024 Shocking Surveillance Footage

Chen Jue was visibly steaming with sweat, an astonishing sight that left the three soldiers present, as well as the small, dark-skinned pickpocket pinned to the ground, utterly dumbfounded.

“Comrade, are you practicing Qigong?” one of the soldiers couldn't help but ask, the other two also sizing up Chen Jue, who seemed almost superhuman. Their hands still held the pickpocket, but their attention was entirely elsewhere.

There was simply no way to ignore it.

Chen Jue’s body radiated heat and white steam in broad daylight, completely upending everyone’s sense of normalcy. If it were winter, perhaps after intense exercise, sweat might condense into mist, and one's breath could turn to vapor—a common enough occurrence. But now, at the end of summer, apart from steam rising from boiling water, sweat never put on such a dramatic display!

“Qigong?”

“No, no,” Chen Jue hurried to clarify, realizing the misunderstanding. “It’s just ordinary martial arts.”

Yet even he was a little surprised by the changes in his body. While practicing in the countryside, he’d occasionally felt his pores contract and close on their own, but never before had he been able to sprint several hundred meters without exhausting himself.

Only after catching the thief did he feel an unstoppable surge of heat inside, prompting him to use the finishing posture of the Eight Immortals stance to release heat, like a tightly closed valve suddenly opening, spraying out pent-up steam and sweat. The visible sweat vapor was so conspicuous it immediately drew everyone's attention.

The principle seemed simple enough, but truly mastering it was extraordinarily difficult.

“Ordinary martial arts could never be this impressive!”

“We three are the top sprinters in our unit, but even after chasing this far, we couldn’t keep up with you, comrade. In fact, you kept pulling further and further ahead! Comrade, you’re incredible!” the soldier shook his head, clearly unconvinced by Chen Jue’s explanation. Chen Jue only smiled and said nothing more.

After a brief rest, the group finally recovered their breath. The three soldiers began to confer, one took out a phone to call the police, another stood straight as if reporting the incident to a superior.

Soldiers are soldiers, police are police—their responsibilities differ, and catching and interrogating thieves ultimately falls to the police.

Within five minutes, two police cars from the nearby Chengnan station arrived.

Upon learning that a pickpocket had been caught red-handed on a bus by three passing soldiers, even the deputy chief of Chengnan station, Zhou Qin, was alerted.

“Thank you for your hard work, comrades! I am Zhou Qin, deputy chief of Chengnan station. We’ll handle the follow-up from here,” Zhou Qin said as he disembarked, saluting the three soldiers.

The soldiers returned the salute. “Hello, Deputy Chief Zhou! Actually, it was this comrade skilled in martial arts who caught the thief first—we just assisted after.”

“Martial arts practitioner?” Zhou Qin, seeing the sweat-soaked group, felt puzzled, and glanced at Chen Jue, who stood nearby unsure whether to stay or go. He said, “Alright, since you’ve all worked up a sweat in this heat, why not come to the station for some water to cool off, and make a brief statement? It won’t take much of your time.”

The soldiers nodded; protocol had to be followed. They handed the pickpocket to two arriving officers, then followed Zhou Qin into the police car.

Chen Jue, told he needed to make a statement as well, got in the same car.

The red plastic bag the pickpocket had dropped during his escape contained the stolen woman’s wallet, which the arriving officers retrieved, photographed, and brought back as evidence.

The Chengnan station was only a short drive from the scene, and they arrived in five minutes. Chen Jue, after getting out, chatted briefly with the officer handling his statement, describing the incident in detail and leaving his contact information before departing.

His courageous apprehension of the thief was considered an act of righteousness, and both Zhou Qin and the officer recording his statement praised him verbally. As for rewards or certificates, there were none—after all, it was just a pickpocketing case, and the amount involved was only a few thousand yuan.

Nowadays, people rarely carry large sums of cash; the woman who was robbed had brought some only because she was heading to the city’s wholesale market.

Upon learning her wallet had been recovered, she specially thanked Chen Jue and the three soldiers.

Yet Chen Jue never expected that, shortly after he left the station, the surveillance footage of his five-hundred-meter sprint and heroic thief capture caused quite a stir within Chengnan station.

“Brother Yun! Come take a look at this footage!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing major—just that this guy runs a little too fast!”

“Isn’t it normal to run fast? Otherwise, how could he catch a thief?”

Inside the station, two officers in charge of collecting evidence watched the surveillance video, composed of several camera angles. It clearly showed Chen Jue leaping out the rear window of the bus, overtaking the three soldiers, vaulting over the greenery, and sprinting hundreds of meters to tackle the thief.

His movements were fluid, uninterrupted, with no pause or slowdown—like a scene from an action film.

What amazed them most was the distance: from the bus to the spot where he caught the thief was, by their estimation, at least five hundred, nearly six hundred meters. Yet Chen Jue covered it in less than a minute.

And this was a city street—not a smooth track as in a stadium. Calculating it out, Chen Jue ran each hundred meters in just over ten seconds!

That’s the speed of a national-level athlete!

Moreover, it wasn’t just a hundred meters—he sprinted over five hundred meters without slowing down!

If he ran four or eight hundred meters in the Olympics, he’d surely be on track for gold or silver medals!

“Could the surveillance timestamps be off?”

“No, Brother Yun—I’ve checked several times!” The two officers watched the footage, clicking their tongues in surprise, then reported the situation to Zhou Qin.

Ordinarily, a simple pickpocket case wouldn’t require the deputy chief’s involvement—but with three soldiers involved, the nature of the case changed.

At that moment, Zhou Qin was in his office, meeting with a military officer just arrived from a suburban outpost.

Upon hearing that his subordinates had critical video evidence to report, Zhou Qin cheerfully invited the officer to view it together.

Handled well, the case could even warrant a TV interview or newspaper coverage, promoting local military-police cooperation and social harmony.

But after watching the footage, not only was Zhou Qin astonished—so too was the military officer, whose expression turned equally perplexed.