[Name on ID: Jason Meghan]
[Gender: Male]
[Age: Thirty-three]
[Position: Nine Realms Station passenger · Active sectors 41, 51, 55, 57, and 58]
[Employee details: Mr. Meghan is Romanian. He speaks English and French, and his native language is the Banat dialect of Romanian.]
The back of the ID was covered in densely packed notes.
[Years of traveling have made Mr. Meghan somewhat eccentric. Six years ago, after he joined an expeditionary team as a translator and went to RSH (Red Stars Hill [the mountain range where the Red Stars are located]), his mental state steadily deteriorated.]
[In the end, he failed to qualify as a VIP.]
[Misfortune never came alone.]
[Three years ago, Mr. Meghan's attendant received an urgent assignment and left to carry out a mission at the site of a Spirit Calamity. Unfortunately, the attendant disappeared into the underground world.]
[We assigned Mr. Meghan a new attendant from his hometown, in the hope that he might soon escape his nightmares and inner demons.]
[To this day, he still travels through the sectors he knows well, scouting and helping the station troubleshoot problems.]
[Hello, passenger. If you find this ID, please rest assured: he is an experienced and trustworthy veteran. However, he needs some personal space to protect his fragile, sensitive heart.]
In a spacious, brightly lit quarantine hotel, Mr. Meghan sat on the sofa.
He stared at the television with undisguised disdain.
In this remote little city, the TV didn't even have international channels.
And in this hotel, which was being used for quarantine, hardly anyone could understand his English, thick with his native dialect's accent.
He felt as if he were stranded on a desert island, like Robinson, washed ashore with a fever.
Every so often, a few medical workers came to swab his throat. They were Robinson's "Friday."
He clutched his passenger ID and a lighter he'd stolen from the smoking room. Taking advantage of the TV program's raucous noise, he set the ID on fire.
Seated at the coffee table in his quarantine suite, he performed this sacred ritual, swearing an oath and murmuring indistinct words in his native language.
"I'm going to become a hunter. I refuse to accept this."
"I refuse to spend my whole life being ordinary."
"Thirteen years. The companions who set out with me have all gone to deeper, more distant regions. The annual reunion with old friends makes me feel like a clown."
"My attendant, who went through thick and thin with me, isn't by my side anymore."
"I can't become a VIP or a combat employee. This dull clerical job can't keep a wolf like me chained up—I absolutely refuse to amount to nothing."
"Becoming a hunter will be the first page of a new chapter in Jason Meghan's life."
He stood up and gazed at the passenger ID blazing in his hands. It was his past, and he would burn it to ashes in this holy fire.
"Meghan, you're reborn! Meghan, you're reborn!"
He lifted his head, his eyes alight with flames.
"Find your first prey and catch him! Sink your teeth into his neck. Take his journal and the Universal Elixir, and you'll be truly alive again!"
Flames spread across the polymer card, releasing a pungent cloud of smoke.
Mr. Meghan caught a whiff of the acrid stench. It was like smelling the blood and water that came with a newborn's arrival in the delivery room.
His eyes burned with fervor—
—and then the fervor went out.
The smoke had set off the fire alarm, dousing all his passion.
Mist sprayed through the room. The power shutoff tripped, plunging the previously bright room into darkness. The TV shut off at once, too, to prevent the fire suppression system from causing an electrical accident.
Only the midday sunlight fell through the window onto the rug.
Mr. Meghan touched his damp cheek and rubbed at his hair. His eyes were bloodshot, and an inexplicable anger rose in his heart.
"Fuck!"
"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Fuck, fuck!"
"I'm fucking cursed!"
He pointed at the lunch on the table—
—carrot stew and plain white rice, the two things he hated most.
"I hate this food!"
Then he grabbed bottle after bottle of drinks from the minibar.
"Oriental Leaf? Magical Chinese tea?! I hate these drinks!"
The shrill fire alarm rang outside the door.
It made Mr. Meghan's already sensitive nerves fray even further.
"I hate this city! I hate it so much!"
He frantically clawed at his clothes, like a caged beast.
