Star Rank Hunter

“I didn’t think Yu Linglong would send you to find me,” Samburt sighed.

Cillin smiled politely and shifted his gaze to Samburt’s hidden right arm. He could tell that it was injured in some way. Noticing Cillin’s gaze, Samburt raised his hand and rolled up his long sleeve to reveal a severed stump. The wound was treated, but it was only a first-aid measure. It must be hurting horribly even now.

“I was betrayed. Someone injected a transmitter into my right arm,” Samburt explained.

Samburt had been hunted for some time, and he had been wondering how his enemies were able to find him again and again despite repeated inspections. After Pian Huo had saved him, he finally realized that a special transmitter had been injected into his right arm.

Samburt had a fondness for watch-style communicators. One day, he had to replace his old communicator because it broke. He hadn’t removed the new communicator since. It wasn’t until Pian Huo told him the truth that he realized that the communicator had been tampered with.

He tried removing the communicator as a matter of course, but he quickly realized that the special transmitter had seeped into his right arm. Knowing it had to be done, he cut off his right arm and destroyed the transmitter. One of the reasons he was able to contact Cillin and vice versa was because his communicator was already destroyed. He couldn’t use his bodyguards’ communicators either because it was risky.

Moreover, Pian Huo couldn’t be sure if there was only one such transmitter in Samburt’s body. It was entirely possible that there was an even more hidden transmitter that was still transmitting Samburt’s location to his enemies, so they dared not hide in a location where they were easily exposed. Pian Huo was searching for a good hiding spot when she saw Genya’s residence. It looked abandoned, and she believed she could borrow its security system and set up some simple electronic countermeasures. She was just about to secure it when she stumbled upon Cillin, Czedow, and Wheeze.

“You should probably look at your wound again,” Cillin suggested.

“It’s fine. It can wait until I’m safe. Right now I don’t even know if I can get home alive, so what’s the point?” Samburt waved off his concern before asking a bodyguard to carry him into a room Cillin had prepared for them. Forget Samburt, even his men looked like they could use a long, long vacation.

Samburt’s group had set up a watch despite their fatigue. Cillin did not offer to treat Samburt’s wound either. It was because he knew that the old man must be extremely paranoid right now. He might not have been a paranoid man in the past, but he was now after he was betrayed by someone he trusted. If he was still a trusting man, his wound would’ve been in far better condition. Cillin refused to believe that Pian Huo didn’t have the medical equipment necessary to treat him properly. If he couldn’t even trust Pian Huo, the one who had saved his life, then he definitely wouldn’t trust a “mercenary” Yu Linglong hired to protect him.

“Are you going to catch some rest?” Cillin asked Pian Huo. The woman was teasing Wheeze with a blade of dry grass right now.

“I’m still fine. I’ll catch some rest when I feel tired,” Pian Huo dragged the dry grass out of Wheeze’s paw and swiped its nose. She seemed pretty energetic all things considered.

“Oh right, does the Eleventh Squad offer peripheral membership, Cillin?”

“You want to join us?”

“Yeah. I envy you. There’s always another adventure waiting around the corner with you Hunters.” Pian Huo tossed the grass away after Wheeze had bitten it and left her with a short stump. “I’m serious. I’ll join you as a peripheral member if you do.”

“No, we do not accept ‘peripheral members’. You’re either one of us, or you’re not not,” Wheeze interrupted in an imperious tone before Cillin could answer.

When Pian Huo looked at Cilin and saw no objection from him, she thought for a few seconds and asked, “Okay. What if I join the Eleventh Squad for real then?”

Cillin was silent for a good few seconds. Pian Huo was a member of Fire Phoenix, one of the three major factions in Sector S. If she were to join the Eleventh Squad…

“Does your master know about your intention? Will he agree?” Cillin was pretty sure Fire Phoenix the man (The organization and the leader share the same name) would not like this.

But Pian Huo surprised him by answering, “He will. My master rarely disagrees with my decision.”

Now he was curious. From what little information he managed to gather from Qi Geyou regarding Pian Huo, Fire Phoenix cared deeply for his disciple. She was a VVIP within the organization as well. However, it was true that Fire Phoenix rarely restrained his disciple, if at all. Otherwise, he would not have run into her in the prison, and her activities would be much more limited after the prisons were gone. Heck, she didn’t even have a bodyguard.

It made little sense now that he thought about it. Angenia was very protective of Gen Xingfu and her children, and even Qi Geyou had some protectors here and there. Pian Huo was Fire Phoenix’s designated successor, and yet the way he allowed her to do whatever she wanted—it was little better than a dad who threw his daughter out into the wild and forgot about her.

Speaking of Qi Geyou, he was just as confused as Cillin was regarding Pian Huo. She was a paradoxical existence that he just could not make sense of. For example, Pian Huo always wore a disguise when she was outside, which suggested that there was a very good reason why her identity had to be kept a secret. In that case, why did Fire Phoenix allow her to run free at all? Wouldn’t it just increase the risk unnecessarily?

