Chapter Summaries

Kannazuki planned to kill Chen Lei by staging his death as a shootout, but Ryuk stopped him and revealed that Chen Lei had triggered a hidden rule. Kannazuki realized the Death Note’s rules currently prevented him from killing Chen Lei.

• Kannazuki returned to his apartment after Chen Lei withdrew the surveillance, then reviewed how close the interrogation had come to exposing him.
• Kannazuki decided Chen Lei had to die and planned to frame his death as a heroic gunfight while investigating the officials shielding the Construction Group.
• Ryuk appeared and warned Kannazuki that he could not kill Chen Lei.
• Kannazuki questioned Ryuk and concluded that Chen Lei had triggered one of the Death Note’s hidden rules.

Kannazuki deduced that the Death Note’s hidden rules protected Chen Lei and other government officials from direct killing, but allowed killing them through proxies. Ryuk confirmed that killing people permanently enhanced Kannazuki’s intelligence, memory, and muscle control, leaving Kannazuki ready to use criminals to attack Chen Lei.

• Kannazuki challenged Ryuk’s warning about killing Chen Lei and deduced that the hidden rules might restrict Ryuk rather than Kannazuki.
• Ryuk revealed that people in the authorities could not normally be killed, but could be killed under certain circumstances.
• Kannazuki reasoned that officials could lose their protection if stripped of their government status, or be killed through another person acting as a proxy.
• Ryuk pointed out that Kannazuki’s thoughts had become faster, and Kannazuki recognized that his memory and muscle control had also improved.
• Kannazuki concluded that killing people with the notebook permanently enhanced its owner, and Ryuk confirmed this was the Creator’s gift.
• Kannazuki inferred that he could control criminals to attack Chen Lei, bypassing the protection against killing him directly.

Kannazuki learned that the Creator could not kill people protected by Shen He, an absolute law that would erase the world if violated. He used the notebook to set a plan in motion against Linhai City's criminal underworld, while Chen Lei learned that Zhao Lidong had vanished from surveillance.

• Ryuk explained that authorities were protected from death by Shen He, whose punishment for breaking the rule would erase the world and its Creator.
• Kannazuki wrote that Zhao Lidong would confess to Chen Lei and then die by suicide, and that Sun Jianguo would reveal weapons-cache locations before dying in a car crash.
• Kannazuki wrote the names of thirteen of Sun Jianguo's enforcers, setting their deaths for two a.m. the next day.
• Kannazuki left to make delivery orders as Chen Lei reviewed his file and remained suspicious of him.
• Chen Lei received word from the Provincial Department's Joint Investigation Group that Zhao Lidong had disappeared from surveillance.

Kannazuki’s attack on the Construction Group distracted the police, while Wang Mingyuan’s search for Sun Jianguo’s missing ledger led him to target delivery riders across Linhai City. The chapter ended with three armed men confronting Kannazuki in a dark alley as he realized capital had joined the hunt.

• Thirteen of the Construction Group’s enforcers died at the same time, forcing Chen Lei to divert the police from the Kannazuki case.
• Wang Mingyuan discovered Sun Jianguo’s ledger was missing and used hacked surveillance footage to identify a yellow FlashEx jacket near one of the deaths.
• Wang Mingyuan posted a one-hundred-million-dollar bounty for the ledger, prompting bounty hunters and killers to attack delivery riders in yellow jackets across Linhai City.
• Three armed men stopped Kannazuki in an alley and demanded access to his delivery account, and he suspected Wang Mingyuan’s organization was behind them.

Kannazuki evaded a search by Dongding Capital’s hired thugs, then used the Death Note to kill them and hacked the delivery platform to get a route into Dongding Tower. He left to deliver afternoon tea to Wang Mingyuan, the man behind the bounty, under the cover of an ordinary courier.

• Kannazuki fooled three pipe-wielding men into ruling him out as the Cleaner, then memorized their van’s license plate as they left.
• Kannazuki traced the cloned plate to Zhao Hu, Qian Long, and Sun Bao and wrote their deaths by infighting in the Death Note.
• Chen Lei found the three men dead beside a bounty flyer and confronted Wang Mingyuan, who denied responsibility and showed him a security permit.
• Kannazuki hacked the delivery platform’s dispatch server after riders were attacked and orders across Linhai City collapsed.
• Kannazuki intercepted an afternoon-tea order for Wang Mingyuan at Dongding Tower and set out to deliver it himself.

