Wind and Clouds Stir, Citywide Manhunt! (Please Follow)

Pale moonlight shone upon the words on the Title Page.

Moonlight, soft as gauze, gathered ever more densely around the book, as though slowly being absorbed by those ceremonial symbols.

In a daze, Bai Zhou saw a thick, Ill Omen Black Mist.

Enveloped by the Black Mist was a blurred, shattered, bizarre world.

As far as the eye could see lay a vast ocean of gray sludge, dotted with black spots. Only upon closer inspection did he realize they were living heads rising and falling with the waves.

Every one of those heads bore indescribable pain in its eyes, their sunken faces weeping in grief.

A shattered, curved Blood Moon hung high above that ocean.

Yet that Blood Moon was not a Blood Moon. In his daze, it resembled a human profile, shifting without form.

That was...

—Thousands of different agonized faces, some male, some female, some human, some beast!

A sharp pain stabbed through Bai Zhou's mind. Mad singing echoed wildly in his ears—shrill, hoarse female voices mingled with powerful male tenors, a cacophony of demonic sounds piercing his ears.

The echoes, utterly filthy and utterly evil, polluted Bai Zhou's mind and sent his sanity plummeting.

What did one plus one equal...?

Why... did my hand have five fingers?

Sleep... wakefulness... where was the boundary...?

Was I a man, a woman... or something else?

A blood vessel on Bai Zhou's right hand bulged on its own, turning into a writhing, slimy venomous snake.

It twisted as it slowly raised its head, its body gradually swelling.

—"Not good!"

With a silent cry, Bai Zhou trembled as he raised his left hand and fumbled through his clothes amid countless mad echoes and the spinning world before his eyes.

He pulled out a lollipop.

Then, without hesitation, he put the lollipop into his mouth.

—Alpaca Lollipop!

["Sanity is the most precious treasure of intelligent beings. Thus, God bestowed the Golden Lacquered Apple as a sign of wisdom's grace."]

The lollipop melted the instant it entered his mouth.

As the tart fragrance of apple burst across his tongue, an incomparable wave of coolness immediately rushed into his brain.

The voices around his ears vanished at once, and the dizziness disappeared without a trace.

His sanity returned. Every emotion and stray thought in his heart was suppressed, no longer able to be stirred in the slightest.

There was only absolute silence by his ears, while his heart became as cold as Ya's Crystal Ball.

With a snap—

Having lost the mad emotions that served as nutrients, the writhing venomous snake stopped growing and fell away from Bai Zhou onto the ground.

Then Bai Zhou raised the Short Club and smashed it to death with all his strength.

Bang!

Just one blow.

The venomous snake writhed a few times on the ground, then rapidly shriveled like a punctured balloon.

In the end, it turned into several dry, black little stones. Their material was hard and peculiar, and evil patterns covered their surfaces.

—Clearly, they were the manifestations of the "distortion," "madness," and "loss of control" Bai Zhou had cut away.

Now, Bai Zhou had discarded them on the ground and personally beaten them to death—

For a moment, he actually felt his mind grow several degrees clearer and calmer.

"Those voices just now..."

Those evil, filthy hymns came from nowhere, possessing tremendous penetrative power.

They seemed to echo eternally within some strange world. He had merely overheard them by accident, yet at times Bai Zhou felt as though they had come specifically to pollute him.

Bai Zhou recalled the knowledge he had learned during special training.

Those should have been the pollution and curses inherently carried by the knowledge within the Dead Sea Scrolls.

High-level extraordinary knowledge often carried similar dangers and strange effects.

—Something like the "taboo" of the half Ancient Character inside him, though weakened by an unknown amount.

And after he eliminated every influence of madness, leaving only calm in his mind...

The scattered words hidden within the mad ravings were assembled by Bai Zhou and rearranged into readable order.

Then he finally understood the message conveyed by the line on the Title Page—

The knowledge within the Dead Sea Scrolls was hidden inside the book, but it was not recorded as text in the ordinary sense.

It was a Forbidden Canon.

It was also a container.

Knowledge and inheritance lay within it.

Yet they were not meant to be studied and read by people, but instilled by it into those qualified and meeting the necessary conditions.

In the end, whoever received all the knowledge it imparted would become the new owner of the Forbidden Canon and might even be qualified to create a new chapter of their own within it.

"Forbidden Canon..."

Just as Bai Zhou had expected, the Dead Sea Scrolls was indeed a "scroll-class" Forbidden Canon.

This was not Bai Zhou's first encounter with a so-called Forbidden Canon.

The highly useful Sacred Oath Slash was from a scroll-class Forbidden Canon...

A single remaining page.

—And now, Bai Zhou had obtained an entire book!

The treasure that the Special Management Department and the Blood Worship Cult had fought tooth and nail over now lay quietly in Bai Zhou's hands beneath the moonlight.

