Ryuk walked around the table.
"You've found a loophole in the notebook's rules."
Kannazuki did not look up.
"Explain."
"This notebook is now recognized as an independent subterminal." Ryuk pointed at the diary. "The thirty genuine pages form its core. Whoever gets it will see that little phantom of mine. He can use those thirty pages to kill people.
"But he won't be able to see my actual body."
Kannazuki nodded.
That was exactly the effect he wanted.
Physical isolation. Information isolation.
He picked up a black rollerball pen.
He switched it to his left hand.
Kannazuki was not left-handed. But his control over his muscles was now exceptional.
The English letters he wrote with his left hand were crooked and wild, with a neurotic flair.
He wrote the rules on the diary's first page.
[How to use it] [The human whose name is written in this note shall die.]
He wrote down the requirements for names, faces, causes of death, and the forty-second limit.
He stopped writing.
He deliberately concealed the two most crucial rules.
First, killing people increased intelligence.
Second, deliberately misspelling a name four times rendered the notebook ineffective.
He did not need his stand-in to become smarter.
He only needed his stand-in to sink into a frenzied lust for killing and become a complete madman.
Only a madman would make a spectacle. Only a madman would draw the police's full firepower.
Kannazuki closed the diary.
He slipped it into an ordinary yellow kraft-paper bag.
He sealed it.
The bait was ready.
Now he needed to find a fish vicious enough-and stupid enough.
Kannazuki turned to face the computer screen.
The miniature terminal cobbled together from discarded motherboards lit up green.
A data cable connected it to the phone with the shattered screen.
The Interstellar Internet Cafe's billing server ran silently in the background.
Kannazuki's ten fingers tapped across the virtual keyboard.
They left a blur of afterimages.
He launched a program that routed connections through multiple proxies.
His IP address rapidly hopped between relay servers across the globe.
Three minutes later.
He infiltrated the largest underground forum on the North American dark web.
The "Eye of the Abyss."
This was a playground for criminals from around the world.
Drug deals, arms smuggling, human trafficking, assassination bounties.
None of that interested Kannazuki.
He broke straight into the forum's underlying database.
He pulled up the activity logs of every user.
He began setting the filtering parameters.
First criterion: over a thousand hours spent watching torture-and-murder videos.
Second criterion: frequent use of antisocial language in posts.
Third criterion: extremely active and desperate for attention.
Fourth criterion: physical IP location in Asia.
He pressed Enter.
The massive database began processing.
A hundred thousand active users were rapidly filtered down.
Ninety thousand.
Fifty thousand.
Ten thousand.
The progress bar advanced.
At last, only three IDs remained on the screen.
Kannazuki pulled up the details of those three IDs.
The first ID was in Tokyo, Japan. Too far away. Eliminated.
The second ID was in a Southeast Asian country. Its IP address changed frequently. An experienced operator, difficult to control. Eliminated.
The third ID.
[Blood_Jester]
Kannazuki locked onto that ID.
He began an in-depth reverse trace.
The other party used a fairly sophisticated onion-routing encryption system.
But to Kannazuki's evolved brain, its encryption logic was riddled with flaws.
Kannazuki tapped the keyboard.
He injected a decryption script he had written himself.
The firewall was torn apart.
The proxy nodes fell one by one.
The physical address was exposed.
The electronic map kept zooming in on the coordinates.
Dragon Country.
Linhai City.
The outskirts of the South District.
The Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse.
A cold smile curved Kannazuki's lips.
Right within Chen Lei's jurisdiction.
Perfect.
He pulled up the IP address's current network activity.
The other party was running an encrypted dark-web livestream.
Kannazuki intercepted the data stream.
He forced it to decode.
A dim video feed appeared on the phone screen.
The backdrop was a basement covered in rust and bloodstains.
Rusty meat hooks hung from the ceiling.
In the center of the frame, a stray dog was bound to an iron operating table with wire.
A man stood before the table.
He wore a filthy black rubber apron.
An old-fashioned gas mask covered his head.
He held a boning knife smeared with dark red blood.
The man let out a muffled laugh at the camera.
He raised the boning knife.
The comment feed along the side of the screen scrolled wildly.
Obscenities in various languages and donation notifications refreshed nonstop.
The man seemed to relish being watched.
He did not begin immediately.
He picked up a pair of metal pliers beside him.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the man said in a raspy voice processed through a voice changer, "let's try something new for tonight's show."
Kannazuki watched the screen.
His gaze was frighteningly calm.
This man met every requirement he had for a stand-in.
Extremely cruel. Desperate for attention. Some awareness of counter-surveillance.
Most importantly, he was right here in Linhai City.
Once he got his hands on the notebook.
He would be unable to wait to show off that godlike power on his livestream.
He would kill.
