Chapter 34: The Trouble-Maker Is Coming

“Is this… his memory?”

As the final scene flashed through Evelyn’s mind, she finished viewing Cage’s memory fragments in just a few short seconds.

They even included things Cage himself had already forgotten—such as his sister.

That old gentleman with the ram-skull relief cane, his entire figure soaked in backlight so his face couldn’t be seen clearly—the primordial demon who had struck a fair deal with him—hadn’t taken desire or a soul, things demons usually found irresistibly attractive.

The price he took was Cage’s memories of his sister—
his most precious possession.

“What a pitiful… and ridiculous man,”

Evelyn sighed softly, sounding both mocking and regretful.

A genius knocked down by the mob, sinking into ruin, who in the end could only trade away his memories of his sister in exchange for the power to keep her alive.

By now, he had long forgotten what he was fighting for.

He only knew that he had to win—
but not why he had to win.

At the same time, through Cage’s memories, Evelyn also saw the organizer behind this race—the man who had tried to get Cage to fix a match.

Eldrich Nianhog, a young master from a collateral branch of the Nianhog family.

Evelyn had seen him from afar a few times at family banquets. Technically speaking, he should have addressed her as “cousin.”

Of course, she only knew him at that level.

No matter how meek and mistreated the original Evelyn had been, she was still the eldest daughter of the Nianhog main line—the one with the highest legal priority in the line of succession.

As a collateral-branch young master, Eldrich had no qualifications to enter the main banquet hall where Evelyn stayed, and naturally had few chances to exchange pleasantries with her.

So the two merely recognized each other.

That said, Evelyn had long guessed that the Nianhog family’s shadow lay behind this race.

If nothing else, the mere fact that someone could turn the four bridgeheads of John Bridge—maintained daily by Nianhog Construction—into VIP viewing lounges was something only a Nianhog could pull off.

“His family… handled bridge maintenance, if I recall correctly?”

Evelyn searched her memory of this nominal cousin.

Unlike Nianhog Industrial, the family’s true core business, peripheral enterprises like Nianhog Construction were usually managed jointly by several collateral branches.

After all, they were just outer businesses. Handing them to collateral lines both placated people and expanded the Nianhog family’s commercial footprint.

As for the world-changing powerhouse that was Nianhog Industrial—that was naturally held tightly in the Earl of Nianhog’s grasp.

As for Eldrich, what he did was nothing more than the standard routine: exploiting the Nianhog surname to rake in massive profits.

If Evelyn wanted to, she could do far worse.

But she didn’t want to.

She wished she could cut ties with the Nianhog family as soon as possible.

The three motorcycles maintained an extremely short distance between them as they burst out of the industrial district and onto the road by the canal. The swirling smoke was stretched into three thin lines by their blistering speed.

Pudgy circled high above, and the distance between them and John Bridge had shrunk to just a few kilometers.

“Whoosh!”

A flaming iron chain suddenly lashed toward Evelyn, Cage’s skull roaring as it opened its jaws and spewed fire.

Just as Evelyn had suspected, he had long forgotten why he’d joined this race—
and had long forgotten the reason he had to win.

He only knew one thing:

He had to win.

“Bang!”

Almost at the exact moment the flaming whip was launched, Evelyn snapped out Shut Up like lightning and fired.

Two large-caliber silver bullets instantly shredded the tail end of the chain. Even the flames wrapped around it were blown out for a split second by the terrifying wind pressure generated by the shot.

With her focus pushed to its absolute limit, her reaction speed now a horrifying 20 milliseconds, Evelyn could even react to bullets.

“Hey! Skeleton!”

She suddenly called out mockingly.
“Do you even remember why you’re racing?”

“Clack—clack!”

Cage opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if trying to refute or explain something. But in his current state, all he could produce was the grating sound of bones scraping together.

“You don’t know,” Evelyn said calmly. “But I do.”

Under her helmet, her lips curved into that familiar, terrifying smile.

“Clack!”

As if enraged, Cage violently twisted the handlebars. His flaming steel wheel screamed forward like a chainsaw, slamming straight at Evelyn.

“Bang!”

But Evelyn fired again, the shot landing precisely on Cage’s front wheel.

A piercing screech of twisting metal rang out as the heat-resistant alloy wheel was shredded to pieces by Shut Up’s annihilating power.

Yet in the next instant, the scattered metal fragments melted under the intense heat of the flames, turning into molten steel—then, under some invisible force, were reshaped back into the form of a wheel.

The entire process took less than a second.

“So I still can’t deal lethal damage to you yet?”

Evelyn narrowed her eyes.

This probing shot had successfully neutralized Cage’s collision—but hadn’t actually injured him.

She had deliberately aimed at his front wheel rather than his body, purely to test him.

Cage couldn’t speak. Which meant their “conversation” was entirely one-sided, and Evelyn had no way of judging whether his mental defenses were crumbling based on those meaningless clacking sounds.

All she could do was probe him by targeting non-lethal areas—testing whether his psychological defenses still had room left.

If she could deal damage he couldn’t recover from, it would mean his mental pressure had once again reached its limit. At that point, Evelyn would have to hold back—

lest she kill him by accident.

But the wheel restoring itself meant his mental defenses had recovered. There was no longer any need for her to restrain herself.

“Do you remember… a woman who was absolutely vital to you?”

Evelyn slowly raised Shut Up, aiming it at Cage’s skull.

Even though she couldn’t kill Cage right now—she still needed to investigate clues about the primordial demon—she still had to apply as much psychological pressure as possible to extract more information after the race.

Just like they say in detective novels: once a criminal’s mind collapses, they’ll confess everything on their own.

Of course, breaking Cage mentally right now would be pointless. In his current state, even if he confessed everything, Evelyn wouldn’t be able to understand what those clacking bone noises meant.

So what she needed to do was keep his psychological defenses under control—maintaining his mental pressure right at the edge of collapse.

Once the race ended and he returned to a normal human state, she’d only need to apply the slightest extra pressure to make him completely break down.

She had to do this.

After all, what she’d seen were only memory fragments, not his entire memory. Many crucial details were still blurry.

For example, the primordial demon who made the deal with him—the old gentleman.

In Cage’s memories, that man was always shrouded in backlight, his face completely obscured. Only the ram-skull relief cane was barely discernible.

Even so, the amount of information contained in those fragments was enormous—especially considering the entire process, from receiving to fully reading them, took only a few seconds.

If an ordinary person had been subjected to that level of information flow, their brain would probably have burned out on the spot.

But the ones receiving and processing it weren’t ordinary people.

Cyril didn’t need explaining—this was his ability, and he was clearly accustomed to reading memory fragments and enduring that torrent of information.

Evelyn was even more terrifying.

Her mental strength was so overwhelming that she could resist demonic temptation entirely. Enduring this level of informational impact was child’s play.

“I—Selti!”

But just as Evelyn raised her gun to fire, a red-and-white streak of light suddenly shot between her and Cage.

It was Cyril.

“Ah… the trouble-maker’s here…”

Evelyn let out a helpless sigh. Seeing Cyril suddenly accelerate and wedge himself between her and Cage, she had already guessed what this naïve young master was about to do.