Corpse Strewn Across

"Don't crowd around here, go home... all of you go home. What are you doing gathered here so early in the morning instead of sleeping?"

A young police officer was trying his best to patiently disperse the onlookers, but the Red Star people had an ingrained nature for rubbernecking; until they had seen the whole story, no one was willing to budge.

After a few attempts at persuasion, the officers gave up, deciding to just let them be.

"Forget it, there aren't many people anyway. Just make sure to collect the body quickly later... You go with Brother Li in a bit..."

Zhou Kai blended into the sparse crowd, walking past the police with an expressionless face.

The word "body" was captured precisely by his ears.

A homicide? A jumper or a murder?

Zhou Kai never cared for crowds, but that was on the condition that the commotion didn't happen right at his doorstep.

He frowned and followed the crowd toward the vehicle with flashing lights.

Lu Yan lived in this building, and Zhou Kai didn't want anything to happen to her.

If there was anything unusual, it was best to figure it out early.

Only upon getting closer did he realize it wasn't an ambulance at all, but a forensic investigation vehicle—a coroner's van.

Inside the area cordoned off by police tape, a forensic examiner was using a small square shovel to... scrape someone off the asphalt.

One stroke, then another, as if scraping off a piece of gum stuck too firmly to the ground.

This bloody and bizarre scene caused several middle-aged women who had finally squeezed to the front to immediately cover their noses and retch as they backed away, creating a gap in the crowd.

Zhou Kai stood at a distance, neither too far nor too close, watching with cold eyes.

The low-voiced conversation between the forensic examiner and the police drifted over.

"They fell from at least a hundred meters up. Which helicopter company had an accident?"

"If only it were that simple..."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the surveillance shows they fell out of a second-story window!"

The male forensic examiner ripped off his mask, his face filled with absurdity and disbelief.

"What kind of situation is this? Don't make jokes like that!"

The young officer looked around awkwardly, and seeing no one was paying attention, he grabbed the examiner's arm: "I'm not joking, keep your voice down... this whole thing is wicked."

"Stop looking, move along, move along."

A scruffy-faced veteran officer kicked the loose-lipped young officer, then waved impatiently toward Zhou Kai's side.

Zhou Kai's gaze lingered on the small shovel stained with red-black matter, then he turned and left as if nothing had happened.

Yet, his mind was exploding.

A person falling from the second floor and turning into a puddle of meat?

Utterly ridiculous.

No one with normal logic would believe it, even if they saw it with their own eyes.

Because it completely defied common sense.

But Zhou Kai was different; he had a strange sense of familiarity with this scene.

He had experienced it.

In a Nightmare.

The time he discovered the Nursery, he had been dragged into an illusion by a Paper Doll and fell down a staircase less than a meter high, yet it felt like falling from a height of over ten meters.

Are there monsters similar to the Paper Dolls in reality? No, that shouldn't be it.

After I broke the illusion, I didn't have any extra injuries on my body.

There must be another reason.

Zhou Kai's brows were locked tight, a vague, indescribable restlessness rising in his heart.

The Nightmare was filled with an inescapable oppression, where darkness and rain churned together, thick as asphalt.

Someone with claustrophobia wouldn't be able to last a minute in his Nightmare.

But Zhou Kai had endured it, even slowly beginning to feel like a fish in water.

However, the wear and tear that environment inflicted on his mind still existed.

That was why Zhou Kai gradually needed to stay in open, bright places to soothe that sense of tension.

He had woken up early today for this very reason.

He planned to take a walk in the nearby park and then head to the boxing gym; the timing would be just right.

But just then, Zhou Kai's phone vibrated.

Someone was calling, and the contact name was... Landlord.

Zhou Kai was somewhat puzzled; it was still early before rent was due, so why was this stingy miser suddenly looking for him?

He answered the phone.

The landlord's tone on the other end was very soft, a complete departure from his usual bluster.

"Little brother, where are you? You'd better come back and take a look... something has happened to your apartment."

"Something happened?"

"Alright, I'll be back immediately."

