On the old street, Lin Zichen walked unhurriedly toward the alley up ahead.

When he saw Catwoman, with a pair of beast ears on her head and whiskers on her face, step out from the alley, his eyes lit up.

It really was Catwoman.

Fifty credits in the bag.

Buzz!

Just as Lin Zichen was thinking about the fifty credits, a ripping sound exploded from ahead.

Catwoman, at Biological Level 9, had moved.

At a speed almost impossible to catch with the naked eye, she flashed toward Lin Zichen like lightning.

She was so fast that a powerful airflow rose around her.

Dust billowed across the road as she passed.

Facing the attack of an opponent at the same tier, Lin Zichen felt no fear and immediately surged his vitality and charged straight at her, meeting her head-on.

‘How is he faster than me?!’

Catwoman, mid‑charge, was stunned when Lin Zichen suddenly erupted with speed far beyond hers.

In the instant she froze.

An instant earlier Lin Zichen had been a hundred meters away, yet now he flashed to her face and hammered a heavy fist at that pure, student‑like face of hers.

A sharp bang rang out.

Catwoman took the punch full on and was blown backward, slamming to the ground and tumbling, crashing all the way back into the alley.

Soon, another bang exploded.

Lin Zichen drove off with his lower leg, his explosive force shattering the pavement and in a blur he shot into the alley to press the advantage.

When he entered the alley, Catwoman, whom he’d just blown away with one punch, had already climbed to her feet.

The half of her face that took the punch burst open.

But what burst was only a layer of fake skin, revealing the features of a woman around forty.

Not ugly, somewhat attractive, but nothing striking.

‘So it only burst the mask…’

Staring at Catwoman as she braced against the wall, Lin Zichen was surprised her head hadn’t exploded from a punch at half strength.

This was the first time since childhood he’d met someone who could withstand fifty percent of his power.

While he was surprised.

Catwoman, on the other hand, was shaken to the core.

He looked so young, high‑school age or just starting university, so how could he be this strong?

And there wasn’t the slightest trace of a Gene Fuser on his body.

That punch just now was thrown with pure physical strength alone.

‘How is this possible?’

In that brief instant, a thousand thoughts flashed through her mind and terror filled her face as she realized she might go down today.

At that thought, she didn’t hesitate, kicked off with both legs with a buzz and bolted backward to escape.

She had fused the Shadow Nightcat Gene—her speed far outstripped creatures of the same tier and could rival Advanced creatures.

As long as she didn’t throw her life away or run into an Advanced creature that crushed her outright, she was always unassailable and could run whenever she couldn’t win.

However, Lin Zichen behind her was no slower, even faster than she was.

In just a few seconds he closed the distance, sprang into the air and smashed a kick at her head.

He put a full one hundred percent into that kick.

Bang!

With that single blast, Catwoman, still at full sprint, was kicked flying on the spot and boom—she crashed into the wall, her body driven deep and vanishing from sight.

Seconds ticked by.

With the patter of falling rubble, Catwoman, embedded in the wall, clawed her way out in a mess.

Her neck was broken, her head hanging limply, an eerie sight.

Lin Zichen gave her no time to breathe; he rushed in and smashed another kick, bang, driving her into the wall again.

The wall shivered with a web of cracks and looked ready to collapse.

This time, the wall fell silent for a long while, as if Catwoman had died inside it.

But Lin Zichen knew she wasn’t dead.

He could still sense the biological pressure flowing from her.

It was just getting weaker and weaker.

Like a candle about to burn out.

As Lin Zichen picked up a brick, ready to smash it into the wall to finish her off.

The weakening pressure inside Catwoman suddenly flared like a fire doused in oil.

It burned hotter.

Hotter still.

In the blink of an eye, her pressure surged from a guttering Ordinary Tier 1 all the way up to the peak of Level 9.

And it kept climbing.

Only when it broke the shackles of Ordinary beings and stepped over the threshold into the Advanced category did it slowly stabilize.

Boom!

The cracked wall burst apart, rubble filled the alley, dust billowed.

A powerfully built figure appeared before Lin Zichen’s eyes.

It was Catwoman.

But her form had changed dramatically.

Her neck was no longer broken—self‑healed.

Her whole body was packed with bulging muscle, dense and strong.

Her eyes were feral, her pressure suffocating.

In the face of death, Catwoman had been forced to fully activate every shred of Shadow Nightcat Gene within her, pushing her transformation further to seize greater power.

The price was losing more of her humanity, letting the beast within swell and her reason ebb.

For her, the price was permanent.

Her fusion adaptability was poor and prone to backlash from the Aberrant Beast gene.

That was exactly why she had fallen and become Catwoman.

"What on earth are you?"

Catwoman bared her teeth, glaring at Lin Zichen, nothing like the pure student girl from before.

At this point the beast had outweighed the human.

But the constant waves of pain kept her from charging him mindlessly.

