Getting Away with It

The darkness around him rippled away in patches, as if erased by a rubber.

The phantom image of golden vines danced before his eyes, then turned into flecks of light and vanished.

Qi Si opened and closed his eyes. He was still standing in the studio, the stench of blood in the air around him unmistakable.

A line of text floated in the upper-left corner of his vision.

[Your next instance will begin in 71:59:59]

A string of changing numbers ran through the text. It had to be the countdown Ye Zi had mentioned in the instance.

Three days to rest and prepare—not too long, not too short.

The Eerie Game's instances seemed not to take up any real-world time. Qi Si pulled his phone from his pocket and checked it. It was nine o'clock on the evening of March 9, 2035.

The man sprawled in front of him stared with eyes that would never close. His body had long since gone cold.

Qi Si tossed the bloodstained scalpel to the ground. After staring at the man for a while, he grimaced.

"What a pain."

The man's face put him off the idea of making a specimen out of him, but dumping him in the wilderness risked the Public Security Bureau finding him.

As a conscientious, law-abiding citizen, Qi Si had no desire to create unnecessary trouble for the Public Security Bureau.

He had to dispose of the body carefully.

The thrill the Eerie Game had left him with faded as one real-world problem after another piled up.

Qi Si deftly untied the ropes and dragged the corpse onto the dissection table. Then he picked a cleaver from the nearby rack of tools.

For an instant, a blurry fragment of memory flickered through his mind, like a flash of inspiration.

He caught hold of it, seized the corpse's right hand, and raised it before his eyes, narrowing them to slits.

A black ring was unmistakably set on the corpse's little finger.

It seemed a little too large, so a fine white thread had been wound around it several times to hold it in place. Set into its jet-black surface was a black butterfly carved into the shape of the letter "S."

It looked familiar.

In the instance, Chang Xu had just shown him an identical one.

"Sariel?" Qi Si murmured, and suddenly realized the situation had become complicated.

The man he had just stabbed to death, Liu Ajiu, was a member of the Sariel Guild.

From Chang Xu's tone, this so-called Sariel Guild was no pushover. Who knew whether they'd avenge one of their own, killed so gruesomely, over some nebulous sense of pride?

Grudges, resentments, friction, disputes... That was what made humans such a nuisance: they let irrational emotions dictate their actions.

Any number of reasons could spark a conflict and send them spiraling into a cycle of blood-for-blood revenge.

And when you lived among people like that, if you wanted anything from them, you had no choice but to accommodate them and get used to it.

Qi Si decided to see the job through. He dragged the corpse onto the workbench, smashed its bones and bent them into a rectangular shape, then pulled a faded suitcase out of the junk piled in the corner and stuffed the body inside.

When he zipped it up, a few spots of blood were visible seeping through the fabric. They weren't obvious; unless someone looked closely, they probably wouldn't notice.

Even so, Qi Si wiped the entire zipper down with a handkerchief. He kept at it until the yellowed strip of fabric had turned uniformly gray-black, making the blood impossible to distinguish from the grime. Only then did he stop, satisfied.

Killing someone wasn't hard. Getting rid of the body was.

Dismemberment was only the most basic step. The main challenge was properly disposing of body parts like fingers and heads, which could clearly be identified as human.

Without access to chemical reagents, stomach acid was a decent option.

Criminals without the means had to fend for themselves; those with the means contacted pig farms. Dog lovers could feed the remains to dogs, and anyone who liked playing pranks could drop them off at a vegetable market.

Qi Si was long past having no options. He also wasn't particularly compassionate, and couldn't be bothered to make a trip to the market.

He checked the time on his phone. It was already nine forty.

Bob's pig farm was closed by now. It wouldn't open until eight the next morning.

He sent Bob a text to give him a heads-up about his visit the next day.

Then he called the number saved in his contacts as "Friend." "Jin Yusheng, I need you to do something for me..."

As he spoke, Qi Si took a rag from the tool rack, wet it, and crouched to wipe the stains from the floor.

He was a clean person by nature and made a habit of tidying up any place where he spent a long time.

It was a good habit he'd developed over the past six years to avoid trouble as much as possible.

Under the wet rag, the blood diluted to a pale pink film across the floor. The damp fabric soaked it up thread by thread until not a trace remained.

Qi Si tossed the rag and his bloodstained shirt into a trash can. He gathered the black garbage bag and tied it shut. From the outside, it looked perfectly ordinary.

Then he took a clean shirt from a nearby rack and pulled it on. Loose and comfortable, he looked like an utterly ordinary young man.

It was half past ten by the time he finished.

Dragging the suitcase behind him, Qi Si opened the warehouse door as if nothing were amiss, only to find the rain outside coming down in sheets.

For an instant, the scene before him seemed to form some secret connection with the instance. It was as if an enormous monster were raising its head from beneath the thick, murky surface of the water.

Fortunately, Qi Si was used to the changeable weather of Jiang City in March.

He retreated into the warehouse, fished a black umbrella out of the junk pile, and opened it overhead before stepping into the endless curtain of rain.

The usually deserted eastern outskirts of Jiang City were full of police cars. Their flashing lights shimmered across puddles slick with oil.

"He made it all the way over here, then disappeared. Damn it, the cameras broke who knows when. Those Public Security Bureau bastards skim plenty of money every day, but never seem to do a lick of real work..." The old man in a detective's uniform pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and popped a piece into his mouth. "Old Mu's making a huge fuss over this. He's the only one left who slipped through the net. Let him run off to another district and give that branch a headache."

"Catching him would count as a win, too." A young woman leaned against the police car and gave a faint smile. "What matters is that his behavior was the strangest. Director Mu suspects he may have Puppet Thread on him. Haven't the people in Department Five been short on research samples?"

