Night, Boiling!

During the early morning self-study session the next day, the crisp chirping of birds drifted in from outside the window.

Gu Jianlin sat in his assigned seat, silently eating a burger while staring blankly at his phone.

All around him, the sound of pen tips scratching against test papers filled the air.

Su Youzhu was the only exception; the girl was already slumped over her desk, fast asleep.

Early this morning, Gu Jianlin had asked her for that so-called love letter and had stared at the handwriting on it for a long time.

The confession content at the beginning was mostly nonsense; only the final few sentences contained clear hints or warnings.

"First, he is telling me that if he can deliver a love letter to Youzhu, he can just as easily kill her."

"Second, he is warning me not to tell anyone else. He knows I have joined the Ether Association now. Once he senses a crisis, he will target Youzhu first as a punishment for me."

"Third, the agreed-upon time might just be a smokescreen. It is very likely this guy will make a move on Youzhu ahead of schedule."

He tapped his index finger lightly against the desk. He could not afford to waste any more time.

"I cannot pin my hopes on the Ether Association or Lu Zicheng and his team, because I cannot be certain of their methods. Once news leaks and the Joker senses danger, he will flee immediately. It is hard to say whether the Ether Association can even protect my family, given that they have their own methods of concealment."

He analyzed in his heart, "What's more, there is Mom and Uncle Su."

When it came to his family, he would not take that risk, not even for a one-in-ten-thousand chance.

He had to use the safest method possible.

The Joker had to die.

If there were any other accomplices, they had to be eradicated as well.

Otherwise, Gu Jianlin's family would never know a day of peace.

Old Gu once said that to defeat a criminal, one could not follow the opponent's logic.

One had to jump outside of his logic and win through the unexpected.

Currently, the Joker was able to hold the initiative because no one could find him.

If his ability to hide failed, that would be a different story.

Lu Zicheng could kill him in a heartbeat.

"If I can find the Joker, he will lose the initiative forever."

Gu Jianlin's fingers tapping on the desk paused. "The price for doing this is that I have to bear all the risks alone, because he is a survivor of the Blood Moon Massacre, and he has come to take revenge on me."

"The Joker's rank is higher than mine, but I have a dual-core drive and a gun. The most critical thing is that he possesses the ability to undergo aberration. If he is like Li Changzhi, it is indeed extremely dangerous, but..."

Gu Jianlin's state back in the Kirin Immortal Palace had been that of an ancient god.

He had possessed immense power, especially that strange syllable.

But after returning to reality, he could no longer manifest that destructive strength.

The Black Kirin deep within his consciousness was also in a state of slumber.

Unless he was subjected to mental stimulation or inhaled spirituality, it simply would not budge.

It was no different from being dead.

"How am I supposed to wake it up?"

Gu Jianlin hesitated for a moment, then picked up his phone and left the classroom.

At this moment, Su Youzhu groggily lifted her head and glanced at his retreating back.

The park in the corner of the campus was bathed in sunlight.

Someone held a phone between their shoulder and ear, smoking a cigarette, and said with a smile, "Heh, just as we expected, the Ether Association has indeed set their sights on us. They've likely even dispatched someone from the Tribunal."

A hoarse voice came through the call: "You can still laugh, Joker."

The Joker extinguished his cigarette and chuckled, "Why so serious? That bunch from the Ether Association doesn't know what we encountered back then. Even the Non-Existent Lock and the Soul-Pacifying Bell in my hands are nothing compared to the perfect evolutionary chain."

The other party replied, "If it weren't for the Non-Existent Lock, you would have been killed by the Tribunal long ago. You had better be careful. If it weren't for the cost of overdrawing your life, how could you have contained those two armaments at your rank?"

The value of a Mythic Armament was far higher than that of an Alchemy Armament.

But not everyone was qualified to wield one.

To forcibly contain a Mythic Armament, one had to risk having their life and soul devoured.

"As long as we can complete that lord's mission, we can obtain complete evolution and be reborn." The Joker licked his lips.

A stern voice came through the phone.

"Joker, don't create extra trouble!"

The person on the other side said, "Even if you have gained the ability to undergo aberration, you cannot confront them head-on."

The Joker's mouth curled into a sinister smile as he said, "With that lord's Necro-Gu, what is there to fear?"

After a moment of silence, the other side said, "As you wish. Have you found Gu Ci'an's son?"

"He has been within my sight the whole time."

The Joker said calmly, "As long as his family is still in Feng City, he cannot run. He is in the light, and I am in the dark. The one holding the initiative will always be me. As for the Ether Association... heh."

He mocked, "He is Gu Ci'an's son, after all. How much can the Ether Association really trust him?"

With that, he hung up the phone, clamped the cigarette in his mouth, and disappeared into the shadows.

The Joker was very confident in himself.

He was the hunter.

And his prey was nothing more than a rookie who had just entered the extraordinary world.

To him, they were like ants.

He could crush them at any time.

As for the Ether Association and the Tribunal, they were just a bunch of idiots.

Not worth mentioning.

However, as he passed by the balcony of the girls' dormitory, he noticed a letter placed there.

