Flame Crow

Chris is dead.

Only five hours had passed since he was taken in by the Police Officer, and a living person had become a cold corpse.

This was Sean's first time seeing a living person dead with his own eyes, and the deceased was his friend. The white cloth only covered Chris's body, not his head. When he saw the pale, ashen, stiff face with purple lips that belonged to Chris, his pupils contracted sharply, his heart leaped into his throat, and he almost suffocated.

It was then that he understood why Quill had said it would be difficult for Chris to recover.

Why he had said Chris couldn't communicate normally even when emotionally stable.

Because Chris was already dead.

Quill's gentle smile remained on his face, appearing exceptionally bright under the stark white lights, so bright it even held a hint of malevolence, clashing with the cold, grim atmosphere of the morgue. His tone was as gentle as ever, yet Sean heard a chilling dread within it.

"Mr. Sean, do you have any questions?"

"If you can't communicate with him normally, I can answer for you."

In that instant, a strong sense of crisis surged through Sean. He suppressed his wildly beating heart, slipped his right hand into his pocket, and his voice sank like a stone dropped into the ocean: "You killed him."

It wasn't a question.

He was stating a fact.

The injury Chris sustained from hitting the wall wasn't that serious; he hadn't even seen much blood. It certainly wasn't fatal. Even if the hospital had deliberately abandoned treatment, Chris shouldn't have died so quickly. The only explanation was that he had been murdered.

Because the Witch Hunt was real, and Chris was a Wizard.

Floris Hospital was the "they" Chris had mentioned!

Quill noticed Sean's movement, his eyes becoming playful, as if he had encountered something interesting.

"You brought a gun?" he asked.

Sean didn't answer, feigning ignorance: "Why kill him?"

"If I told you I didn't kill him, that he used Magic to control my scalpel to try and kill me, but failed and accidentally killed himself, would you believe me?" Quill spread his hands innocently.

Sean stared at Quill, his eyes burning with rising anger.

"Oh, sorry, did I just say the word 'Magic'?" Quill seemed to just realize, patting his head. "Look at me, I must have talked too much with your friend lately and been influenced by him. In reality, where are there any Wizards in this world? It's all just the innocent fantasies of patients."

"On the other hand, Mr. Sean."

"Although our country allows individuals to own firearms, they are generally not carried around. You're here at the hospital to visit a friend, so why are you carrying a gun?"

"I guess you believed Chris's words, thinking that the world we live in has a so-called truth, and a mysterious organization that specifically hunts those of you who know the truth. You suspect our Floris Hospital is such an organization, and you felt danger, so you brought a gun, right?"

"You seemed to be observing the garden environment earlier, but in reality, you were planning an escape route."

"I must say, you are very cautious, Mr. Sean."

"But it's a pity, you're overthinking it. The truth of the matter is, you are also sick." Although he spoke with regret, a morbid excitement showed on Quill's face. His eyes under his glasses were sharp and greedy, like a hawk spotting its prey. "Based on your performance just now, I can preliminarily conclude that you also suffer from the same delusion as Chris, and it has severely affected your cognition. So my suggestion is..."

"Stay here, Mr. Sean."

"I've already introduced you to the situation at Floris Hospital. Our facilities here are excellent, and you've seen it all along the way. We will absolutely not let Mr. Sean suffer any grievances."

"We are a private hospital, so the fees are indeed quite expensive. However, Mr. Sean is a well-known novelist, and his monthly royalties are more than a year's salary for us working people. Mr. Sean should be able to afford this amount."

"Please rest assured, Mr. Sean, recuperating here will not affect your work. On the contrary, I can help Mr. Sean improve his work efficiency. I can specially customize a small dark room for you, where you won't be allowed to eat until you reach your word count for the day. What do you think?"

By the end, Quill's address to Sean had changed from "you" to "you" (polite form), truly treating Sean as his client. He also knew Sean's profession—he had known from the beginning. His polite demeanor at the entrance earlier was all his acting and pretense. Quill's true objective was to keep Sean at the hospital!

His once refined face now appeared distorted in Sean's eyes. The polite smile that should have been endearing was cast pale by the light, exuding an indescribable strangeness.

Sean's fingers were already on the trigger, his nerves taut. The large pocket bulged slightly from the barrel of the gun. His voice was frozen by the cold air: "So Floris Hospital can arrest people with impunity?"

"No, no, no, I'm not arresting you." Quill corrected with a smile. "You came to our hospital voluntarily. Mr. Sean came to see Dr. Quill for treatment. Dr. Quill diagnosed his condition, and Mr. Sean stayed here to cooperate with our treatment for the sake of early recovery."

