Where was he?

"Chen Mudou was right."

"My Fusion Rate really is low, but what's in my brain is different."

"And there's something... strange about this Research Society."

The young man watched the empty corridor ahead with a cautious expression.

Jingye Meinan curled his lip. "The doors are all open, and there aren't any guards. Anyone who isn't blind could notice something that obvious, okay? Are you saying only your brilliant intellect could see through all this?"

"I'm not talking about intelligence."

The young man spoke slowly, then suddenly flipped backward, clinging to the ceiling like a spider.

"What the hell?"

Caught completely off guard, Jingye Meinan's eyes went wide.

On closer inspection...

There was a vent the size of a shoebox beside Qin Yiguan's head. With just four fingers gripping its edge, he had suspended his entire body from the ceiling.

The young man felt that his body was very, very light now.

His eyes flickered. "This will work."

An entry lit up on his information panel: [Shadow Syndrome]-The Concealer.

The young man had once cracked a serial murder case. The killer's methods were ordinary, his ability to evade investigation was poor, and he had even left multiple clues at the scenes.

Yet the police simply couldn't catch him.

The killer was like a ghost. They searched his apartment and his usual haunts, but never caught so much as a glimpse of him.

Once, Officer Wang had even predicted the killer's next target. Though they arrived too late, the murder had taken place less than a minute before.

Officer Wang deployed his officers, completing an exhaustive search within six minutes over an enormous five-kilometer area. They even solved a nearby theft along the way, yet found no trace of the killer.

Then...

Qin Yiguan got involved, thoroughly simulating the killer's psychology and behavior.

The killer was successfully apprehended and brought to justice.

From then on, the killer had another name: The Concealer.

Now...

Qin Yiguan slowly worked his shoulder and arm joints. Then his fingers unleashed strength far beyond that of an ordinary person, pulling the grille straight out of the shoebox-sized vent.

Immediately afterward, Qin Yiguan's shoulders contracted in a bizarre fashion, and his spine even gave off a series of cracks, like joints being dislocated.

At the same time, the young man recalled what he knew.

Since childhood, The Concealer had deliberately worn down his joints, damaging them to increase their range of motion. After more than a decade of this self-mutilation, he had finally mastered an ability resembling the Bone-Shrinking Technique.

He had also reduced his weight to an extreme degree. When arrested, he weighed just thirty-two kilograms despite being an adult.

He had trained his fingers separately as well. His thumb alone could exert fifteen kilograms of downward force, allowing him to break through small obstructions.

After each murder, he hadn't actually gone far. Instead, he hid inside the ceiling, in a pipe that should have been impossible for a living person to fit into, quietly watching the clueless police.

That was his motive for killing: to enjoy the perverse pleasure of hiding.

Now, the young man's eyes lit up.

He could simulate the results of The Concealer's decade-plus of training in an instant!

Then...

The young man's body contracted to an extreme degree. At a glance, it seemed to occupy barely half its original volume.

A moment later...

He slowly squeezed his entire body into the shoebox-sized vent!

No one knew how he had contorted himself to leave his right hand, still holding the grille, as the last part to enter.

Click.

The young man's right hand slowly withdrew into the ventilation duct, replacing the grille behind him.

Jingye Meinan stared upward in shock. "Holy fucking..."

Now...

The young man slowly straightened up inside the duct. Only the outlets of this ventilation system were narrow; the interior branched in every direction and stood a full two meters high.

From inside the vent...

The young man's quiet voice drifted out. "Meinan, I wasn't talking about intelligence. I meant that my brain holds a way to get out of here unscathed!"

Then...

The young man started walking forward.

He passed through a narrow connecting passage and entered the elevator shaft. Throughout the process, he remained The Concealer, his footsteps making no sound even on the thin ventilation duct.

Down on the ground...

Jiu Zhengxuan gazed up at the sky, ill at ease.

-"Wei Hu, have the takeoff procedures still not been completed?"

Qin Yiguan crept through the ceiling, searching for a while.

At last, he spotted Jiao Shensan in a huge conference room.

But he wasn't alone.

Now...

The young man silently crouched inside the ceiling, looking through the grille beneath his feet at the people in the room.

Jiao Shensan was over sixty, but he stood straight, his back and waist broad. Wearing a white lab coat, he stood before a floor-to-ceiling window, watching a white cloud drift toward him from afar.

High-altitude clouds actually moved very fast, no slower than a car speeding past.

But the instant that white cloud met the glass, it seemed to embrace it, gently merging with it.

In a flash, the white cloud disappeared from view.

"Doctor Jiao, the Metaverse Government has sent us a response."

"In the hour before Mechanical Crow appeared, a total of twelve thousand three hundred residents logged into the Metaverse for the first time."

"I compared their facial features. The person we're looking for wasn't among them."

"And what baffles us most is this."

"We spent forty hours comparing Nutrient Pod distribution records worldwide."

"That young man we met that day..."

"Wasn't in those records."

"And there's something we found even stranger."

"We searched the residency records of every Central District, and even their surveillance records. We found absolutely no footage of that young man. Not a single trace."

"He has no Nutrient Pod, nor does he live in any Central District."

"Yet he appeared in the Experimental Zone."

Several Research Society scientists and more than a dozen young scientific assistants wore bewildered expressions. Deep down, even their previously unshakable faith in science and technology had begun to waver.

"And since Neural Helmets are a basic safeguard for humanity, the Gemini Superbrain has blocked access to those records."

"So all we can do now is send out Mechanical Proxies to visit the Rust Cities one by one."

"But China alone has five thousand seven hundred Rust Cities..."

A young scientific assistant sighed softly. "Where on earth is that kid...?"

Jiao Shensan also tilted his head up slightly, his gaze seeming to rest on the ceiling. "Yes... where on earth is that kid?"