Outside the parking lot security booth.
Officer Han knocked on the glass. The drowsy guard opened his eyes with a weary look.
"What do you want? Are you crazy?"
Usually, cars entering or leaving either triggered the license plate sensor and passed through automatically, or honked to get him to open the gate. Not many people actually came up to the security booth and knocked on the window.
"Watch your mouth. I'm a police officer!" Officer Han said sternly.
The police badge hadn't worked on that guy earlier, but it seemed to work just fine on the guard.
"Uh, officer..."
The guard scrambled to his feet and hurriedly gave a rather sloppy salute.
"All right, all right, you don't have to do that. Why were you cursing at me?"
"Officer, would you believe me if I said it was a misunderstanding? Some crazy guy was knocking on my window earlier, muttering on and on for ages. I didn't want to deal with him, so I just chased him off. I thought he'd come back."
Jiang Yue's expression changed. "How long ago was that?"
"Not that long ago. If you came from that direction, you should've run into him, right?"
"Was he in his forties? Carrying a briefcase?"
"Yeah. He didn't look like he had something wrong with his head, either. No idea what set him off."
Jiang Yue hurriedly asked, "Was he parking here?"
"Not at all. Not a single car has come or gone in the past half hour."
As soon as Jiang Yue heard that, he grabbed Officer Han and took off running.
"Come on! Don't let him get away!"
Officer Han hesitated. "Little Jiang, don't jump to conclusions. The files say the ICU patient, Ke Yunshan, is eighty-five this year. The guy we just saw could practically be his grandson."
Jiang Yue groaned. "Stop talking and run!"
As they neared the security booth, he'd begun to feel uneasy. The feeling was strong, and the lingering aura he'd sensed earlier in Bean Sprout Alley seemed to be faintly clinging to the booth.
He'd been misled by the age, too. He'd seen Ke Yunshan's file: an old man in his eighties, nearing the end of his life.
So when he'd run into a passerby on the phone outside the parking lot, a man around forty, he hadn't even considered that he might be Ke Yunshan.
Only when he neared the booth and sensed that faint aura did he realize something was wrong.
Then his brief exchange with the guard jolted him awake.
In the middle of the night, someone who wasn't parking here had stood at the security booth, muttering away at the guard. There was something plainly strange about that.
And the lingering aura hadn't dissipated from around the booth.
The truth was invisible to the naked eye, but it was already staring them in the face.
The Year Eater!
Stealing other people's years to make himself younger—that was entirely possible.
Although Spirit Intelligence hadn't mentioned any strange abilities possessed by the Year Eater, a reasonable deduction was still worth pursuing.
Perhaps Jiang Yue's attitude had cowed Officer Han.
"Should I call for backup?"
"Why wouldn't you? Planning to save them for the holidays?" Jiang Yue quickened his pace.
They'd left their car a long way off and had been searching on foot, so driving now would only waste time.
Fortunately, there were no side roads between here and their destination.
The two of them sprinted after the man at full speed.
They chased him for several hundred meters but still couldn't see him.
"Lost him again?" Officer Han looked around. They'd reached a crossroads, and there was a surveillance camera right at the intersection.
"I'll have someone check the footage."
Jiang Yue waved him off. "No need. Get someone to block the other end of this road. Describe the guy we just saw. We'll search this way."
"Little Jiang, are you sure?" This was an intersection, and Officer Han couldn't understand what made Jiang Yue so confident in his judgment.
"Foxes don't show their tails unless they're in danger. But when they're in a hurry, they always let them slip." Jiang Yue smiled confidently.
When they'd brushed past the man earlier, he'd been completely unruffled, without a single flaw. He'd seemed like an ordinary person heading home in the middle of the night.
But now, Jiang Yue was a hundred percent certain that the man had been alerted by their arrival and was running away.
Running meant moving faster and using more energy. Even evil spirits gave off some of their own aura. The faster they moved, the more their aura fluctuated, especially since the Year Eater hadn't yet fully evolved.
When it walked normally or stopped briefly, that aura was so faint that Jiang Yue couldn't detect it.
But once it sped up, its tail showed.
The aura was even clearer than it had been in Bean Sprout Alley.
"Officer Han, do you have a photo of Ke Yunshan on your phone?"
"Actually, I do."
Something this strange had happened, so they'd naturally collected the basic information.
"It's him!" One look at the photo made Jiang Yue even more certain.
