Pickpocket!

History shows it wasn't the cops who killed the pickpocketing trade — it was smartphones and surveillance cameras. Too bad: neither exists right now.

Spring, 1982. Jiang Xia is riding a green-painted train home. The car is packed wall to wall — a sea of grey, blue, and black clothing.

Bulging yellow urea sacks crowd the narrow aisle, and passengers with standing tickets perch on top of them, hollering at strangers like old friends. Adults shouting, kids wailing, the clang-clang-clang of the train rattling down the tracks — it all mashes together into one ear-splitting mess.

None of it touches Jiang Xia's mood. She leans back in her seat, humming silently to herself. Finally graduated from the police vocational school!

Say what you want about the eighties, but guaranteed job placement after graduation? That's the kind of perk that makes people cry tears of joy.

Fresh out of school, Jiang Xia had already received her employment notice and work assignment letter: she'd been posted to Zhouying Police Station in Changning City as a public-security officer. Jiang Xia was a Changning local — Zhouying Police Station was barely two kilometers from her house, a fifteen-minute bike ride at most.

An iron rice bowl, close to home, decent pay — the minor annoyances barely registered. She was serving the people either way; it didn't matter where she shone.

And besides... she had a little secret that was better off staying out of the spotlight. 'Excuse me, coming through.' A man shouldered his way through the aisle, calling out as he went.

He looked to be in his early thirties, skinny as a monkey, with a sharp, weasel-like face. He was asking to pass, sure — but his eyes were darting everywhere, clocking every passenger's clothes and pockets.

Jiang Xia glanced over. One eyebrow went up. Oh. A colleague. Ugh, no — what was she thinking? This guy was a career thief, plain and simple.

She didn't even need to catch him in the act. One look was all it took for Jiang Xia to clock exactly who she was dealing with.

She kept her face blank and watched. As the man called out for space, passengers in the aisle shifted — pulling in their legs, squeezing toward their seats — opening up just enough of a gap for someone to squeeze through.

The aisle was a minefield of bags and bundles, so Shou Houn could only inch forward one step at a time, gradually closing in on a passenger in a black dacron jacket who looked like he had money. That passenger had zero idea danger was coming.

He was busy talking loudly to the person across from him. Shou Houn suddenly stumbled — or pretended to — and crashed into the passenger's shoulder, mouth running with 'sorry, sorry,' while his right hand shot forward and then snapped back, slipping the black wallet out of the man's pocket and into his own.

The whole move was seamless. Nobody around noticed. Not even the victim. Jiang Xia rubbed her chin. Northern-school technique.

That clean? He's been drilling for seven or eight years, easy. Still a little rough around the edges, needs more — wait, no.

This guy seriously just lifted a wallet right under her nose?! Jiang Xia gently tapped the auntie chatting beside her. 'Hey, auntie, can you watch my bag?

I need to use the bathroom.' 'Of course!' The auntie was enthusiastic. 'I'll keep an eye on your bag and your seat both!' 'Thanks, auntie.' Jiang Xia smiled, stuffed her palm-sized notebook and pen into her pocket, stepped over the bags on the floor, and headed toward the bathroom.

Shou Houn reached the end of that car, lingered a moment, then started walking back. Jiang Xia met him head-on. Half a meter of aisle between them.

That half-meter was stuffed with three full urea sacks, two old men sitting on top of them with their hands tucked in their sleeves, chatting away in dialect. Seeing people needed to pass, the old man on the right reached out and hauled a sack aside, clearing a small foothold.

Jiang Xia squeezed left toward the seats, making a little room, and said politely: 'After you, big bro.' 'No, no — ladies first.' Shou Houn — that was the thief's nickname, and it fit — was in a good mood after a successful lift. Seeing a pretty young woman coming toward him only made him more gentlemanly.

He leaned back with a grin. 'You know how it is — ladies first.' 'Oh, thanks, big bro.' Jiang Xia's lips curved up. She slid past him, stepped over the bags, and in one barely-there motion of her left hand — completely invisible to him — she lifted the dacron passenger's wallet right out of his pocket and tucked it into her sleeve.

The moment the move was done, a familiar chime rang in Jiang Xia's ear — one only she could hear. [Ding — congratulations, host. One theft completed.

Free EXP +1.] Jiang Xia's expression didn't flicker. She walked straight to the bathroom. She was a transmigrator with a System.

Before transmigrating, Jiang Xia had been a teacher at an art exam prep studio, specializing in sketching and figure drawing. Art students always crammed before exams — drawing until one or two in the morning every night — and Jiang Xia would sometimes stay late to give feedback.

That night she'd pushed through until 2:30 a.m., starving, and went downstairs with some students to grab street food. Crossing the road, a car came out of nowhere, blew through a red light, and barreled straight at them.

Jiang Xia only had time to shove the student beside her out of the way before everything went dark. When she opened her eyes again, she was in 1979 — inhabiting the body of a fourteen-year-old middle schooler named 'Jiang Xia,' who had nearly drowned saving two kids from a river.

Under the influence of the original host's lingering consciousness, she'd blurted out to a reporter that she wanted to go to police school and become a cop. The government officials who came to commend her took it seriously, and with one generous wave of a hand, handed her a special-admission slot at a provincial police vocational school.