Lin Zichen didn’t answer.

Seeing her Biological Level leap into the Advanced range and her stance turn desperate, he judged the risk too high.

Calmly, he said, "Sorry, wrong person."

Then his figure flickered and in the blink of an eye he vanished from the mouth of the alley.

Unable to gauge his strength, Catwoman watched him leave and chose not to fight.

"What is he? How can his body be that strong? It makes no sense…"

She muttered a few lines, then flashed away from the trouble spot before things could change.

The moment she stepped out of the alley.

A steel pipe as thick as an egg stabbed in from the side with a wet squelch, spearing through her head and nailing her to the wall.

She’d been ambushed and before she could react, a second pipe rammed in with another squelch, piercing her heart.

That second pipe was yanked out at once, then drove in again, hard.

Squelch!

Dozens upon dozens of rapid thrusts followed.

Each strike was charged with vitality, savagely pulverizing her bones and flesh from within, pinning her to the wall and killing her on the spot.

Only when Catwoman was beyond dead and every last trace of pressure had vanished did Lin Zichen release the pipe and let it clatter to the ground.

A cross level kill. A clean kill on a High‑Level Gene Fuser. Yes, it involved an ambush, but it was still the strength of a Level 9 taking down a High‑Level Shadow Nightcat Gene Fuser without a scratch.

Natural camouflage really was strong; hiding his presence by the wall made him undetectable even to the hyper‑acute senses of a High‑Level Shadow Nightcat Gene Fuser.

‘Well, Natural Selection’s damage boost helped.’

As he thought of this.

The adrenaline that had been flooding Lin Zichen’s body ebbed away.

Without it, looking at Catwoman’s corpse full of bloody holes on the wall made him a touch uneasy.

Still, it wasn’t too bad.

He’d killed Ratmen long ago and had some immunity to discomfort.

‘The first time is the hardest. I should find a chance to let that little naughty girl see blood too, toughen up that timid heart of hers…’

Since Shen Qinghan had stepped onto the Path of Evolution, she would eventually face killing.

Better to let her see blood early and feel the cruelty of the world, so she could go farther on the Path of Evolution.

After mulling it over for a bit.

Lin Zichen wiped the blood spattered on his face, then cleaned his hands, took out his phone, snapped a photo of Catwoman’s death and uploaded it to the mission system on the school app as proof he’d dealt with her.

Then he called the Public Security Department to come and clear the scene.

After that, Lin Zichen touched Catwoman’s corpse and began devouring the Shadow Nightcat Gene within her.

[You have devoured a large amount of the Life Origin of “Shadow Nightcat.”]

[Shadow Nightcat Compendium: 36%]

‘Thirty‑six percent?’

Lin Zichen paused; he hadn’t expected devouring just one High‑Level Shadow Nightcat Gene Fuser to push the compendium that far.

Thinking it over, he figured she’d been suffering backlash from the gene, which skewed the proportion of Shadow Nightcat Gene in her body higher.

He only thought about it and didn’t dwell.

Over the next half minute.

He tidied the corpse on the wall to cover his devouring traces.

He didn’t wait for the Public Security Department, just left the alley, went home, showered,] and went to sleep.

The mission system on the school app had a required “account of events.”

That field could serve as a statement and the school would coordinate with the Public Security Department, so he didn’t need to go make one in person.

* * *

Elsewhere, on a street over a thousand meters from the alley.

Ma Xiwei got through to Ma Zhenhe and furious reported, "Dad, the Catwoman mission I took had bad intel. Her Biological Level wasn’t Level 6 but Level 9. I was almost killed!"

"What?!"

His shocked voice came through the phone.

Then, angrier, "Xiwei, tell me exactly what happened. I’ll go talk to Director He in charge of the mission system."

"Dad, here’s what happened…"

Steadying herself, Ma Xiwei described in detail how she and the two seniors had pursued Catwoman.

After he understood, Ma Zhenhe said he’d go to Director He right away and told her to get back to school immediately, not to stay outside and risk Catwoman’s revenge.

Ma Xiwei listened, hailed a Premium Uber ride and set out for Shanhai University with the two seniors.

Not long after they got in, the senior sister in the back seat with her suddenly exclaimed, "What’s going on, how did the Catwoman mission get completed by Lin Zichen?!"

"What did you say?"

Ma Xiwei thought she’d misheard and couldn’t believe it, "Catwoman was Level 9, how could he complete it?"

"It’s true," the senior sister said, "Open the mission now. It shows Lin Zichen completed it just a minute ago."

Ma Xiwei didn’t take out her phone, just leaned over to look at the senior sister’s screen.

Seeing that Lin Zichen really had completed the mission, she was left questioning reality.

‘Impossible… That cunning Catwoman was a Shadow Nightcat Gene Fuser at Biological Level 9. Lin Zichen was just a freshman. How could he complete it?’