"The admission procedures are already being processed and should be sent over soon."

Quill smiled gently, "Mr. Sean will sign, right?"

The procedures he had instructed the staff to handle downstairs were not for Sean's convenience to leave later, but to ensure Sean couldn't leave.

"What if I don't cooperate?"

"You will cooperate."

Quill looked at his bulging pocket and smiled, "Believe me, Mr. Sean, firing a gun is definitely not a rational act. It will attract our professional security guards and add another symptom to your medical record."

"Besides, you are just a frail writer. With your marksmanship, you might not be able to kill me."

Quill took out a delicate scalpel from his chest, his smile conceited and sinister. "Our distance is within seven steps."

The thin scalpel blade gleamed coldly. Sean could feel its sharpness and even imagine it easily slicing open Chris's abdomen.

Quill, holding the scalpel, approached Sean step by step. Each of his steps felt like a blow to Sean's heart. The surrounding cold air seemed to surge from all directions like a tide. Sean had never felt such immense pressure—not even when he encountered robbers at a bank and faced the dark muzzle of a gangster's gun, he hadn't felt this suffocated.

But he didn't retreat.

Sean met Quill's gaze directly, raised his cocked pistol, and aimed it at his forehead.

"Take one more step, and we die together."

Quill hadn't expected Sean to remain calm under his deliberate pressure. He saw a determination in Sean's eyes—he would really shoot, even if it meant a mutual kill.

"Mr. Sean, are you very confident in yourself?" Quill licked his tongue, his smile turning manic. "How about this: I'll count to three, you shoot, I'll draw my knife. Let's see who's faster."

"Three."

"Two."

"One..."

The air was pressed to an extreme at this moment.

But just as Quill uttered the last number, an angry, middle-aged male voice abruptly came from the stairwell.

"Quill, Sean? What are you two doing here!?"

The voice seemed to possess some kind of magic, instantly dissolving the life-or-death tension between the two.

Quill's gaze passed over Sean, and he looked in surprise at the man who had suddenly appeared. "Vice Dean?"

"Why are you here?"

The man called "Vice Dean" ignored him and directly addressed Sean in an irrefutable tone, "Sean, come here."

Sean glanced at Quill, turned around without a word, and walked towards the man.

He was so calm that Quill almost thought he knew the Vice Dean and had known he would come.

But in reality, the gun in Sean's hand was not put away; it was still loaded.

He didn't know any Vice Dean, nor did he know why the man had suddenly appeared. He only knew that at this moment, everyone at Floris Hospital was his enemy. Judging by his position, this man was more dangerous than Quill.

But there was one benefit.

The Vice Dean's status was "noble." He wouldn't be looking for someone to talk to in the morgue.

Quill's surprised expression proved this point as well; the Vice Dean wouldn't normally come here.

As long as he got out of this building, his chances of escape would be greater.

Even if the Vice Dean, to save trouble, really spoke to him at the stairwell, he would be closer to the exit.

As Sean had expected, the Vice Dean indeed led him downstairs.

Quill didn't stop him or say anything more, only giving Sean a meaningful look when Sean turned back to him.

Sean understood his lip movements: "Don't celebrate too early, you can't escape."

It had stopped raining outside, and the sky was gradually clearing.

Emerging from the morgue, Sean remained highly vigilant.

But to his surprise, the Vice Dean didn't make things difficult for him, nor did he speak. He remained silent the entire time, leading him around the main building, out of the hospital through the main entrance, and into a small alley.

The moment he stepped out of the hospital, Sean's tense nerves finally relaxed slightly. He realized his back was cold—it was already drenched in sweat, and the shirt under his jacket was sticking to his back.

"Weren't you brave just now, wanting to take Quill down with you? I thought you weren't afraid." The man noticed Sean's unusual state and mocked him, but his voice was entirely different from the male voice before; it was a strange, clear, ethereal girl's voice.

Sean stared blankly, his face full of astonishment as he watched the "Vice Dean's" face contort and change before his eyes. His physique also "shrunk," transforming from a man around fifty years old, dressed in a suit, into a graceful and beautiful young girl in a fiery red dress.

Sean: "???"

"You, you this..."

"Witch Potion, haven't you heard of it?"

The girl, with her hands on her chest, looked at him and said, "I remember you wrote about it in your book."

He had indeed written about it.