Kannazuki infiltrated Dongding Tower by arranging the death of its security chief and bribing his deputy to disable surveillance. After overhearing Lin Yaodong order an attack on Chen Lei’s daughter, Kannazuki served tea to the gathered underworld leaders and left with a blank Death Note fragment prepared for them.

• Kannazuki used the Death Note to cause Li Qiang’s fatal car accident and bribed Zhao Yi to shut down surveillance on the C Zone freight elevator.
• Kannazuki disguised himself as a waiter and entered Dongding Tower’s eighty-eighth floor with tea for a meeting.
• Kannazuki overheard Lin Yaodong discuss the missing ledger and order an attack on Chen Lei’s daughter.
• Kannazuki secretly recorded the six people at the meeting and served them tea without being recognized.
• After Lin Yaodong asked for tea every afternoon, Kannazuki warned him there would be no next time and left carrying a Death Note fragment with space for names.

Kannazuki used the Black Water-Based Pen to compel Lin Yaodong to expose Dongding Capital’s crimes and kill himself, then escaped Dongding Tower disguised as a delivery worker. Chen Lei uncovered signs of an unseen executioner and identified the figure in the yellow jacket as the Cleaner, ordering a search of delivery riders’ routes.

• Kannazuki wrote Lin Yaodong’s actions and suicide into a torn page, then left the tower with his serving cart.
• At 3:15 p.m., Lin Yaodong revealed Dongding Capital’s evidence, shot the power switch, and recited a detailed confession before killing himself at 3:20.
• Chen Lei reached the conference room, secured the evidence, and arrested Wang Mingyuan while ordering the others detained.
• Kannazuki changed clothes in the basement and rode away on his electric scooter after the Trojan Program erased the freight elevator footage and tea order data.
• Chen Lei rejected the idea that Lin Yaodong had acted voluntarily and ordered investigators to examine the tower’s surveillance footage.
• Chen Lei connected a five-minute footage gap and a fake waiter delivery to the yellow-jacketed rider, identified him as the Cleaner, and ordered a review of delivery riders’ routes.

After Chen Lei’s cyber team failed to trace the Cleaner, Chen Lei identified Kannazuki as his prime suspect and went to confront him at home. Kannazuki welcomed Chen Lei into his apartment, leaving their tense encounter poised to begin.

• Zhou Ming traced the fake delivery order through twelve international hops before the data self-destructed, and Chen Lei realized the trail had been designed to waste police resources.
• Kannazuki explained to Ryuk that the police had followed a decoy and predicted Chen Lei would switch from technological investigation to investigating people.
• Chen Lei erased the network leads from his board, focused on Kannazuki’s flawless interrogation, and concluded that he was the Cleaner despite having no evidence.
• Chen Lei ordered Xiao Li to retrieve Kannazuki’s complete records and locate his home, then drove there with two officers.
• At one in the morning, Kannazuki hid the Death Note beneath a magazine and opened his door to Chen Lei, who asked to come inside.

Chen Lei tried to expose Kannazuki as the hacker behind the delivery-system attack, but Kannazuki defeated his verbal trap with the platform’s actual rules and his empty wallet. After the police left, Kannazuki prepared to use the Death Note as Cleaner and take control of Linhai City.

• Chen Lei questioned Kannazuki about Lin Yaodong’s death, the bounty on delivery workers, and the delivery platform’s system crash.
• Kannazuki claimed he had been getting his bike repaired when the system was hacked and said he had learned of the crash on the riders’ forum.
• Chen Lei falsely claimed the hacker had credited online riders with fifty yuan in severe-weather compensation, hoping Kannazuki would reveal whether he knew about the nonexistent payment.
• Kannazuki showed Chen Lei that the platform had no such compensation and that his wallet still held only ￥2.5, defeating the trap and clearing Chen Lei’s suspicions.
• After Chen Lei and the officers left, Kannazuki revealed the Death Note and told Ryuk that it was time for Cleaner to take over the city.

Kannazuki discovered that the Creator had erased Death Note and its creators from the world’s records, memories, and physical reality, leaving him as the only Kira. He concluded that the change protected his secrets from the police, while Ryuk explained that the Creator wanted a battle of wits without spoilers.

