1888: Memoirs of an Unconfirmed Creature Hunter

Chapter 322: The Inheritance of Discipline

Time rewinds eight hours earlier.

In a narrow clearing deep within Chinatown, shielded by towering walls and dense banyan trees.

"Bang."

A muffled gunshot startled several sparrows resting on a tree branch into flight.

Julian lowered his still-smoking pistol, looking somewhat dejectedly at the simple straw target ten meters away.

It wasn't a particularly distant target, one could even say it was right under his nose.

But in that previous volley of six consecutive shots, only two had barely grazed the straw dummy's edge. The other four had all vanished into the dirt of the rear wall.

The young academic from the French Academy removed his round spectacles, damp with sweat, and somewhat clumsily wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

His arm was slightly numb from the recoil's vibration, that sore ache constantly reminding him of a harsh reality: he was an excellent scholar and linguist, but he was definitely not a qualified fighter.

In every previous battle, he had deeply felt this sense of powerlessness.Whether facing those fanatical believers in the Paris catacombs, or fighting that terrifying Stitched-together Monster in Oberammergau, or encountering that slippery "Oil Ghost" in the rubber warehouse last night.

The gun in his hand was more often just psychological comfort, or could only provide extremely limited suppressive fire.

He couldn't precisely target enemy weak points while moving at high speed like Lin Jie, nor could he construct an insurmountable defensive line with firepower like William.

"If William were here..." Julian muttered softly, "He could blow that straw dummy's head off with his eyes closed."

"William could indeed do that."

A calm voice came from the veranda at the back of the courtyard.

Lin Jie walked over, holding a long, slender object wrapped in black oilcloth.

He looked at the almost completely intact straw dummy without showing any trace of mockery, simply offering an objective assessment: "But that kind of marksmanship from William was forged with tens of thousands of rounds and countless experiences crawling out of piles of corpses."

"You're a scholar. Your hands are meant for flipping through ancient scrolls and holding pens. Muscle memory like that can't be acquired quickly in a short time."

"But I can't hide behind you all forever."

Julian put his glasses back on, his eyes flashing with a stubborn yet anxious light. "That Oil Ghost's agility far exceeds that of a normal person. If we want to completely eliminate it in tonight's ice factory trap, relying solely on the trap won't be enough."

"You're right." Lin Jie nodded. "Facing that type of UMA, any single missed shot could cause the entire tactical chain to collapse. We need one hundred percent accuracy, with zero room for error."

"So I must practice." Julian raised his revolver again, preparing to reload.

"You won't get it from practice." Lin Jie reached out and pressed down on his gun barrel. "Given your aptitude and current mental state, even if you practiced here until your hand was useless, you still wouldn't hit that monster scurrying around on the ground tonight."

Julian was momentarily stunned, then lowered his arm with a bitter smile. "Then what should we do? Abandon the containment plan?"

"No."

Lin Jie placed the object wrapped in black oilcloth on the stone table.

As the oilcloth was unwrapped layer by layer, a uniquely shaped weapon, brimming with industrial violent aesthetics and a cold sense of order, was revealed under the sunlight.

It was a pistol with a long barrel, the magazine positioned in front of the trigger.

It wasn't a revolver common to this era, but a design with distinct Prussian military-industrial style, even somewhat ahead of its time.

Most striking were the densely coiled, thorn-like rusty iron wires wrapped around the gun body and wooden grip.

Grotesque Armament—【Discipline】.

This was the trophy Lin Jie had seized from the Iron Cross captain's corpse during the cemetery battle in New Orleans, North America.

"This gun..." Julian looked at this weapon. Even without touching it, he could feel the chilling aura emanating from its surface.

Lin Jie picked up the gun, feeling the stinging pain of the coarse iron wire grinding against his palm. "I've studied it. This is an exceptionally unique armament. Its core material is a fragment from some UMA that symbolizes order and punishment, likely a conceptual entity born in some ancient prison or tribunal."

He extended the grip toward Julian.

"Its core ability isn't power, nor rate of fire, but 'inevitability'."

Lin Jie looked into Julian's eyes and said seriously, "This gun doesn't require you to have sharpshooter-level aiming skills. It doesn't even require you to clearly see the enemy's face. It only needs you to give it a clear, unchangeable command—a lock-on."

