he waited until it had landed and stopped moving before making his move.

He never expected to hit it on the first try!

This was quite a pleasant surprise for Chen Jue.

From now on, whenever he saw annoying pests like flies, mosquitoes, or cockroaches, Chen Jue could just eliminate them with physical means.

Just then, the panel actually popped up with a notification:

——————

[DING~]

[Completed a meticulous Hidden Weapon combat scenario. Successfully killed one living insect.]

[Hidden Weapon Throwing Skill Level +50]

——————

Looking at the notification on the panel, Chen Jue remembered the pit bull he had killed with a dart to the throat.

He had received a similar combat notification back then, too.

He hadn’t expected that switching to a minuscule target like a fly could also grant such a large amount of combat Skill Level.

Moreover, this was for a Level 5 Skill. Logically, gaining 1 point of Skill Level should be more than twice as difficult as it was at Level 4.

’No wonder it added so much at once! With my current Master Level Hidden Weapon skill, I really wasn’t that confident I could hit a living target as small as a fly at close range.’

’That last throw was probably a stroke of genius, mostly just dumb luck,’ Chen Jue analyzed internally.

At that moment, Shen Shikun, who was sitting across from him, had snapped out of his shock and bewilderment.

He first glanced at the green-headed fly pinned by the toothpick, then at Chen Jue’s ordinary-looking face. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally hesitated and asked, "Chen Jue... no, wait, I should call you Brother Jue! I think you’re a year older than me!"

"Brother Jue! How did you do that just now?"

"That was just a lucky shot! I probably couldn’t do it again." Seeing the other man’s curiosity, Chen Jue offered a few humble words and mentioned to Fatty Bai that he had practiced professional darts before.

"Professional darts?"

"You mean the kind with the needle-like tips?"

Shen Shikun had grown up abroad and had heard of the recreational sport.

But when he thought about the washbasin-sized targets used in professional darts and compared it to the rice-grain-sized head of the fly, Shen Shikun couldn’t shake the feeling that his new, overly modest colleague was something else entirely.

"Brother Jue, are you one of those hidden masters from the internet? A City Hunter who rids the city of pests for the people!"

Shen Shikun first grabbed a napkin to cover the fly skewered on the toothpick, saving himself from the appetite-killing sight, then pulled out his phone and played a video.

"City Hunter?"

"What’s that?"

Chen Jue leaned over curiously to take a look.

The video’s title was "The Battle Between a Slingshot Bro and a Rat." On screen, a young man holding a professional slingshot and wearing a miner-style headlamp was searching for targets next to a foul-smelling trash can.

After spotting a target, the young man would yank back the slingshot, yell, "Take that!" and with a sharp THWAP, nail the rat with a small steel ball.

After being hit by the ball bearing, the rat would twitch a few times on the spot and immediately "GG," clearly having taken critical damage and died from ruptured Inner Organs.

Over the course of the video, the young man used his slingshot to take out more than a dozen fat rats roaming the filthy corners of the city.

"Amazing!"

"So this is the City Hunter you were talking about?" Chen Jue couldn’t help but exclaim.

He had never seen this kind of bizarrely fascinating video before, but he was hooked after just a few glances.

The video was only a few minutes long, but it was edited to be fast-paced, complete with hilarious voice-overs like "The light comes on, your rat life is over," "Here, have a peanut," and "Actor number one has received his box lunch." It was incredibly satisfying and stress-relieving to watch.

It was far more lively and interesting than the two crudely made "special talent" videos Chen Jue had filmed.

"This is the City Hunter, Ahfei! I’ve been following him for a long time."

"Brother Jue, with dart skills as amazing as yours, why don’t you make a video?"

"Ahfei has over a million fans across the internet. He makes a lot of money every month just by hunting rats!" Shen Shikun said with a look of longing. As a 200-jin fatty, he was most envious of these nimble folk masters.

Chen Jue didn’t comment, only saying that he wasn’t at that level.

