The game had only just begun

His heart clenched violently. His breathing stopped completely.

His mind crashed.

"Aah!"

A shrill, distorted scream tore through the dead silence.

Shrimp's legs went weak. He tumbled out of his chair.

He landed hard on the blood-soaked concrete floor.

Scrambling on all fours, he backed away desperately like a frightened rat.

His nails scraped bloody trails across the rough floor.

His back slammed against the cold wall.

"Stay away! Stay away! What the hell are you!"

Shrimp shook violently, his teeth chattering.

Warm liquid trickled down his inner thighs, soaking his crotch.

A yellow puddle spread across the concrete.

He had been so arrogant while waving his boning knife on his dark web livestreams.

He had proclaimed himself the master of life and death.

Faced with a genuinely supernatural being, he was more helpless than that dead dog.

The Rental Apartment.

Kannazuki watched Shrimp huddle in the corner on the screen, tears and snot streaming down his face.

His eyes remained utterly impassive.

"Gahahahaha!"

Shrill, raucous laughter echoed through the room.

Ryuk hung upside down from the ceiling, his enormous black wings spread.

Watching the screen, he laughed so hard that his bones rattled.

"Tsuki! Look at that idiot! He pissed himself! Gahaha!"

Ryuk pointed at the screen.

"When I first appeared in front of you, you didn't even blink."

Ryuk floated down, bringing his hideous face close to Kannazuki.

"Put them side by side, and you know which one belongs in the trash. This guy's a total waste."

"Human fear of the unknown is an instinct written into their genes."

Kannazuki pressed the lock button, cutting off the video feed.

The screen went black.

"Will he use that notebook?" Ryuk asked, tilting his head.

"He will."

Kannazuki stood, walked to the sink, and turned on the faucet.

Cold water washed over his hands.

"Fear has a short shelf life. Once he realizes the apparition won't hurt him, once he discovers the notebook really can kill, his fear will turn into insatiable greed."

Kannazuki turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel to dry his hands.

"He isn't intelligent enough to pull off a complicated locked-room murder. He'll only use the simplest, crudest method: cardiac arrest. That's precisely the cause of death the police are most sensitive to right now."

Kannazuki hung the towel back up.

"The moment he kills his first victim, the police will connect his case to Sun Daqiang's. The name 'Kira' will fit him perfectly."

Kannazuki walked to the window.

The basement reeked of urine and blood.

Shrimp slumped on the floor, his legs refusing to obey him. His eyes remained fixed on the enormous, translucent black head floating in midair.

"Keh keh keh." Ryuk's apparition rolled his eyes in midair.

His voice was dry and rasping.

"Human, don't you even have the strength to stand?"

Shrimp's Adam's apple bobbed. Humiliation overwhelmed his fear.

He had killed people and dismembered animals on his dark web livestreams. He considered himself a demon without limits. Yet an apparition had just frightened him into wetting himself.

He clenched his teeth, planted both hands on the rough concrete, and forced himself upright. His crotch was cold and wet, the fabric clinging to his thighs.

Shrimp walked to the iron operating table, grabbed the brown diary, and picked up the black marker beside it.

"Write a name, and they die?" Shrimp's facial muscles twitched.

A face flashed through his mind: Liu Dazhu, the owner of the Scrap Collection Station next door to the Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse.

Yesterday afternoon, Liu Dazhu's tricycle had blocked Shrimp's way, and he had called him a "street punk."

Shrimp pulled off the cap and pressed the marker hard against the page.

[Liu Dazhu]

He left the cause of death blank. Shrimp stared fixedly at the diary, his chest heaving.

Inside the Rental Apartment, Kannazuki sat in his computer chair. The screen was split in two. On the left was the feed from the miniature camera in the basement. On the right was the traffic surveillance feed outside the Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse, which he had just hacked into.

Kannazuki watched the timestamp in the lower-right corner.

Thirty-eight seconds. Thirty-nine seconds. Forty seconds.

On the traffic surveillance feed.