Julian hesitated for a moment, then extended both hands and solemnly accepted the weapon.

The instant his fingers touched the iron wires coiled around the grip, a sensation like an electric shock shot straight through his nerves to his brain.

It wasn't actual pain, but an extremely intense, compulsive Mental Impact.

In that moment, Julian felt his previously scattered thoughts being forcibly "straightened" by an invisible ruler.

Subtle yet profound changes occurred in the world as he perceived it.

The swaying leaves no longer danced randomly in the wind; they moved following the trajectories dictated by aerodynamics. The light spots on the ground were no longer chaotic; they were the inevitable Projections of geometric optics.

All chaos was eliminated.

All disorder was corrected.

This was 【Discipline】.

"How does it feel?" Lin Jie asked.

"Strange." Julian took a deep breath. His voice became more steady, more lacking in inflection than usual. "It feels... the world has become very clear, extremely clear. All distracting thoughts have vanished, leaving only cause and effect, and logic."

"That's its price." Lin Jie explained. "It forcibly imposes an absolutely rational mode of thinking on the user. While using it, you'll become like a precise machine, or a component of this gun itself."

"You'll lose tolerance for chaos and error, replaced by a compulsion to enforce rules."

Julian tightened his grip on the handle. Even as the iron wires pierced the skin of his palm, drawing blood, he remained completely unaware.

On the contrary, that stinging sensation gave him a strange sense of peace and pleasure—the security brought by order.

"This is enough." Julian looked up, gazing through his lenses at the distant straw dummy.

Now, in his field of vision, that straw dummy was no longer a blurry target.

It was a "certain outcome" connected by countless dotted lines representing ballistic trajectories.

He could "see" that as long as he pulled the trigger, the bullet would follow one of those optimized trajectories, hitting the target's forehead without the slightest doubt.

This wasn't probability.

This was rule.

"Try it." Lin Jie pointed to a large banyan tree nearby. "Don't shoot the straw dummy. I want you to hit that clay pot behind that tree. You can't see it, but you know it's there."

Julian turned.

The massive banyan tree, requiring three people to encircle its trunk, completely blocked his line of sight.

But the pot's positional coordinates appeared clearly in his mind.

He casually raised his hand, the muzzle pointing toward an empty area beside the banyan tree.

To any observer, this shot would definitely miss, and miss by a ridiculous margin.

But in Julian's perception, that was the entry point of a perfect arc.

"Bang!"

A dazzling flash of fire erupted from the muzzle.

The alchemical bullet engraved with law runes left the chamber.

After flying a few meters, it actually traced a large arc in the air that defied physical inertia!

Like a bird pulled by an invisible rope, the bullet nimbly circumvented the thick banyan tree trunk, then abruptly turned inward.

"Crack!"

A crisp shattering sound came from behind the tree.

Lin Jie walked over to look. The clay pot placed behind the tree had been shattered to pieces. The bullet had precisely entered through the pot's mouth and pierced through the bottom.

"This is 【Tracking Ballistics】." Lin Jie picked up a fragment and walked back. "Or, more accurately, this is 【Correction】. The moment you lock onto the target and pull the trigger, the outcome of a hit is already predetermined. The process is merely the necessary correction to achieve that result."

Julian looked at the still slightly warm gun barrel in his hand, his eyes showing shock and awe.

This power was too domineering, too dangerous.

He could feel that a cold soul resided within this gun. It thirsted to carry out judgment, to correct all errors in the world.

And the so-called "errors" were the enemies in the user's eyes.

"It's powerful." Julian said softly. "But I feel... it's trying to control me. It's forcing me to destroy everything around me that's misaligned, irregular. Even a crooked leaf makes me want to shoot it."

He forcefully suppressed the impulse to fire at a nearby pile of slightly disorganized bricks and switched the safety on.

"That's mental erosion." Lin Jie warned with a serious expression. "Grotesque Armaments of this level have extremely strong side effects. The previous user was himself a fanatic, so he could master this gun."

"But you're different. Your mind is free, divergent. Prolonged use could lead to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, even loss of emotion."

"So." Lin Jie patted Julian's shoulder. "Unless absolutely necessary, don't draw it lightly. But tonight, we need this absolute order."

