Heaven Was Watching

[Linhai City, rented room in an urban village]

Night lay heavy. The pale glow of the computer screen fell across Kannazuki's face.

He had not logged into the delivery-order system. Instead, he opened Linhai City's largest local public forum-the Cape Community.

The homepage was already in an uproar. Hot-topic markers lit up the entire page, and all ten top threads revolved around the three bizarre deaths that had occurred recently.

"Retribution or divine punishment? Let's dig into what Zhao Gang, Wang Hu, and Zhang Wei had in common!"

"Heaven is watching everything we do! I was there when Zhang Wei knelt yesterday. That definitely wasn't voluntary!"

"Does Linhai City have a god of death now? I'm calling him 'Light Yagami'!"

Kannazuki clicked the last thread. It already had over ten thousand replies.

"Only a god could silently take these scumbags' lives!"

"Lord Light Yagami, please look into Old Wang next door! His loan sharking drove my brother to his death, and he's still living just fine!"

"If Light Yagami exists, I'll be his most faithful follower!"

A frenzy. This was a frenzy of god-making among those at the bottom of society.

As Kannazuki watched the words scrolling across the screen, his lips curved into a cold, hard smile.

He did not lose himself in that illusory worship. Zhang Wei's public kneeling had felt satisfying, but it had also exposed a tremendous risk.

It had drawn too much attention.

The notebook could control behavior before death, but where did that control end?

If he wrote, "Zhang Wei dies after flying into the sky," would Zhang Wei actually fly? Obviously not.

Unless he established the notebook's physical limits, sooner or later he would get burned playing with fire.

Kannazuki switched away from the page and opened a website called "National Public Information on Judgment Debtors."

He needed a test subject.

One guilty of heinous crimes, and far enough away from Linhai City.

The mouse wheel spun rapidly.

Ten minutes later, his gaze settled on a notice.

Liu Qiang. Male, forty-six.

Construction contractor. Maliciously withheld over three million yuan in migrant workers' wages and assembled a group of thugs to beat representatives demanding payment, leaving one severely disabled. Fled after the incident.

The latest leads indicated that Liu Qiang was hiding in Yunzhou City on the southwestern border.

Yunzhou City was twenty-four hundred kilometers from Linhai City.

Kannazuki opened a drawer and took out the black Death Note. He turned to the fourth page and uncapped a rollerball pen.

[Liu Qiang.]

[Cause of death: Within twenty-four hours, travels twenty-four hundred kilometers back to the entrance of the Linhai City Public Security Bureau, kneels and loudly turns himself in, reveals the account passwords for the transferred funds, then dies of a sudden heart attack.]

After finishing the last stroke, Kannazuki checked the time. Eight o'clock sharp.

If the notebook was an omnipotent wish-granting machine, Liu Qiang would appear outside the Linhai City bureau at precisely eight tomorrow evening.

He closed the notebook. Kannazuki shut down the computer and lay back down on his bed.

The next day.

Kannazuki spent the day making deliveries as usual.

At seven that evening, he finished work early, changed into an unremarkable gray tracksuit, put on a baseball cap, and entered an unlicensed internet café deep in the urban village that required no identity registration.

The café reeked of instant noodles and secondhand smoke. Kannazuki picked a computer in the farthest corner and sat down.

He opened the publicly accessible live traffic-camera website run by the Linhai City Traffic Administration Bureau. He selected the camera at the city Public Security Bureau's main entrance.

The feed loaded. Traffic flowed past the bureau entrance, and the police emblem gleamed coldly beneath the streetlights.

Seven fifty.

Seven fifty-five.

Eight o'clock sharp.

On the surveillance feed, a few residents heading home from work occasionally passed along the sidewalk. No one knelt and surrendered.

Eight ten. Still nothing.

Expressionless, Kannazuki closed the surveillance page. He switched to a search engine and entered "Yunzhou City Liu Qiang sudden illness."

There were no relevant news reports.

Kannazuki was in no hurry. He paid, logged off, and returned to his rented room. After a shower, he opened his computer again and accessed the public nationwide police-report feed.

At eleven that night, a brief report appeared.

[Yunzhou police bulletin: At eight o'clock this evening, a Linhai-born suspect surnamed Liu, who had been on the run for two years, died of a sudden illness in a private room at a bathhouse in Yunzhou City. Preliminary forensic findings identified the cause of death as acute myocardial infarction. Foul play has been ruled out.]

Kannazuki stared at the screen. Eight o'clock sharp. Myocardial infarction.

He opened the Excel file on his desktop labeled "Judgment Records."

Beside Liu Qiang's entry, number 004, he added a new column titled "Limit Testing." The clatter of the keyboard echoed through the quiet room.

[Test conclusion: Control of behavior before death must remain within the deceased's physical capabilities.

Twenty-four hundred kilometers cannot be covered within twenty-four hours using conventional transportation.

When physical limits are exceeded, behavioral control fails, directly triggering the default cause of death (cardiac paralysis).]

Kannazuki leaned back in his chair.

The notebook was not a god. It obeyed some strict form of physical logic. That meant every future judgment would require precise calculations and logical analysis.

"This is getting more and more interesting." Kannazuki picked up the glass of cooled boiled water on his desk and drained it.