• After the cop left, Kannazuki asked Ryuk whether he was smarter than Light Yagami, but Ryuk had never heard of Light.
• Kannazuki searched online for Light Yagami and Death Note, then checked his purchase history and bookshelf, finding that the manga had been replaced by Hunter × Hunter.
• Kannazuki found that online posts about Kira remained, but references to Light Yagami and Death Note had been changed to Kira and a shinigami curse.
• Kannazuki reasoned that the Creator had erased Death Note from human knowledge and altered the physical world, making him the only Kira.
• Kannazuki decided the erasure benefited him by keeping the police from learning the notebook’s rules, and Ryuk said the Creator wanted a battle of wits without spoilers.

Kannazuki used the Death Note to kill Zhou Hai while secretly deducing its hidden rules and the changes to his own abilities. At the police bureau, Chen Lei found a shipping-weight discrepancy that suggested Kannazuki's manga order records had been altered.

• Kannazuki deduced that the Death Note had hidden rules and decided to conceal his suspicions from Ryuk.
• Kannazuki wrote that Zhou Hai would destroy the money in his vault, swallow the shredder blade, and die at 2:10 a.m.
• Zhou Hai shredded the vault's cash, swallowed the blade, and died as Kannazuki had written.
• Chen Lei learned of Zhou Hai's death and linked it to the earlier murders attributed to the Cleaner.
• Chen Lei checked Kannazuki's manga order and noticed its listed shipping weight was far too low for twelve volumes.

Chen Lei traced Kannazuki’s six-month-old manga order to a parcel too small and light to contain the listed books, concluding it had held a Black Notebook. He began covert surveillance, but Kannazuki detected the observers without giving himself away, leaving Chen Lei convinced the real hunt had begun.

• Chen Lei compared the shipping records for Kannazuki’s order with the weight and dimensions of the manga and concluded Kannazuki had bought a Black Notebook.
• Chen Lei asked the bureau chief for a surveillance warrant, but the chief refused and authorized only three officers to watch Kannazuki covertly.
• Chen Lei and Xiao Li set up surveillance in an unfinished building and arranged for a GPS tracker to attach to Kannazuki’s bike during a battery swap.
• Kannazuki stayed home in the morning, then took out his trash and spotted a flash from Chen Lei’s binoculars without changing his pace or expression.
• Chen Lei watched Kannazuki return inside and suspected that Kannazuki had known exactly where he was hiding.

Kannazuki realized Chen Lei had linked him to the killings through the weight of a package that had carried the Death Note, and he began working to evade the police’s surveillance. He planted a USB backdoor at the Interstellar Internet Cafe while Chen Lei tracked his movements, unaware that Kannazuki had begun building a network foothold.

• Kannazuki discovered that his phone was transmitting location data more often and inferred that Chen Lei had traced him through the recorded weight of a package containing the Death Note.
• Kannazuki decided to master hacking within seven days and sought an untraceable network node while avoiding searches on his monitored phone.
• Kannazuki swapped his scooter battery for one carrying a GPS tracker and rode to the Interstellar Internet Cafe with a delivery order.
• Kannazuki secretly inserted a USB drive into the cafe’s billing computer, launching a script that opened a backdoor and sent remote access credentials to an anonymous email account.
• Chen Lei watched Kannazuki’s tracked delivery route and ordered Xiao Li to continue monitoring him, unaware that the cafe’s computers had become Kannazuki’s first compromised machines.

Kannazuki stole technical books and electronic components, then built a miniature terminal and mastered computer science while evading police surveillance. After Chen Lei searched his apartment, Kannazuki hid his work inside a battered copy of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.

• Kannazuki used a student's library card to take ten technical books, bought electronic parts at a secondhand market, and concealed them in his delivery box.
• Kannazuki assembled a miniature portable terminal under his blanket and rapidly read all ten books before dawn.
• Kannazuki stayed inside for three days, prompting Chen Lei and Xiao Li to inspect his apartment.
• Chen Lei found no suspicious devices and left after Kannazuki claimed he had stayed home sick and read old books.
• Kannazuki reopened Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, revealing a sheet of core C++ code hidden between its pages.

Kannazuki mastered advanced hacking and secretly broke into major financial systems to test his defenses before targeting a logistics company’s records. As his Trojan gained access to the company server, Chen Lei’s search for physical evidence against him remained fruitless.