"Jiang Xueming! I hate you so much! Why did I come all the way here to catch you?! You can't even buy a gun in this godforsaken place!"
Just as Mr. Meghan had said, he had become a wolf, ready to tear into anyone he came across.
The security guard and the translator outside worked together to kick the door open.
In just a few short seconds,
Mr. Meghan rubbed his face, composed his expression, and sat back on the sofa with a bottle of Oriental Leaf in his hand.
He unscrewed the cap and slowly savored the taste of the fire suppression water mixed with the magical Chinese tea. Then he smiled amiably. His voice trembled, though it was hard to tell whether he was nervous, excited, or afraid of the security guard.
He greeted them in English and explained, "Sorry. I wanted to have a cigarette and accidentally made a mess in here. I'll pay for it."
The security guard went to deal with the fire alarm.
The young translator, wearing a face mask, spoke to him fluently in English. "Mr. Meghan, you're still under observation, so you can't smoke. This hotel is reserved for medical staff. Please cooperate with us."
Mr. Meghan immediately asked, "Can I call my consulate?"
"The nearest consulate is in the provincial capital, more than two hundred kilometers away. Even if you want someone to help, you'll have to wait until your quarantine is over."
Mr. Meghan asked again, "Could you prepare some different food for me?"
"You've already changed your meals three times. There's nothing we can do if you don't like them. This little city only has these local produce options. We really don't have food from your hometown."
Mr. Meghan pressed on. "Then could you let me out? I have money—a lot of money. If you help me, I'll bribe your supervisor afterward. I'll transfer you money. Is three million enough? What about five million?"
"I've heard that line in telecom fraud cases. Forget it. Public health comes first. I recommend downloading an app and learning a few tricks from the National Anti-Fraud Center."
Mr. Meghan hurried to explain, "I really don't mean to run away. Just help me this once. I'll go out for some fresh air and come right back within three days. No! Two days! No, no, no—just a few hours..."
"Not happening." The young translator rolled her eyes behind her mask. "You've climbed out the window six times today. The security guys have been scooping you up like they're grabbing toys from a claw machine. That bearded guy's a real piece of work. Do you think I'd believe anything you say? They even moved you to the twenty-seventh floor and locked the windows. Please don't climb out again. This is a medical quarantine hotel, not a funeral home."
"Then could you bring me some..." Mr. Meghan bargained, eventually settling on a fallback option. "Could you bring me some movie tapes?"
He pointed weakly at the TV.
"Even a streaming subscription would do. There are so many movies I can't watch."
The young translator muttered, "All right."
After the security guard finished dealing with the fire alarm,
a cleaning lady came in and tidied up. She glared at the bearded man as though he were trash, then fled as if she were avoiding a plague.
Once everyone had left,
there was no bringing back the ferocious look in Meghan's eyes.
The sofa's fabric cover had been replaced with a fresh one. He took off his soaking wet clothes, flopped onto the sofa, and secretly cried for a while, turning into a whimpering little wolf cub.
He sat up, picked up the remote, and cheered himself on.
"Meghan. Pull yourself together! Pull yourself together, Meghan!"
He turned on the TV and picked Prison Break, hoping to get a little of his old feeling back.
"That's right. I'm going to escape from here just like the main character."
He looked at the new bowl of food on the table and talked to himself.
"Someone once escaped from the most terrifying prison in the world with nothing but a spoon. I can do it too. I'm a sexy tough guy! I have a will of steel."
Unfortunately, there were only a pair of chopsticks on the tray. No spoon.
—Mr. Meghan decided to change the channel.
He picked Forrest Gump, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Hachi: A Dog's Tale for a marathon, followed by the Harry Potter collection.
As Tom Hanks appeared on the big screen and the music of "Forrest Gump Suite" played again,
he vaguely recalled the days when Jason Meghan was still new to life as a passenger, hiding in a garage to watch movies with his female attendant.
Meghan had prepared tissues. He blew his nose and wiped his tears, then picked up the food he didn't like and tried to learn how to use chopsticks.
He felt as clumsy as the child on the screen, as awkward as Forrest himself.
He ate, watched, cried, and thought.
