Light, you're free

Chen Lei stood before the autopsy table. The surgical lights were stark and blinding.

Twelve bodies lay in a row.

Old Qin, the lead forensic doctor, removed his mask. Blood stained his gloves.

"Captain Chen, the tissue results are back." Old Qin slapped a stack of reports onto the stainless steel surface, his voice heavy with exhaustion and disbelief.

"No toxic response, no mechanical injuries, no signs of asphyxiation.

All twelve suffered acute spasms of their coronary arteries at exactly the same time, resulting in massive myocardial infarctions."

Chen Lei stared at the toxicology report. "Not a single abnormality?"

"If I had to name one, it would be that everything was too normal."

Old Qin pointed at the tissue sample from Zhang Qiang's heart.

"This kid was only twenty-two. His arteries were cleaner than mine. There was no physiological basis for a heart attack.

But his heart simply stopped.

All twelve, whether old, frail, sick, disabled, or in their prime, died the same way."

Chen Lei said nothing. He turned and left the autopsy room.

Conference Room One, City Public Security Bureau.

Smoke hung thick in the air. Zhao Jianguo, chief of the Linhai City Public Security Bureau, sat at the head of the table, his face livid.

On the projection screen, twelve separate feeds simultaneously played the final ten seconds of the victims' lives.

Zhang Qiang playing games in an internet café.

Wang Cuihua buying meat at a market.

Zhao Gang drinking water in the Archive Room.

Twelve people, in different places, doing different things. Then, in the same second, they clutched their chests, collapsed, and died.

No killer. No weapon. No contact.

Bang! Zhao Jianguo slammed his palm onto the conference table, making the teacups jump.

"Can anyone tell me what this is? Mass hysteria? An alien attack?"

The room fell deathly silent. The heads of the Criminal Investigation Detachment, Cybersecurity Monitoring Brigade, and Technical Investigation Section all lowered their heads.

"Twelve lives!

And one of them was one of our own...!" Zhao Jianguo pointed at the footage of Zhao Gang collapsing, his eyes bloodshot.

"Within a single day, from the same cause.

And you're telling me you can't find a single lead?"

Chen Lei stood and stubbed out his cigarette. "Chief, this case is already beyond conventional criminal investigation."

"What are you suggesting? Ghosts and demons?"

"I don't know what it is." Chen Lei met Zhao Jianguo's eyes.

"But I know whoever did this possesses means we can't understand.

I request that we classify this as a major serial murder case and immediately ask the Provincial Department to send a Special Task Force and Specialized Technical Support."

Zhao Jianguo clenched his teeth and stared at Chen Lei for a full ten seconds. "Approved.

Within twenty-four hours, I want a preliminary direction for the investigation.

Otherwise, every one of us in this room will resign and take responsibility."

Rental Apartment.

Nine in the morning.

Kannazuki opened his eyes. He had slept well, and his mind was clear.

He sat up and pulled back a corner of the curtain. The sunlight was blinding.

The concealed observation post on the seventh floor of the unfinished building opposite was still there. Chen Lei's men had not withdrawn.

Kannazuki walked over to the computer desk. The green light on the miniature terminal assembled from discarded motherboards blinked.

He picked up his phone. On the screen, encrypted internal emails from the City Public Security Bureau had already been automatically intercepted and decrypted by the background program.

[Case briefing on the November 12 major serial sudden-death case and preparations for the arrival of the Provincial Department's Special Task Force]

Kannazuki skimmed through the email.

Everything was proceeding according to plan.

The facts had shattered Chen Lei's suspicions. The weight of twelve lives was enough to crush any unfounded speculation aimed at him personally.

But he knew it was not enough.

Shrimp was an idiot, and idiots were prone to losing control-and exposing themselves.

Kannazuki's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard.

The cover on the physical level was complete. Shrimp had become invisible to the surveillance network.

"Light, why are you cleaning up that idiot's mess?"

Ryuk crouched at the head of the bed, munching on his first apple of the day. "Wouldn't it be more fun if he got caught?"

"If he gets caught too quickly, this fire won't burn hot enough."

Kannazuki disconnected and erased his traces. "He needs time to let the fear build.

The greater the fear, the more the authorities will focus on him."

The basement.

Shrimp had been too excited to sleep all night.

He looked at the twelve names in the diary, an unprecedented sense of self-importance swelling in his chest.

The police had not come knocking. There was no activity outside.

The notebook was real. He really had become a god.

Shrimp opened the dark web forum "Eye of the Abyss."

He no longer needed to hide.

He wanted the entire world to know he existed.

