Officer Chen, make yourself comfortable

City Public Security Bureau Cybersecurity Detachment.

The doors were shut tight.

In the climate-controlled server room, the air conditioning was cranked to maximum, and the server fans roared deafeningly.

Chen Lei stood before the main console.

Four cigarette butts already littered the floor at his feet.

"Captain Chen, the Provincial Department has approved our highest-level access."

Cybersecurity Detachment Captain Zhou Ming strode over, holding a freshly printed authorization code. "We've forcibly taken control of the delivery platform's underlying database.

"We've cut off their commercial internet connection. The data is running exclusively on our internal network now."

Chen Lei stared at the electronic display covering an entire wall.

Green code cascaded frantically down the screen.

"How long until we find the source of that ghost order?" Chen Lei asked.

"We're dealing with an expert." Zhou Ming pulled up a chair and sat, his hands blurring over the keyboard.

"He didn't just alter the dispatch record for 3:05 p.m. He also overwrote the logs with junk data.

"Standard recovery won't work. We're reconstructing the fragments."

Chen Lei said nothing.

He knew there was no point rushing them.

Lin Yaodong's death had blown the lid off all of Linhai City.

Dongding Capital was leaderless, and the underworld had spiraled completely out of control.

Calls from the Provincial Department flooded the bureau chief's office, one after another. The pressure to solve the case before the deadline rested squarely on Chen Lei's shoulders.

The "Cleaner" in the yellow outdoor jacket hadn't merely killed someone. He was openly challenging the police's entire investigative apparatus.

"Reconstruction eighty percent complete!" a technician shouted.

Chen Lei stepped closer.

"Found it!" Zhou Ming slammed the Enter key.

"At 2:50 p.m., an external IP breached the platform's regional dispatch server, forcibly generated that afternoon tea order for Dongding Tower, and designated the person who would receive it."

"Can you locate the IP?" Chen Lei braced both hands on the console.

"Running a reverse trace."

The cascading code vanished from the main screen, replaced by a high-resolution world map.

A red dot lit up over Linhai City.

"The source is here." Zhou Ming watched the screen intently.

The instant he finished speaking, the dot vanished. A red line crossed the Pacific Ocean and landed in Silicon Valley on the west coast of the United States.

"A relay." Zhou Ming's brow tightened. "He used a proxy server."

The red line never paused.

It shot from Silicon Valley to Reykjavik, Iceland.

Then to Saint Petersburg, Russia.

São Paulo, Brazil.

Cape Town, South Africa.

Red trails crisscrossed the world map wildly, forming a tangled spiderweb.

"Stop him!" Chen Lei roared.

"We can't. His automated hopping program is too fast. It switches physical nodes every half second."

Cold sweat beaded on Zhou Ming's forehead. His fingers hammered the keyboard as he tried to cut off the data stream.

The seventh hop.

The ninth hop.

The eleventh hop.

Only clattering keyboards and hurried breathing filled the Cybersecurity Detachment's main room. Every technician was helping Zhou Ming box the target in.

The twelfth hop.

The red dot finally settled on a nameless island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"Got it!" Zhou Ming shouted. "Final destination IP locked. It's a server at an abandoned weather station in the Marshall Islands."

Chen Lei fixed his eyes on the red dot.

"Get the physical address. Contact INTERPOL for assistance..." Before Chen Lei could finish giving the order-

The main screen flickered.

The red dot burst apart.

The entire world map shattered into countless specks of digital static.

Then a black dialog box appeared in the center of the screen.

There was no mocking message, no taunting image.

Only a single, stark system notification:

[Data self-destructed. Connection terminated.]

Deathly silence fell over the server room.

Zhou Ming slumped against his chair, taking his hands off the keyboard. He stared at the darkened screen, profound helplessness in his eyes.

"It was useless." Zhou Ming's voice was dry. "All twelve international hops were a decoy program he wrote in advance. He was never at that abandoned weather station.

"From the very first second of our trace, we latched onto a fake bone he tossed us.

"When the program reached the end, the bone destroyed itself."

Chen Lei stood motionless.

The cold air blowing through the climate-controlled room made him shiver.

They had failed.

They had invoked the city bureau's highest access privileges and assembled the province's best cybersecurity specialists, yet they hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of their opponent.

"Captain Chen, I'm sorry." Zhou Ming lowered his head.

Chen Lei didn't lose his temper.

He turned and pulled his cigarette pack from his pocket. Empty.