The Armadillo Hunters of this world were so fierce and ruthless. The veteran hunters could handle the hardships he'd faced in his own life, then easily overcome them and go hunting.
Being a bad guy was hard. Becoming a superstar in the underworld was harder. Hunting passengers with no weapons, no one to help, no grasp of the language, and no familiarity with the place—while sporting a bright red health code—was harder still.
When Forrest Gump started running on the TV,
Mr. Meghan had a few grains of rice at the corner of his mouth, and a little grease in his beard. The vegetable leaf caught between his teeth joined the growl of his throat, howling in defiance.
"Run, Forrest! Run!"
He shouted, holding his chopsticks and bowl, as if he'd found a new direction in life.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the living room. Like Robinson Crusoe in the castaway tale, standing there in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, he roared at life with a deafening cry.
"Run, Forrest! Run!"
He watched the restraints fall away on TV as the protagonist ran faster and faster.
And right then—
—at that very second,
Jason Meghan's eyes flicked toward the window.
The twenty-seventh floor no longer seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.
He went to the window, wearing nothing but his underwear, and carefully examined the steel latches and hex nuts around its frame.
They were like Forrest's leg braces. Meghan felt as if all he had to do was move his legs and he could take them apart.
The airport terminal in the distance was calling to him.
He could hear the planes taxiing, their engines ringing out like gulls.
He could feel it—the pumps at work, the pipes filling the planes' tanks with life. That ineffable power swept him up in the movie's background music, and he could barely contain himself.
Just as he was about to act—to take apart the window lock, climb down the building, and run toward a new life—
a bus pulled up in the terminal plaza, and more than ten passengers got off one after another.
Years of underground adventures had given Mr. Meghan a remarkable sense of Inspiration.
In that instant, every pore on his body shrank. His eyes went wide, and he froze as if struck by lightning.
He could barely breathe. His blood seemed to slow, and his limbs and joints grew stiff.
The flash of Inspiration felt as if two enormous hands had clamped around his heart and the major blood vessels in his neck. His face turned deathly pale.
He crouched down at once, his back against the wall, and pressed both palms flat against it as if afraid someone might see him. Terror shone in his eyes.
His nerves were on edge, and the sunlight streaming through the window above seemed painfully bright.
He couldn't look directly at that person—the familiar man he'd seen countless times in his target photos over the past few days.
That cold, severe man. That slender, short man.
The prey who had returned from his first trip on the train, and who, in Mr. Meghan's mind, should have been as defenseless as a newborn.
That man was Jiang Xueming.
At the airport terminal plaza,
Seventh Brother had booked the plane tickets in advance.
Xueming held his younger sister's hand and asked about what she wanted to do in the future.
"You'll graduate in less than a year. Where do you want to go?"
Bailu said innocently, "I want to go to an art academy! China Academy of Art, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University Academy of Arts—I have great grades in my academic subjects. Brother, you'd be great at teaching me to draw!"
Xueming turned his head meaningfully and looked toward the cluster of buildings east of the airport.
He'd sensed something just now—some strange feeling of Inspiration seemed to be watching him. It had appeared for just a moment, then vanished.
Still, this kind of thing had happened often in his life before.
It was a lot like Seventh Brother suddenly acting crazy last night and sneaking over to crouch beside his bed. It felt much the same as what he'd just sensed.
He didn't pay it much mind. He was delighted to hear that his sister was doing well in school.
"I'll be waiting for your good news. Whichever university you get into, I'll move to that city and settle down there to take care of you."
Meghan waited for his body to come back under the control of his own will.
It took about a minute for him to escape the terror his brain had conjured and return to reality.
This veteran passenger had relied on this extraordinary Inspiration to survive one calamity after another in the underground world.
His face was covered in cold sweat, but he remained proud and stubborn as he weighed the situation.
He absolutely couldn't let Jiang Xueming become his inner demon, a terrifying barrier in the mind of a rising star of the underworld.
He quickly managed to convince himself. He postponed his kidnapping plan targeting Jiang Xueming by half a month—not because he was scared, of course. He still had to quarantine for fourteen days.
Then he sat back down in front of the sofa.
The movie was still playing.
Life went on.
Before you continue