Tang Hao's death

"You worthless school! Give me back my son!"

"Boo hoo... my son..."

"Nothing to do with you? How could this have nothing to do with you? If it weren't for your school, how could my son have gone astray, running off to internet cafés every day..."

On Monday, Xia Xu had barely reached the school gates when the scene before him left him dumbfounded.

A crowd had surrounded the entire entrance, and some had even put up a white banner. A middle-aged couple were wailing at the top of their lungs. The woman was especially agitated, charging straight at the school representatives and lashing out the moment they appeared.

The others, probably the couple's relatives and friends, also surged forward aggressively. More than a dozen people completely blocked the entrance, while students arriving for school gathered in ever greater numbers around the gates because they couldn't get in.

Clearly, most of the students were rather pleased with this development. First, it gave them a perfectly valid excuse to arrive late and skip morning study. Second, enjoying a spectacle was simply human nature.

They weren't the only ones. Passing pedestrians also stopped, forming an ever-growing crowd, all hoping to watch the commotion.

But taking pleasure in this particular spectacle was rather indecent.

Someone had died!

An inexplicable sense of foreboding rose in Xia Xu's heart. When he noticed that the school representatives trying to calm the situation included not only the principal and other administrators, but also his homeroom teacher, Liu Xiulan, his heart lurched.

"Ma Bing, what's going on?"

After scanning the growing crowd several times, Xia Xu squeezed through it and found his deskmate, Ma Bing, standing right at the front.

He looked as though he had arrived quite early, so he probably knew something about what had happened.

"Tang Hao died. Those people are his parents and relatives."

There wasn't a trace of color in Ma Bing's face. His expression was filled with fear and lingering dread.

Tang Hao was a typical delinquent who did poorly at school. Some people were afraid of students like him and avoided them, but plenty of boys enjoyed hanging out with them for various reasons.

Ma Bing got along pretty well with Tang Hao too. They often went to internet cafés or played basketball together, and slipped off to secluded corners or the toilets to smoke during breaks.

"How did he die?"

As his ominous suspicions became reality, Xia Xu's expression darkened as well.

Tang Hao was a supporting character in Hunter, yet now he was dead. It was hard not to draw a causal connection between the two.

A supporting character had to participate in the plot somehow. He couldn't just get killed off before the story even began. Now that Tang Hao was dead, the plot must have already started or been about to start, and he had begun serving his role in it.

And clearly, that role was to die. Perhaps his death advanced the plot or served as an opening hook. He might even have been nothing more than a fleeting background detail in some killer's history.

"He was bitten to death by some wild beast on his way home after spending the night at an internet café. I heard it was horrible. The police even came to see me yesterday."

The more Ma Bing spoke, the worse his expression became.

After all, he had been at the same internet café as Tang Hao on Friday, and Tang Hao had been killed after spending two nights there. The police had even visited Ma Bing yesterday to ask what he knew.

Ever since learning of Tang Hao's death, he had been gripped by a lingering fear he still hadn't recovered from. If he had stayed overnight with Tang Hao, or gone back to the café that day, his own family might now have been among those weeping outside.

Xia Xu pressed him. "Did you hear that from the police?"

"Yes, I heard them say it myself. They were also talking quietly when they left. Apparently, he'd been mauled beyond recognition. There... there wasn't much left of him."

At that last sentence, Ma Bing, already deathly pale, began to retch.

* A wild beast? So that's what Hunter means...*

Xia Xu fell silent, pondering what he had heard.

Surely the police examination wouldn't have been wrong. Wounds inflicted by a beast's teeth were easy to distinguish from those caused by a man-made weapon.

Initially, he had thought Hunter referred to something like a police pursuit or an undercover operation. Now, however, he had clearly guessed wrong. The story's title meant a hunter in the literal sense, and it was most likely about hunting wild beasts.

After all, surely it didn't mean hunting people? Could this plot really be about a beast hunting humans?

Judging from his experience with The Dying Man, these "plots" did follow-or at least closely resembled-the conventions of films and television dramas. Regardless of how their genres and storylines varied, one thing remained constant: they were made for people to watch.

That raised the question of audience identification and perspective. A film could depict a beast killing people, but that would, at most, establish how powerful it was. The central story would still be about the protagonists trying to escape it, survive, or defeat it.

If it meant hunting people, then the perspective and camera would belong to the inhuman beast. A film that made a beast its protagonist and centered its plot on slaughtering humans was hardly a story human viewers could identify with, find exciting, and enjoy.

It would be guaranteed to flop. Besides, a flat sequence of animal killings with no dramatic ups and downs clearly didn't constitute a plot. It barely even deserved to be called a story.