• Kannazuki studied computer science intensively, tapped into Happy Home’s broadband, and hid his online location behind multiple proxies.
• Kannazuki penetrated Alipay and WeChat’s core databases, verified his access, and erased his traces without changing any data.
• Chen Lei and Xiao Li searched Kannazuki’s discarded trash for evidence, but found nothing because Kannazuki had destroyed his drafts with acid.
• Kannazuki created a Trojan called Borer to change a logistics order’s recorded weight from 0.3 kg to 2.4 kg and rewrite the historical logs.
• Borer reached the logistics company’s core server, and Kannazuki’s screen displayed “[Access Granted].”

Kannazuki concealed his logistics-system tampering, erasing the last piece of evidence linking him to the police investigation. After exploiting Ryuk’s hunger for apples, he considered killing a fruit seller but instead turned his attention to loan shark Sun Daqiang and a death that might happen under police protection.

• Kannazuki altered historical package records so more than a thousand orders appeared to weigh 0.3 kg, burying his own shipment in corrupted data.
• Chen Lei received the logistics company’s report confirming the widespread error and saw Kannazuki’s order listed among the affected packages.
• Kannazuki bought apples at a morning market while Ryuk begged for them, then used Ryuk’s addiction to secure his compliance.
• Kannazuki wrote down the fruit seller’s name but crossed it out, deciding a death after their contact would draw police suspicion.
• Kannazuki focused on loan shark Sun Daqiang and wondered whether he could die while under heavy police protection.

Kannazuki discovered that the Death Note replenished torn pages and that each detached page worked independently, then used one to write Sun Daqiang’s death and destroyed it. At nine that evening, Sun Daqiang’s behavior began changing inside a heavily guarded safe house.

• Kannazuki tore the Death Note’s last page out and watched a new page appear in its place.
• Ryuk explained that every scrap of the notebook worked as an independent death terminal.
• Kannazuki wrote that Sun Daqiang would die by swallowing ninety-nine coins, then flushed the detached page down the toilet.
• Kannazuki said he wanted Chen Lei to witness the failure of his security measures, then sat down to read.
• At nine o’clock in the fortified safe house, Sun Daqiang jolted violently as his written death began.

Sun Daqiang died after arranging and swallowing ninety-nine coins, while his death further evolved Kannazuki’s intelligence. Kannazuki prepared to use the Death Note against criminals worldwide but paused to simulate the consequences of mass killing.

• Sun Daqiang panicked in custody, demanded ninety-nine one-yuan coins, and arranged them into a strange formation.
• Sun Daqiang swallowed all ninety-nine coins despite the SWAT officers’ attempts to stop him and died in the sealed room.
• Kannazuki felt his intelligence and hearing expand after Sun Daqiang’s death.
• Kannazuki reviewed a database of criminals who had escaped punishment and imagined writing their names in the Death Note.
• Kannazuki held his pen above the Death Note but began simulating the consequences of a worldwide mass slaughter.

Kannazuki realized that a mass killing would bring national security agencies down on him, so he decided to frame another person as Kira and draw attention away from himself. He created a disguised notebook from alternating real and fake pages, and Ryuk sent a small apparition into it.

• Kannazuki simulated killing a thousand criminals each day and saw that within five days the massacre would trigger a global national-security response that would likely identify and eliminate him.
• Ryuk mocked Kannazuki for fearing Chen Lei, and Kannazuki concluded that he had to divert the detective's attention rather than kill more people himself.
• Kannazuki decided to create a high-profile Kira as a stand-in by mailing someone a page from the Death Note.
• Kannazuki stitched thirty Death Note pages together with thirty ordinary pages to make a disguised diary.
• Ryuk explained that anyone who touched a real page could see part of him and use that page's power, then sent a small apparition of himself into the assembled diary.

Kannazuki prepared a Death Note as bait and targeted Shrimp, a brutal livestreaming criminal in Linhai City, to draw police attention away from himself. Shrimp found the notebook and encountered Ryuk’s spectral form.

• Kannazuki wrote the notebook’s rules while concealing the rules that would make Shrimp smarter or render the notebook ineffective.
• Kannazuki searched a dark-web forum, identified Blood_Jester as Shrimp, and traced him to the Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse.
• Kannazuki arranged an anonymous delivery and personally placed the kraft-paper bag in a parcel locker for Shrimp to find.
• Shrimp discovered the bag in mailbox 2, took the notebook to his basement, and read its first page.
• Ryuk appeared before Shrimp as the basement turned cold, leaving Shrimp staring at the spectral being.