The neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip flickered as if the city itself were nervous. At the high-roller table of the Golden Reset Casino, the air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume and cold, calculated desperation.
The Gala Five sat in a semi-circle, their collective net worth enough to buy a medium-sized continent. They had tracked Chen Feng here, convinced that this "Gentleman Thief" persona was just a temporary lapse in his Salted Fish sanity.
"Double or nothing," Su Meiling said, her voice a sharp blade. "If we win this hand, you come back to Asia. You sit in your office, you drink your strawberry milk, and you stop jumping off buildings in red jackets."
Chen Feng, looking effortlessly cool in his thrift-store blazer, pushed a mountain of stolen casino chips into the center. "And if I win? You stop treating me like a rare Pokémon and let me finish my tour."
The cards were dealt. The tension was so high that Gary, sitting at the bar, was vibrating. But Chen Feng didn't use his Sovereign powers to see the cards. He didn't manipulate the deck. He simply used the Lupin-esque "Thief's Intuition." He read the micro-expressions of the most powerful women in the world—the slight twitch in Xuerui's brow, the way Seraphina leaned into her bluff.
With a smirk, he flipped his cards. A Royal Flush.
"Luck is the only thing you can't buy, ladies," Chen Feng chuckled, scooping the chips into a velvet sack. "And right now, I'm the luckiest man on Earth."
The Grand Canyon Standoff: The Final Act
Three days later, the chase reached its literal cliffhanger at the rim of the Grand Canyon. The Gala Five had cornered Chen Feng and Gary at the edge of Mather Point. Behind them, a three-thousand-foot drop; in front of them, five women who had finally reached their limit.
"Chen Feng, enough!" Lin Xuerui stepped forward, her Ice Queen aura flaring. "We have the helicopters. We have the satellite tracking. You have nowhere to go."
Chen Feng looked at them—really looked at them. He saw the exhaustion in Meiling's eyes, the genuine worry in Xia's cousin's face, and the spark of mad respect in Seraphina.
"You're right," Chen Feng said, his voice dropping the playful tone. "You've proven you can follow me across the globe. But you've also proven that you'll never truly catch me. Because I'm not running from you. I'm running toward something else."
He pulled a small, silver remote from his pocket—the one he had "stolen" from the Apex Lab. He pressed a button. Suddenly, the sky above the canyon didn't just change color; it became a massive, holographic projection.
The image was a stylized caricature of a man in a crown and a red jacket, winking at the world. Below it, in flaming letters, read: "THE SOVEREIGN'S COLLECTION: COMING TO A CONTINENT NEAR YOU."
"I've realized something," Chen Feng said, walking backward toward the abyss. "Being a 'Salted Fish' was boring because I had no goal. But being a Thief? That's art. You five can't outwit a man who is making up the rules as he goes."
With a mock salute, he grabbed Gary and stepped off the edge. Before they could scream, a customized "Lupin-style" glider—a masterpiece of gravity-defying engineering—unfurled from his backpack. They soared into the orange sunset of the canyon, leaving the five most powerful women on Earth standing in the dust.
For the first time, Su Meiling didn't order a pursuit. She just watched the glider disappear.
"He's... he's actually enjoying himself," she whispered.
"He's impossible," Xuerui sighed, a faint, defeated smile on her lips. "Let him go. For now."
Inside the glided cabin, Chen Feng pulled out a notebook he had "borrowed" from a hotel. On the first page, he began writing with a fountain pen stolen from the Apex Lab.
"What are you doing, Boss?" Gary asked, still shaking from the leap.
"I'm making a list, Gary. If I'm going to be a Thief, I'm going to be the greatest the world has ever seen. Seven Continents. Seven Treasures. One Sovereign."
He scribbled the targets with an elegant, flowing script. First, he noted the "Black Box" of the Federal Reserve in North America, which he considered checked off after his stint in the Apex Lab. Next was South America, where he sought the "Golden Sun-Disk" hidden in an Incan temple that appeared only during a lunar eclipse.
For Europe, his eyes were set on the "Original Manuscript of Fate" tucked away in the Vatican's most restricted archives. Africa held the "Star of the Nile," a diamond said to be guarded by spirits of the desert. In Asia, he planned to reclaim the "Emperor's First Breath," a jar containing primordial qi.
Australia's target was the "Dreamtime Opal" located at the spiritual heart of the continent, and finally, Antarctica—the most dangerous of all—where the "Frozen Core," the engine of the previous world reset, lay dormant.
"Next stop, South America," Chen Feng declared, his eyes glowing with a newfound thrill. "Gary, find me some jungle-appropriate silk pajamas. We have a temple to rob."