Zhou Kai caught a subtle nuance in the landlord's tone; the man was afraid.

He was afraid of him, and of things associated with him.

Before long, Zhou Kai had returned to the Pigeon Cage Residential Complex where he rented.

From a distance, he saw a pile of luggage placed downstairs, all roughly packed up.

A chubby middle-aged man was pacing back and forth in the shadows, looking nervous and restless.

As soon as he saw Zhou Kai return, he hurried over with a trot.

He spoke hurriedly: "Little Brother Zhou, look, it's like this... my living conditions here are mediocre, I really can't accommodate big shots like you."

"I've had people pack up your luggage for you. Why don't you... look for another place to rent?"

He shook his head violently, the fat on his face wobbling.

"In any case, I definitely don't dare to rent my house to you anymore."

Was this really the same greedy, lecherous, and hot-tempered landlord he remembered? Today, he seemed like a completely different person.

It was as if... he had been scared witless?

Zhou Kai's heart sank, and he pressed, "What exactly happened?"

The landlord's expression was stiff: "You can go up and see for yourself."

"I'll say this in advance: I have nothing to do with those people, and I don't want to have anything to do with them."

Those people.

Zhou Kai roughly understood what was going on, and he walked toward the familiar path to his Home with a cold face.

Everything looked similar to usual, yet there were subtle differences.

This chaotic sense of difference made one feel inexplicably restless while walking through it.

He went upstairs.

The stairwell was covered in colorful paint, scrawled with insulting words.

He reached his Home.

The not-so-sturdy wooden door had been smashed into splinters, scattered messily across the hallway. On some of the larger door panels, one could clearly see footprints, roughly size 45 or 46, which should have belonged to a man.

"Coming to my door to cause trouble?"

Zhou Kai sneered.

"There aren't many people who have had a grudge against me lately, just a few... I will find you all."

Just as the hardest murder cases to solve are random killings without motive, the hardest acts to retaliate against are those driven by maliciousness without cause.

However, the names of himself and his sister in the stairwell, along with his identity as a student at the Falcon Wing Boxing Gym.

All of these pointed toward important information regarding the identity of the perpetrators.

In less than two or three seconds, Zhou Kai guessed who had done it.

"It's not Dreamless; they've gone quiet lately, and there's a high probability they've given up on monitoring me."

"And besides Dreamless, the only one with a grudge big enough to do something this disgusting to me would be you, right?"

Zhou Kai thought of Wang Jinquan, who had been beaten like a dead dog by him and then slapped into the hospital by Chen Ping.

"Interesting. Even lying in a hospital bed, you don't forget to use such low-down tactics..."

A trace of ferocity flashed in Zhou Kai's eyes.

At this moment, the landlord came huffing and puffing up from downstairs.

He was drenched in sweat.

He said awkwardly: "I didn't break your laptop, so don't ask me for compensation... and the money for replacing the door and repainting the hallway will have to be deducted from your deposit."

Zhou Kai's expression was indifferent: "How much?"

The landlord's eyes lit up, and he probed: "Thirty thousand?"

Zhou Kai stared at him: "Three thousand at most."

The landlord was stunned. He wanted to flare up, but as if realizing something, he shrank his neck and chose to compromise.

In Red Star, to encourage residents to buy homes, the legal deposit for renting was set extremely high, at one-sixth of the total price of the property.

For instance, Zhou Qing had paid a sixty-thousand deposit to rent this apartment.

Now, fifty-seven thousand had been returned to Zhou Kai's hands.

Zhou Kai certainly wouldn't keep any of this money for himself; after taking three thousand from his own salary advance to make up the difference, he transferred the full amount back to Zhou Qing without a cent missing.

After concealing the fact that he had been harassed, he told her that he wouldn't need to rent a place for the time being...

As for where to put his luggage and where he would stay during the period before finding a new place...

For now, he had no choice but to go to Lu Yan's Home.

When Zhou Qing asked about him staying temporarily at Lu Yan's place.

She simply replied that it was fine, and didn't ask anything further.