However...

Unlocking the Dead Sea Scrolls would be far from easy.

Even for only the First Chapter, the conditions for receiving its knowledge were exceptionally harsh.

—He needed to absorb a massive amount of Undead Death Qi.

As for how massive, it did not elaborate.

—But just as vague requirements were the hardest to fulfill, an unexplained condition was all the more despairingly demanding.

No wonder the former owner had buried the Dead Sea Scrolls underground at the entrance to the Funeral Home Crematorium.

There truly were few places where fresh Undead Death Qi came in every day like this one.

"An Undead Thief..."

Bai Zhou examined the silent Forbidden Canon in his hands and murmured.

Perhaps the former owner had also taken it to many mass graves and cemeteries.

But even so, the Dead Sea Scrolls had only absorbed...

1%!

Not even that.

There was simply no visible possibility of fulfilling the unlocking requirements.

This was a time of peace. Tinghai City had no battlefield, much less the possibility of large numbers of deaths.

Even if he ventured into the Reflection Ruins Realm, according to Ya, he would not encounter many active Undead.

—Undead? Cemeteries?

Within the Reflection Ruins Realm, those were living resources everyone fought to seize!

This "massive amount," whether in terms of quality or quantity, was likely...

A number that would drive any extraordinary individual into despair.

It made one wonder which famous war maniac or evil Butcher in history had successfully unlocked the First Chapter before.

However—

Bai Zhou blinked.

Undead Death Qi?

He knew a place where it was not lacking.

Not lacking at all.

He had personally seen at least a thousand Skeletons.

There was also that mad skeleton who called himself a general.

And there were even more on the battlefield.

—Whether in quantity or quality, they were extraordinarily impressive!

Was it time to make another trip into the Deep Ruins Realm?

But whenever Bai Zhou thought of that insane skeleton's inexplicable duel, a chill ran through his heart.

Unless...

Bai Zhou felt the peculiar texture transmitted by the Dead Sea Scrolls in his hand, deep in thought.

Dead Sea, Undead Death Qi...

How exactly did this book absorb Undead Death Qi?

Was there a possibility like this?

Could the Dead Sea Scrolls actually restrain and suppress skeletal undead?

—It was worth trying.

Even if it did not work, it would be fine.

As long as he found a way around the Undead General, merely absorbing the other Skeletons should be enough to nearly unlock the First Chapter...

"Phew..."

Bai Zhou relaxed and took the lollipop from his mouth.

Emotion returned to his eyes, and his clear gaze became lively and energetic once more.

Looking at the lollipop, now less than half melted, he felt a pang of heartache.

Perhaps the Alpaca Lollipop was even more useful than he had imagined.

—Especially in this Mystic World filled with "distortion," "madness," and "loss of control"!

Bai Zhou hurriedly wrapped it in a tissue and carefully put it away.

It was fine. He had used the Dead Sea Scrolls once, and he could keep using it next time.

Although he had fewer than two lollipops left, as long as he rationed them, one could be used like three!

"And this..."

There was something else he could not forget.

Bai Zhou looked at the strange fragments the venomous snake had turned into at his feet. Following his principle of not wasting anything, he picked them all up.

The moment he touched those stones, Bai Zhou again felt vexed and restless.

Negative emotions rose ever higher within him, and that familiar feeling gradually returned... until Bai Zhou completely put them away.

Perhaps they could become special materials for certain Rituals.

Though he had never seen Ya use any special materials in her Rituals.

Her focus was on convenience of setup and good value for money.

Bai Zhou fell into thought.

Or perhaps they could be made into special "bullets"...

Whoosh—

The shadow of a bird swept over Bai Zhou's head.

Tap.

Footsteps approached from afar, faint and intermittent.

Three in the morning.

At the end of the long street shrouded in pale mist, a hazy figure appeared and slowly ambled over.

Bai Zhou instinctively tensed up first, tightening his grip on the pitch black Short Club in his hand.

Once he saw who it was, he relaxed again.

The knife-wielding Maiden had arrived as promised.

So Ya had come.

Then the bird he had not clearly seen earlier should have been Ya's Crow...

However.

Ya, walking over from not far away, wore a deeply strange expression.

God knew how much effort she had spent finding Dongxing Road.

Although she had a map in hand, she was just like Bai Zhou.

She did not know east from west in the real world either.

Fortunately, the Crow in the sky could provide her with a bird's-eye view.

After searching for a long time, she finally reached this remote stretch of Dongxing Road, only to find that Bai Zhou was not at the intersection.

She had thought something had happened to Bai Zhou, but when she turned her head, she found him standing in front of a shop.

Oh, so he had come here to eat... Had the shop just closed?