Back to the present. When Cillin didn’t reply immediately, Pian Huo turned back to Wheeze and said in a serious tone, “I can pay the membership fee! Is this enough?”

She gestured a number, and Wheeze immediately turned to stare at Cillin. It was obvious what its meaning was.

Cillin: “...” She didn’t even have to try to figure out its weakness, huh?

“Fine, I can tell you need some time to think this through. I’m in no hurry anyway. Just give me an answer after this mission is over,” Pian Huo clapped her hands and stretched a little, but she didn’t go to her room. Instead, she sat down on a stone bench and stared at the sky.

Anti-surveillance countermeasures had already been set up throughout the residence. The satellites wouldn’t notice a thing even if the entire place went boom.

“Can you tell me some of the places the Eleventh Squad has been to, Cillin? Someplace special. I’d like to visit them one day even if you reject me in the end,” Pian Huo said.

“Someplace special?” Cillin thought for a moment and told her just that including the hunting planets.

“Sounds awesome,” she said in the end. Cillin couldn’t tell if she was referring to the locations or the occupation.

Suddenly, Wheeze lifted its ears and called out, “Cillin!”

The warning was unnecessary. Earlier, he had installed some detection equipment within five hundred meters of the residence, and some of them had just been triggered. The equipment were configured to detect certain rare metals instead of people to lower the chances of the equipment being discovered. There was no one in the slums—except himself—who could afford these rare metals, and the people carrying them were moving very, very quickly. The only people who fit the criteria were Samburt’s assassins.

Czedow was guarding Samburt in the room next door, and he notified the old man immediately after the fact. As expected, the transmitter wasn’t the only way the assassins had to track him down.

Cillin was staring at a moth on the wall. At first glance, it looked no different from a regular moth, but a closer look would reveal many discrepancies. For starters, it didn’t even look like a moth from this area. In fact, moths were so rare in the slums that they were practically protected insects. If the assassins knew better, they would’ve used a fly to track down Samburt; the most common insect in the slums.

Smell. The assassins were tracking Samburt through smell, and Cillin didn’t think that it was just the blood stench of his stump. They must have a sample of his body scent as well. Of course, the transmitter was their main method of tracking Samburt, but they weren’t stupid, and they had several backup plans in case the transmitter failed. This special moth was one of them.

Wheeze leaped into the air and swallowed the moth in one gulp. Some vigorous chewing and swallowing later, it commented, “It tastes horrible.”

Then why did you swallow it!? Pian Huo ranted in her head.

Pian Huo and Cililn withdrew to one side of the building, Czedow and Samburt’s two bodyguards moved to the other side.

The assassins fired near soundless shots at Cillin and Pian Huo, but an invisible shield Pian Huo had set up earlier blocked it all. Then—

Pssh!

A shower of blood sprayed over the wall. It was followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground. This one was Wheeze’s work. The gray cat had pretended to be a normal cat while the assassins ran past it, and as soon as they were distracted it swiped at the nearest guy’s neck and nearly beheaded the poor guy. And this was Wheeze being restrained because it didn’t want its ear pulled. It had been cooped up a little too much as of late, and it was looking to relieve itself with a good ol’ bloodbath.

The other assassins never saw Wheeze killing their ally, but they immediately spread out and observed their surroundings warily. Unfortunately for them, they were completely distracted when three people suddenly lost their heads and collapsed to the ground.

Who’s shooting at us?! thought the remaining assassins. Cillin was the only one who had his gun out, but he wasn’t aiming at them, so it couldn’t be him. Even if it was, there was no way he could headshot three of them at the same time… right?

This was just the beginning. Five more people dropped to the ground without a head, and every one of them was wondering how they got shot when no gun was pointing at them before their consciousness melted into eternal darkness.

After taking out eight assassins in a row, Cillin turned around and watched Pian Huo as she took out her second assassin. She had a hidden weapon in her bracer that fired extremely fast projectiles that were partially homing as well. Not only that, the projectiles exploded the second they sank into the body. The explosion was small, but it was enough to destroy the victim’s organs and kill them near instantaneously. Cillin wondered if it was a proprietary technology of Fire Phoenix.

“I thought you used a whip?” Cillin asked.

Instead of answering his question, Pian Huo said urgently while looking left and right, “There were thirteen assassins, but I count only eleven bodies.”

She thought that the two missing assassins were lurking in the dark.

“Oh, they’re already dead.”

As soon as Cillin said this, Wheeze jumped over from the other side of the wall and walked toward them. It complained while smacking its lips, “They taste just as horrible as the moth!”

Pian Huo: “...”

On the other side of the building, Czedow had taken out seven assassins, and Samburt’s bodyguards two. When Cillin met up with them, he saw Samburt and his subordinates staring at Czedow and him like they were monsters.

Most of them hadn’t seen Cillin in action, but the two bodyguards responsible for keeping an eye on Cillin’s battlefield had. Naturally, they saw how he killed eight people in a row without pointing his muzzle at them.

