Establishing a Persona

At night, in Brooklyn, New York, on the second floor of a large villa spanning several hundred square meters, a brown-haired man in his forties or fifties lounged leisurely on the sofa, completely relaxed as he enjoyed the automated service of the blonde woman before him.

They were not the only two people in the room. Four fully armed bodyguards stood nearby, carrying out their guard duties without looking away.

As the leader of the Countermeasure Gang, Brown Roderick had clawed his way to this position with great difficulty. Naturally, he treasured his own life. Even at a private moment like this, he remained cautious, afraid he might not live to die of old age.

Every bodyguard at Brown Roderick's side had been hired at a high price after leaving the military. Each was a muscular brute capable of taking on three men barehanded, equipped with body armor and handguns to ensure no one could threaten his life.

Standing respectfully before Brown Roderick was a thick-faced man. He was Brown's right-hand man.

"Has the AK Party been getting a little restless lately?" Brown asked his deputy casually.

"There have indeed been conflicts with us in business lately, and their hands haven't been clean either. Three or four of our boys have already been sent to the hospital," the deputy explained.

"Damn it, we agreed to develop the underground drug trade together, but they've been getting greedier and uglier lately. Looks like we'll have to settle this with them." As Brown spoke, one of the bodyguards suddenly sidestepped and blocked him from view.

"What's going on? Why are you suddenly so tense?" Brown asked in confusion. Then he heard heavy footsteps gradually growing louder beside him. Someone was coming upstairs.

Where are the guards downstairs? How did they not stop him? Brown thought in panic.

This sudden change returned the previously excited Brown to normal size, while the blonde woman rose in fright and curled up in his arms.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Heavy footsteps reached Brown's ears. The bodyguards vigilantly raised their handguns and aimed toward the stairs. Soon, an entirely unhidden head slowly rose into view from the stairwell.

Brown's eyes widened. Through the bodyguards' silhouettes, he saw the intruder's head, and fear crept into his heart.

What kind of face was that? It looked as though it had been scorched by blazing fire. Even the hair was gone. The entire face was covered in scars, without a single patch of intact skin, making it impossible to discern its original appearance.

Only a pair of pitch-black eyes stared fixedly at them, like a demon that had crawled out of hell.

The instant the man's appearance came into view, the blonde woman in Brown's arms let out a piercing scream.

As if it were a signal, the four bodyguards, who had been waiting in formation, fired their aimed handguns almost simultaneously at the man's exposed head.

Bang!

The bullets fired at the same time came from four directions, but in the next instant, they were blocked by a heavy iron door. Before Brown's eyes, his nearly ton-heavy stainless steel blast door had somehow been removed and was being held before the man as a shield.

No wonder the footsteps had sounded so heavy. Carrying a whole door would be heavy, wouldn't it?

The man raised the iron door in his hands and continued slowly up the stairs. During that time, the bodyguards kept firing, but their bullets could not break through the defenses of their own door.

"Who the hell are you? We can talk this out." Brown threw the blonde woman in his arms aside and tried to communicate as he backed away.

In response, the man grabbed the iron door and hurled it at them like a concealed weapon with terrifying brute force.

Boom.

The unstoppable iron door, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, slammed directly into two firing bodyguards. After a dull impact, it continued onward without losing momentum and crushed Brown beneath it, killing all three instantly.

As for the deputy and the other two bodyguards, each had a fruit knife embedded in his forehead, piercing through the skull. They collapsed silently to the floor, their breaths extinguished.

Judging from the brand marked on the ends of the handles, those fruit knives had also been taken from their house.

From the man's appearance to the deaths of six people, the entire process took no more than five seconds.

The blonde woman, a surviving plaything who was still alive, curled up in the corner in terror, not daring to make a sound.

What awaited her was the man's finally spoken, hoarse voice. "Don't worry. I don't kill innocent people who can't resist. Get out."

After he spoke, the blonde woman finally dared to look up, only to see the man using the blood of the dead to draw a gigantic S-shaped Bloodstain on the floor, making the place look like the site of some cult ritual.

After doing all that, the man truly did as he said. Without sparing her another glance, he silently walked back down the stairs as he had come and disappeared from the villa.

Name: Bai Ye

Lifespan: 18/500

Strength: 1.6+0.2

Constitution: 1.6+0.2

Spirit: 1.6+

Charm: 0.3+

Unused Attribute Points: 0.2

...

Description:

Total attributes have exceeded 6 points. Talent 2, Strongest's Leisure, activated. Unused Attribute Points +0.1

You used Sulfuric Acid to damage the skin on your head and hands once. Total recovery time: 184 minutes...

Repeated 781 times. Constitution increased by 0.1

Repeated 215 times. Spirit increased by 0.1

...

Looking at the description on the Stat Panel, Bai Ye, who had just finished killing and walked out of the villa, scratched at the scorched skin on his acid-corroded face.

The process of regrowing after disfiguring himself with Sulfuric Acid was unbearably itchy for him.

That was right—Sulfuric Acid for disfigurement. After quietly returning home earlier, what Bai Ye had gone to retrieve was the Sulfuric Acid he intended to use to ruin his own appearance.

Only by completely changing both his appearance and fingerprints could he prevent anyone from linking him to the Murder Demon who had wiped out the gang.

Long before this, Bai Ye had conducted some experiments on his body and successfully learned what a Constitution of 1.5 meant. It was an elevation in the level of life itself.

If Constitution below 1.5 could only be considered that of someone with powerful recovery abilities, then after reaching 1.5, Bai Ye was practically a Tomie incapable of self-duplication.

As long as an injury did not kill him on the spot, given enough time, he could slowly restore himself to his original state through eating. Even if he were cut in half at the waist, given enough time, he could grow his lower body back.

Those were Bai Ye's reasonable deductions after a series of destructive tests on his own body.

And just as the panel described, Bai Ye now needed only three hours for his acid-disfigured face to return to normal. His Charm would return to its usual 1.4, and even his hair would grow back.

Tonight was Bai Ye's first step toward killing Li Shu: first, kill a gang leader as an offering, then plant in people's minds the persona of a disfigured vengeful evil god with no connection to himself, one who was filled with hatred for the underworld.