novelraw Chapter 127: Faceless
Chapter 127: Faceless
Substantial resentment and killing intent solidified into a gaze, transforming into an invisible long nail that pierced Lin Jie's back.
It penetrated the thick brick walls of the inn and the dark curtains blocking the light, invading his perception field with precise and brute force.
The "Malicious Doppelgänger" was right at his doorstep.
Lin Jie's body instantly entered a highly alert combat state, every muscle tensed and ready to strike.
He instinctively wanted to draw the Serene Heart from his waist and fire a warning shot toward the window.
"What's wrong, Lin?" Julian's concerned and sharp voice rang out just in time.
The experienced Curator had noticed the subtle, abnormal change in Lin Jie's expression and the stiffness of his body.
Lin Jie took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing the combat impulse about to erupt.
With the enemy hidden and themselves exposed, and with even the enemy's specific form and abilities unknown, any rash counterattack could alert the enemy and trigger a worse chain reaction.
He turned to look at the concerned, questioning gazes of his two companions.He understood he could no longer hide things. Facing such a bizarre enemy, individual heroism and withholding information were foolish acts of suicide.
He needed the team's wisdom and his comrades' protection.
"Nothing." Lin Jie first used a normal phrase to steady the equally confused Professor Schmidt beside him.
Then he turned his gaze to William and Julian, calmly saying in a coded language only the three of them could understand, "Outside the window. One of the dirty things that greeted me on the bridge this afternoon. Seems to have followed me home too."
The expressions on Julian and William's faces froze.
They certainly understood the information contained behind Lin Jie's "jargon."
The "Doppelgänger UMA," which had only existed in legends and eyewitness accounts during their discussion moments ago, had now brazenly come knocking directly on their door and was, right under their noses, launching a new round of provocation and surveillance against the team's core.
William's silent eyes erupted with icy killing intent.
He reached out to pull the ever-present Colt Army revolver from his chest and head to the window, ready to respond to the foolhardy peeper outside with a Spirit-Dispersing Explosive Round.
But Lin Jie timely raised his hand, stopping him with a subtle gesture.
He slowly shook his head at William, signaling him to stay calm and not act rashly.
A silent tactical exchange was completed among the three.
Dinner ended hastily.
Although Professor Schmidt sensed the eerie change in atmosphere, his exhausted mind didn't press for details.
Lin Jie and Julian politely declined the professor's invitation to continue their exchange at the university club, citing "the need to organize intelligence overnight."
When Professor Schmidt's worried, aged figure disappeared at the end of the corridor, the atmosphere in the room switched from "academic exchange" back to "pre-battle meeting."
Lin Jie told his two companions everything without reservation: the startling glimpse he encountered on the ancient bridge that afternoon and the resentful "feeling of being watched" he had just sensed again.
"Its target is clearly me," Lin Jie said with a grave expression.
This assertion sent a chill of fear down Julian and William's spines.
"Then why hasn't it acted?" William's voice held a question.
"Since it's already locked onto you, why is it only conducting surveillance and provocation instead of attacking directly?"
This question was also a confusion in Lin Jie's own mind.
He shook his head.
"I don't know, but it feels very strange."
"The way it looks at me isn't like a hungry beast looking at a feast. It's more like... appraising a piece of art."
Early the next morning, the sky remained overcast.
Under the pretext of "expressing condolences for the deceased and hoping to find some clues related to 'mental health' among his belongings to prevent similar tragedies," and led by Professor Schmidt, they successfully entered the student dormitory of the first suicide victim, Schulz.
It was a cramped single dormitory located on the top floor of Heidelberg University's oldest building.
The room was filled with an oppressive and lonely atmosphere.
A single bed, a desk, a chair, and a massive bookshelf occupying an entire wall—these were all the furniture in the room.
The room was empty.
Or rather, it was an eerie and contradictory kind of "emptiness."
The basic furnishings of the room were still there.
The dusty, profound philosophical works by Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer were still neatly arranged on the bookshelf.
But all items bearing personal attributes that could prove the existence of the "individual" named "Friedrich Schulz" had completely vanished.
There were no letters, diaries, or class notes on the desk.
Not a single piece of clothing carrying its owner's warmth or scent remained in the wardrobe.
On the walls, where private photos or commemorative postcards had once been posted, only paler, abrupt blank imprints remained.
The entire dormitory seemed to have undergone a professional and thorough "sterilization."
An invisible "cleaner" had entered here immediately after the victim's suicide and, with obsessive-compulsive precision, erased all proof of the deceased's "self" existence in this world.
As if Friedrich Schulz had never existed at all.
"This... this is impossible..." Professor Schmidt uttered a disbelieving whisper as he looked at the bizarre scene before him.
"I was here just two weeks ago! At that time, this child's desk was still piled with drafts of his doctoral dissertation! Photos of him and his family were still on the walls! Where did all those things go?!"
"They were 'consumed'," Julian's voice was icy.
"According to rumors, after a 'Doppelgänger' replaces its host, it instinctively erases all identity imprints the host left behind in the real world."
Lin Jie didn't speak. He walked over to the single bed, the only thing that could prove the deceased had once lived here.
Only a bare mattress remained on the bed;
the sheets and quilt had similarly vanished without a trace.
An indescribable aura of nothingness emanated from the mattress.
He slowly closed his eyes and extended his right hand.
William immediately stepped forward, subtly positioning his broad frame between Lin Jie and the door.
He knew what Lin Jie was about to do, and he also knew that during such dangerous "spiritual readings," Lin Jie was at his most vulnerable defensively.
Lin Jie's fingers gently touched the dust-covered mattress.
Reverberation Touch!
"Boom!"
A vast and chaotic torrent of information crashed into his mind.
Before his eyes was only an endless expanse of pure white static snow, crackling with "zzt" interference.
Countless mutually contradictory and negating philosophical concepts and logical paradoxes tore at his reason within this ocean of white snow.
"I think, therefore I am... but what if my 'thinking' itself is just a 'program' that can be replicated?"
"Phenomenon is reality, but what if even the 'observer' itself cannot determine whether it is 'real'?"
"Free will... Absolute Spirit... thing-in-itself..."
These wise and enlightened philosophical terms had all now transformed into "self-negating white noise" capable of grinding sound thinking into "logical mush."
Lin Jie felt as if his brain had been thrown into a high-speed blender.
His "self" cognition began to grow fuzzy and thin under the immense impact of this nihilistic information, on the verge of being assimilated and dissolved by this boundless expanse of "white snow."
"Lin!"
William's roar, filled with power and concern, struck like thunder, yanking Lin Jie's nearly lost consciousness back from the terrifying "white abyss."
Lin Jie's body shuddered as he severed the connection with the mattress.
He fell to his knees with a *thump*, clutching his nearly splitting head with both hands and letting out a groan of pain.
Cold sweat poured from his temples, soaking his hair.
"What did you see?" Julian immediately stepped forward to support him, asking urgently.
Lin Jie raised his head, his eyes still holding traces of not-yet-faded terror.
He shook his head, his voice hoarse.
"I saw nothing."
"There's nothing there."
"There's only an endless 'blankness'."
But he hadn't come away entirely empty-handed, because at the very last moment before his consciousness was about to be consumed, deep within that endless noise of white snow, he had caught a fleeting, startling glimpse of a blurry image that flashed past.
It was a faceless being, its body outline constantly shifting like melting wax... a Faceless One.