He crushed the empty pack into a ball and threw it in the trash.

"This isn't your fault." Chen Lei's voice was hoarse, strangely calm. "He's smarter than we imagined."

Chen Lei strode out of the server room.

The hallway lights were somewhat harsh.

Chen Lei leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. His mind rapidly reviewed everything that had happened over the past forty-eight hours.

Li Jianguo had died in the Detention Center.

Zhao Lidong had jumped from a building after turning himself in.

Sun Jianguo had died in a car crash.

Thirteen enforcers had dropped dead.

Lin Yaodong had blown himself up in public.

Every death had occurred either in a locked room, in an accident, or under circumstances with airtight physical explanations. The police had found no tangible murder weapon or fingerprints.

The only thing proving the Cleaner's existence was that yellow delivery jacket.

Now even the sole digital lead had been completely severed.

Their opponent was leading them around on a leash.

Chen Lei's eyes snapped open.

He understood.

That nonexistent afternoon tea order, those deliberately preserved traces of tampering-they hadn't been mistakes at all.

They were bait.

The Cleaner knew the police would investigate the delivery platform, so he had deliberately left a trail that would take enormous computing power and time to follow.

With a single line of code, he had tied up the Linhai City Public Security Bureau's main investigative force for five full hours.

He was draining police resources.

This was his way of telling the police: on the technological playing field, you couldn't win.

At the same time.

Happy Home, Old City District.

The smell of cooking grease from the night-market stalls hung in the air.

Kannazuki sat on a plastic stool. A steaming bowl of beef fried rice stood before him.

He wore an ordinary gray hoodie, having taken off that conspicuous yellow outdoor jacket.

He picked up his spoon and shoveled a generous mouthful of fried rice into his mouth. Rice and the fragrance of cumin burst across his tongue.

"Gahahahaha."

Ryuk crouched on the folding table beside him.

His enormous body sent passing stray cats fleeing with their fur standing on end.

The Shinigami held a Red Fuji Apple he had just swiped from a fruit stand.

"Tsuki, you've got quite an appetite these days." Ryuk crunched through the apple core. "You just killed a tycoon worth ten billion, and now you're eating fifteen-yuan fried rice."

Kannazuki swallowed.

"Evolution requires energy." Kannazuki wiped the corner of his mouth with a tissue. "A brain working at high speed consumes large amounts of glucose."

He looked at the neon lights flickering across the street.

"By my reckoning, the city bureau's cybersecurity team should have reached the twelfth node by now." Kannazuki's tone was casual, as though he were discussing tomorrow's weather.

"Aren't you afraid they'll actually trace your real IP?" Ryuk tilted his head, curiosity gleaming in his red eyes.

"They can't." Kannazuki lifted the complimentary egg-drop soup from the table and took a sip. "I sent the command through Dongding Tower's internal wireless network. Even if they trace it to the source, it'll only lead them back to Lin Yaodong himself."

Kannazuki set down the soup bowl.

The evolution of both his body and intellect had given him an entirely new understanding of this world's rules.

Human investigative methods were built on physical traces and logical chains of cause and effect.

Sever the causality and erase the traces, and the police were blind.

"Those cops must be going crazy right now." Ryuk laughed shrilly. "That guy Chen Lei is probably smashing his desk."

Kannazuki didn't smile.

He took out a twenty-yuan note and tucked it beneath the bowl.

"Chen Lei won't smash his desk." Kannazuki stood.

"He isn't some useless fool who flies into a rage when he hits a dead end. He's a hunting dog who never lets go once he's sunk his teeth into his prey."

With both hands in his hoodie pockets, Kannazuki walked toward the dim alley.

"If he can't win through technology, he'll abandon technology." Kannazuki's silhouette melted into the darkness. "He'll go back to the basics."

The city bureau.

The Criminal Investigation Detachment captain's office.

Chen Lei pushed open the door.

The office lights were off. Only the streetlights outside shone through the window, illuminating the photographs densely covering the whiteboard.

Chen Lei walked up to the whiteboard.

He picked up the eraser and vigorously wiped away every reference to "network tracing," "IP addresses," and "platform data."

The technological approach was a dead end.

Then he would take another path.

Chen Lei pulled over a chair and sat before the whiteboard.

He stared at the photographs of the dead.

"Before Lin Yaodong died, he offered a hundred-million-dollar bounty for a delivery worker in a yellow outdoor jacket," Chen Lei murmured in the darkness.

