Baiting with His Own Body

The ridicule and disdain within Scotland Yard toward Constable Arthur Weston's "eyewitness report" came as no surprise to Lin Jie. The stubborn old policeman was ordered to take leave and reflect on his actions.

Meanwhile, the two I.A.R.C. investigators seemed to have evaporated from the Whitechapel District. For two consecutive days, they never again appeared within Lin Jie's field of vision.

This sudden calm did not make Lin Jie relax. Instead, it only intensified the sense of crisis in his heart.

He knew this was by no means the enemy giving up the hunt. It was more like an experienced beast deliberately holding its breath before a kill, waiting for its prey to expose an opening on its own.

Lin Jie knew he could not keep waiting. Passive defense would only cause him to gradually lose every shred of initiative, until he was completely strangled by this invisible web.

He had to act, and in a way no one expected, stir this stagnant pool into turmoil once more.

After confirming that his latest hideout, an abandoned print workshop, was temporarily safe, Lin Jie made a decision that was practically insane.

He would take the initiative to seek out the UMA codenamed "Mist Walker."

Since he could not obtain intelligence through normal channels, he would create intelligence in the most primitive and dangerous way possible.

He would use himself as bait.

The plan sounded no different from suicide, but Lin Jie was not acting on impulse.

After several days of observation and studying the sketches in Cartographer's diary, he had gained a deeper understanding of his invisible enemy.

Mist Walker's hunting habits were extremely cautious. It preferred the most isolated and socially forgotten individuals.

Its targets were low-class prostitutes wandering alone late at night, dead drunk.

Their bodies were weak, their minds muddled, and even if they disappeared, it would take a long time before anyone noticed.

Lin Jie concluded that this caution stemmed from its fear of "accidents." It loathed every variable that might disrupt its perfect "feeding ritual."

And what Lin Jie intended to do was become the greatest "variable."

He would imitate the UMA's preferred prey, disguise himself as a perfect target, walk into its hunting ground, then use his own insignificant pebble to pry at that enormous, precise killing machine and force it to reveal a crack while operating.

It was a plan that walked along a blade's edge, with incredibly exacting requirements for the "disguise." A mistake in any detail could lead to utter ruin.

After nightfall, Lin Jie began his preparations.

First, he needed to change his appearance.

A healthy East Asian man with clear, bright eyes would never become Mist Walker's target.

He mixed the leftover ink in the print workshop with dust and carefully smeared it across his face, creating a sickly, sallow, emaciated look of long-term malnutrition.

He then tore open his already ragged clothes, making them look even more tattered as they hung loosely from his body.

The most crucial step was changing his bearing and gait.

He spent a shilling on a bottle of the cheapest gin from a black-market liquor seller.

This hard liquor, known as "Old Tom," was poison used by London's lower class to numb their nerves.

Lin Jie merely sniffed its pungent scent, tinged with botanical flavoring, and already felt dizzy.

He did not drink it. Instead, he poured most of the bottle over his clothes, soaking himself thoroughly in the heavy stench of alcohol.

Finally, he needed a set of "prey" clothes.

He slipped into a rubbish heap near the Rat's Nest apartments from before and, fortunately, found an old long dress caked in mud, along with an equally filthy headscarf someone had thrown away.

The outfit gave off a nauseatingly sour, rotten stench, but to Lin Jie, it was the perfect camouflage.

When he had put on the entire outfit, the rather handsome young man in the mirror had completely vanished.

In his place stood a small, ragged vagrant reeking of alcohol, whose gender was difficult to distinguish.

He hunched his back and imitated the unfocused eyes and staggering gait of a drunk, deliberately emptying his gaze until he looked no different from the wretches of Whitechapel District whose souls had been utterly crushed by life.

At eleven o'clock at night, Whitechapel District entered its most "lively" and most dangerous hour of the day.

Lin Jie emerged from the shadows and began wandering through Mist Walker's core hunting grounds.

He had carefully designed his route, linking every previous crime scene and lingering for long periods in those unlit, neglected dead-end alleys.

The cold night wind swept past, carrying rubbish and dust from the ground.

Lin Jie felt an unprecedented loneliness and fear.

He was not a professional actor. Maintaining such a complete disguise was a tremendous drain on his mind.

He could feel the ill intent in the stares of street thugs and pimps, but after sizing him up, they all lost interest and looked away.

A drunken vagrant whose gender could not even be discerned had no value to be exploited.

The disguise... had succeeded.

Now all that remained was to wait for the truly deadly tracker to take the bait.

His only support was the Webley revolver hidden beneath his wide sleeve.

He did not hold the gun in his hand. Even the faintest gleam of metal could expose him.

He merely kept his wrist against the grip, feeling the faint coolness transmitted by the companion scale of the Deep Sea Resentful Woman, which could soothe the fear in his heart.

Time passed second by second.

Lin Jie's nerves had been stretched to their limit, and he began to doubt whether his judgment had been wrong.

Perhaps Mist Walker had no desire to hunt tonight? Perhaps his disguise had long been riddled with flaws before its inhuman senses?

Just as he reached a narrow alley named George Field, where there was almost no light at all, he stopped.

This was one of the areas marked on the map with the highest danger rating.

He leaned against the wall, slowly slid down, curled up in the corner, and pretended to be completely drunk and unconscious.

He made his breathing slow and faint, turning himself into a heap of discarded rubbish that blended into the surroundings.

Suddenly, a faint trace of sulfur drifted into his nostrils.

It was here!

Lin Jie's heart skipped a beat, but his body remained absolutely still.

This UMA possessed extremely high intelligence. Before launching a formal attack, it would certainly conduct one last observation and test.

Any reaction that did not fit the situation would immediately alert it, and then it would vanish without a trace.

He could only gamble that it would believe everything it saw before it.

Gamble that this tired, filthy, alcohol-reeking "shell" was a perfect, harmless prey.

The sulfurous smell seemed to grow stronger, while the darkness around him became deeper than before.

The light seemed to have been swallowed by some invisible force, plunging this already dim alley into absolute darkness where he could not see his hand before his face.

Lin Jie could sense that some "thing" was silently "seeping" out from the shadows on the walls.

He could not see it, but he could "feel" it.

It was an icy, reptilian gaze focused upon him, sweeping over him inch by inch as it assessed the quality of this meal.

Lin Jie forced himself to remain "unconscious," without even letting his eyelids tremble.

But the hand hidden beneath his sleeve had already slowly pulled back the hammer of the Webley revolver into firing position.