Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Page 65

The photographer clearly noticed the camera was shaking violently and then frantically zoomed in.

The image became grainy and noisy, but it was still clear: it was indeed a person, with very little arm swing and an absurdly large stride, like an eagle skimming the ground—no, a falcon.

Then, the train entered the tunnel.

The figures didn't stop.

He charged diagonally up the hillside, the steep mountainside seeming flat beneath his feet, each step kicking up a cloud of dust.

When they reached the halfway point of the mountain, a muffled thud was heard in the video.

This concludes the video.

The comments section has completely gone crazy:

"Is this a person???"

"Sonic boom??? Supersonic speed???"

"What kind of special effect is this?"

"Show me some special effects! The mountain shadows, the moonlight angles, the train numbers—everything matches!"

"High-speed rail superhero? I saw a video like that a couple of days ago, but no, that was during the day!"

"What are the keywords? Why can't I find them?"

"No need to search anymore, it's been deleted in China. Go to foreign websites, there are a lot of videos of high-speed rail superheroes recently."

A batch of videos was deleted, but another batch popped up.

Ten minutes later, it stopped sending.

—"A gunfight breaks out in the old street of Xiwang County!"

The shooting location was quite far away, roughly from the window of a building across the old street.

The photographer was clearly well-off; his phone had a very high resolution, and even when zoomed in, it was still clear that a figure was facing a dozen or so uniformed men with guns in the middle of the old street.

You can't hear gunshots in the video, but you can see the muzzle flashes.

In the firelight, the figure suddenly vanished—

Next, the person filming thoughtfully slowed down the video playback speed by a full fifteen times, and only then could one see the figure calmly walking to each uniform and, as if taking a water cup, putting away all the guns.

The whole process took less than a second.

It took several seconds for the uniformed officers to realize what was happening.

All the uniforms stood frozen in place, no one daring to move.

The figure turned around and glanced in the direction of the photographer.

I smiled.

A batch of videos was deleted, but another batch popped up.

Ten minutes later, it also stopped working.

--------

The external network is different.

71. Go ahead and sue me if you dare!

Hans Müller, 35, lives in an apartment in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district filled with monitors and hard drives.

His profession is a bit embarrassing to admit—he runs a video website account called "RealEdge Paranormal," which specializes in posting paranormal phenomena from around the world: blurry images of the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs over small American towns, ghostly figures supposedly filmed in an abandoned hospital in Japan, and aerial footage of crop circles in Eastern Europe.

Twenty years ago, this line of work was considered promising.

Back then, camera resolution was low, autofocus was unreliable, and drones were still military secrets—any ripple on the lake, accompanied by pretentious background music, could get you twenty minutes on a morning TV program.

Hans's father supported the family with this, and even saved up enough to buy this apartment.

But now?

High-definition cameras are everywhere.

A simple shot with a mobile phone can be 4K.

When the drone flew over, the so-called "mysterious area" turned out to be nothing more than a few oddly shaped rocks.

The infrared night vision device illuminates the darkness so clearly that even a stray cat cannot hide from it.

The Dharma-ending Age has arrived!

This was Hans's self-deprecating remark when he was drinking with his colleagues in private.

The account's data is honest: it has 32,000 subscribers, half of whom are likely bots.

The most popular video in the past two months is about the "ghostly crying" in a cave in Norway, which has been viewed 80,000 times and received 43 comments, 12 of which are his own replies.

Hans never considered changing careers.

Thirty-five years old, unmarried, no children, and doesn't have any other skills besides this.

Besides, what if? What if one day they actually film something...?

Hans's daily work consists of watching videos.

For various platforms and languages, dozens of keywords were set: UFO, ghost, cryptid, unexplained, paranormal—along with their corresponding German, French, Spanish, and Chinese versions.

The algorithm had already marked him as a heavy user.

Thousands of posts are pushed out every day, 99.9% of which are garbage: photoshopped UFOs, curtains that make indoor smoking look like will-o'-the-wisps, and light refraction that is blown into a spacetime rift.

But that 0.1% is the reason why the "ghostly cry" can still survive.

--------

The incident happened a week ago.

Late at night, with his third cup of coffee in hand, Hans sat in front of three monitors, scrolling through his screen as usual.