He would loudly proclaim himself the arbiter of punishment.
He would keep Chen Lei and the entire Linhai City police force firmly fixated on him.
Kannazuki's hands hovered above the keyboard.
All ten fingers came down.
Code scrolled.
He forcibly breached the underlying population database.
He stripped away the dark-web registration information.
Facial features extracted.
Skeletal contours compared.
An ID photo appeared.
Name: Shrimp. Age: thirty-two. Prior conviction: intentional assault. Sentence: five years. Current status: unemployed drifter.
Kannazuki scanned the case file.
Five years ago, Shrimp had stabbed his neighbor seventeen times with a boning knife.
Every stab had avoided vital areas.
This was not a crime of passion. This was taking pleasure in torture.
A person like this had no capacity for empathy and barely any moral limits.
Once he held power over life and death, his vanity would inevitably drive him completely out of control.
The perfect expendable pawn.
Kannazuki disconnected from the network.
He erased the access logs.
He opened the dark-web toolkit he had written himself.
He wrote a script to automate the delivery order.
He set the sender's address to a virtual node in Iceland.
The data packets hopped randomly through servers in seven countries.
The digital tracking trail was severed.
Kannazuki took out his old phone and inserted an unregistered data SIM.
He logged into a local errand-service platform.
He placed an order.
Instructions: collect the kraft-paper bag from compartment 12 of the Hive Box parcel lockers on Hongda Road. Deliver it to mailbox 2 at the main entrance of the Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse. Leave immediately after placing it inside.
A courier accepted the order.
Kannazuki picked up the kraft-paper bag.
He attached a miniature camera to the seal.
He put on a yellow delivery jacket and a helmet.
He opened the door and went downstairs.
He went on foot.
A map of Skynet's surveillance camera coverage in Linhai City's South District surfaced in his mind.
Camera locations. Blind spots. Rotation intervals.
He knew them all by heart.
He dodged the overhead surveillance cameras and threaded his way through back alleys.
Fifteen minutes later. Hongda Road.
He slipped the paper bag into parcel locker 12.
Shut the door. Retraced his steps.
Not a single camera captured his face along the way.
The physical delivery loop was complete.
The trail would end at the parcel locker.
Two in the morning.
The Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse.
The night wind carried the stench of blood and rust.
A battered electric tricycle jolted along the dirt road.
It stopped outside a rusted iron gate.
Shrimp hopped off the seat.
His leather jacket was covered in grease and dried blood. A cheap cigarette dangled from his lips.
He walked over to the cargo bed and picked up a black plastic bag with one hand.
Dark red, bloody liquid dripped from the bottom.
Shrimp headed toward the iron gate, ready to pull out his key.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at mailbox number two.
Its door stood half open, a strip of yellow kraft paper poking out.
Shrimp stopped.
The slaughterhouse had been abandoned for ten years. Usually, not a soul came near it.
He spat out his cigarette butt and pulled out the paper bag.
He squeezed it. Felt like a book.
Shrimp sneered and tucked the paper bag inside his jacket.
He pushed open the iron gate and headed for the basement.
The Rental Apartment.
The lights were off.
Kannazuki sat in his computer chair.
His phone screen gave off a faint glow.
The miniature camera activated. A live feed came through.
The basement was dimly lit. An incandescent bulb swayed overhead.
Rusted chains, meat hooks, and boning knives hung on the walls.
Shrimp tossed the black plastic bag into a corner.
The bag fell open, revealing the corpse of a stray dog, its eyes still wide open in death.
He walked over to the iron operating table, dragged up a broken chair, and sat down.
He pulled out the kraft paper bag.
Tore open the seal.
A brown notebook fell onto the iron table.
Shrimp frowned.
He picked up the notebook and opened it to the first page.
Crooked English lettering.
[How to use it]
[The human whose name is written in this note shall die.]
Shrimp had dropped out of middle school, but after spending so long on the dark web, he recognized a few words.
"Name... die..."
Shrimp read the words aloud, then snorted.
"Write a name and they die? What lunatic came up with this prank?"
He casually tossed the notebook back onto the iron table and started to get up to deal with the dog's corpse.
At that very second.
The basement's incandescent bulb flickered violently, crackling with electricity.
The temperature plummeted, as though he had fallen into an ice cellar.
Shrimp's breath turned to white mist.
A bone-piercing chill touched the back of his neck, like a block of ice pressed against his skin.
He turned his head stiffly.
The air warped unnaturally.
A huge, translucent black head materialized out of thin air.
Bulging red eyes stared straight at him.
Shriveled gray skin clung tightly to the bones.
A gaping maw stretched from ear to ear, packed with jagged fangs.
Ryuk's spectral form.
Shrimp's pupils instantly dilated as far as they could.
Before you continue