The old man chewed his gum, unconvinced. "Not to be rude, Xiao Ning, but it's been so long. Whatever samples they had, they've probably destroyed them several times over by now."

The woman kept smiling. "Either way, we're at the wrap-up stage. We need to give them an answer."

After leaving the warehouse, Qi Si had barely gone a few steps when he spotted the police cars arriving one after another in the distance. He immediately turned around and walked away.

Since its founding in 1989, the Federation had been plagued by unrest. Cults and resistance groups sprang up everywhere, and terrorism ran rampant. Blowing up a building was an everyday occurrence, and missile strikes were hardly surprising.

To maintain stability, whenever the Public Security Bureau ran short on funding, it would pick some lucky place at random and launch a surprise inspection, taking in suspicious people without identification on them. Citizens received a stern talking-to, public officials got something for their resumes. A happy ending for everyone.

On an ordinary day, that wouldn't have been a problem. But with a suitcase full of body parts, Qi Si had no desire to be stopped and questioned.

After all, disposing of a police officer's body was far more trouble than disposing of a vagrant's—and the trouble would probably never end. The thought made his head ache.

Qi Si weaved through the winding narrow alleys. After walking about a hundred meters, he saw no one paying attention to him, so he calmly reached out to lift the yellow police tape.

"Hold it!" a sharp voice suddenly shouted from behind him.

A moment later, a middle-aged officer with unkempt hair and a cigarette between his lips jumped out of a police car parked in the shadows and walked over.

Qi Si withdrew his hand from the tape and turned halfway around, speaking first. "Officer, what happened here?"

He looked ill at ease, as innocent and guileless as an ordinary, honest citizen.

The middle-aged officer stopped on the other side of the tape and brushed ash off his uniform. His small, unremarkable eyes scrutinized Qi Si. "What's your name?"

"Qi Si. Qi as in 'Qi of the State of Chu,' Si as in 'cultured.'"

"That name sounds familiar. What do you do?"

Of course it sounded familiar. He was a regular in the interrogation room. Qi Si smiled awkwardly. "I make taxidermy specimens. I just held a regional exhibition the day before yesterday. It was in the paper."[Note]

He pointed toward the warehouse behind him. "That's my studio. I have mild insomnia and can't stand the noise, so I moved my studio out to the outskirts."

The middle-aged officer didn't seem suspicious. He pulled up a photo on his phone and showed it to Qi Si. "Have you seen this man?"

In the photo, a scruffy, bearded man stared blankly ahead. A blue-white scar ran from the corner of his right eye to his lips, giving his square face an oddly mismatched look.

Liu Ajiu!

Qi Si kept his expression steady and took less than half a second to review what he knew:

--A friend had hacked all the surveillance cameras around here. The nearest working camera was at a bus stop half a mile away.

--Liu Ajiu had only been here for three hours, which wasn't long enough to meet the criteria for filing a missing-person report. He hadn't made much noise when he was killed, either.

--The police probably didn't know he was dead. They were looking for him, most likely because they considered him a criminal...

Qi Si made up his mind. Frowning, he pretended to struggle to remember. "I was in my studio all day today and didn't see anyone... Someone did come by the day before yesterday, but I've been going back and forth so much these past few days, I've got myself muddled. I'm not sure..."

The middle-aged officer had already waved him off when Qi Si said "the day before yesterday."

He patted Qi Si on the shoulder and kindly reminded him, "You should head home. Don't leave the city for the next few days. It's not safe outside."

Qi Si glanced around, letting just the right amount of curiosity show in his eyes. "Officer, can you tell me what happened?"

"I can't." The other man exhaled a cloud of smoke, his Beijing accent drawling through the words. He gave Qi Si a weary, mysterious look. "Some things get more dangerous the more you know."

Qi Si gave a dry laugh and didn't press him further.

He lifted the police tape with one hand and dragged his suitcase with the other, holding his umbrella between his neck and shoulder as he passed the officer.

He had barely gone five steps when the officer suddenly asked, "What's in the suitcase?"

Qi Si stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "Specimens. They're halfway done, and I was planning to take them home and continue working on them."

"Can I take a look?"

Qi Si lowered his eyes. "It might be a little inconvenient. I've just finished shaping them, and the wind could ruin them... Of course, if you really need to open it, that's fine."

"Forget it. Go on home. Sorry for wasting your time." The officer waved him away and looked elsewhere.

Qi Si's lips curved into a grateful, compliant smile. Any trace of amusement in his eyes melted into it until it was hard to make out.

"No, no, it's fine. You've been working hard out here late at night."

He dipped his head politely, keeping the same steady pace as before as he walked away, step by step through the puddles.

The rain kept falling, pattering against his umbrella with a soft rustle that only made the night seem quieter.

After turning a corner, Qi Si stopped. Only then did he realize he was cold, though a spot near his heart was giving off a faint warmth.

He reached for his neck. At some point, a blood-red pendant had appeared there, giving off a faint heat.

[Name: Rose Heart]

[Type: Item]

[Effect:...]

He'd actually brought an item out of the game?

Qi Si untied the garbage bag from the suitcase handle and reached into the crumpled shirt to feel around. He found nothing.

"I didn't bring the Pocket Watch of Fate out. I only brought the Rose Heart?... Well, that makes sense. A minute of time reversal would be way too outrageous in the real world."

Beneath the ghostly streetlights, the black-haired young man narrowed his eyes with keen interest. "The Eerie Game seems even more interesting than I thought..."

[Note] The real-world sections of this book borrow the setting of Crime Merchant and Zhou Lin. The world is ruled by the Federation, and countries have been downgraded to "districts."