Julian took several deep breaths, struggling to push that cold killing intent and compulsion back into the depths of his heart.

He nodded, inserting this murderous weapon named 【Discipline】 into his belt.

"I understand." The scholar adjusted his glasses. The gaze behind the lenses became unprecedentedly resolute. "To survive, I don't mind becoming an emotionless machine, even if only for a few hours."

...

When night fell, the abandoned ice factory located at the edge of the Kallang Basin upstream of the Singapore River was immersed in its usual deathly silent darkness as always.

But beneath that dark surface, a meticulously woven net of death had already been cast.

Julian was currently lying prone on a rusty maintenance walkway on the second floor of the ice factory.

This position offered a wide field of view, overlooking the entire ground-floor ice storage tank hall, while also having a massive load-bearing column as cover.

He had been lying here for a full two hours.

If it were the old him, he would have likely been irritated long ago by the humid, stuffy environment and mosquito bites.

But now, under the influence of that 【Discipline】, he felt unprecedented patience and focus.

He was like a statue, even his breathing rhythm strictly controlled to twelve breaths per minute.

Below his field of vision, at the bottom of the enormous ice storage tank, the red-clothed paper puppet stood quietly.

Every line, every fold on its body appeared so clear in Julian's eyes.

To his left, Evelyn was hiding behind a row of massive condenser pipes.

She tightly gripped the master valve connected to the factory's entire sprinkler system.

Copper wire was wound around that thick red handle—reinforcement she had specifically added to prevent her hand from slipping.

Beside her sat the modified sonic launcher, its large copper horn aimed at the open area below.

A faint red light glowed on its indicator, showing it was in standby mode.

Lin Jie was concealed in the deepest shadows, that position being the "bottom" of the entire trap.

Everything was ready.

All variables had been accounted for.

"This is the beauty of order." Julian silently recited in his heart.

At that moment, an extremely faint sound broke the silence within the ice factory.

It's here.

Julian's pupils contracted.

In his "order vision," a profoundly discordant "error" suddenly intruded into the perfect, static picture.

That black fluid seeping in through the door gap had no fixed shape; its edges continuously writhed and changed.

It was so chaotic, so disordered, practically the natural enemy of the very concept of 【Discipline】.

Julian felt the gun at his waist vibrating intensely. A powerful impulse to immediately fire and erase this "error" surged within him.

But he resisted.

According to Lin Jie's plan, they had to wait until it fully entered the trap's center, until it was completely captivated by that red paper figure. That was the optimal moment to deliver judgment.

The mass of black fluid slowly coalesced into shape, becoming a pitch-black humanoid monster.

It greedily sniffed the faint, elusive scent of a woman's hair in the air, sliding step by step toward the deadly lure.

Closer.

Even closer.

The instant the monster's claws were about to touch the paper figure, Julian saw Evelyn below yank down the red valve.

"Whoosh—!!!"

Accompanied by a massive pressure release sound, tons of white quicklime powder cascaded down like an avalanche from the dozen or so thick pipes overhead!

White dust engulfed the black figure.

Immediately following was the horrifying sound of intense boiling.

"Sizzle—"

A shriek echoed throughout the factory building.

Julian had already completed the motions of drawing his gun, locking on, and firing the moment the white mist billowed up.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Four gunshots merged into a continuous line.

Four bullets carrying the curse of inevitable impact pierced through the thick lime mist, tracing four deadly arcs in the air.

They didn't attack the monster's body, as that was protected by oil.

Their targets were—joints.

Wrists.

Ankles.

Knees.

These were the crucial nodes connecting the torso, supporting movement.

Also the nodes of order.

"Crack! Crack!"

The sound of shattering bones.

Within that boiling White Hell, the black monster attempting to transform and flee suddenly collapsed to the ground like a pile of scattered building blocks.

Its limb joints had been precisely shattered. That bizarre fluidity was forcibly interrupted at this moment.

"Hit."

Julian said coldly.

He adjusted his glasses, looking down at the black shadow writhing in agony below. Not a shred of pity existed in his heart, only the pure satisfaction of having solved a complex mathematical problem.

This was discipline.

This was the victory of rules.

The next second, Lin Jie's figure tore through the white mist, charging out from the shadows.

The true execution had begun.