True Colors (Part 1)

A soft, lingering electronic bell rang out. The time had entered eight in the morning, and another busy yet inefficient day drew back its curtain.

Ronan had waited a long time, but the "Kind Soul" never showed. Seeing that the thugs he had knocked down were more or less recovering, he had no desire to clean up this mess and simply turned to leave.

He did not ask who was targeting him. On one hand, he did not believe these thugs truly knew the inside story. On the other, seeing the needleless injector on the ground and the special solution inside it, he already had a rough guess.

Sitting in the classroom, Ronan did not hear a single word of the teacher's lecture. Spread open before him was a notebook covered in abstract symbols traced with a highlighter. Using the color adjustment function, he turned the lines dark red, making them almost identical to what had appeared in his Meditative State.

Ronan stared at the symbol in his notebook, and it naturally corresponded to the Burning Demon Shadow.

This symbol was strange. When Ronan tried to use it as a core to reconstruct the Burning Demon Shadow's concrete form, he inexplicably felt that every stroke he added would be superfluous.

Those dozen or so intertwined, coiling lines had already captured every trait of the Burning Demon Shadow. They were packed full, leaving him nowhere to begin.

His pen hovered without falling, and the pent-up feeling made him uncomfortable. Ronan simply stopped demanding perfection and casually sketched lines, letting his hand roam freely as a way to relax. Meanwhile, he considered why the abstract symbol had appeared.

There was no doubt that the Burning Demon Shadow had been surrounded and destroyed aboard the warship. Yet the symbol that had appeared on the chains he visualized was just as real.

After thinking it over, Ronan could find only one explanation: while the Dark Heavy Chains had controlled the Burning Demon Shadow, they had at one point analyzed the mysteries of its Core Layer and gained something from it. Though the Burning Demon Shadow had been destroyed, its core traits had still left their mark on the chains and retained a certain degree of function.

Then it had not been the Dark Heavy Chains that warned him of that morning's crisis, but this symbol originating from the Burning Demon Shadow. The Burning Demon Shadow had always been extremely sensitive to Negative Emotions such as fear and brutality, and could use them for its own ends. It was simply a matter of specialization.

Ronan also sensed that after the recent conflict, the symbol's presence had become somewhat stronger than before. Its power seemed to still be constantly recovering.

Could the Burning Demon Shadow be "revived" through the symbol?

Ronan's heart stirred. If that were true, it could not have been better. The Burning Demon Shadow's combat power had been fully displayed aboard the warship. With such a "bodyguard," why would he fear those campus thugs? Even when he entered the Professional Association later, he would have another trump card and be far more at ease.

Was there some way to speed up the Burning Demon Shadow's recovery? Hm?

Ronan suddenly felt resistance at his pen tip. Looking down at his notebook, he saw that the perfectly fine abstract symbol had been drawn into something utterly bizarre. It resembled the Burning Demon Shadow, but its proportions and everything else were completely wrong.

Yet it seemed he could keep drawing.

A strangely compelled thought, along with an inexplicable flash of inspiration, suddenly piqued Ronan's interest.

Most of the time, Ronan's drawing involved "subtraction." He simplified every structure, line, and arrangement of shadows, all to highlight the single most essential trait of the subject.

The only time he had ever done "addition," as he remembered, was when he achieved a breakthrough in "My Heart is a Prison." At the time, he had only an abstract concept, without any concrete image to correspond to it. By constantly pouring out inspiration and filling in details, he had temporarily constructed a grand framework and drawn the "Dark Heavy Chains" out of it.

The current situation was somewhat similar to yesterday's.

He did not have that much inspiration, but once he established a general direction, the related details and clues were still considerable. For example, the needleless injector, the stun gun, and those thugs...

Ronan continued from the clumsy sketch, revising here and filling in there. An image that had originally lain shapeless in the depths of his mind gradually became clearer.

What finally appeared in the notebook was a blurred cluster of buildings, faintly resembling the layout of certain areas within Zhi Xing Institute.

The drawing was rough and hazy. Anyone looking at it would likely be utterly baffled, taking it for nothing more than a crude, unfinished sketch.

But Ronan knew that this drawing was finished. It had already been filled with all his inspiration and known information, and it revealed the most important answer:

At the central area, where the abstract symbol lay, a human silhouette had ultimately formed—a person outwardly fierce but inwardly weak, using exaggerated body language to conceal the fear in his heart.

And also...

Ronan fixed his eyes on the sketch. A layer of firelight seemed to flow across the dark red lines. Illuminated by that "firelight," he felt slightly dazed, as though his mind and body had become detached before and after an out-of-body experience. Yet in that state, much of the vague information in the drawing suddenly became clear:

The target was about three kilometers away, somewhere southwest of the campus. If it corresponded to the Institute's buildings... the Medical Department!

As the clear information surged into his mind one after another, even Ronan himself was stunned.

Could this be a "spiritualist's" technique? It was practically like sleepwalking—casually piecing together all kinds of elements, yet somehow arriving at a relatively clear answer in the end.

But how did those real "spiritualists" work?

Hm, the Medical Department... Ronan suddenly remembered that he had scheduled a physical examination there yesterday. The time... well, it had already passed.

But memories always came in chains. Ronan remembered again that when he logged onto the Secret Star Forum yesterday, an online friend called "uLing," also affected by the Burning Demon Shadow, had said he was taking his wife for a physical examination. He wondered what they had found.

Ronan wanted very much to gather information related to the Burning Demon Shadow. His soft screen was broken, so he used his wristband to connect to the miniature projector built into his desk, accessed the external network, and checked the Secret Star Forum for news.

The moment he logged in, Ronan almost failed to recognize it. The entire forum had been covered in solemn, oppressive shades of gray, without a trace of any other color.

The central display had become the event horizon of a dark black hole, with the title:

The Search Remains Unfinished, the Fallen Spirit Not Far Away—A Memorial Thread for uLing.

Ronan froze for a moment before opening the thread. At the top was an excerpted news report, roughly stating:

A married couple living in the Research Zone went to the hospital for a physical examination yesterday afternoon. After an argument escalated, the wife reportedly suffered a mental breakdown and lost control, stabbing her husband to death in a domestic tragedy.

Below it was a line of heavy, bold text:

Be vigilant! Be vigilant! Be vigilant! The impact of the "Nightmare Incident" exceeds our expectations. Everyone must remain alert and do everything possible to uncover the truth as soon as possible!

Ronan stared at the news report until class ended.

The students noisily dispersed, heading off in different directions toward their next classes. Ronan also rose and left the classroom, but he was not headed for another lecture hall. He was heading for the Medical Department three kilometers away.

However, not long after leaving the classroom, a faint dizziness came over him.