Both sides were thrilled. Only Jiang Xia stared at the System that had suddenly appeared and felt completely lost. She stepped into the bathroom and slid the lock.

The pale-blue screen that only she could see blinked into existence immediately, eight large characters blazing across the top: [Crime Master Cultivation System] At the bottom, grey subtitles scrolled past. Skills pending unlock: Poison synthesis Dismemberment mastery Counterfeit currency production ... …

Even after seeing it dozens of times, Jiang Xia still couldn't help going silent for two full seconds. What kind of transmigration gives you a System like this?

She was a cop. A cop. Any one of these skills would get you shot a hundred times over. This thing was basically a point-blank execution waiting to happen.

Yep — this garbage System was Jiang Xia's little secret. The System's goal: cultivate the world's top crime master. Commit a crime, earn EXP.

Hit certain thresholds, unlock criminal skills. Honestly? The leveling was simple, the rewards were clear, and it was extremely functional.

It just had a tiny problem of being soul-destroying and life-threatening. Three years ago, Jiang Xia had stared at the System in a daze for hours, wondering what she'd done in a past life to deserve this.

Especially since the trash System had force-gifted her a starter skill. Pseudo-Grandmaster-level Theft Arts. Great skill, technically — she could lift things off a thief without them noticing — but it had one small flaw: her hands occasionally acted on their own.

Like the muscle memory that builds up in professional athletes from years of training, right after she got the skill, she'd unconsciously pocket other people's things without meaning to. That scared her badly.

It took everything she had to mostly break the habit. She'd originally planned to never activate the skill or the System for the rest of her life — but after studying it more carefully, she found the garbage System did have some legitimate uses.

Jiang Xia opened her personal panel. The System instantly projected her 3D model, with a text profile alongside it. [Name: Jiang Xia Personal Skills: Theft Arts LV5, Sketching LV3, Tracking LV2, Grappling LV1...]

Jiang Xia tapped on Tracking and added the EXP she'd just earned. Outside of criminal skills, she could also invest points into legitimate skills she'd learned — using EXP to level up positive abilities.

So Jiang Xia had found a loophole in the System: steal back what pickpockets steal, then return it to the victim. Crime completed, EXP earned, no one gets hurt.

Practically perfect. She closed the System, pulled out her homemade sketchbook and pencil, and started drawing the thief's face — fast, confident strokes.

She knew full well this was a dangerous habit. It was way too easy to lose control chasing quick EXP gains. So Jiang Xia kept herself on a tight leash.

She never went looking for pickpockets. Only when she happened to catch one in the act would she steal back from them — and then hand them over to the authorities.

Because of that, her skill growth was painfully slow. Tracking was only at LV2, and most of that came from self-study. No eraser, no rough outline — Jiang Xia started with the eyes and worked outward.

Two, maybe three minutes later, a near-perfect likeness of the thief stared back from the page. This was a skill from her past life, same muscle memory as the rest — and after years of practice here, she'd finally recovered about seventy or eighty percent of her old ability.

This thief's technique was solid. Someone taught him. Ninety-nine percent chance he was part of a crew. Once she got off the train, she'd hand the portrait to the train police.

With a face to go on, they'd know who to look for — and from him, they could unravel the whole operation and take everyone down at once. She closed the sketchbook, tucked it back in her pocket, opened the bathroom door, and headed back.

As she passed the dacron-jacket passenger, she quietly slipped the wallet back into his pocket. This round: she leveled up, the passenger kept his money, and a pickpocket crew was about to get wiped out.

The First Emperor touching a live wire — she was winning so hard it hurt. * Shou Houn was making his way back to the car where Zhei Tou was waiting. He had no idea someone was about to hand him over to the cops.

He hadn't even noticed the stolen wallet was gone. His head was full of the young woman who'd just walked past him. She really was something.

He could almost still smell the faint rose scent lingering at the tip of his nose — her hair oil, probably — sweet and clean against the car's thick wall of body odor. Shou Houn's thoughts were starting to drift somewhere they shouldn't.

Right in the middle of that daydream, a hand landed on his shoulder. 'What are you spacing out about, big bro?' The hand belonged to Dong Zi — his shifu's newest third disciple, standing right in front of him now.

'Nothing.' Shou Houn turned his head and said casually, 'Just thinking I probably just closed a big one.' 'Oh, nice!' Dong Zi lit up. 'You hit a fat target?' 'Dacron jacket, wearing a watch too.

Too bad Shifu said not to touch the wrist.' Shou Houn kept his voice low as he walked. Ahead was the connector between two cars — not many people, just an old man in the corner slowly smoking an old-style pipe.

The old man's hair was salt-and-pepper, topped with a classic eight-panel cloth cap. He was half-curled in on himself, head drooping slightly — like a farmer who'd spent half his life bent over a field.

But Shou Houn didn't dare take him lightly for a second. This was his shifu. A legendary Zhei Tou from the southwest Shandong region.

Back in his prime, his hands were fast enough to snatch soap out of a pot of boiling oil. Age had slowed him down — hands not as steady as they used to be — and that's why he'd finally started taking on disciples.

Spotting him, Shou Houn immediately reached into his pocket, ready to pull out the lifted wallet and hand it over. But the moment his hand touched the pocket, his heart dropped.

Empty. Nothing there. Where was the wallet? Where the hell did the wallet he just lifted go?!