Besides, slingshots were extremely lethal; at close range, their destructive power was almost on par with an air gun, far exceeding the force of a dart thrown by an ordinary person.

As for whether Chen Jue could throw a dart with that much killing power... well, one only had to look at the pit bull he had killed to know that the answer was a definite yes.

It was just that Chen Jue had been busy grinding his Attributes and developing new sports, and since the proficiency bar for his upgraded Skill was so long, he saw little hope of leveling it up anytime soon. As a result, he hadn’t paid much attention to practical Hidden Weapon combat.

He never thought that going downstairs for a work lunch with Fatty Bai would instantly open up so many new ideas.

...

Perhaps because he had shown off his skill in the restaurant at noon, the way Shen Shikun looked at Chen Jue became increasingly strange.

In addition to a hint of scrutiny and suspicion, his gaze now also held a measure of respect and curiosity.

After all, the image of a toothpick skewering a fly was just too unforgettable.

"I should’ve taken a picture just now and sent it to the group chat for everyone to see! It might have gone viral!"

"It’s all my fault! My germaphobia acted up again!"

After lunch, back at his desk, Shen Shikun slapped his thigh in frustration.

Work was so stressful these days that people were crazy about bizarre and amusing videos, pictures, memes, and comments.

If he had taken a picture of the fly-on-a-toothpick and posted it online, it could have easily become a top comment under some major influencer’s post.

As for Chen Jue, with his mind opened to new possibilities, he sat at his desk and searched for the account of the content creator with the ID "City Hunter Ahfei."

He first gave him a follow, then clicked through his videos.

Chen Jue discovered that besides being a City Hunter who went viral for hunting rats, Ahfei’s main profession was as a wrestler and fitness coach.

His body was well-built; the arms he used to draw the slingshot were thick and powerful, covered in bulging, defined muscles.

The sanitary conditions in the city where Ahfei lived were relatively poor, with many old streets dating back decades.

The garbage dumps and trash cans he filmed were basically overflowing with sewage, and you could see rats, flies, and cockroaches everywhere.

This was simply unimaginable in a major metropolis like Hang City!

As a newly minted first-tier metropolis, Hang City had just hosted a major sports event and a wave of international friends, so its public image was maintained to an almost obsessive degree.

They practically scraped the streets three feet deep every day to clean them; there was no way you’d see a rat just by turning your head.

However, just because you couldn’t find them in the city’s CBD didn’t mean the city was free of the "Four Pests" like rats.

Because no matter how bright and glamorous a place is, there will always be unexpected corners where filth accumulates.

’I just need to find a place with a concentration of restaurants. Lots of kitchen waste, poorer sanitary conditions... there are bound to be plenty of the Four Pests there!’

Chen Jue’s interest was piqued. For the rest of the afternoon, besides reviewing a few system-assigned Class-A clients, all he could think about was practical Hidden Weapon combat.

As for why he was only focusing on the Four Pests, it was because there were too many protected animals these days.

You could get ten years in prison just for raiding a bird’s nest. Chen Jue didn’t dare to act recklessly.

If he accidentally hit a protected animal and earned himself a pair of shiny, stainless-steel bracelets enchanted with a Binding Magic +N years, it definitely wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

...

Having found a new source of amusement, he spent the afternoon watching a few City Hunter videos and looking up sports-related information online. His happy time slacking off passed in a flash.

It was his first day at the new job, so Chen Jue wanted to leave a good impression on his colleagues and decided not to skip out early.

Once 5 PM arrived, he clocked out on his phone, changed back into his sportswear in the restroom, and left the 17th-floor risk control department along with a group of colleagues who were getting up and discussing what to eat for dinner.

He didn’t bother with the packed elevators, as the line was far too long.

Hengtong Mansion had 32 floors and over three thousand employees. During peak commuting hours, the eight elevators were simply not enough.

It would be fine if he were on a lower floor; he could just take the stairs for a bit and be out.

