Trigger conditions?

The municipal police headquarters' surveillance room. A plastic bag had been wrapped tightly around the smoke detector.

Chen Lei sat in a swivel chair, a cigarette in his right hand and his left resting on the keyboard. The screen's glow lit his stubbled face, revealing two deep creases beside his mouth.

"Rewind ten seconds," Chen Lei said.

The technician beside him tapped the keyboard. The footage rewound.

The screen showed the first-floor lobby of Linhai City People's Hospital.

The timestamp read 3:10 p.m. Wearing a white coat, Zhang Wei stepped out of the elevator.

"Slow it down. Half speed."

Zhang Wei paused. In the footage, no one stood within three meters of him. A patient's relative carrying a fruit basket walked past on his left, two meters away. A nurse stood at the service counter writing, five meters away.

Zhang Wei turned and walked toward the deceased patient's family. He dropped to his knees.

"Zoom in on his face." Chen Lei leaned forward.

The pixels enlarged on the screen.

Zhang Wei's lips moved, his facial muscles stiff. His pupils had an unnatural, unfocused look.

After his final sentence, he toppled over stiffly, black blood pouring from his mouth and nose.

"Stop." Chen Lei pressed a hand onto the technician's shoulder.

"In the three seconds before he fell, did anyone approach him? Did anything fly toward him?"

The technician pulled up footage from all four lobby cameras and played them in sync.

"Captain Chen, we checked. There was no physical contact.

"No trajectory from any thrown object. Not even a ball of paper flew past." The technician rubbed his aching eyes.

"He just walked over, knelt down, and then collapsed."

Chen Lei said nothing. He stared at the railing along the second-floor corridor. Someone had been standing there when Zhang Wei's collapse threw the lobby into chaos. In the camera's blind spot, only a sliver of yellow clothing had been caught on film.

A delivery worker.

Chen Lei stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, and left the surveillance room.

The forensic department was on the second basement level. The smell of formalin lingered in the corridor year-round.

Chen Lei pushed open the door. Lao Liu, the forensic examiner, was drinking water from an enamel mug. Three autopsy reports lay on the desk.

"Chen, here's what you wanted." Lao Liu pushed the reports over. "We rushed them through."

Chen Lei opened the first. Zhao Gang. Cause of death: acute coronary artery occlusion.

The second. Wang Hu. Cause of death: acute coronary artery occlusion.

The third. Zhang Wei.

Chen Lei stared at the conclusion page of the third report, his brow knotted.

"Wasn't Zhang Wei's death a cerebral hemorrhage? How is this a heart attack too?"

Lao Liu set down the enamel mug and tapped the report with a finger.

"It presented as a cerebral hemorrhage. When he collapsed, his blood pressure spiked instantly, rupturing the blood vessels in his brain.

"But the autopsy showed that the root cause of the abnormal blood pressure was an extreme spasm in his coronary arteries just before death, which blocked them completely."

Lao Liu paused, his tone turning grave. "Three people, all dead within forty-eight hours.

"No traces of poison, no fatal injuries, not even plaque from high cholesterol.

"It was as if their hearts... had suddenly been crushed by an invisible hand."

Chen Lei closed the report. "An infectious disease? A new virus?"

"We did genome sequencing. Negative. Blood cultures, negative."

Lao Liu shook his head. "From a medical standpoint, it's a coincidence. Three sudden deaths from natural causes."

"I don't believe in coincidences."

Chen Lei grabbed the three reports and headed for the elevator.

Back in the Criminal Police Team's main office, Chen Lei pulled out a chair, sat down, and logged into the Public Security Internal System.

The tapping of the keyboard sounded especially sharp in the quiet office.

He entered: Zhao Gang.

The records appeared: multiple police reports. Neighborhood disputes, suspected elder abuse.

He entered: Wang Hu.

The records appeared: Class A Fugitive.

Armed robbery with a knife, resulting in two deaths.

He entered: Zhang Wei.

The records appeared: multiple mediation records for doctor-patient disputes. Suspected solicitation of bribes and delays in treatment.

Chen Lei took out a red pen and wrote the three names in his notebook.

Then he drew a heavy circle beside them.

Evil men.

Three people with no social connections, living in different districts, working in vastly different professions. Their only common ground: they were all evil men whom the law struggled to punish, or who were evading punishment.

Chen Lei tore out the page, picked up the three autopsy reports, and headed for the deputy director's office.

The door was ajar. Deputy Director Wang was on the phone. Seeing Chen Lei enter, Wang hastily hung up and picked up his insulated mug.

"Chen Lei, keep a close eye on that telecom fraud case. The Provincial Department wants a progress report."

Chen Lei slapped the three autopsy reports and the torn page onto the desk.

"Director Wang, I want to link these cases."