He logged into his [Blood_Jester] account and clicked to create a post.

Title: [I am the god of the new world. Judgment has begun.]

Body:

"The twelve pieces of trash in Linhai City were merely an appetizer."

"This world is too filthy.

The law is a joke. From today onward, I will take control of everything."

"Tomorrow at noon.

Wang Hong, chairman of Hongda Group; Li Hai, general manager of Construction Group; and Zhang Jianming, deputy director of the Customs Anti-Smuggling Office, all in Linhai City. These three insatiably greedy parasites will face my punishment."

"Cause of death: cardiac paralysis."

"The countdown begins.

Police, come and catch me-if you can."

He clicked send.

The instant the post appeared on the dark web, sharp-eyed hackers and information brokers spotted it.

Ten minutes later.

Screenshots of the announcement had been translated into more than a dozen languages and were spreading like a virus across major mainstream social platforms worldwide, including Twitter, Facebook, and Weibo.

The internet erupted.

Some mocked it as a prank by someone with delusions of grandeur.

Others linked it to the twelve serial sudden deaths that had just occurred in Linhai City, sparking panic.

Still others began fanatically worshipping the self-proclaimed "god," leaving comments beneath the post begging him to kill their enemies.

The storm of public opinion kept snowballing...

Linhai City Public Security Bureau.

Alarms blared throughout the Cybersecurity Monitoring Brigade's office.

"Captain Chen! Something's happened!" Xiao Li rushed into the Criminal Investigation Detachment's office with a tablet, his face deathly pale. "A post appeared on the dark web.

Someone has claimed responsibility for the twelve serial murders and announced his next killings!"

Chen Lei snatched the tablet from him.

His eyes swept over the post.

Wang Hong, Li Hai, Zhang Jianming. All three were prominent figures in Linhai City, and none of them was clean behind the scenes.

"Trace the IP!" Chen Lei roared. "What the hell is the Cybersecurity Monitoring Brigade doing? Find the location of whoever posted this, now!"

The Cybersecurity Monitoring Brigade's server room.

More than a dozen elite cybercrime officers hammered at their keyboards.

"Captain Chen, they're using multiple layers of onion routing encryption. We're tracing them!"

The nodes on the screen kept jumping.

Japan. United States. South Africa.

"Break through the third relay layer! Pinpoint the physical region!"

The progress bar raced forward.

"Found it!" the brigade commander shouted. "The IP address ultimately points to... Russia, an abandoned military radar station server in the Siberian Wilderness!"

Chen Lei froze.

Russia?

He whipped his head around and looked out the window.

Impossible. The serial killer was in Russia? Then how had those twelve people in Linhai City died? Remote murder across national borders?

If the killer really was overseas, then what did that make Kannazuki, the delivery driver he had been watching so relentlessly?

A coincidence? An ordinary man he had turned into an imagined enemy just because he had bought a few novels?

A sense of absurdity washed over Chen Lei. The intuition he had always prided himself on was utterly crushed by cold data.

"Captain Chen," Xiao Li ventured cautiously beside him.

"The guys at the unfinished building are asking... should they keep watching Kannazuki?"

Chen Lei closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Withdraw." Chen Lei forced the word through clenched teeth. "Bring all our officers back.

Send people to protect Wang Hong, Li Hai, and Zhang Jianming immediately.

Until noon tomorrow, those three are to have tactical officers watching them even when they use the bathroom!"

"Yes, sir!"

Noon.

Happy Home residential complex. The seventh-floor Rental Apartment in Unit Three, Building Four.

Kannazuki sat at the table, holding a bowl of freshly prepared braised beef instant noodles.

He lifted a strand of noodles with his chopsticks but did not hurry to eat.

Instead, he turned and looked out the window.

Sunlight passed unhindered through the glass and shone into the room.

Two hundred meters away, across from him.

The seventh-floor window of the unfinished building.

Empty.

The high-powered telescope that had stood there was gone.

The eyes watching him had vanished.

Kannazuki looked away and brought the noodles to his mouth. He chewed slowly.

"Gah, gah, gah." Ryuk hung upside down from the window frame, looking at the unfinished building opposite.

"They're gone. Light, you're free."

"Temporarily." Kannazuki sipped the broth, his voice as still as stagnant water.

"Chen Lei is a rabid dog. Once he fails to find anything to sink his teeth into with that stand-in, sooner or later he'll follow the scent back here."

He put down his instant noodle fork.

He took out a tissue and wiped the corners of his mouth.

"But before that..."

Kannazuki's gaze turned utterly cold, like a glacier in the polar wastes.