The hen laid an egg-cluck, cluck!

Kannazuki did not put pen to paper.

He did not immediately write a cause of death after Sun Daqiang's name.

An obsession rooted deep in his soul wound around his thoughts like a vine.

Ryuk had told him some of this notebook's rules, and he had discovered one himself through testing.

But all those rules rested on one premise-the notebook was intact.

What if it wasn't?

Kannazuki rubbed his fingers over the rigid black cover, his gaze settling on the notebook's binding.

His mind raced through the possibilities. If he tore out a page, would that page still work?

If it did, would tearing out a middle page produce a different effect from tearing out the last one?

Most people would regard a supernatural object that decided life and death with reverence.

Kannazuki did not.

He trusted only repeatedly verified physical laws and closed loops of logic. Since this notebook existed in the real world, it had to obey some higher-dimensional set of "physical laws."

He wanted to test its limits.

Kannazuki opened the notebook, his fingertips sliding across blank pages as he flipped straight to the end.

The last page.

It was a symbolic concept. It represented "termination," "the end," and "the limit."

Kannazuki pinched the bottom corner of the last page.

"Yue, what are you doing?" Ryuk noticed his intention and stopped chewing his apple, intense interest gleaming in his red eyes.

No one had ever dared to challenge the notebook itself.

Kannazuki did not answer.

He pulled with his fingers.

Riiip-

The crisp sound of tearing paper rang through the silent Rental Apartment, particularly harsh against the quiet.

His movement was clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation. He tore an entire blank sheet cleanly out of the notebook.

Kannazuki laid the torn-out sheet flat on the desk.

Then he picked up the Death Note, now missing a page.

His pupils contracted instantly.

Right where he had torn out the page, at the end of the thick stack of paper near the spine's binding, a brand-new blank sheet was materializing at a speed visible to the naked eye, carrying a faint scent of paper and ink.

It was not growing out of thin air.

It looked more like some kind of spatial folding technology pushing a new sheet of "paper" out of an infinitely extending alternate dimension within the binding.

The entire process took less than three seconds.

The notebook returned to its original state, exactly as thick as before. It was as though the tearing had been an illusion.

Kannazuki reached out and lightly touched the newly formed page. It felt smooth and warm, no different from before.

A hidden rule.

Kannazuki immediately reached his conclusion. This notebook had an infinite number of pages. No matter how many he tore out, it would replenish itself.

"Gahahahaha!"

"The hen laid an egg-cluck, cluck!"

Raucous laughter came from overhead.

Ryuk tumbled excitedly through the air, his massive skeletal frame bumping into the ceiling and dislodging flecks of dust.

"Yue! You bastard! You actually dared to tear it!"

Ryuk landed on the edge of the bed and looked at Kannazuki as though he were a priceless treasure.

"So the torn-out pages work just as well?"

Kannazuki picked up the separate sheet from the desk and asked calmly.

"Of course!" Ryuk stretched his enormous mouth into a grin like a split pomegranate. "I figured most idiots who got their hands on the notebook would worship it like the Bible, terrified of damaging even a little bit of it.

"They'd never imagine that every scrap of paper in this thing is an independent death terminal.

"I thought it would take you ages to discover this trick-or that you might never figure it out before you died."

Kannazuki nodded.

The final piece of the puzzle in his mind fell into place.

The significance of this discovery went far beyond gaining another murder weapon.

It meant he could hide the notebook itself somewhere absolutely secure and use torn-out pages to make an entirely new "Death Note."

Physical isolation.

This would minimize the risk of exposing the notebook.

Even if Chen Lei actually burst into this room with a search warrant one day and tore down the ceiling, he would never find the black notebook itself.

Kannazuki picked up the Black Water-Based Pen on the desk.

He no longer looked at the notebook itself. His attention focused entirely on the separate sheet he had torn out, its edge slightly ragged.

The pen tip descended.

Ink seeped into the paper fibers.

[Sun Daqiang]

After writing the name, Kannazuki clearly pictured the man with the bald crown and fleshy, brutish face.

He had seen Sun Daqiang's photograph in leaked internal police files.

[Cause of death: suffocation.]

[Detailed process: At precisely nine tonight, inside the police safe house, Sun Daqiang will enter a state of extreme excitement and frenzy. He will firmly believe that the "wealth luck" hidden within his body is about to drain away, and that the only remedy is to recast his destiny using ninety-nine one-yuan coins. He will threaten self-harm to force the officers guarding him to find ninety-nine coins for him. After receiving the coins, he will kneel on the floor and arrange them into a bizarre formation pointing due north. At nine thirty, the formation will be complete, and he will swallow all the coins. The ninety-nine coins will obstruct his esophagus and trachea, ultimately causing death by mechanical asphyxiation at nine thirty-seven. At the moment of death, he will be smiling.]

He wrote the final period.

Kannazuki folded the separate sheet in half, then in half again.

He went into the bathroom, tossed the wad of paper into the toilet, and pressed the flush button.

The swirling water carried the paper that had decided a life and would soon unleash a colossal storm down into the depths of the sewer.

The "weapon" was discarded after use.

Not a trace remained.

"Gahaha, Yue, you really are a meticulous little villain." Ryuk hung upside down from the ceiling, his enormous head almost reaching the floor. "I thought you'd just give him a heart attack."

"That would be too dull."

Kannazuki left the bathroom and sat back down at the desk.

"I want Chen Lei to watch with his own eyes as the impregnable defenses he built with taxpayers' money prove as flimsy as a sheet of paper before me."

He picked up The Eight Parts of the Heavenly Dragon, its cover torn off, and quietly began to read.

Eight fifty-five that evening.

Across from the Municipal Public Security Bureau stood a business hotel requisitioned as a temporary safe house.

Seventh floor, room 707.

It had already been transformed into a tightly sealed fortress.

Steel plates had been welded over the windows from the inside. The only door was a specially made blast-resistant door that required two officers to swipe their cards simultaneously to open it from outside.

Inside, four fully armed SWAT officers stood at the four corners, their expressions solemn.

They were elite members of the City Public Security Bureau Counterterrorism Assault Team, each a seasoned veteran.

Sun Daqiang, with his bald crown, sat cross-legged in the armchair at the center of the room, an unlit cigar clenched between his lips, his face full of arrogance and disdain.

"Come on, officers. No need to be so tense."

Sun Daqiang spat out the cigar and chuckled. "What's that coward called 'Kira' going to do, walk through walls?

"With you here, I feel safer than I do at home."

Zhou Yi, the SWAT captain in charge, gave him a cold glance without speaking.

Every fiber of his being resisted protecting scum like this. But those were his orders.

The digits on the wall's digital clock changed silently.

20:59:58.

20:59:59.

21:00:00.

The instant the appointed time arrived, Sun Daqiang's body jolted violently.