Wang glanced at the names on the reports. "Zhao Gang, Wang Hu, Zhang Wei. Didn't the forensic examiner classify them as natural deaths? What's there to link?"

"Three days, three evil men, all dying the same way.

"The underlying cause of death was acute coronary artery occlusion in every case." Chen Lei pointed at the reports. "Wang Hu threw away his knife and knelt before he died. Zhang Wei publicly confessed before he died.

"These were absolutely not natural deaths. They were murders. Someone is systematically eliminating people like them."

Wang set down his insulated mug and looked at Chen Lei. "Where's the evidence?"

Chen Lei fell silent for two seconds. "I don't have any yet."

"No murder weapon, no traces at the scenes, no suspect. The forensic reports are perfectly clear: no poison, no injuries." Wang leaned back in his chair. "On what grounds am I supposed to approve your request to link the cases? Tell the Municipal Party Committee that Linhai City has someone with superpowers who can kill people with his mind?"

"Director Wang, a detective's instincts-"

"Investigations require evidence! Due process!" Wang abruptly raised his voice, cutting him off.

"In these three cases, there's no tangible means of committing a crime. Legally, there's no basis for calling them serial murders.

"You're wasting police resources. Request denied."

Wang pushed the reports back to the edge of the desk. "Close the cases. Go investigate your telecom fraud."

Chen Lei stood where he was, staring at Wang for several seconds. He did not argue again. He picked up the reports, turned, and left the office.

Ten p.m. Most of the windows in the Criminal Police Team's building were dark.

Inside Chen Lei's private office, the blinds were shut tight.

He stood in front of the copier. A strip of green scanning light swept across the files on Zhao Gang, Wang Hu, and Zhang Wei. If anyone discovered he had copied case files without authorization, he would face at least a formal disciplinary demerit. But Chen Lei did not care.

He took out the copies and wheeled over a mobile whiteboard.

Magnetic clips snapped into place. The three victims' photographs were fixed to the board.

Chen Lei picked up a red marker and wrote two large words above the photographs: X Files.

A rented room in an urban village.

The rain had started again. Drops struck the sheet-metal awning with dull thuds.

Fresh from a shower, Kannazuki sat shirtless at his battered computer desk.

The black Death Note lay quietly beside the keyboard.

He clicked on the desktop and created a new Excel spreadsheet.

He renamed it: Judgment Records.

He double-clicked to open it. Kannazuki deftly set up the column headings.

Number. Name. Crime. Execution time. Behavior before death. Public response.

He typed.

001. Zhao Gang. Elder abuse. 23:15. None. Panic and cheers within the residential complex.

002. Wang Hu. Hostage-taking. 09:30. Discarded weapon and knelt. Heated discussion across the internet.

003. Zhang Wei. Taking bribes and causing a death. 15:10. Publicly confessed and knelt. Follow-up media coverage.

Kannazuki stared at the three rows of data on the screen. The cursor blinked in the "Behavior before death" column.

"The notebook's control is powerful," Kannazuki muttered to himself. "But this time, Zhang Wei drew too much attention."

He opened the delivery app's dashboard and pulled up his delivery routes for the past three days.

When Zhao Gang died, he had been in his rented room.

When Wang Hu died, he had been on a delivery run.

When Zhang Wei died, he had been in the hospital lobby.

Kannazuki's gaze turned cold. He realized there was a fatal flaw.

If the police linked the three cases, they would inevitably check the surrounding surveillance footage.

His appearance on the hospital's second floor might well draw police attention. Although he had worn a helmet and a mask, his delivery uniform was far too conspicuous.

"There can't be any overlap. It has to be completely random."

Kannazuki created a new sheet in Excel.

He named it: Potential Threats.

In the first row, he entered a name: Chen Lei.

The criminal police captain who had led the officers charging into the hospital that afternoon. Kannazuki had found his name in follow-up local news reports.

The look in that man's eyes when he glanced up at the second floor had been just like a hound catching the scent of blood.

Kannazuki picked up the black notebook, his fingers stroking its cold cover.

"Chen Lei. If you get in my way..." Kannazuki left the sentence unfinished.

He knew that writing down a police officer's name meant setting himself firmly against the establishment.

He was not ready yet.

He needed more tests and subtler methods.

The office at municipal police headquarters.

Chen Lei had smoked half a pack of cigarettes. On the whiteboard, red lines connected the three photographs, ultimately converging at a central point.

He recalled the instant he had looked up at the second floor from the hospital lobby.

He stepped back twice and studied the entire whiteboard.

No physical contact, no poison, no wounds.

How exactly had the killer managed to kill with such precision?

Chen Lei uncapped the marker and, at the very center of the whiteboard where the three red lines met, wrote two words with firm strokes.

Trigger conditions?