[Skill Book: Blood Sickle Flying Blade] [Quality: Fine] [Requirement: 220 Mysterious Power] [Active Skill: Infuse a weapon with bloodlust. When activated, it can unleash Blood Sickle Flying Blades from a distance, up to three in succession. Hitting a target deals damage and causes bleeding, and knocks the target back five meters. The knockback effect only works once.]
"Damn, speak of the devil. Deng Zhiwei, did you come here to deliver a package?"
Li Ran immediately learned the skill.
Soon, the method for using Blood Sickle Flying Blade and a description of its effects flooded into his mind.
Li Ran was lacking in every regard. Now, anything that could improve his combat ability was welcome.
Blood Sickle Flying Blade could be used in close combat or at range. The bloodlust coating a weapon dealt additional damage, while at range, he could unleash three flying blades. If an enemy closed in quickly, the blades could knock them back.
"If I use the knockback well, it could save my life."
Li Ran continued searching the corpse, but unfortunately, he found nothing else this time.
"This monster came out of the kitchen at the Mutton Restaurant..."
A sense of foreboding came over Li Ran.
He got up and entered the Mutton Restaurant, his expression growing increasingly solemn.
He caught a powerful stench of blood.
At the kitchen, Li Ran slowly lifted the curtain.
His pupils contracted violently.
"Ugh!"
Li Ran nearly threw up on the spot.
Fortunately, everything he had been through these past few days had strengthened his nerves.
In the kitchen, he found two mangled corpses. They were so badly mutilated they were barely recognizable as human, as though they'd been killed and then gnawed on by wild animals. Their deaths had been horrific.
But Li Ran knew the two corpses were probably Grandma Mi's son and daughter-in-law.
Flies filled the air in the kitchen, and maggots crawled all over the floor. That meant the bodies had been dead for a long time.
Usually, after three days, a corpse began to give off a foul smell. Then it rotted, produced maggots, and attracted flies.
But Deng Zhiwei had only been infected by the virus yesterday.
In other words, Deng Zhiwei wasn't the killer!
It had merely smelled the blood and come to gnaw on the corpses...
At that thought, Li Ran immediately remembered Grandma Mi's request.
Grandma Mi had asked him to deliver a letter to her son. If he couldn't deliver it, he was to bring it back to her.
Could this mean...
"Grandma Mi already knew?"
[Task Completed: Grandma Mi's Request] [Completion Reward: Mysterious Power +20, Points +200] [Task Triggered: Find the Real Killer!] [Task Reward: Mysterious Power +100, Points +1,000, Fine Equipment (Fine) ×1, Skill Book (Fine) ×1]
The cold sound of a task being triggered rang out again. Li Ran raised an eyebrow.
"Just as I thought. This is another stage of the task. The request was only a task trigger disguised as a location objective. This is the real task."
"This must be the final stage of Grandma Mi's quest chain. With rewards this generous, the risks must be enormous."
Li Ran furrowed his brow. "Since I have to investigate the killer, I can't overlook any details at the crime scene."
An hour later.
Li Ran went to the shop entrance to get some fresh air.
He had taken photos of the crime scene with his phone.
"They were killed by a sharp weapon piercing straight through their heads. Both had bloodied holes as wide as bowls in their skulls. Their brains were splattered all over the floor."
Li Ran recalled the Demon King of Killing standing by the window, its body opening like a pitcher plant as a bloody tongue licked the glass and wrote the word "Death."
"Could Wang Gan have killed this couple?"
"Back then, the Golden Finger told me Wang Gan was a vicious criminal with five lives on his hands."
"No, that doesn't add up. There were surveillance cameras in the Mutton Restaurant, and Wang Gan was afraid of being exposed."
"Looks like I'll have to search for other clues to figure out what really happened."
Li Ran thoughtfully looked toward the other surveillance cameras outside the shop.
"The surveillance cameras in this instance only scare certain NPCs. They're basically just for show. Even if I went to the property management office, no one would check the footage. I'd probably run into a virus-infected monster instead."
Li Ran glanced around the dining area, puzzled. Several lines of hints from the Golden Finger immediately appeared.
(The scene is a mess. Something horrifying must have happened here.)
(Many unemployed drifters live in the cheap rooms on the second floor of the shops and like to eat here.)
(The scraps of paper scattered on the floor could provide you with an important clue.)
Li Ran frowned slightly, walked over, and picked up the scraps of paper.
When pieced together, they clearly formed a notice.
Employee Termination Notice
Mr. Yu Peng,
During your tenure as the company's business manager, you violated the company's strict prohibition on leaking trade secrets, causing the company huge losses and seriously harming its interests. In accordance with the disciplinary regulations of the Company Legal Department, we have decided to dismiss you!
Please complete the procedures for leaving the company within seven days and compensate the company for its losses in the amount of five million.
The company reserves the right to pursue all legal liability.
This notice is hereby issued!
Back Street, a dark alley.
"Hey, handsome. Interested?"
Yu Peng raised his eyelids and looked over the heavily made-up, flamboyantly dressed woman before him.
"Mm."
He nodded without expression, and the woman immediately came over and hooked her arm through his.
Yu Peng followed her into a house with an iron gate, then followed her up to a room on the third floor.
To be precise, it wasn't a suite. The poorly soundproofed room had been divided by wooden boards into several small cubicles.
It was dim inside. Each cubicle contained nothing but a stained bed, a bedside table, and a wastebasket stuffed with toilet paper.
The woman took off his clothes and worked hard.
But he couldn't get in the mood at all.
Through the small window, he could see the busiest part of the city, where high-rises crowded together and traffic streamed past.
He'd once belonged to that bustling world.
Now, there was no place for him in the city.
He had worked diligently for ten years and finally bought a home in the city, becoming one of the many slaves to their mortgage.
But a single termination notice had cruelly plunged him into hell.
Overnight, he was saddled with five million in debt. His home was seized, his bank and credit cards frozen, all his friends and colleagues distanced themselves from him, and even his girlfriend suddenly left him.
He took the few belongings he had left and came to this neighborhood twenty miles away. He used what little cash he had to pay two months' rent in advance on a place that cost 1,200 a month. He spent until late that night unpacking and went to bed. When he got up the next morning, he changed his clothes and went to put them in the washing machine—only to remember he didn't have one. He couldn't hold it together anymore. He crouched down and cried for a while.
He often imagined he was a swordfish in the ocean, free to roam the vast waters, with no natural enemies. If anyone dared to mess with him, he'd kill them with the sword on his head.
But reality was the complete opposite.
Anyone could walk all over him!
Living really was exhausting.
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