"All unrelated personnel! Retreat immediately!" An enforcer glared at Chen Ling with extreme vigilance, then turned to warn the crowd. "This man is a vicious criminal! A heretic who infiltrated the enforcement system! Be careful—he might attack at any moment!"
Hearing this, the citizens of Aurora City paled. They hastily backed away, their gazes filled with fear and horror as they looked at Chen Ling.
Watching the retreating crowd, Chen Ling's expression remained as calm as still water. His eyes swept over the people, and the corners of his lips curled slightly upward.
"Over a thousand people... What an unexpected surprise."
Before entering the city, Chen Ling had worried that the enforcers and judges behind the walls might not even gather a "spectator" crowd of a hundred. Now, it seemed his concerns were completely unnecessary—the encircling civilians and enforcers before him numbered at least a thousand.
Seeing Chen Ling not only fail to refute the accusations but even smile, an indescribable sense of eeriness crept into the crowd's hearts... It was like a serial killer, exposed in public, grinning at everyone—utterly spine-chilling.
"Sir, is... is there some kind of misunderstanding?" Beside the train, the survivors from District Three whom Chen Ling had brought into Aurora City looked on in bewilderment.
"How could Chief Chen be a criminal? He saved our lives!"
"That's right... Without Chief Chen, we would've frozen to death on the tundra long ago..."
"No way! Chief Chen can't be a bad person! You must have made a mistake!!"
"Yeah! Brother Chen Ling isn't a bad guy!!"
"..."
The voices of the District Three survivors grew louder. Frowning at the enforcers before them, they rebutted one after another, their tones more resolute than ever.
"Fools!" The enforcer, seeing this, shouted furiously,
"You've all been deceived by him, and now you're defending him?! He only saved you to use you as hostages to force Aurora City to open its gates! From start to finish, you were nothing but his pawns!! Understand?!
This man slaughtered all his companions in the Soldier's Ancient Repository and stole the foundation fragments! He's a heretic disguised as an enforcer! And you still believe in him?!"
The District Three survivors froze.
But the next moment, Xu Chongguo roared in anger, "I don't care about any 'heretic' nonsense! Even if he used us, he still got us into Aurora City! We're alive because of him! He's more of an enforcer than any of you who abandoned the seven districts!!"
"Exactly!! When disaster struck, the enforcers all fled and even killed my father!! Now Chief Chen saved me and brought us into Aurora City alive! How could he be a heretic?!"
"Where were the real enforcers when Chief Chen was fighting Calamities for us?! What right do you hypocrites hiding behind these walls have to call him names?!"
"Chief Chen is not a heretic!!"
"Chief Chen is not a heretic!!!"
"..."
Xu Chongguo's words awakened the crowd. These were people who had been abandoned by Aurora City, and now their fury was fully ignited by these baseless accusations. The anger and hatred suppressed in their hearts all poured out, with Chen Ling as the catalyst.
At this moment, the onlooking citizens of Aurora City were dumbfounded. They stared blankly at the blood-coated figure standing silently atop the train, utterly confused about whose words to believe...
They couldn't define Chen Ling, nor could they label him as good or evil in their minds. That figure was like an unsolvable enigma.
Among the crowd, Wen Shilin also watched Chen Ling thoughtfully.
His pen scribbled rapidly, meticulously recording every word spoken by both sides... The magnesium flash sparked, and his assistant immortalized Chen Ling's image on film.
"That's impossible." Han Meng, shackled in chains, immediately shook his head. "Chen Ling can't be a heretic."
"Han Meng, you were the Chief Enforcer of District Three. A heretic was living right under your nose, and you didn't notice at all?" A five-striped enforcer sneered. "He's the one responsible for the massacre in the Soldier's Ancient Repository. If we hadn't captured a survivor and performed a soul-fragment search, he would've slipped through our fingers..."
Hearing this, Han Meng stiffened slightly.
"Also, we found evidence in Xi Renjie's soul fragments too. This Chen Ling has bizarre abilities—not only can he change faces, but he can also use illusions to perform tricks and feeds on Calamities... With all that, you still don't think he's a heretic?"
"What did you say?!"
Han Meng's head jerked up. His mind instantly flashed back to the mysterious crimson, red-clad figure who had appeared when he was gravely injured in the Gray Realm... Before that, Chen Ling had even mentioned the Twilight Society in front of him... Clue after clue connected in Han Meng's mind, all pointing to one conclusion.
Han Meng stared dumbfounded at the familiar figure atop the train, gradually overlapping with the memory of the figure in the crimson opera robes.
The argument between the District Three survivors and the enforcers raged on, while Chen Ling—the subject of the dispute—stood there listening quietly, as if none of it concerned him.
As two more five-striped enforcers approached, the enforcers surrounding the train quickly parted to make way. The two stood before the train, their icy gazes fixed on Chen Ling as they spoke slowly:
"Heretic Chen Ling, we were just wondering how to drag you back from outside the city... Yet here you are, delivering yourself to us. In that case, come with us."
"Go?" Chen Ling drawled lazily. "Where?"
The five-striped enforcer looked at him and answered word by word, "A soul-fragment search."
"Chen Ling, we know you have many tricks up your sleeve. But now that you're inside Aurora City, even if you had heaven-defying abilities, there's no escape... No matter what purpose you had for infiltrating the enforcement system, once the soul-fragment search is conducted, everything about you and the forces behind you—will be exposed!"
"Chen Ling, we understand that you fled into Aurora City in desperation to survive the Gray Realm convergence. As long as you undergo the soul-fragment search, you might still have a chance to live."
"Surrender peacefully. Since you could enter the Soldier's Ancient Repository, you can't be above third-tier... No amount of struggling will help you now."
The two enforcers spoke one after another, their fifth-tier auras sweeping outward. In just a few sentences, they had sealed off all of Chen Ling's escape routes.
In their eyes, Chen Ling was already a turtle in a jar—trapped and helpless!