But the 17th floor was awkwardly stuck in the middle. Walking down was too time-consuming, so most people waited for the elevator.

However, Chen Jue had already tried climbing the 17 floors that morning, so going down was almost effortless for him.

A mix of walking and jumping, he made it from the 17th floor all the way down to the underground garage in about five minutes.

But because it wasn’t a large amount of exercise, the panel didn’t give him any notifications this time.

"Twelve minutes to get to work, five minutes to leave." Opening a calendar and progress tracker app he had just downloaded, Chen Jue recorded his times for going up and down the stairs that day.

He planned to climb the stairs like this every day from now on, comparing the time it took so he could visually track the improvement in his Climbing speed.

Compared to the composite Attribute values on the panel, this kind of change over time would make it easier for Chen Jue to do a before-and-after comparison.

’Before I go to sleep, I’ll also record the number of Attribute points I grinded out today. That way, I can build a data model to improve my efficiency!’ Chen Jue calculated in his head.

He couldn’t let his Master Level risk control data Skill go to waste.

...

He drove away from Hengtong, but instead of returning to the talent-housing apartment, he circled the nearby city center.

After a dozen or so minutes, he finally found a small hardware store tucked away in a nook on a commercial street outside an old residential complex.

"Boss, do you sell nails?" Chen Jue asked as he parked his car by the roadside and entered the shop.

"We have nails! Are they for putting into walls, for hanging things?"

"Do you want to just buy a hook instead?"

The hardware store owner put down his calculator. Seeing Chen Jue’s soft and delicate appearance, he knew this young man wasn’t in the renovation business.

He was probably a white-collar worker from a nearby office, so the owner started pitching him the adhesive plastic hooks used for everyday household needs.

Young white-collar workers who came to the city for jobs couldn’t afford big apartments. Their rooms were cramped with little usable space, so when they came to a hardware store, they were usually buying either power strips or this type of hook.

"No thanks, I just want nails."

"Preferably about as long as my finger. The cheaper, the better," Chen Jue said, holding up his index finger to show the length.

"Ah, so three-inch nails. Woodworking nails, are those okay?" The shop owner went to a shelf, grabbed a small box, and went back to his accounting.

Chen Jue opened the box and weighed one in his hand. The three-inch iron nail had decent weight. It was lighter than the darts and iron chopsticks he had bought, but it was barely usable. He then asked the owner if there was a wooden board he could use to test the quality.

The hardware store owner was a straightforward man. He pointed to a woodworking board hanging in the corner and was about to ask Chen Jue if he wanted a hammer to test the nail’s quality.

But to his surprise, when he wasn’t looking, Chen Jue swung his arm, powerfully throwing the nail he was holding, and THUD—it embedded itself in the woodworking board three meters away.

"What the hell was that noise?" The owner, who had his head down pressing his calculator, didn’t immediately react. He thought something had fallen off a shelf and quickly looked up, glancing around.

"Not bad!"

"These nails will do. Give me ten boxes!" Chen Jue said with a satisfied nod, looking at the [Hidden Weapon Throwing] Skill Level +1 notification that popped up on his panel.

"You want to buy ten boxes?"

The hardware store owner was stunned. He never expected this white-collar worker, Chen Jue, to buy so many at once.

He hurried to the back shelves to get ten boxes. The price came out to just 90 yuan, much cheaper than the darts Chen Jue had ordered.

"Forty pieces per box, less than 0.2 yuan per piece. Using these nails for ’hunting in the wild’ is a real bargain!" Chen Jue chuckled as he paid, got into his car with a large plastic bag, and drove off.

He left the hardware store owner looking suspicious. Then, the owner slapped his forehead as if he remembered something and turned to get a closer look at the woodworking board.

He saw that the nail on the board was now embedded more than halfway in.

"Sweet mother of mine!"

"It went in without a hammer?"

"How did he do that?" The hardware store owner scratched his messy hair and began to question his reality.