As for the bodyguards fighting alongside Czedow, they doubted his abilities at the beginning as a matter of course. But when Czedow rushed out into the open before they could react and fired his gun so fast they thought he was carrying a rifle, they knew they were dead wrong. When they saw him dragging in seven bodies and realized that that was how many assassins he killed in the span of seconds, they knew they were beyond lucky to have him on their side. They were also recalling how poorly their engagements had gone and wondered if they were dreaming.

Samburt had witnessed the Eleventh Squad’s strength at Sector M before, but he was still stunned by what he saw tonight. Less than three minutes had passed since the moment they discovered the assassins, waited for them to enter the residence, and killed them all. In fact, it had really taken them less than a minute to kill all the assassins since the battle began.

“Is everyone in Vanguard like you?” Samburt couldn’t help but ask.

“No.” Cillin knew what Samburt meant. If even one-fifth of Vanguard was as strong as him or Czedow, then the Great Four would be history a long time ago. There would only be Vanguard.

“Yes, that makes sense,” Samburt figured out the answer to his own question and smiled.

They weren’t out of the woods yet though. This was just the first wave; the vanguard of the assassins Yu Linglong’s second cousin, Yu Xing sent.

“In light of some new information, I would seriously advise you to treat your wound and use an odor-blocking spray,” Cillin said while producing a small canister. Most Eleventh squad members were familiar with it as it was a tool they used quite often.

Cillin proceeded to tell Samburt about the moth and showed it to him. There were two tracker moths in total. One of them was eaten by Wheeze, and the other one was caught as proof.

This time, Samburt did not turn down the suggestion. He also agreed when Pian Huo offered him her medical equipment once more. However, Samburt’s bodyguards had no idea how to use them, so Pian Huo had to instruct them step by step from the side.

“No! The medicine needs to be spread out more evenly. You can’t smear too much of it on the wound. And remember, you need to smear another medicine later—okay, stop. Why are you smearing it so far away from the wound? What’s the point—”

Despite Pian Huo’s instructions, it was clear that the bodyguard was neither dextrous nor very good at applying medicine in general. It wasn’t like he had never treated wounds before, but it was usually basic first aid that would keep him functioning long enough to lie down in a healing capsule and let the machines do the rest of the work. Obviously, they would recover way faster if they had treated themselves properly before lying down in the capsule, but the process was, as the poor bodyguard had come to realize, extremely troublesome.

There was one bodyguard who was more skilled with medicine than the current one, but the guy was currently injured and not fit enough to help. So, suffering it was.

The bodyguard was sweating bullets when he was finally applying the first medicine. He thought it was way, way harder than fighting the assassins. Shaking his head, Samburt gave Pian Huo a nod and said, “Can I trouble you to apply my medicine? As you may have noticed, my men are quite clumsy.”

“No problem. I’m quite familiar with the process. A proper treatment now would save you a lot of trouble when you regrow your hand later,” Pian Huo replied while picking up the second medicine.

As expected, the treatment process was smooth-sailing after she took over. The bodyguard had taken five minutes to finish smearing the first medicine, but Pian Huo had taken only half a minute to smear the second medicine and move on. One look at her proficiency, and you know that she got hurt a lot during her adventures.

In this line of work, you would encounter many situations where machines couldn’t help you. That was why it was incredibly important to master such skills. Primitive it might be, it could make the difference between life and death. This was especially true for Hunters.

Five minutes later, Samburt’s hand looked way better than it used to. Cillin then used the odor-blocking spray on Samburt and his subordinates. They should be able to avoid the track moths now, though of course their pursuers might have other tricks up their sleeves.

“Thank you so much for your help, boys!” Samburt said.

Boys…?

Wheeze tilted its head at Pian Huo and wondered how the hell the old man managed to mistake a girl for a boy. No wonder he got betrayed.

Wheeze’s opinion was completely unfair, of course. Pian Huo’s disguise was good enough to fool most people and even electronics. It just so happened that Cillin, Czedow and Wheeze weren’t one of them.

Samburt tried moving his retreated arm a little before looking thoughtfully at Pian Huo. “You know, you look like an old friend of mine.”

Cillin had noticed that Samburt was shooting weird looks at Pian Huo from time to time. Now, he understood why. An old friend, he says? Who could it be?

Pian Huo was putting away the medicinal bottles when Samburt’s comment caused her to pause for a second. She then resumed her work and asked in a casual tone, “Your friend? Who?”

“Si Fang.”

Cillin felt a twitch in his eyes. Si? His attention quickly shifted to the name. He had seen the name “Si Fang” when he visited Sector S with Lung before. Publicly, she did not exist in GAL’s database. The reason Cillin recognized the name at all was because Mo Heng’s son, Mo Qing was currently sitting in her seat.

Si Fang was a famous admiral back then. In fact, she was the only female admiral in the GAL Army who wielded true power. However, she was sent to a max security prison in Sector S due to a certain incident and was never heard of again after the fact. Cillin didn’t think it was odd at the time because it was standard procedure to wipe out all data regarding a senior officer who was sent to a max security prison. But now…

Cillin stared at Pian Huo—the woman was focusing a little too hard on her medicine—and wondered.