It was an alchemical magic potion that could temporarily change a person's gender. If the quality was high enough, it could also significantly alter the user's physique and appearance. A common physical identification method involved the tail feathers of a fantasy creature called a "Smell Crow," which could detect if a target had taken the potion.

Speaking of feathers, Sean suddenly realized, "Are you the Flame Crow from last night?"

The girl's beautiful eyebrows twitched slightly. "Quite clever."

She guessed so quickly that they had met last night.

"You're not bad-looking either." She sized up Sean, not expecting that this shut-in writer, after a slight effort to dress up for going out, would actually look surprisingly good. It wasn't a loss to save him.

Sean: "..."

Having just escaped from a tense and oppressive situation, his emotions couldn't shift that quickly. He couldn't keep up with the girl's erratic thoughts. Normally, he probably would have complimented the girl's beauty. A writer's mind was never short of compliments for the opposite sex, but now, all he could say were two words:

"Thank you."

"No need." The girl waved her hand. "You won't be so lucky next time."

She was at Floris Hospital on business. When she entered the city yesterday, she heard someone had escaped from the hospital. She knew this person might die and wanted to try to save them, but unfortunately, she was too late. By the time she arrived, the police were already there to arrest them. Today, she sneaked into the hospital and found Sean being threatened by Quill, so she went to help.

It was all done on the fly; saving one person was saving one person.

She didn't know Chris or Sean. Putting aside their looks, it didn't matter much to her who she saved.

"So you deliberately flew past my house last night to warn me?" Sean asked.

"Yes." The girl said, "But you didn't listen."

It wasn't just her; Chris was also warning Sean that the Witch Hunt was cruel. Don't get involved with the mysterious, and definitely don't become a Wizard, as that would only turn you into their prey.

"Don't go to Floris Hospital anymore. As long as you don't actively step through the main gate, they shouldn't arrest you," the girl instructed.

Sean: "Should?"

"They usually only capture real Wizards," the girl replied.

"I've read the stories you write. The protagonist is named Karl Black? For you to know him, you should be an Awakened One, but you've only awakened partial cognition and haven't gained Magic, which means your level of awakening isn't enough."

Incomplete awakening meant Sean had the potential to become a Wizard, but it wasn't high, at least not at this stage. Ordinary low-level Wizards couldn't even block pistol bullets and would become just another victim in the Witch Hunt.

"I advise you to just be a normal person," the girl suggested. "At least you'll survive."

Sean was silent for a moment, then shook his head. "It's no use. They've already set their sights on me."

Since Quill knew his profession, he must have read his books. In other words, Quill also knew he was an "Awakened One," and he was already on Floris Hospital's "patient list."

Sean didn't understand the exact meaning of Awakened One; he hadn't had related dreams yet, but he could roughly guess it was an awakening of consciousness, like opening one's eyes to the world.

The reason Floris Hospital hadn't acted against him was likely because of his novels—Quill, that madman, actually wanted to lock him up to write...

His intuition told Sean that the bizarre yet realistic worldview he had "shaped" in his books might help people awaken more easily, thereby helping them find more potential Wizards.

And then round them all up.

He was being used.

The day he lost his usefulness would be the day he died.

That's why Chris told him to stop writing and leave the city.

The only way to hide was to change his identity, change his profession, and live a new life, without revealing any clues.

But Sean wasn't that kind of person.

Just like he went to Floris Hospital despite knowing it might be dangerous; just like he pointed a gun at Quill's forehead even though he knew he might die by Quill's scalpel.

Sean remembered Chris's words—"When they say you're a Wizard, you are too."

He wanted to change it to: "When they say you're a Wizard, you'd better be."

Sean could feel the girl's goodwill and knew that ordinary low-level Wizards weren't much stronger than mortals. Some Wizards who focused solely on offensive spells were glass cannons even at higher levels, which aligned with the settings in his books.

But precisely because of this, he wanted to become a Wizard even more.

Because whether it was Chris, Quill, or the Flame Crow Girl in front of him, they were all proving one thing to him—everything in his book was real. His novel unfolded from a third-person perspective, with the author acting like an observer, witnessing heroes and epics throughout the river of history and recording them in words. That's why the girl believed he had awakened his cognition and seen the truth of the world.

Quill probably thought the same.

However, what he awakened might not be cognition, but "memory."

In his dreams, he wasn't an observer recording history, but a participant in everything, experiencing it all from a first-person perspective.

These stories were all his personal experiences.

He wasn't a supporting character, but the protagonist.

Karl Black was himself.

This book was called The Moon and the Knight, and in the novel, it had a special category tag—

It was called "Invincible Flow."