Three-Way Standoff

Mist Walker gathered every ounce of its venom and strength into one final strike, crossing the distance between life and death in an instant.

Lin Jie's pupils contracted at the sheer speed. He could even see his own startled face reflected in the obsidian-like bone spike.

Never had the shadow of death felt so real and cold as it did now.

His body could not keep up with that speed beyond all reason. Dodging was no longer possible, and he had no time to raise the Webley revolver in his hand again.

At that critical moment, a gunshot completely unlike Lin Jie's old revolver—deeper and more powerful—exploded from the entrance of the alley!

A bullet wreathed in ghostly blue flames, trailing a visible spiral of air, arrived after yet struck first, hitting Mist Walker's fully formed arm with perfect accuracy.

"Boom!"

The blue flames did not burn. The instant they touched Mist Walker's body, they rapidly spread across it with a series of cracking sounds.

That body made of shadows was actually being "frozen" at a visible speed!

A thin layer of frost shimmering with blue radiance covered half its body, bringing its desperate charge to an abrupt halt less than half a meter from Lin Jie. It became a bizarre ice sculpture filled with hatred and unwillingness.

Immediately afterward, another figure burst from the shadows at the mouth of the alley like a tiger descending the mountain.

It was the burly Marcus.

He gripped an oddly shaped weapon, something like a shotgun but with a shorter barrel, its muzzle aimed directly at the temporarily frozen Mist Walker.

"Ether Binding!" Marcus roared as he pulled the trigger.

There was no flame, no deafening blast.

What erupted from the muzzle of that strange weapon was an invisible force field that spread outward like ripples.

The force field instantly enveloped Mist Walker. Around its freshly frozen body, the air twisted violently, and the entire space seemed compressed and bound.

Bound by both frost and force field, the UMA released a shrill wail that echoed only within the mind.

At last, a calm and unhurried figure slowly emerged from the alley entrance.

It was Barton in the top hat.

He held an exquisite Mauser C96 pistol, wisps of smoke still curling from its barrel.

Without even looking at the fully suppressed UMA, he fixed his sharp gaze on the dumbfounded Lin Jie deeper in the alley.

"Looks like we arrived at just the right time," Barton said, as calm as ever.

After the violent roller coaster from the brink of death to a narrow escape, Lin Jie's mind finally began functioning again.

He immediately understood the situation before him.

The I.A.R.C. investigators had been watching him from nearby all along.

They had allowed him to serve as bait and contend with this terrifying UMA. Only after he exposed the monster's invisibility and seriously wounded it did they calmly appear as "saviors" to reap the final reward.

What a fine case of letting the snipe and clam fight while the fisherman profits.

Anger welled up in Lin Jie, but even more overwhelming was a sense of helplessness.

Before absolute power and sophisticated equipment, the little "cleverness" he had once been so pleased with seemed laughably childish.

Playing with him was as effortless for them as a cat toying with a mouse.

"Purify it completely, Marcus." Barton gave the order, but his gaze never left Lin Jie's face. "Our guest seems to have a great deal to say about tonight's 'performance.'"

With a savage grin, Marcus took a small silver bottle from his waist, unscrewed the cap, and carefully poured the mercury-like viscous liquid inside over the bound Mist Walker.

The instant the liquid touched its body, it spread rapidly like a living thing. With every movement, another portion of Mist Walker's shadowy body dissolved away.

The entire process was silent, yet filled with chilling strangeness.

Then, as if experiencing a final flash of life, the dying Mist Walker suddenly unleashed one last powerful mental assault.

Every glass object in the alley—including several windows in the nearby apartment building and fragments of wine bottles on the ground—shattered simultaneously without warning at that instant!

"Watch out!" Barton's expression shifted slightly as he immediately raised his gun in alert.

Yet this final attack was not aimed at Marcus, who was purifying it, nor at Barton, who posed the greatest threat.

Its target was the one who had exposed its perfect disguise and made it suffer the greatest humiliation of its life... Lin Jie!

Lin Jie felt as though his brain had been smashed by a heavy hammer. His vision went black as countless images and voices full of hatred and curses burrowed into his mind.

Before dying, the UMA had condensed all its negative energy into a mental curse that sought not to harm its enemy, but only to drag him down with it!

Just as Lin Jie's consciousness was about to be crushed by that malicious energy, a flash of insight suddenly sparked in his mind. Acting on instinct, he screamed words whose origin even he had never considered, words from a fragment of memory buried deep within [Afterimage]:

"Mirrors! It's afraid of reflections!"

The words left his mouth entirely on reflex.

Amid the countless waves of information from before, a faint fragment concerning Mist Walker's weakness had remained hidden deep in his subconscious.

And now, under this final mental assault, that fragment had unexpectedly been "activated"!

At the same time as he shouted those words, he used the last of his strength to hold the only thing in his hand that could count as a "reflective object"—the empty Webley revolver—across before his eyes!

Barton's reaction was inhumanly fast.

The moment Lin Jie shouted "mirrors," he did not even stop to consider whether the words were true. His body had already made the most professional response.

He abandoned his gun and, with a movement almost like magic, drew a palm-sized round silver mirror from inside his trench coat!

With a flick of his wrist, he angled the silver mirror just right, precisely reflecting the dim yellow light of a gas lamp nearby onto the dissolving Mist Walker!

When that faint but exceptionally pure reflected light shone upon it, its already dissolving body began to evaporate and vaporize frantically at ten times its previous speed!

At last, before everyone's eyes, the terrifying phantom that had plagued London for nearly two months and left Scotland Yard helpless completely turned into a wisp of smoke, dispersing into the foul air of Whitechapel District.

All that remained was a black crystalline residue no larger than a fingernail, along with a lingering scent of sulfur.

The alley fell deathly silent once more.

Marcus stared in disbelief at everything before him, then at the purification liquid in his hand, and then at the tiny mirror in Barton's hand.

They had prepared the highest-grade purification method, yet what had proven most effective was nothing more than the most primitive reflection of light?

Barton slowly put away the silver mirror, and the look in his eyes as he regarded Lin Jie changed.

The scrutiny, curiosity, and amusement from before all vanished.

In their place was a complicated expression mixed with appreciation and extreme vigilance.

"How... did you know about that weakness?" Surprise entered Barton's voice. "There is no record of this information even in the highest-level Black Book at Association headquarters."

Lin Jie panted heavily. That mental attack had left his head splitting, but he still forced himself to stand straight.

He knew the time to lay his cards on the table had come.

He could not show weakness any longer, much less reveal the slightest fear.

Before these professional "hunters," only by displaying irreplaceable value could he win himself a chance at survival—and equal respect.

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, met Barton's probing gaze, and slowly raised the German diary belonging to Karl the Cartographer from his arms.

"All the answers are in here." Lin Jie's voice was hoarse, but exceptionally clear. "And I know far more than you can imagine... far, far more."

The night wind swept through, stirring up the red pigment powder on the ground into an eerie scarlet mist that filled the narrow alley and shrouded the three people facing off within it.

A negotiation over secrets, value, and survival was about to begin.