He's Already Dead

"Don't even think about it. Just because it's not dangerous for Master Xuanzang doesn't mean it's not dangerous for you, does it?"

On the way back, Zhou Zhenguo offered Xiao Chu some consolation. "Young man, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the future. You mustn't dwell on past gains and losses. Understand?"

"Yes, yes."

Xiao Chu answered helplessly.

He understood the logic, but his heart still hurt.

It was just like a year ago, when he was playing games at midnight, in a ranked match to climb from Bronze to Silver. Right in the middle of a crucial team fight, his girlfriend suddenly called.

He'd resolutely chosen to abandon his teammates.

Then he heard her panting and, in a flustered voice, saying, "Wrong number. I accidentally pressed the button. I'm out for a run."

It hurt just as much as when he failed to rank up and got cuckolded at the same time.

After that, Xiao Chu became a man who always said, "I choose Zhao Xin."

"By the way, these are the files on the organization's members, as well as its higher-ups. I'll tell you about them in a moment."

Tang Luo, at the front of the group, stopped and turned around. He took out the files and handed them to the other two. "Let's find a chance to wipe out this organization for good."

Guiding people toward goodness and getting others to join in punishing evil and promoting good could also earn merit.

"Master!"

Xiao Chu shuddered.

To hell with being a wise man.

From now on, at least for the rest of this mission, the basic principle of his life would be to cling tightly to Master Xuanzang's leg and never let go.

"Master, where are we going next?" Xiao Chu took the files, put them away, and moved closer to Tang Luo.

"What do you think?"

Tang Luo asked.

Although he had been the master on the Journey to the West back then, Tang Luo had never really had any sense of himself as a leader.

Their usual routine had basically been, "Head west, cultivate, run into demons and monsters, then kill them!"

Simple and direct. Tang Luo didn't even have to worry about which way to go.

With Little White Dragon's precise GPS, they never had to worry about getting lost.

"Master, it's up to you."

Xiao Chu said. Starting tonight, he would follow Master Xuanzang's lead.

Tang Luo glanced at Xiao Chu twice.

What was going on?

Where had the "proactive Sun Wukong" from earlier today gone?

How could a perfectly good kid have become useless so quickly?

Since Xiao Chu wasn't his disciple, Tang Luo couldn't be bothered to get him motivated again. He turned to Zhou Zhenguo and asked, "What do you think, Mr. Zhou?"

"Let's go back to the inn and meet up with the others first," Zhou Zhenguo said. "Both incidents happened at night. So far, we haven't even caught a glimpse of Jack the Ripper. We're completely on the back foot. I think nighttime is Jack the Ripper's territory, so we'd better investigate during the day."

"If things go badly, we can even make use of the organization and force them to help us track down Jack the Ripper."

Not relying on outside help was only sensible if the God and Demon Walkers could complete their mission on their own.

If they couldn't, or if they themselves were in grave danger, only a fool would keep sticking to the rules.

Besides, this wasn't really a rule in the first place.

It was simply a choice made in the hope of maximizing their gains.

Outside the inn on the main street, Xiao Chu pounded on the door. "Boss! Boss, open up!"

Unlike the previous inn, this one had no small courtyard. It was simply a building right on the street.

The entrance opened straight into the lobby.

There were some shops next door.

Though night had only just fallen, the shops around them had already closed.

They'd encountered only a handful of people on the way, all hurrying along in groups.

When they saw Tang Luo and the others, they looked somewhat wary.

The streetlights cast a dim glow.

Scotland Yard hadn't imposed a curfew, but the little city still felt bleak, almost lifeless.

"Open up! We booked three rooms!"

Xiao Chu had pounded on the door for quite a while, but the inn remained silent. No one came to open it.

It wasn't as if someone had to be waiting at the door of this inn twenty-four hours a day.

But it wasn't even nine o'clock yet.

Under normal circumstances, the innkeeper or the attendant wouldn't turn in until at least midnight.

They wouldn't go to bed during the first half of the night.

After all, guests had booked three rooms that day.

It was normal for the inn to be closed to the public, but Xiao Chu was pounding on the door so loudly that people had opened their windows in the neighboring houses to take a look.

And yet there was still no response from inside. Something was wrong.

"Stand back."

Tang Luo said, reaching out to push open the inn's front door.

The lights in the lobby were on.

But something seemed to be wrong with them. They were flickering wildly.

Zhou Zhenguo and Xiao Chu both squinted, finding it extremely uncomfortable.

There was no one behind the counter.

A figure was slumped over a table in the corner.

He was sitting in a chair, face down, with his face buried in the crook of his arm.

In the flickering light, they couldn't make out who it was. The figure just seemed vaguely familiar.

"Looks like Xiao Zhou. Why's he sleeping here?"

Xiao Chu squinted at the figure and said.

The person slumped over the table wasn't dead.

He was asleep, and all three of them could clearly hear him snoring.

The sound was perfectly "in sync" with the flickering light overhead.

"Maybe he came here to rest and fell asleep?" Zhou Zhenguo guessed. He moved a few steps closer, then suddenly thrust out his hand.

Metal clanged.

Chains shot out of the floor and instantly wrapped around Xiao Zhou, hoisting him up along with the chair and pinning him to the table.

"..."

Xiao Chu froze, then realized Zhou Zhenguo had made his move.

This uncle really did like springing sudden attacks.

