Chapter 192: Pride Will Come Find You

"Hello, what can I get for you?"

"A cup of the Emerald Estate's premium Rose Whisper. No roses, nitro cold brew, with three spoons of sugar. Also, I like swans, so please shape the latte art into a swan. Thank you."

The waiter smiled and nodded. "Right away. Please wait a moment."

Before long, a cup of coffee topped with swan latte art was brought to the table. At that exact moment, a hoarse voice rang out in Nangong Mengli's mind. It sounded like a heavy smoker's rasp, weathered by time and full of stories.

"We meet again, Miss Murong."

Her expression unchanging, Nangong Mengli took a sip of her coffee. Pale milk foam clung to her red lips. She gently licked it away and said lightly, "Mr. Yan, do you not plan to show yourself?"

"No need to speak out loud. This is my subordinate's ability, Mental Link. You can think of it as a mental telephone call. I'm not in this coffee shop, so we'll communicate this way for now. Well? Any news from the Seven Deadly Sins?"

"Pride has agreed to meet you."

"Excellent." A hint of satisfaction bled into Yan Moxie's hoarse voice. "Time and place."

Nangong Mengli set her coffee down, a mysterious smile curving the corners of her lips. "You don't need to know, because... Pride will come find you personally."

Yan Moxie fell into a brief silence. That single sentence carried a wealth of information. As one of the vice-commanders of the Revolutionary Army, he was a wanted man across the entire nation. Coming to Star City naturally required hiding his tracks; it was safe to say that, besides himself, not even his subordinates knew his exact location.

Yet Pride said he would come to him personally. Didn't that mean his every move might already be under Pride's control? How else could he be found?

However, he was a Gold powerhouse after all, possessing a state of mind far beyond ordinary men. He simply replied calmly, "Alright. I'll be waiting."

With that, the mental link severed, and Yan Moxie's voice vanished.

Nangong Mengli simply went back to drinking her coffee. Wasting it would be shameful, after all.

Directly across from her, Su Mu sat watching with keen interest. He was sitting on the wide leather sofa, yet the cushions did not dip in the slightest. Nor did anyone notice that an extra person had appeared in the coffee shop.

'A mental link? Doesn't seem too difficult.'

Armed with formidable mental strength, he could master a few minor mental tricks even without relying on a Law. It felt much like a person born with natural strength and speed; even if they knew nothing about football, they could achieve results with just a little training.

As the saying went: master one path, and you master them all. This was exactly that principle.

He slowly stood up, watching a thin thread of mental energy peel away from Nangong Mengli. It moved with incredible speed, completely undetectable to the naked eye.

But none of that could stump Su Mu. He caught up to the vanishing mental thread as if teleporting, his body passing through walls and rooms like a ghost, until he finally sank beneath the earth into a cramped underground base.

For the sake of secrecy, the base had been built small. There weren't many staff members inside—only three. One of them, a woman with short brown hair, was the very person who had just cast the mental link.

Another thin thread of mental energy stretched out from her into the distance, connecting to who knew where.

"Brother Yan, is Pride really that capable? He can actually find you? Not even the people from the Chiyan Empire can do that," the short-haired woman communicated through the mental link.

"I don't know." Yan Moxie's voice gave away no emotion. "I haven't told anyone my location, so there's no chance of a spy within the organization leaking my whereabouts. Perhaps Pride possesses some unknown method of tracking."

"But... Brother Yan, you're a Gold powerhouse too, and you excel at concealment. Otherwise, the organization wouldn't have sent you. So many Gold powerhouses in the Empire can't find you, and Pride hasn't even seen your face. How could he possibly find you? If you ask me, he's just bluffing."

Well, he had seen him now.

Su Mu had already vanished from the underground base. Following the network cable—or rather, the mental thread—he had teleported right to Yan Moxie's side.

He carefully sized up Yan Moxie. The man wore a worn-out black trench coat and dark sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he sat at a street stall eating stinky tofu.

His face was covered in stubble, and his build was somewhat gaunt, but his features were sharp and deeply sculpted. He looked to be around thirty, carrying the distinct vibe of a mature, rugged older man.

Su Mu's goal for this trip had been to catch a glimpse of Yan Moxie so that he could easily use his dream teleportation to find the man later. He just hadn't expected Yan Moxie to avoid showing his face, forcing him to go to all this extra trouble.

Still, it wasn't a total waste of effort. At the very least, he had witnessed another application of mental power: the mental link.

To many Transcendents, a Law was the equivalent of a weapon. They held the weapon and could use it, but they didn't understand the mechanics behind it.

But Su Mu was different. Having spent a century wielding power freely in his dreams, his mastery over mental power had long since reached the absolute pinnacle. With some simple mental-type Laws, he could easily see right through to their core principles and learn to use them himself.

Yan Moxie did not realize that Su Mu was already sitting directly across from him. He simply continued speaking, "He has no need to bluff. Someone who dares to challenge the Empire's bottom line and murder a noble in front of a crowd wouldn't do something so childish. He probably really can find me.

"Perhaps the organization needs to raise Pride's threat rating even higher. The strength he exposed when killing Murong Zhuo might have only been the tip of the iceberg."

The short-haired woman suddenly suggested with a mischievous tone, "Brother Yan, how about this? Go find a hidden spot and tuck yourself away. Isn't Pride extremely confident? I refuse to believe that if you truly wanted to hide, anyone in this world could find you!"

"I'm not that childish. Hanging up." Yan Moxie severed the mental link.

After that, he abandoned his stinky tofu, hastily paid the stall owner, and slipped into the crowd, walking away.

He kept a vigilant watch on his surroundings, ensuring that absolutely no one was paying attention to him before ducking into a dark alleyway.

Then, an unbelievable scene unfolded. Yan Moxie's body began to melt, as though he were being devoured by the shadows on the ground. He continuously sank into the darkness until he disappeared entirely.

Watching this play out, Su Mu was somewhat speechless. Was the vice-commander of the Revolutionary Army really this much of a tsundere? He claimed he wasn't that childish, yet the moment he hung up, he ditched his tofu and immediately ran off to hide?

A clump of shadow moved rapidly through the darkness, blending in so seamlessly that it was nearly impossible to distinguish.

Transformed into a shadow, Yan Moxie reached the edge of the alleyway. Just past the threshold lay the sunlit ground.

Swish!

He vanished. When he reappeared, he was already attached to the shadow of a passing pedestrian.

'Silver Law Sequence 49, Shadow Walker?' Su Mu stared at the black blob flickering from one pedestrian's shadow to the next, roughly guessing a portion of Yan Moxie's abilities.