Thus, Hunter couldn't have a beast as its protagonist or central focus. Moreover, from a storytelling standpoint, having the beast kill innocent humans at the beginning established its brutality and stirred the audience's hatred toward it. That naturally placed it in the role of antagonist, one that could hardly be redeemed through flashbacks to some tragic past.

Then, with the beast as the antagonist, there naturally had to be a protagonist. The plot needed twists and turns, and the audience needed an outlet for their hatred of the villain. The basic storyline therefore emerged quite naturally: a vicious beast attacked humans, people were slaughtered and fled, and finally, humanity fought back and killed the beast.

That was a proper story, and a complete one.

Given the title Hunter, the plot might add a slight variation to that framework, modifying humanity's hard-won victory. For example, the people slaughtered and forced to flee might be supporting characters, while the protagonist-the hunter-intervened at a critical moment, making a heroic entrance to slay the beast.

But that presented another problem. A film like this might be worth watching if it took place in a remote mountain village or abroad, but what exciting plot could it create in a densely populated city?

Hunting down a beast that had escaped from a zoo and attacked people?

Even the fiercest beast could, at most, injure or kill a few people. Once the police discovered it, one or two shots would settle things. Any of the vehicles found everywhere along the streets could run it down, and a phone call would quickly bring help. Forcing the plot to proceed without assistance or police intervention would be far too contrived. In this real world, such contrivances couldn't hold up at all.

Thus, this supposed beast would actually be easy to defeat. That seemed to make an exciting story impossible, however the plot was arranged. At most, it could become an emotionally nuanced drama or an awkward, poorly made survival horror film-and the latter would have the hallmarks of a flop from the outset.

Unless... this beast is something out of the ordinary!

After analyzing the possibilities, Xia Xu felt increasingly uneasy.

The problems above were actually easy to solve. All it took was an unusual beast.

An urban setting, with a hunter killing an abnormal creature as its central premise-he could think of essentially only two possibilities. Either it was a supernatural story involving demons, ghosts, or other uncanny creatures, or it was a popcorn science-fiction film featuring a classic premise like animals mutated by genetic experiments, with the male lead stepping in to save the world.

Whichever it was, if he had guessed correctly, this world was vastly different from the normal parallel world he had previously believed it to be. His ordinary life as a wealthy man in an "urban reincarnation" story was clearly out of the question.

Relatively speaking, the second possibility should be more likely. If this really is a supernatural world where demons and ghosts arise, their appearance would have to be a widespread phenomenon...

Xia Xu felt that demons were unlikely.

After all, whether he considered his original body's memories, the people around him, or the information he had encountered personally and online, this was just an ordinary world very much like Earth.

The leap from an ordinary technological world to a supernatural one containing demons and ghosts was an enormous change in the world's underlying setting. Such beings could arise on their own, their effects would be uncontrollable, and there couldn't possibly be just one of them.

If this really were that sort of world, it seemed impossible to conceal everything so perfectly that nobody had any inkling of it.

Mutated creatures, by comparison, were much easier to accept.

Although genetically engineering a powerful creature would be considered highly advanced technology on both Blue Ocean Star and Earth, both worlds had already taken the first steps. The creation of a mutated organism could also be explained through existing theories of biology and genetics.

Besides, these visually driven popcorn "science-fiction films" were extremely common. The worse ones could produce giant crocodiles, giant snakes, or man-eating sharks with any flimsy excuse about radiation or a chemical leak. The more plausible ones simply established a genetic experiment or cloned dinosaurs.

Failing that, they could follow the example of superhero films: advanced technology created by some special organization, or a terrifying monster bred by some mad scientist. There were countless plausible ways to make it work, and nobody could pin down the probabilities.

It shouldn't be a creature with truly terrifying destructive power. If it were some enormous monster, or something capable of causing mass casualties, there would definitely be plenty of supporting characters involved. I should be surrounded by people with supporting-character destinies in Hunter...

Xia Xu tried to reassure himself with that thought.

Unfortunately, it did little good. He couldn't suppress the dryness in his mouth, and anxiety and a sense of danger continued to sweep through his mind.

He hadn't forgotten that he, too, was one of Hunter's supporting characters. As Tang Hao's classmate and a fellow supporting character in Hunter, his circumstances overlapped heavily with Tang Hao's.

Tang Hao had already been killed off at the very beginning of the plot. Could his own turn be far behind?

The monster's lack of large-scale destructive power would, at most, mean that other people were relatively safe. It meant nothing for a supporting character like him, who was supposed to be involved.

In theory, a mutated monster might not count as a "supernatural creature," but what difference did that make to him? Anything capable of serving as the "prey" couldn't be weak. It would inevitably be an extremely dangerous being that could easily take his life.

Across both his lives, he had hardly ever been in a fight, let alone faced anything life-threatening. Now he was being told that he might encounter some unknown, extraordinary monster. How could he possibly not panic?