"Is what you love, your life?"

The Joker fell into deep thought.

In the empty, deserted garden behind the back gate of Fengcheng No. 2 High School.

Gu Jianlin stood beside the bushes, looking down at the bloodstains that had yet to be cleaned up, remaining silent.

The blood had already coagulated, appearing as a deep, mottled dark red.

There was also animal fur scattered on the ground.

Beside the flower bed was a pet food bowl; the food inside had long since spoiled and turned foul, making one feel nauseated.

Gu Jianlin suppressed his revulsion and carefully sniffed the odors.

Combining this with the animal carcasses he had seen last night, he searched for clues step by step.

The overturned food bowl, the scattered fur, the blood splattered on the ground, the grass stained red, the footprints where the grass had been trampled, the deep indentations in the soil, and the graffiti on the love letter—one by one, the clues connected.

That was enough.

Gu Jianlin closed his eyes, constructing a psychological profile of the killer in his mind step by step.

His cruelty, his morbidity, his madness.

It was chilling.

"Forty-six years old, dark personality, grew up in foreign slums, perhaps witnessed a shooting, experienced domestic violence, enjoys abusing animals. Long-term bachelor, received higher education after growing up, mentally highly unstable."

Gu Jianlin paused. "And, possesses non-human characteristics."

Very good, it matched the information.

It really is you, Joker!

For a fleeting moment, he opened his eyes, and a bizarre scene flashed before them.

Sharp, blade-like appendages, accompanied by spraying blood, sliced open the abdomen of some animal.

A blood-stained hand reached into the animal's abdomen and plucked out a heart that was still beating.

Fragmented scenes flashed through his mind, fleeting like scenery passing by a window when driving at top speed.

Gu Jianlin turned around and searched the grass carefully. It took a long time before he found a strand of spider silk.

Because this strand of spider silk was truly too thin; if one did not observe carefully, it would certainly be overlooked.

"This Joker is truly cautious. He left very few traces of himself, but fortunately, there is this piece of silk." Gu Jianlin took out a tissue, carefully picked it up, wrapped it, and put it into his pocket.

This was a precious material for a curse.

The psychological profile was basically complete; the next step was to compare them one by one.

This time, Gu Jianlin had to find a person who could hide their identity within the entire school; the workload was unprecedentedly large.

But for him, this was also a challenge.

It didn't matter, though; he could skip all his classes today. He had plenty of time to search slowly.

He was a very patient person.

Gu Jianlin put on his Bluetooth earphones and began playing the music on his phone, looping the track.

Accompanied by the classical, winding melody, a male voice began to sing, sounding like a plea.

"1983 alleyway, December is clear, Chapter Seven of the Night..."

The campus was shrouded in dusk.

The teaching building, the laboratory building, the office building, the basketball court, the swimming pool, the public restrooms.

In some classrooms, the math teacher was already setting problems on the blackboard, while fifty students below listened intently.

No one noticed a teenager wearing earphones hurrying past the door.

In the laboratory building, the chemistry teacher was shouting at the top of his lungs, while clumsy students handled reagents in a panic.

On the basketball court, a fierce battle was underway; the blue and red uniforms of the two school teams intertwined, sweat pouring like rain.

The sound of gasping for breath and the thumping of basketballs hitting the ground violently mixed together.

In the stands, only one person watched them silently, a lollipop in his mouth.

In the school's swimming pool, girls in swimsuits frolicked in the water, their well-developed curves stretching freely. Water droplets danced on their snow-white skin as they swam underwater, as light as fish.

In the gymnasium next door, a junior student in white lace was practicing ballet, spinning effortlessly on one foot.

Her skirt expanded and contracted like a lily, a sight of breathtaking beauty.

The teenager with earphones watched them silently, then turned and headed to the public restroom.

The guys in the men's room only felt a figure flash past the door, as if they had seen a ghost.

A beautiful teacher who had just come out of the women's restroom almost collided with the teenager wearing earphones, letting out a startled cry.

A kitten napping by the roadside rubbed affectionately against his ankles.

In the vast campus, Gu Jianlin was like a lonely ghost, hurrying past everyone.

He constantly profiled their personalities in his mind, recording them in his heart.

It was as if there were a palace of memory in his brain, collecting books inside. Every time a book was opened, it revealed the personality profile of a certain person, recording their truest side.

If it were before he became an Ascender, he might not have been able to do something so exaggerated.

But ever since he awakened, his profiling ability seemed to have grown stronger as well.

Perhaps this... was the evolution of life.

In almost a single day, he had even found the hidden agents the Ether Association had planted in the school.

At this moment, the sun was setting.

The music in his earphones, which had played who knows how many times, began a new loop.

Gu Jianlin adjusted his earphones and walked silently toward the cafeteria, his right hand resting on the pistol at his waist.

He walked through the darkness, his footsteps growing faster and faster.

As if stepping to a certain beat.

"We can, forget, forgive."

"But we must know the truth."

"The iron bars that were moved."

"That last piece of the puzzle is finally complete."

Bang.

