German Diary and Bloodstained Sketches

On his first night in Rat's Nest, Lin Jie did not sleep.

Any unusual sound—a sickly cough from the next bed, or the drunken ramblings of a drunk turning over in his sleep—made his muscles tense instantly, his hand reflexively pressing against the revolver in his arms.

Only when the sky outside shifted from pitch-black to pale gray did this den of sin welcome a new day amid hangover headaches and hungry groans.

Lin Jie rose from bed without a sound.

His silent display of dominance the night before had worked. No one dared provoke the quiet Easterner anymore.

He spent two pence buying a piece of black bread hard enough to serve as a brick and a steaming bowl of utterly tasteless oatmeal from Old Mole.

This was the first meal since arriving in this era that could be considered "breakfast." The hot porridge drove away the cold that had accumulated in his body overnight, and some color returned to his face, which had gone pale from blood loss.

He did not linger in the apartment, instead stepping out onto the streets of Whitechapel early in the morning.

The streets were far more "lively" now than at night. Wagons hauling goods, workers hurrying along, idle street thugs, and prostitutes with hollow eyes formed a vivid yet oppressive picture of everyday life.

Lin Jie's destination was one of the few places in Whitechapel District that could be called a "public space"—a cheap reading room run by the church.

Officially, it existed to spread the gospel among the poor. In reality, it was more like a refuge where people could warm themselves and briefly escape reality.

Most importantly, it was free and provided that day's newspapers.

The reading room was full of all kinds of people: unemployed workers, homeless vagrants, and several foreigners like Lin Jie, seeking a moment of peace.

No one spoke. Only the rustle of turning pages could be heard.

Lin Jie found an inconspicuous corner and sat down, then carefully took the German diary that would decide his future fate from his coat.

Now, at last, he had a relatively safe place to try to "interpret" it.

He drew a deep breath and opened the diary. Beneath the hard cover lay thick, slightly yellowed pages that gave off the pleasant scent of ink and old paper.

On the title page, the owner's name, a sentence written in an exceptionally elegant German script, and the four letters "I.A.R.C." had been inscribed.

Lin Jie could not understand the sentence, but he recognized the number—"1886."

This diary had begun two years earlier.

He decided to give up trying to understand the words and focus all his attention on the sketches and symbols within the diary.

The sketch on the first page depicted the very monster he had encountered aboard the ship.

The artist's skill was extraordinary. With nothing but pen strokes, he had vividly captured the creature's slick skin, its seaweed-like tangled long hair, and those eyes radiating an inhuman chill.

Beside the drawing were dense German annotations, as well as Arabic numerals and symbols that he could understand.

For instance, he saw a symbol resembling a barometer followed by a string of changing numbers. Beside it was a diagram showing the moon's changes from full moon to new moon.

Lin Jie immediately recalled that the monsters aboard the ship had appeared on calm nights close to the full moon.

That investigator had been documenting the relationship between its activity patterns and environmental conditions.

He also saw a simple drawing resembling a chemical beaker, with "AgNO3" written beside it—silver nitrate! In another cross-sectional diagram of a specially made bullet, he clearly saw the same chemical formula marked on the bullet head.

Lin Jie's heart began pounding.

So that was it!

The investigator's bullets dealt special damage to the Grudge Woman because they contained silver nitrate! Was that based on occultism, or some unknown scientific principle?

He did not know, but this discovery was undoubtedly a crucial piece of information worth a fortune.

It proved that these seemingly incomprehensible monsters also followed certain rules. They could be studied, and they could be hunted with targeted methods!

He turned the pages one by one, like a starving student greedily absorbing knowledge from another world.

This diary was practically a detailed set of Notes on Anomalous Creatures. It recorded the various experiences of this German investigator from the I.A.R.C. organization over the past two years.

He saw a sketch of a gigantic black hound, its eyes blazing with infernal fire as it prowled desolate swampland.

Beside it was the place name "Dartmoor." Lin Jie knew it was England's Dartmoor moorland, the setting of the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Yet in this diary, that legendary demon hound was a real Caution Rank creature.

He also saw creatures resembling enormous bats but bearing human faces. They nested in abandoned mines and used infrasound to attack their prey.

Beside them, the investigator had drawn simple instructions for stuffing wet cotton into one's ears as protection.

Every sketch represented a deadly encounter, and every record might have been experience bought with a life.