Liu Dazhu was bent over, loading a bundle of flattened cardboard boxes onto his tricycle. Without warning, he froze.

Liu Dazhu let go.

The boxes scattered across the ground. He clutched the left side of his chest with both hands, pitched forward, and slammed onto the dusty road. His legs kicked a few times. Then he went completely still.

Kannazuki shifted his gaze to the left side of the screen.

In the basement, Shrimp had no idea what was happening outside. But he felt it. A strange illusion of control over another person's life and death rose from deep within him.

Shrimp looked down at his hands. His muscles spasmed faintly. He jerked his head up and looked at Ryuk's apparition floating in midair. His fear was gone, replaced by overwhelming ecstasy.

His mouth split into a grin. Laughter squeezed out from deep in his throat.

It grew louder and louder, echoing through the empty basement.

Kannazuki stared into Shrimp's eyes on the screen.

They were cloudy and bloodshot, filled with pure madness and greed.

There was no trace of rational clarity. None of the absolute calm brought about by neuronal restructuring.

"His intelligence hasn't undergone any qualitative change," Kannazuki murmured to himself.

Another hidden rule fell into place.

The notebook's intelligence-enhancement mechanism worked only for the holder of the original notebook with its complete cover.

A subsidiary notebook made from torn-out pages could only kill. It provided no enhancements.

Kannazuki pressed the power button. The screen went dark.

This was exactly the result he needed. A stand-in who became smarter would discover the flaws and turn on the mastermind.

A madman who possessed a lethal weapon but remained stupid was the perfect expendable pawn.

Kannazuki took off his outerwear, walked to the bed, and lay down.

He pulled up the thin blanket, closed his eyes, and slowed his breathing, entering a state of deep sleep.

The unfinished building opposite. Seventh floor.

Chen Lei's eyes were bloodshot as he pressed them against the eyepieces of the high-powered binoculars.

In his field of view, Kannazuki lay motionless on the single bed.

"Captain Chen." Xiao Li sat on a folding stool beside him, reviewing the records on his tablet. "He's been asleep for four hours. The heart-rate monitor shows extremely high-quality sleep. He hasn't gotten up to use the bathroom or turned over."

Chen Lei pulled away from the eyepieces and rubbed his aching eyes.

"Keep watching," Chen Lei said hoarsely.

In the basement, the incandescent light swayed.

Shrimp had completely lost control. He sat at the iron table, his marker racing madly across the pages.

"Zhang Qiang," Shrimp read aloud. He was a classmate from middle school who had once publicly mocked him as a fatherless bastard.

"Wang Cuihua." Shrimp kept writing. She was his former landlady, who had thrown him and his luggage into the street when he fell behind on rent.

"Zhao Gang." Shrimp gritted his teeth. He was the man who had arrested him back then...

One name after another. Shrimp didn't need to investigate their current circumstances. He only needed to remember the faces of those who had humiliated him.

No elaborate causes of death. No precise timing.

He simply wrote.

Linhai City. West District.

Zhang Qiang sat at a computer in an internet cafe, hammering the keyboard with both hands. A victory screen filled the monitor. Just as he was about to cheer, his heart seized. His head slammed onto the keyboard. Someone beside him cried out in alarm.

South District. The Market.

Wang Cuihua held two pounds of pork ribs and was loudly haggling with the butcher. Suddenly, her face turned deathly pale, and she fell straight backward. The back of her head struck the concrete steps.

The City Public Security Bureau. The Archive Room.

Zhao Gang was organizing case files from ten years ago. He lifted his insulated mug and took a sip of water. The mug fell to the floor. Scalding tea splashed...

Two hours.

Twelve names. Twelve lives.

The unfinished building.

The police radio at Chen Lei's waist suddenly blared, shattering the silence.

"Command Center to all units. A sudden death has occurred at the Starry Sky Internet Cafe in the West District. The deceased is Zhang Qiang. Suspected cause of death: sudden cardiac death. Nearby patrol units, respond immediately."

Chen Lei frowned.