The cafeteria door was pushed open with force, and the cool wind rushed in, stirring up dust everywhere.

The sunlight faded, and darkness swept in overwhelmingly. People were already preparing to get food on the first floor, while the second and third floors were dim. The elevators were not running, and nothing could be seen.

Someone walked into the third floor with a girl in his arms, looking like a couple in the throes of love, and disappeared around the corner of the corridor.

Gu Jianlin stood in the darkness, staring at his back.

The melody in his earphones reached its climax.

"I hear the footsteps I expected, soft leather heels."

"He pushes the door open, the evening breeze shakes, the kerosene lamp flickers."

"The typewriter stops at the killer's, name I turn around..."

"The night sky over Westminster Abbey begins to boil."

In Gu Jianlin's line of sight, that person's silhouette gradually distorted, momentarily transforming into a magician wearing a clown mask.

Gu Jianlin had finally found the person he was looking for.

Throughout the entire day, he had observed countless faces in the school, and finally confirmed the back he had just seen.

He had looked at this person three times, confirming without a doubt that it was him.

The cafeteria lights were dim, and students carrying their dinner brushed past him; he walked in like a ghost.

The dim twilight cast his silhouette, light and dark intersecting.

He stepped into the darkness, as if walking into another world. The noise of the mundane world faded away rapidly, and mystery and eeriness rushed toward him.

Crisp footsteps suddenly echoed at the stairwell. A girl with short, pale cyan hair walked up the stairs, draped in a loose, oversized school jacket. Her silhouette was slender and petite, graceful and delicate.

Gu Jianlin was startled; he had not expected her to be here at this time!

No, it wasn't that she just happened to be here.

It was that Joker was lingering in her vicinity.

Su Youzhu had only wanted to come to the cafeteria to buy some white fungus porridge because her appetite wasn't great today. Unfortunately, no one had arrived at the third-floor windows yet, so she planned to go up alone and sit for a while; she was used to being a loner anyway.

For a homebody, as long as her phone still had battery, it was equivalent to roaming the entire world.

Just then, she suddenly heard some strange sounds coming from the bizarre wailing in the corridor ahead.

It sounded like fabric rubbing together, along with the kissing and sucking sounds of lips and teeth.

Accompanied by a woman's low, seemingly pained moan.

Her pretty face flushed red, and she prepared to turn and leave. She didn't know who was so famished that they were getting it on in the cafeteria corridor; it was so indecent.

Suddenly, someone walked up from behind, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her tightly into his embrace.

Su Youzhu was just about to scream when her vermilion lips were covered.

"Shh."

Gu Jianlin held her slender, soft waist, led her step by step behind the corner, and stared fixedly into the darkness of the corridor ahead, whispering into her ear: "Don't make a sound, it's dangerous here."

Thump-thump.

That was the sound of a heartbeat.

Su Youzhu was frightened, her heart racing, but upon hearing the familiar voice in her ear, she opened her clear, bright eyes. Turning her head to see the boy's cold, sharp profile, she stopped struggling.

She didn't know what was happening, watching him silently as if stunned.

In the few months the two siblings had lived together, this was their most intimate moment.

Gu Jianlin's hand covered her lips tightly. There was no scent of sweat; instead, there was the faint, clean fragrance of hand soap. His palm was likely stained with her lipstick by now, dampened by her breath.

As for the so-called danger, she didn't know what it was either.

Her heart was simply beating faster by instinct.

"Listen to me carefully. When I let go, run out immediately. Don't look back under any circumstances. Try to head toward crowded areas; there are people in the school who can protect you. Do you understand? It's dangerous here, there's a murderer."

Gu Jianlin lowered his voice: "Be good."

His voice was steady, as if it possessed magic.

Su Youzhu vaguely knew what his father did for a living. As a profiler who had cracked many earth-shattering cases, he was bound to attract revenge-seekers. Thinking of this, she actually felt a bit nervous and waved her phone.

Gu Jianlin moved in front of her, shielding her, and said word by word: "It's too late."

Although they had only lived together for four months, this girl had never shown him the slightest rejection.

On the contrary, she had kindly taken care of him, wanting him to integrate into the family.

He could not let anything happen to her.

Otherwise, Mom would be very sad.

For a fleeting moment, a gaunt shadow was cast in the corridor.

Gu Jianlin saw that shadow and sensed that someone was already standing at the end of the corridor.

He took a deep breath and mouthed the words: "Be good, then call the police to save me."

At this moment, Gu Jianlin finally understood how his father had felt during the car accident.

This was the feeling of wanting to protect someone.

"Go!"

He suddenly let out a roar and pushed the girl in his arms away.

Su Youzhu stumbled backward from his forceful shove, her pale cyan hair disheveling her beautiful eyes. The depths of her pupils were filled with tension and worry, but then she turned and ran down the stairs without hesitation, fleeing toward the outside.

Very good, very calm, simply amazing!

Bang!

A cloud of smoke exploded, and a black shadow appeared out of thin air behind the boy.

Gu Jianlin grabbed a chair, turned, and smashed it backward!