Why a delivery worker?

Because when Sun Jianguo died, that delivery worker had taken the ledger.

There were tens of thousands of delivery workers in Linhai City.

But anyone capable of killing Sun Jianguo, hacking the delivery platform, and strolling openly onto the top floor of Dongding Tower was no ordinary delivery worker.

He needed extraordinary composure, exceptional intelligence, and a cold indifference to human life.

Chen Lei's gaze moved across the whiteboard.

At last, it stopped on a two-inch ID photograph.

It showed an ordinary-looking young man with dull eyes.

Kannazuki.

Two days earlier, this young man had sat in an iron chair in the interrogation room.

Under Chen Lei's intense questioning, he had shown no sign of panic. Even his heart rate hadn't risen.

He had used flawless logic and a discrepancy in timing to clear himself of suspicion in Li Jianguo's death.

Chen Lei stood.

He walked to the whiteboard and pressed a finger against Kannazuki's photograph.

"Too perfect," Chen Lei murmured. "Having no flaws is the biggest flaw of all."

Chen Lei recalled that detail from the interrogation room.

The look Kannazuki had given him when leaving.

It hadn't been the look of a suspect watching a policeman. It had been the look of a lofty observer watching an ant struggle to solve a puzzle.

"It was you." Chen Lei's voice rang through the empty office with absolute certainty.

No evidence.

No logic.

It went against every principle of criminal investigation, every insistence on a chain of evidence.

But Chen Lei's instincts were screaming a warning.

The Delivery Worker named Kannazuki was the Cleaner tearing Linhai City apart.

Chen Lei turned and walked over to his desk.

He snatched up the car keys.

He no longer needed to check the surveillance footage or wait for Cybersecurity to recover the data.

Ultimately, investigating a case meant investigating people.

And everyone had weaknesses. Everyone made mistakes.

Chen Lei pulled open his office door and strode into the light of the corridor.

"Xiao Li!" Chen Lei shouted toward the duty room.

The young officer hurried out. "Captain Chen, has Cybersecurity found something?"

"Forget Cybersecurity." Chen Lei tossed him the keys. "Go to the Archive Room and pull every file on Kannazuki, from childhood to now.

"Orphanage records, school transcripts, earnings from his jobs-I want to know how many pairs of socks he's bought!"

Xiao Li froze. "Captain Chen, wasn't Kannazuki cleared as a suspect? Besides, right now he's just a-"

"Get the files!" Chen Lei cut him off sharply. "And find out where he's living now.

"Bring two officers and come with me."

"Where are we going?"

"To pay our old friend a visit." Chen Lei strode toward the elevator.

One in the morning.

Happy Home.

Kannazuki finished showering and changed into clean pajamas.

He sat at his computer desk. The black Death Note lay quietly on its surface.

He picked up the Utility Knife, deftly flipping the blade between his fingertips.

Most of Linhai City's malignant tumors had already been cut out.

But the game wasn't over yet.

"Knock, knock, knock."

The dull knocking echoed through the silent hallway.

Kannazuki's hand stopped moving. The Utility Knife came to rest securely between his index and middle fingers.

"Heh heh." Hanging upside down from the ceiling, Ryuk turned his head, his red eyes shifting toward the security door. "Kannazuki, you have visitors."

Kannazuki said nothing.

He put down the Utility Knife, picked up an old magazine from the desk, and laid it over the black notebook.

The knocking came again.

Harder. More urgent.

"Open up. Police."

Chen Lei's hoarse voice carried through the metal door, heavy with an authority that brooked no refusal.

Kannazuki stood up.

He walked to the door and wrapped his hand around the cold handle.

The faintest smile curved his lips.

They came sooner than I expected, Kannazuki thought.

Click.

The security door opened.

The dim hallway light spilled into the Rental Apartment.

Chen Lei stood outside in a rain-soaked jacket. Behind him were two officers, their hands resting on the holsters at their waists.

Chen Lei's gaze swept past Kannazuki's shoulder, surveying the cramped Rental Apartment.

Finally, his eyes returned to Kannazuki's calm face.

"Kannazuki."

Chen Lei looked at him, his gaze sharp as a blade. "Sorry to bother you so late. You don't mind if I come in and sit down, do you?"

Kannazuki released the door handle and stepped back half a pace.

"Officer Chen, make yourself comfortable."

Kannazuki's voice was gentle, his manner utterly harmless. "Would you like some water?"