At nine that night, at the Third Designated Shooting Range of the Donghai City Public Security Bureau.
"Bang—!"
The last bullet left the barrel with a dull roar. The scorching shell casing traced a graceful arc through the air before landing at his feet with a crisp clink.
Qin Feng lowered the M-7 "Spiritbreaker" pistol in his hand, a faint wisp of smoke still rising from its muzzle.
He did not look at the target. Instead, he closed his eyes and felt the lingering tremors in his arm muscles, along with the strange sensation of becoming one with the cold steel in his hand.
[Item Affinity]
The moment he gripped the gun, this passive skill had quietly activated.
The gun's center of gravity, the angle of recoil, the trigger pull... all that cold data seemed to turn into a warm current, instinctively absorbed, analyzed, and optimized by his body.
After advancing to the Form Observation Realm, his minute control over every muscle had pushed that optimization to its limit.
The electronic target system faithfully transmitted the result to the screen: 9.8 rings.
"Monster..." a hoarse voice sounded from beside him.
Qin Feng opened his eyes and saw an elderly instructor with graying temples and the rank of Level 3 Police Superintendent on his shoulders. The man was staring fixedly at the screen, then looking at him as though he were an alien.
"Instructor Chen, I just got lucky." Qin Feng removed his goggles and noise-canceling earmuffs, rubbing his slightly swollen ears.
"Lucky?" Instructor Chen rushed over in a few strides, his spittle nearly spraying Qin Feng's face. "I've been here for over twenty years, and I've never seen luck like yours! Kid, tell me honestly—were you some sharpshooter from a military compound, coming here to mess with us?"
"Reporting to Instructor Chen, my background is spotless. I am a history student at Donghai University." Qin Feng stood at attention and answered with complete seriousness.
Instructor Chen's expression twisted even further, as if he had swallowed an entire lemon.
He pointed at Qin Feng's target sheet. The bullet holes were densely clustered around the bullseye, with almost none below the ninth ring. "Three hours! Three hours ago, you held a gun like a girl! And now you're telling me you're a student?"
He simply could not understand it.
During the first half hour, the kid's bullets had scattered across the target like flower petals blown through the sky.
But later, it was as if he had formed some mysterious connection with that gun. Every adjustment after every shot was terrifyingly precise.
That horrifying learning ability and bodily control were unbelievable.
"You brat..." Instructor Chen pointed at Qin Feng, unable to speak for a long while. In the end, he could only force out a sentence through clenched teeth. "...Remember to sweep up all the shell casings!"
After saying that, he shook his head and left, muttering things like "weird," "unscientific," and "young people these days..." His back looked somewhat desolate, as though more than twenty years of professional knowledge had been overturned.
Qin Feng watched him leave, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
Fixed targets were no problem, but moving targets required prediction and dynamic vision. Muscle memory alone was not enough.
"Looks like I'll still need firepower suppression against anything more agile."
As he gathered the shell casings scattered across the ground, he glanced down at the magazine he had brought and felt a pang of pain.
Ten Psionic Bullets, five contribution points each. Firing one magazine meant spending fifty contribution points.
Extravagant. Far too extravagant.
"Good steel should be used on the blade."
Qin Feng carefully put the pistol and the gold-stamped firearm permit back into the gun bag.
Ordinary bullets were for small fry. Psionic Bullets were the final surprise reserved for the "clients."
When he walked out of the shooting range, the cool night breeze dispelled the smell of gunpowder from his nose.
Qin Feng flagged down a taxi.
"Donghai University Town, please."
The car merged into the glittering stream of traffic.
Leaning against the back seat, Qin Feng opened the "Yellow Springs" app again and tapped the D-Class commission.
[Commission ID: D-087] [Event: Ghost Call]
He read through it line by line, his fingertip slowly sliding across the screen.
[Victim One: Li Ming, a third-year Civil Engineering student. Died after falling from a building. Prediction: 'You will fall from a great height and be smashed to pieces.'] [Victim Two: Wang Ya, a second-year Foreign Languages student. Drowned in the dormitory bathtub. Prediction: 'Water will cover your nose and mouth, and you will suffocate to death.'] [Victim Three: Sun Peng, a fourth-year Computer Science student. Electrocuted to death at an internet café. Prediction: 'The electric current will scorch your nerves and bring release.']
Qin Feng's gaze sharpened.
This was not a ghost directly killing people, but a far more ingenious method.
It did not act personally. Instead, through some unknown medium, it forcibly imposed the concept of "death" onto its victims, then allowed coincidences in reality to complete the fatal chain.
A classic rule-based urban legend.
To break the situation, he had to find and destroy the "source" that set the rules before they took effect.
"University Town. We're here." The driver's voice interrupted Qin Feng's thoughts.
He paid and got out. The university town was still lively at night, with the smoke and smells of barbecue stalls mingling with the laughter of young men and women, full of the vitality of everyday life.
But through Qin Feng's vision, enhanced by the Form Observation Realm, the world revealed an entirely different sight.
Threads of gray-black resentment, thinner than hairs and carrying an ominous aura, drifted steadily toward the same direction.
Following the flow of resentment, his gaze eventually settled on a student dormitory building not far away.
The building looked as though it had been splashed with a thin layer of ink, utterly out of place among the brightly lit dormitories around it.
With the pistol in his sports bag, Qin Feng walked toward the building at an unhurried pace.
Police tape had already been set up downstairs. Several police cars flashed red and blue lights, driving away the surrounding darkness while drawing plenty of curious students.
Qin Feng naturally blended into the crowd and pricked up his ears to catch the discussions around him.
"It's this building. The one who died was Senior Sun Peng from the Computer Science department."
"It was awful. My classmate said he got into an accident at an internet café outside campus—the computer tower leaked electricity... But why did the police seal off his dormitory?"
"You don't know? The police suspect he had psychological problems and may have committed suicide. They came back to search his belongings and diary! And before the accident, he received that ghost call too!"
A girl lowered her voice, her tone full of terror. "The call said he would be electrocuted to death, and then... it really came true! Everyone in our dorm is terrified now. We don't even dare answer unfamiliar calls alone at night."
So that was it.
Qin Feng understood. The police operation had instead made things easier for him.
He circled around to the back of the dormitory building and, under the cover of night, discovered a half-open restroom window.
After checking that no one was around, he pushed off with his toes, climbed onto the windowsill as lightly as a cat, and silently slipped inside.
The instant he entered the hallway, that oppressive sensation intensified several times over. The air seemed to become viscous, and every breath carried a cold, damp chill that drilled straight into his bones.
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