The screen on the left is running TikTok on autoplay, the screen on the right is scrolling through the r/UFO subreddit on Reddit, and the monitor in the middle is waiting in the background for YouTube.

A notification popped up from the left corner of the screen.

Views: 835 million. Comments: 13. Tags: #parkour #China #crazy

The data is as ordinary as it gets.

There are thousands of these videos every day.

And parkour?

Hans swung the glass straight across—almost hitting the coffee cup.

The video has started.

Let's take a look.

The footage comes from the perspective of a car's dashcam. It shows an ordinary city street with sparse traffic, and the afternoon sun illuminates everything clearly.

The headline roughly translates to: "Dashcam captures maniac doing parkour, with police cars in the background!"

The dashcam's timestamp shows: 14:47:33.

Ahead, a gray sedan is waiting at a red light. Further ahead, the view is open, and you can see the intersection and the oncoming lanes.

14:47:35.

On the right side of the screen, a figure rushes out of the alleyway on the right and plunges directly into the traffic.

Then, they weaved and shifted between moving vehicles.

A white van was driving from left to right and was about to hit someone—a figure kicked off the side of the van, and was launched like a slingshot, tracing an arc, skimming over the hood of another black sedan, landing, jumping again, and veering off course.

Throughout the entire process, his body hardly paused.

Every touch of the ground, every instance of leveraging, felt like it was all calculated—no, even smoother than calculated.

That was a state of complete liberation from hesitation and fear, as if gravity was merely a suggestion to him, rather than a rule.

14:47:38.

The figure has disappeared into the shadows on the left side of the screen.

three seconds.

From entering the frame to exiting the frame, it takes a total of three seconds.

Immediately afterwards, the sound of sirens grew louder as they approached.

Three police cars sped through the intersection, their red and blue lights still conspicuous in the afternoon light.

Then came the fourth, and the fifth.

They didn't slow down at all, chasing after the direction where the figure disappeared.

14:47:43.

The scene returned to calm, with only the gray sedan still parked in front, its hazard lights turned on at some point.

The video ends.

Eight seconds.

Hans dragged the progress bar back to the beginning and watched it again.

It's quite interesting; the visuals and the subject matter are both excellent, especially the police car scene at the end, which is very suspenseful.

...But what does this have to do with the "ghostly cries"?

Hans scrolled through the thirteen comments in the comment section one by one:

@parkour_fanatic: "Is this a pro? I'm blown away by that side-stepping move!"

@beijing_boy: "I've never seen a run like that before. So cool!"

@movie_lover2024: "New movie trailer? Looks good."

@skeptic_tom: "It must be special effects. How could a normal person jump like that?"

@ParkourOldZhang: "It's not special effects. I'm a parkour coach. Those moves—the angle of force, the landing posture, the center of gravity control—are all real skills. But even someone who's trained for ten years can't do that fast. Who is this guy?"

@cat_lover_99: "And then? How long did it take the police to catch him?"

Hans continued scrolling down and then saw a comment that made his hands stop on the keyboard—

@numbers_guy: "This is definitely special effects! Can't you guys even see this? From the store with the green sign in the video to the edge of the frame, the distance is at least 100 meters. How long did it take him? 3 seconds! What does it mean to run 100 meters in 3 seconds? Is this even possible?"

Hans paused for a moment, then dragged the progress bar to the front.

There is indeed a storefront with a green sign on the right side of the video. The sign is in Chinese, which he doesn't recognize, but that location can be used as a reference.

He took a screenshot, zoomed in, and roughly estimated the distance from the supermarket sign to the left side of the image; it was indeed about 100 meters.

three seconds.

One hundred meters.

120 km/h?!

He checked the numbers on the calculator three times to make sure he hadn't pressed the wrong keys.

Hans watched the video again, this time focusing not on the dangerous stunts, but on the movement trajectory of the figure.

Crossing 100 meters in three seconds.

Weaving and maneuvering through traffic. Stepping on the side of the bike, leaping over the hood, turning, and turning again.

Every movement was incredibly fluid.

It's so smooth that I never doubted its authenticity during my first few browsing sessions—it looked so natural.

It should run as naturally as a person should be able to.

...Hmm, no wonder they suddenly sent me a parkour video...

Okay, you're included in today's material too.