[City Public Security Bureau, Criminal Investigation Unit's main office]

The landline on Chen Lei's desk rang abruptly.

He crushed the cigarette between his fingers into the ashtray and picked up the receiver.

"Chen, it's Old Ma from Yunzhou Criminal Investigation."

Noise filled the other end of the line. "That Liu Qiang you put out an online wanted notice for died here.

The forensic report just came out. I'll send over an interdepartmental notice."

Chen Lei froze. "How did he die?"

"He was having some fun at a bathhouse when he suddenly dropped. Acute myocardial infarction. No one else at the scene, and the surveillance footage was clean. That old bastard got off easy."

"A heart attack..." Chen Lei forced the words through clenched teeth.

After hanging up, Chen Lei strode to the whiteboard in the corner of the office.

He picked up a marker and wrote "Liu Qiang" in heavy strokes beside the photographs of Zhao Gang, Wang Hu, and Zhang Wei.

Four now.

Chen Lei folded his arms and stared hard at the whiteboard.

The four men belonged to different social classes, came from different regions, and had different occupations. Zhao Gang was a low-level thug, Wang Hu a violent criminal, Zhang Wei a highly educated elite, and Liu Qiang a fugitive debt dodger.

No social connections. No common enemies.

How had the killer pinpointed them?

"Captain Chen, take a look at this." The young officer Xiao Liu walked over carrying a bowl of instant noodles and pointed his chin toward the phone in his hand. "The internet's gone completely crazy.

Everyone on the Cape Community is worshipping 'Light Yagami.'

Look at this hot thread. They've exposed every last dirty detail of Zhang Wei's kickbacks. It even lists exactly which restaurants he ate at and on what dates."

Chen Lei whipped around and snatched Xiao Liu's phone.

The screen displayed the Cape Community discussion board.

Chen Lei scrolled down rapidly.

The thread exposing Zhang Wei's bribery had been posted three days earlier and had attracted enormous attention.

The video of Zhao Gang abusing an elderly person had also been bumped onto the forum's front page three days earlier.

People had been continually adding posts to a thread tracking Wang Hu's Class A wanted notice.

A buzz rang through Chen Lei's head. In an instant, one clear lead cut through all the fog.

The internet!

The killer wasn't a god. The killer was human, too. And a human needed a way to obtain information.

How could an ordinary person simultaneously know the crimes and movements of four people with no connection to one another?

Only through the internet. Through this local forum, where the entire city's grievances and gossip converged!

Chen Lei turned, opened the Cape Community on his own computer, and searched for "Liu Qiang."

He hit Enter.

A lengthy post from half a month earlier appeared on the screen. Its title was painfully striking: "An accusation written in blood and tears! Heartless contractor Liu Qiang fled with the money. My father's legs were broken, and we still can't afford surgery!"

The poster described Liu Qiang's crimes in detail and even attached a blurry photograph taken before he fled.

Chen Lei braced both hands on his desk, his chest heaving.

Found it. He had found the trigger.

This wasn't divine punishment at all. It was a ghost lurking behind the internet, selecting prey from grievance posts on the forum!

"Xiao Liu!" Chen Lei barked.

Xiao Liu nearly dropped his bowl of noodles in fright. "Here!"

"Grab your coat. You're coming with me to the Cybersecurity Unit!" Chen Lei snatched his car keys off the desk and strode out.

"What are we going to Cybersecurity for, Captain Chen?

Aren't we barred from combining these cases?" Xiao Liu quickly set down his bowl and jogged after him.

"All four men were exposed and extensively discussed on [the Cape Community].

If the killer wanted to kill them, he had to read those threads to verify the information!" Chen Lei spoke rapidly as he walked. "Check the backend data!

Filter out every IP address that viewed all four threads over the past three days and spent more than ten minutes on them!"

Two in the morning. The server room of the city bureau's Cybersecurity Unit.

The servers' cooling fans roared.

Chen Lei stood behind the technician, watching code and data streams race across the screen.

The progress bar crept forward.

"Captain Chen, [the Cape Community] has far too many daily active users. Even with the requirements of viewing all four threads and spending that much time on them, the preliminary results still contain over ten thousand IP addresses." The technician wiped sweat from his forehead.

Chen Lei lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.

"Add another filter." Chen Lei exhaled smoke, his gaze sharp as a blade.

"When the killer killed Zhang Wei, he was on the second floor of the hospital lobby.

Check those IPs against cell-tower data. Were any physically located near the City People's Hospital around three that afternoon?"

The technician's hands flew across the keyboard.

"Cross-referencing cell-tower data..."

"Excluding static broadband IPs..."

"Isolating mobile network requests..."

The stream of data on the screen suddenly stopped.

The progress bar reached the end.

Thousands upon thousands of IP addresses vanished in an instant, leaving just three lonely rows of data in the center of the screen.

Chen Lei bent forward, pressing both hands hard against the edge of the computer desk until his knuckles turned white.

"Check the registered identities linked to those three IPs."

Meanwhile.

The rented room in the urban village.

Kannazuki pressed Enter and saved the Excel spreadsheet.

He unplugged the USB drive and shut down the computer. Turning toward the window, he saw that it had begun raining again.

Distant police sirens echoed faintly through the rainy night.

Within the invisible torrent of data, the distance between the two men had shrunk to almost nothing.