It made sense. Zhou Zhenguo's Binding Chain wasn't suited to head-on combat.

He'd naturally developed the habit of "stopping halfway through a sentence and suddenly attacking."

If he could solve something with a surprise attack, why bother fighting?

Caught in the chains for no apparent reason, Xiao Zhou woke up too. He raised his head in confusion and glanced around, stopping when he saw Tang Luo and the others. He looked as if he hadn't woken up properly yet.

Seeing his face smeared with blood made Zhou Zhenguo and Xiao Chu tense up.

"What happened? Why are you sleeping here? Where's everyone else? Didn't you hear us knocking just now?"

Zhou Zhenguo fired off a string of questions.

Xiao Zhou still seemed half asleep. He stared wide-eyed at the three of them.

He paid no attention to Zhou Zhenguo's questions.

A few seconds later, he opened his mouth as if he was about to say something.

Just then.

A chill wind, from some unknown source, swept through the entire room.

An icy cold spread in an instant.

It was as if the door to a huge freezer had opened and someone had thrown Zhou Zhenguo and the others inside.

"So cold..."

Xiao Chu instinctively tried to wrap his arms around himself.

But the movement brought a numb, lifeless sensation.

He realized in horror that he'd lost control of his arms!

Only his facial expressions remained "free." The rest of his body seemed to have frozen solid.

Like an insect trapped in amber.

"Ah!"

Xiao Chu let out a silent roar in his heart.

He was terrified, and furious!

Then a warm current suddenly welled up in his chest and flowed through his limbs.

It drove away the cold and numbness.

Xiao Chu regained control of his body.

The protection Tang Luo had empowered with merit was doing its job.

Zhou Zhenguo beside him was in the same situation.

The protection they hadn't needed at the Mental Hospital was being used up here.

"Jack the Ripper?!"

Zhou Zhenguo roared in anger, looking toward the stairwell on the other side.

At the landing where the stairs turned, a person stood there. No one knew when he had appeared.

Most of his body was hidden in darkness and shadow.

They couldn't make out his features. Judging by his build and posture, he seemed to be a man.

The cold wind filling the room had surged over them like a tide, pinning Zhou Zhenguo and the others in place.

But after the man appeared, it receded like a tide.

It flowed back toward him, as if he were drawing it back into his body.

No sooner had Zhou Zhenguo finished shouting than a flash of silver flickered at the corner of his eye.

The man standing on the stair landing seemed weightless. He drifted to the side.

The silver streak flew past him.

It sank into the wall behind him, its handle vibrating incessantly with a metallic ring.

It was a table knife.

Before the vibrating handle had stopped, several more streaks of silver flashed by.

Tang Luo snatched up the table knives from a nearby table and hurled them one after another.

The man moved like a ghost. He seemed light as a feather, yet his speed was astonishing.

The sight was so bizarrely incongruous it made them want to spit blood.

He headed up the stairs to escape.

The stairwell turned at a right angle.

Tang Luo and the others could still see the landing at the turn.

But beyond that, the stairs continued outside their field of vision.

The man vanished from sight. One last streak of silver whistled through the air, and everything fell quiet again.

Only the light overhead continued to flicker.

Xiao Chu and Zhou Zhenguo stayed where they were.

The man's presence—or some kind of ability—had pinned them down so completely that they'd been as still as quails.

Even after he retreated, how could Xiao Chu and Zhou Zhenguo dare chase him?

Besides, Zhou Zhenguo had already used his Binding Chain.

His strength had been greatly reduced.

Of those present, only Master Xuanzang probably had the ability to go after him.

If Tang Luo didn't move, Zhou Zhenguo and Xiao Chu definitely wouldn't either.

"Master, was that Jack the Ripper just now?" Xiao Chu asked, his right hand almost covering his eyes.

The flickering light made him feel as if he were about to go blind.

Zhou Zhenguo went over to the switch and pressed it twice. To his surprise, the lights returned to normal.

"No."

Tang Luo gave a slight shake of his head.

"Master, how can you be so sure?" Zhou Zhenguo asked.

"If that had been Jack the Ripper, we should have completed the mission by now," Tang Luo said.

"Huh?" Xiao Chu and Zhou Zhenguo looked confused.

Tang Luo pointed at the hole in the opposite wall. "I hit him. He's already dead."

Only then did Zhou Zhenguo notice the hole where the wall met the ceiling.

It was the mark left by the last table knife.

"I'll go take a look."

Zhou Zhenguo had enough nerve for that much.

He hurried toward the stairs. Right after him, a voice rang out: "It's Old John!"

At the landing between the stairs and the second floor lay a body, nearly cleaved in two.

Xuanzang Style had struck.

It was hard to imagine that such a wound could have been made by a tiny butter knife.

That very knife was embedded in the ceiling.

And strangely, not a drop of blood had spilled from the body.

Zhou Zhenguo recognized him. They had met Old John that morning and dismissed him as a suspect because he had difficulty walking.

Crouching down, Zhou Zhenguo took off Old John's shoe.

One foot was deformed. He couldn't tell whether it had been that way from birth or had been injured later.

But there was no doubt that it was a foot that made walking difficult.

With a foot like that holding him back, how fast could he possibly move?

Yet just moments ago, Old John had displayed a ghostlike ability to move.

That deformed foot seemed to grin, mocking Zhou Zhenguo and the others for their foolishness and conceit.