Officer Han was still completely baffled. "Little Jiang, they look nothing alike."
"If we had facial recognition on site, you could check for yourself. Trust me, the man we just saw was Ke Yunshan. If you had a photo of him in his thirties or forties, you'd recognize him for sure."
"But their ages don't match at all."
"Do you think all those years he stole were just for show?"
"You mean..." Officer Han sucked in a sharp breath. If you could steal other people's years and use them for yourself, wasn't that a way to live forever?
In that instant, he felt as if his entire worldview had shattered.
Now that they'd pinned down the Year Eater's whereabouts, Jiang Yue was no longer in such a hurry. Someone was blocking the other end. If it still got away, then his teammates really were a bunch of pigs.
This was an abandoned road, with a residential complex slated for demolition beside it. Most of the residents had already moved out; all that remained was for the buildings to be torn down.
Places like this were exactly where evil spirits liked to appear.
There wasn't enough yang energy, yin energy was flourishing, and the place was desolate and bleak—a perfect breeding ground for evil spirits.
Jiang Yue was like a hunting dog now, tense and excited.
This was his first time tracking an evil creature, and it was also a beginner mission assigned by Spirit Intelligence. He had a feeling that he was just one step away from completing it.
The bleak moonlight fell over the abandoned complex, making it seem especially forlorn.
The plane trees hadn't yet grown their leaves, and their fallen blossoms lay scattered everywhere, with no one around to sweep them up. The whole place looked even more desolate.
With no one to maintain it for so long, the grass had grown thick in places, reaching halfway up a person's body.
There were bound to be insects, snakes, centipedes, and the like in a place like this, so they had no choice but to proceed with care.
An old trash can lay crookedly on its side. Nearby stood a few battered pieces of exercise equipment, long neglected and covered in rust. None of them could be used.
Jiang Yue stopped at the entrance to one of the buildings.
"It's in this building." He was absolutely certain. The evil aura that had been moving around had grown noticeably fainter here.
The aura was hidden almost perfectly. If Jiang Yue hadn't had the temporary boost from his tracking skill, he might not have been able to pin it down.
"I'll go in." Officer Han finally drew the weapon from his waist.
He held a flashlight in one hand, bracing the other, which held his gun. It was a confident, professional-looking stance.
Jiang Yue said, "No rush. Let's wait."
"Wait? What if he slips away again? He jumped from the eighteenth floor and was fine."
"No matter how many floors he jumps from, there'll be a sound. Besides, he's more nervous than we are right now." Jiang Yue stayed calm.
He had the Hundred Evils Immunity Halo, so he could go in. But he wasn't sure whether he could subdue the other man in a dark building full of unknown dangers—or whether he might be ambushed.
The Hundred Evils Immunity Halo didn't make him immune to every physical attack. A brick could still knock him flat.
The risk was obvious.
If his life were on the line, taking that risk would be worth it.
Given the circumstances, though, waiting was the best option. They'd reached the point where they could sit tight and close the net. Why take the risk?
Most importantly, his mission was to track the Year Eater. At this point, it was almost complete. All he had to do was take the final step.
As for Officer Han, Jiang Yue was only trying to look out for him. Officer Han was armed, so he should be fine. An incompletely evolved evil spirit ought to be afraid of guns.
But it was still an evil spirit, not an ordinary criminal.
There was always the chance something could go wrong.
If the other one lashed out in desperation and counterattacked, Officer Han might be caught off guard and fall victim to a trick. The next thing they knew, he'd be an old man himself. That would be tragic.
"Are we really going to wait?" Officer Han still wasn't sure.
"Your people should be here soon, right?"
"They'll be here any minute."
"Make sure they bring tranquilizer guns." Jiang Yue had thought of many ways to handle it, but it seemed to him that the Year Eater would be safest to deal with while unconscious.
Handcuffs or leg shackles could restrain its movements, but they would do little to limit its ability to steal years.
Officer Han was about to speak when his expression suddenly shifted. He raised his gun. "Don't move! Hands up!"
A figure slowly emerged from the darkness of the pitch-black entrance. Its face was shrouded in gloom, and its eyes burned with vicious hatred. They were nothing like the eyes of a normal human being.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" the figure growled, like a beast about to pounce.
In the moonlight, the Year Eater's face twisted into a savage grimace. Its features seemed to sink into darkness, leaving hollow gaps that looked all the more eerie in the night.
So this was the Year Eater?
Before you continue