Greed

The arrogance on his face vanished in an instant, replaced by utter terror and madness.

His pupils dilated, and his eyes turned blood-red.

"No! No! My fortune! My fortune is slipping away!"

Sun Daqiang sprang off the sofa like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, frantically tearing at his clothes.

"It's getting out! Quick! Help me hold it in!"

The four SWAT officers in the room instantly went on alert, lowering their Type 95 Rifles slightly to aim at Sun Daqiang.

"Sun Daqiang! Calm down!" Zhou Yi barked. "Stay where you are! Don't move!"

"I can't calm down! My destiny is about to shatter!"

Sun Daqiang looked possessed. He rushed to the wall and slammed his head against it with a muffled thud.

"Quick! Give me coins! I need coins!" Blood ran down his forehead as he turned and roared at the four SWAT officers.

"I need ninety-nine! One-yuan coins! I need them to lay out a formation!

"Hurry! Otherwise, I'll die right here! Then none of you will have an answer for your superiors!"

Zhou Yi's brow tightened.

Suspects losing control of their emotions was common in safe houses. But he had never seen anyone suddenly go berserk like this.

"C-Captain, what do we do?" a young officer asked quietly.

"If he dies here, we're all in trouble."

Zhou Yi gritted his teeth and spoke quietly into his headset. "Calling command. The target is suffering an emotional breakdown and exhibiting severe self-harming behavior. Requesting items to calm him down."

He did not mention coins, only items to calm him down.

A few minutes later, the door opened. A logistics officer in a bulletproof vest arrived with a heavy cloth bag, escorted by two SWAT officers.

Zhou Yi took the bag and poured the coins onto the floor.

Clatter-

Over a hundred one-yuan coins scattered across the smooth floor, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen.

The instant Sun Daqiang saw the coins, the madness in his eyes became feverish devotion.

He lunged at them like a dog, dropped to his knees, and began counting them one by one with trembling hands.

Exactly ninety-nine.

He raised his head toward the wall on the north side of the room and began arranging the coins into a twisted pattern no outsider could possibly understand.

The four SWAT officers formed a circle around him with their guns ready, watching him intently. The atmosphere in the room grew unbearably eerie.

"Captain, what... what is he doing? Some kind of shamanic ritual?"

Zhou Yi did not answer. Cold sweat had already soaked his back.

An indescribable chill crept up his spine.

9:31 a.m.

Sun Daqiang placed the final coin. The bizarre formation resembled a twisted smiling face, mocking everyone in the room.

He let out a long breath, his face settling into an expression of relieved satisfaction.

Then, kneeling on the floor, he lowered his head as though worshipping, stuck out his tongue, and licked the coin in the very center.

Immediately afterward, he grabbed a handful of coins and shoved them straight into his mouth without a moment's hesitation.

"Stop him!" Zhou Yi finally reacted, roaring as he charged forward first.

Three officers lunged at the same time.

But they were too late.

A terrifying strength that did not belong to Sun Daqiang erupted from his body. Like a raging bull, he violently threw off the two SWAT officers trying to pin his arms.

He tipped his head back, choking noises rattling in his throat as he frantically crammed the coins from the floor into his mouth.

One, ten, fifty...

One SWAT officer tried to pry his mouth open with a baton, but Sun Daqiang bit down on it, instantly leaving a row of deep tooth marks.

9:36 a.m.

All ninety-nine coins on the floor were gone.

Sun Daqiang's belly swelled visibly. His face turned a dark, purplish red, and the veins in his neck bulged like earthworms.

He tried to breathe, but cold metal had completely blocked his windpipe and esophagus.

He knelt in the center of the formation he had laid out, clutching his throat with both hands as his body convulsed violently.

As he looked at the terrified SWAT officers before him, a bizarre smile of release slowly appeared on his face.

9:37 a.m.

Sun Daqiang's body abruptly went rigid, and his pupils lost all focus.

He was dead.

Surrounded by four elite SWAT officers, inside a sealed, windowless room, he had killed himself in an utterly absurd fashion.

Deathly silence filled the room.

Only heavy breathing remained.

The SWAT officer slowly backed up two steps and leaned against the cold wall, feeling as though every ounce of strength had drained from his body.

He looked at Sun Daqiang's corpse on the floor and the formation laid out with coins. A single word rose unbidden in his mind.

-Judgment.

11:00 a.m.

Happy Home residential complex.

The seventh-floor Rental Apartment in Unit 3, Building 4.

Heavy blackout curtains shut out the sunlight completely.

Kannazuki sat cross-legged on the bed.

His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady.

An indescribable rush of pleasure shot up his spine and straight into his cerebral cortex.

Sun Daqiang was dead.

A life steeped in sin and greed had been taken.

In return, a dramatic qualitative transformation was taking place inside Kannazuki's brain.

He could clearly feel his neuronal synapses proliferating and reorganizing at a frantic pace.

His cerebrospinal fluid flowed faster, supplying his brain with far more oxygen and energy than an ordinary person's.

His range of hearing expanded.

He heard the rustle of a stray cat walking through the grass downstairs.

He heard the dry scraping of an inadequately lubricated security-door hinge on the first floor of the neighboring unit.

He even heard Xiao Li, the officer under Chen Lei's command, chewing gum inside the unfinished building two hundred meters away.

Kannazuki opened his eyes.

A cold glint of absolute reason flashed deep within his pupils.

This was Kira's path of evolution.

Killing brought intelligence. Intelligence brought control.

He turned toward the miniature terminal on the desk, cobbled together from discarded motherboards.

Rows of green code scrolled automatically across its screen.

It was the web crawler he had written.

The program traversed the dark web and major public judicial databases around the world, collecting information on heinous drug lords, arms dealers, and serial killers who had escaped legal punishment.

Cartel bosses in Mexico.

Armed drug lords in the Golden Triangle.

Underground organ traffickers in North America.

Those controlling child prostitution networks in Europe.

Thousands upon thousands of names, accompanied by clear photographs, were sorted into categories and stored in the virtual database he had constructed in his mind.

All he had to do was pick up his pen.

All he had to do was write those names in that black notebook.

His intelligence would undergo an unprecedented, explosive leap.

He would cast off his mortal shell entirely and become a true god looking down upon all living beings.

Kannazuki stood up.

He walked to the desk and opened the drawer.

The black Death Note lay quietly inside.

He reached out and picked up the black rollerball pen.

He removed the cap.

The tip hovered above the blank page.

All I have to do is write.

The first stroke.

The thousandth.

The ten-thousandth.

Kannazuki's breathing grew slightly heavier.

Greed.

It was an instinct etched deep into the genes of carbon-based life.

His greed for power and hunger for evolution reached their peak at that moment.

But he did not put pen to paper.

His newly evolved superbrain began a ruthless scenario simulation.

Simulation objective: the consequences of initiating a worldwide mass slaughter.