The more Lin Jie read, the more alarmed he became, and the more he felt the tremendous weight of the diary in his arms. This was not merely one man's record of adventure, but a "survival guide" forged from blood and fire.

His fingers stopped on one page. The creature in the image made him physically uncomfortable.

It was a sketch depicting an urban setting.

The background showed a typical narrow brick alley from the Victorian era. A tall, thin figure in a long trench coat and top hat stood with its back to the observer.

Its proportions were grotesquely unbalanced, its limbs as long as a spider's. Most horrifying of all, where the back of its head should have been hung a blurry, twisted face that seemed to be smiling. In its hand, it carried an old-fashioned doctor's bag.

Beside the drawing, the investigator had heavily marked a skull symbol in bright red ink and written "Town-UMA" beneath it.

Town Rank UMA.

Lin Jie stared at the drawing again and again as a chill slowly crawled up his spine.

That bag, that habit of committing crimes in city alleys... He immediately connected it to Jack the Ripper, whose crimes had caused such a sensation during this period of history.

Just then, an old worker reading the newspaper beside him suddenly let out a cry mixed with fear and excitement.

"Dear God! He's struck again!"

Everyone in the reading room was immediately drawn over, craning their necks.

Lin Jie looked up as well.

The old worker was trembling as he pointed to the front-page headline of The Daily Telegraph, written in bold, terrifying letters:

"Whitechapel Terror Escalates! Another Woman Ripped Open Last Night!"

The newspaper described in detail a new case that had occurred the previous night near a low-rent apartment building on George Street.

The victim had died in exactly the same manner as the previous victims. The method was cruel, and witnesses claimed they had smelled a pungent odor like the lingering stench of burning sulfur before and after the crime.

Lin Jie's pupils abruptly contracted.

George Street... Wasn't that the street where Rat's Nest, where he had hidden the night before, was located? He clearly remembered hearing a woman scream while drifting in and out of sleep!

He had thought it was merely part of the "daily life" of Whitechapel, never imagining that he had unknowingly brushed past such a horrific murder!

He immediately lowered his head and looked again at the sketch of the tall, thin figure in the diary.

He forced himself to calm down and tried to use his sensitivity to information left behind on objects to "feel" the drawing.

This time, he did not touch it.

He merely stared at it, immersing his entire mind within it.

Because his experience the previous night resonated so strongly with the drawing, a different kind of feedback emerged.

He smelled it.

That faint, lingering scent of sulfur.

Then came an inhuman emotion mixed with wild delight and hatred.

It was an absolute arrogance that regarded humans as ants and slaughter as art.

Could it be?

A thought surfaced in his mind.

Could Jack the Ripper—the century-defining mystery that had shaken all London and left Scotland Yard at its wits' end—really be the Town Rank UMA recorded in this diary?!

This shocking guess brought him no excitement, only icy fear.

He was now at the center of this apex predator's hunting ground, while also needing to evade pursuit by another powerful organization.

What was he supposed to do?

Flee Whitechapel District? The thought lasted only a second before he rejected it himself.

The mysterious I.A.R.C. organization pursuing him clearly possessed tracking abilities far beyond Scotland Yard's. The fact that they had found him so quickly after he sold the silver coin was proof enough.

A penniless Easterner with poor language skills would only become a more conspicuous target no matter which corner of London he fled to.

Wait helplessly for death? That was even more of a dead end.

If that organization captured him, the best possible outcome would likely be being tortured for information and then "disposed of" to preserve their secrets.

Not to mention that a Town Rank terror UMA was prowling this district, feeding madly. He had narrowly escaped death last night, but who could guarantee he would not become the next unlucky victim the following night?

Ahead was an abyss, behind was hell, and standing still meant waiting to be swallowed by both.

Lin Jie stared fixedly at the newspaper's description of the "sulfur smell," then at the diary's sketch of the tall, thin monster carrying a doctor's bag.

An extremely dangerous thought, yet seemingly the only feasible one at present, rose from the depths of his heart.

He was now threatened by two forces at once.

One was "human." The other was "ghost."

And according to the diary, those two forces were hostile to each other. So, was it possible to use the "ghost" against the "human"?

Cold sweat seeped into Lin Jie's palms.

This was no longer a plan. It was a mad gamble.

He needed to stir up these muddy waters and pry open a crack for survival for himself, a pitiful ant caught in a war between a hunter and another prey.