Before he could speak, the radio sounded again.

"Command Center calling. A death has occurred at the Red Star Market in the South District. The deceased, Wang Cuihua, collapsed and died from a sudden heart attack."

"Command Center. Officer Zhao Gang suffered sudden cardiac arrest in the City Public Security Bureau's Archive Room. Resuscitation was unsuccessful."

"Command Center..."

The reports came one after another, the voices growing faster and increasingly urgent.

Chen Lei shot to his feet and snatched the tablet from Xiao Li's hands.

"Access the Command Center's internal network. Pull up the reports on all twelve victims," Chen Lei barked.

Xiao Li operated the tablet with trembling fingers. Three seconds later, twelve reports appeared side by side on the screen.

Chen Lei scanned them quickly.

Zhang Qiang. Unemployed drifter.

Wang Cuihua. Retired worker.

Zhao Gang. Police officer assigned to the Archive Room.

Liu Dazhu. Scrap yard owner.

Their backgrounds were vastly different, their social standing varied, and their locations spanned all four major districts of Linhai City: east, south, west, and north.

"Find the overlap," Chen Lei ordered.

"Cross-reference all twelve against Kannazuki's social network. Household registration, communication records, spending history, medical records. Check everything."

Xiao Li tapped the keyboard. The City Public Security Bureau's Supercomputer began processing at high speed.

Two minutes later, an enormous red notification box appeared on the screen.

[Matches: 0]

Chen Lei stared at that "0." His breathing stopped.

No overlap.

None of these twelve people knew one another.

Nor had any of them had any physical contact with Kannazuki. His food-delivery routes had even perfectly avoided every area they had visited during the week before their deaths.

The most devastating factor was the timing.

Chen Lei turned toward the high-powered binoculars.

Through the binoculars, Kannazuki still lay on that single bed. His position had barely changed.

For those four hours, Kannazuki had been asleep the entire time.

Chen Lei and Xiao Li had kept their eyes fixed on him. There had been no glow from any electronic device. No unusual movements.

Chen Lei's logical defenses began to crumble.

If Sun Daqiang's death could still be explained by some extraordinarily sophisticated locked-room murder technique...

Then what about this?

A man lay asleep in bed while simultaneously killing twelve strangers scattered across the city.

This was beyond the realm of criminal investigation.

It was a miracle. Or a devil's trick.

Chen Lei gripped the tablet tightly, veins bulging on the backs of his hands. He believed in neither gods nor devils. He believed only in evidence and corpses.

"Captain Chen." Xiao Li swallowed.

His voice trembled. "How... how do we investigate this? This isn't even on the same plane."

Chen Lei tossed the tablet onto the camp bed.

He grabbed the jacket draped over the back of his chair.

"Keep your eyes glued to him." Chen Lei put on his jacket and strode toward the stairwell. "Record even the number of times he turns over. Don't look away unless I give the order."

"Where are you going?" Xiao Li stood.

"The Forensic Doctor Center." Chen Lei headed down the stairs without looking back, his footsteps echoing through the empty stairwell.

He had to go to the autopsy table himself.

He was going to cut open those hearts. He was going to find out exactly what had precisely destroyed the vital systems of twelve completely unrelated people at the same time.

If a person had done it, they had to have left traces.

Even a single fiber. A drop of poison.

The basement.

Shrimp stopped writing. He stared at the names densely packed across the pages of the diary, gasping for breath.

The thrill of killing sent shudders through his whole body. He felt he was no longer the ex-con everyone looked down on. He was the master.

He raised his head and looked toward the dark web livestreaming equipment in the corner, which had been running the whole time.

A crazed idea took root in his brain, which had never undergone intelligence enhancement.

He wanted the whole world to know he possessed this power.

Shrimp stood up. He walked toward the camera.

He reached up and tore the gas mask from his face, revealing heavy, brutish features covered in stubble.

Facing the camera, he spread his lips into a grin.

"Everyone." Shrimp's voice was hoarse.

"The game has only just begun."