Just as Ya was thinking that—

The quiet moonlight shone upon the shop's signboard, allowing Ya to see its contents clearly.

—Naturally, it was the sign that read, "Enjoy eternal peace in the end. We tailor the final page of your life for you."

And Bai Zhou stood beneath that sign, hugging a book and looking inexplicably well-behaved.

At Bai Zhou's feet was a pit he had clearly just dug open, fresh soil gathered around his shoes.

A Funeral Home, a pit in the ground, and a youth waiting.

—To emphasize once again.

It was three in the morning.

Ya: "?"

She wondered if she was seeing ghosts.

—What happened?

In the deep night, her iridescent pupils trembled slightly.

They had only been apart for a little while, yet the young man who had just been full of courage and curiosity about the new world...

Why had he suddenly decided to give up on life?

And...

What was that book Bai Zhou was holding, the one that looked so much like a giant turnip?

When they had parted just now... had Bai Zhou been holding that?

Ya's gaze was somewhat lost.

Inside the base.

Click—

The tightly shut dormitory door opened.

"This is Bai Zhou's dormitory."

The nervous dorm supervisor led the Major and a group of "big shots" inside.

The empty dormitory and the colorful posters covering the walls left everyone stunned.

"Where are the desks? The stools?"

An officer asked in confusion.

The dorm supervisor stammered for a long time, unable to answer.

"..."

The Major in sunglasses looked around, then raised his head toward the posters on the wall.

First, he silently stared for a while at the sunglasses-wearing Terminator robot on one of the posters.

Then he gave a cold order:

"Take down every last one of these posters!"

Riiip—

The harsh sound of tearing rang in everyone's ears.

The posters on the walls were stripped away one by one.

The mottled, weathered marks on the walls came into view.

"This is..."

Everyone's expressions changed to varying degrees.

They were not stains. There was no graffiti. There were no blank spaces.

Dense, overlapping blade marks—some deep, some shallow—covered the walls from top to bottom.

A complete mess.

They were not random. Looking closely, there was an inexplicable pattern to them, one that somehow brought to mind the scene they had just witnessed through the Black Box [Fragment Echo].

—That Holy Light slash condensed into a single point before erupting in an instant.

Between those crisscrossing blade marks, there were also dried, inexplicable bloodstains that had seeped into the walls, speck by speck, spreading into patches.

There were also scorch marks and traces of corrosion from unknown sources.

...The place was riddled with holes. This dormitory was such a wreck that it was almost unbearable to look at.

—Yet no one could bring themselves to speak.

There was only deathly silence.

In a daze, they saw countless desperate chops, thrusts, and blocks carved into the walls.

Faintly, they saw a figure who came here every night to train bitterly, struggle, burn, and temper himself.

The psychological profiler examined those traces, muttering softly under his breath. His expression grew increasingly solemn, and a light sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead.

"He probably wasn't this strong at the beginning."

To see the marks more clearly, the Major slowly removed his sunglasses. His already cold expression became even more chilling.

"Perhaps he grew in secret right under our noses."

"—Did no one hear anything unusual?"

Faced with the Major's question, the Officers all turned their eyes toward the dorm supervisor.

"Th-this..." The dorm supervisor trembled.

An officer waved a hand.

At once, two Soldiers stepped forward and dragged the dorm supervisor away.

"Interesting."

Running his fingers over the cuts in the wall, the Major slowly narrowed his eyes.

Then, under the silent gaze of everyone present, the Major slowly turned around.

"Bai Zhou is a Blood Worship Cult spy. He stole intelligence, aided the Blood Worship Cult's invasion, killed Special Management Department personnel, triggered a Black Box riot, and fled with a Black Box. His crimes are monstrous, and he is exceedingly dangerous!

"In the name of the Special Black Box Control Agency, issue a Wanted Poster. Place Tinghai under martial law. Hunt down Bai Zhou!"

"In my personal capacity, contact our brother departments in the Authorities. I hope they can help keep an eye out for information on this person."

"In the name of Zijing Company, post a high-priced bounty on the Black Market. Dead or alive."

"Also, in the name of the Authorities, order the Public Security Officer department to assist in the search. Once he is found, do not alert him. Report immediately!"

After issuing a series of orders, the Major finally looked at the grave-faced Officers.

At that moment, his expression was exceptionally calm, yet he spoke word by word, each one seeming to carry tremendous weight:

"Five days."

"I give you five days to find him."

"—Then kill him."

His voice was calm,

"If you cannot do it, I will personally act."

"That will mean..."

"I will have no use for any of you again."

The faces of all the Officers instantly turned deathly pale.

"—Yes!"

And so,

Late that night, Branch 36 of the Special Management Department alarmed many departments within the Authorities.

All of Tinghai sprang into action.

Because this was a citywide manhunt.

For a young man who had only turned eighteen a few days ago.