Afterimage Whispers

Old patrolman Weston said nothing more.

He merely gave Lin Jie a long look, his gaze as complex as London's thick fog, mingling shock and suspicion.

Silently, he picked up his long-cold cup of coffee and turned to leave the reading room, leaving Lin Jie alone.

Lin Jie appeared calm on the surface, but inwardly, he let out a small sigh of relief.

The "bait" he had cast had successfully caught the fish's attention. Now, whether to wait or take the initiative required more careful consideration.

He did not want to become too deeply involved in Scotland Yard's murky waters. His true target had always been that mysterious organization hiding in the shadows and hunting him—I.A.R.C.

What he needed to do was obtain crucial intelligence on the "Jack the Ripper UMA" before they found him.

He remained in the reading room for the rest of the morning. Only after confirming that no one was following him did Lin Jie leave this temporary refuge.

Instead of returning to the chaotic Rat's Nest, he chose to wander aimlessly through the streets and alleys of the Whitechapel District.

This was not meaningless wandering.

He was doing something only he could do—surveying the "hunting ground."

He drew a mental map in his mind.

He marked every murder location from the newspapers—Bucks Row, Hanbury Street, Berner Street, and George Street from last night—one by one.

He discovered that while these locations appeared scattered, they all surrounded a central area.

It was a district made up of several main roads and countless narrow alleys, with an extremely dense and highly transient population.

This killer possessed an intense territorial instinct.

More importantly, he wanted to personally experience those crime scenes. He wanted to test his ability and see whether he could "hear" whispers from the past that others could not, from those forgotten corners.

His first destination was the Berner Street crime scene nearest to him.

It was in a small courtyard behind a place called the International Working Men's Educational Club. By now, Scotland Yard had sealed off the courtyard with a crude cordon, but to Whitechapel District residents, such a blockade was practically meaningless.

Lin Jie easily climbed in through a collapsed section of wall.

The courtyard was empty. Only a faint dark stain remained on the damp stone pavement, washed by rainwater. The air still carried an inescapable scent of blood.

Lin Jie paced slowly. Instead of looking at the obvious traces, his eyes swept over the surroundings—the high walls, the locked back door, the sole narrow exit.

This was a perfect place to commit murder: enclosed, secluded, with sound unlikely to carry.

He slowly crouched down and extended a hand. After hesitating for a moment, he finally pressed his palm lightly against the mottled, icy brick wall. This wall was the most likely witness to everything that had happened that night.

He closed his eyes.

He focused his mind completely on the point where his palm touched the wall.

In an instant, a weak yet clear torrent of sensations surged through his arm and into his mind.

Unlike the violent impact when it had been triggered passively before, the event had happened some time ago, so the "information density" had greatly diminished. The feedback was much gentler, like a severely damaged tape recording—fragmented and full of static.

The first thing he "heard" was an intensely repressed feeling of suffocation, like drowning.

Next came fear so powerful it seemed to solidify.

Then came an icy sensation tearing through the air, swift and precise. There were no unnecessary movements, only the most efficient killing.

Finally, it all settled into a bizarre sense of satisfaction mixed with wild ecstasy and hatred, like an artist admiring his own work.

This emotion was exactly the same as what he had felt while staring at the diary sketch, only far clearer!

"Hah—!"

Lin Jie jerked his hand back and gasped for air, cold sweat pouring down his forehead.

Every use of this ability was like deep-sea diving, placing a tremendous burden on his mind.

But he had gained something.

This "reading" confirmed beyond any doubt that this crime was connected to the UMA he knew of.

However, just as he prepared to leave, two figures casually passing the mouth of the alley made his heart leap into his throat.

It was them!

The two I.A.R.C. investigators who had hunted him in the apartment—the man in the tall hat and the burly man!

They were no longer wearing the neat wool coats from the day before yesterday, having changed into worn canvas jackets more suitable for moving about the Whitechapel District. Yet their sharp, capable bearing and keen eyes still stood out starkly among the numb crowd around them.

They seemed interested in this crime scene as well. Pretending to pass by casually, they swiftly surveyed the courtyard with professional eyes.

Lin Jie immediately slipped behind a pile of discarded wooden crates, concealing himself completely in the shadows and barely daring to breathe.

I.A.R.C. had indeed gotten involved.

They were not only hunting him—they were also tracking this UMA. The two trails had unexpectedly converged in this tiny courtyard.

Through the gaps between the crates, Lin Jie calmly observed them.

He noticed that the man in the tall hat seemed to be holding a precision-made brass instrument resembling a compass. Its needle trembled faintly and irregularly.

He was measuring something, quietly speaking to the burly man beside him as he examined the scene.

"The 'anomalous fluctuations' here are already very weak. Looks like we arrived too late," the man in the tall hat said softly, a trace of regret in his voice.

"Damn it, Barton!" the burly man complained. "If we'd caught that Easterner sooner and gotten the Cartographer's diary, we might've been able to predict this thing's movements in advance. Now everything's a mess."

"Don't rush, Marcus." The tall-hatted man, Barton, shook his head. "Things aren't that simple. This 'Ripper' is more elusive than any Town Rank one we've encountered before."

"And don't you find it strange? That Asian man, an outsider with no records at all—why does he have the Cartographer's diary?"

Hidden behind the crates, Lin Jie heard every word clearly. After spending several days in London, his English had improved considerably.

For the first time, he learned the two men's names—Barton and Marcus—as well as the nickname of their German associate who had died aboard the Sea Witch: the Cartographer.

The instrument in their hands was clearly equipment capable of detecting residual power from the Underworld, just as strange as his gun.

To him, this was intelligence worth a fortune.

But it also meant that his own probing through his ability might likewise be detected by such equipment! What he had just done was practically dancing on the edge of a cliff!

Fortunately, Barton and Marcus did not discover him. After a brief investigation, they found no valuable clues and turned to leave.

Only after their figures had completely vanished from the alley entrance did Lin Jie dare emerge from behind the crates. Leaning against the wall, he realized his back was already soaked with cold sweat.

This encounter sounded an alarm for him.

His enemies were far more professional and far more powerful than he had imagined. They possessed technology and equipment he could not understand at all.

Against opponents like these, his only advantage was the information gap—they did not know he possessed the ability to read memories, and they knew even less that he had precisely matched Jack the Ripper to a particular page in the Cartographer's diary.

He had to move faster.

He looked up at London's eternally lead-gray sky. Beneath the shadows of this seemingly peaceful city, a secret war was underway.

And he, an accidental intruder, had to find his place in this war—or there was only one road left for him: death.