novelraw Chapter 36: Sea of Darkness - (36)
Chapter 36: Sea of Darkness - (36)
The Game System continued issuing new notifications.
“[Quest Objective]: Investigate the Cultist murder case.”
“Detected that the investigation subject has died; your quest is considered completed.”
“[Investigation Progress]: 100%.”
“In facing a murderer with superhuman abilities, you remained composed amidst danger, turned passivity into initiative, and promptly executed the quest objective on the spot. Throughout the task, you displayed exceptional keenness, composure, and intellect far surpassing those of ordinary individuals. Your tactical acumen is difficult for most people to match.”
“You have exceptionally completed the mission. As a lone wolf without teammates, you are the sole winner of this task.”
“Based on your performance in the mission, you have earned the title [Predator].”
“[Predator]: You are a hunter with extraordinary intuition, and no prey can escape your pursuit and hunt. This title can be used when posting on the forum; if employed, ‘Predator’ will be prefixed to your forum nickname.”
Kui Xin took a deep breath.
Personally, killing Fang Zhi was a choice she made, and as it stands, her decision proved incredibly correct.Once a player dies, their information is reported on the forum. From the moment Kui Xin decided to eliminate contaminants around her, she pondered how to commit murder without being announced on the forum.
After much thought, she planned to take a calculated risk by staging an accidental death. She couldn’t kill directly with her own hands; instead, she had to rely on external means to eliminate her prey, such as making him drown or fall from a building. However, Kui Xin was uncertain about the Game System’s criteria for determining deaths. If even indirect human involvement factored into the system’s judgment, her plan would fail.
Therefore, Kui Xin needed to take a risk and conduct a test—to assess the Game System’s evaluation standards and determine whether she could avoid having the deaths reported.
However, Fang Zhi’s superhuman ability disrupted Kui Xin’s plans.
If his ability was indeed related to reloading checkpoints and rewinding time, she would risk everything to seize it for herself.
With such a superhuman ability, Kui Xin would have significantly greater assurance of her survival.
She cherished her life immensely. In the perilous circumstances of the Second World, she had no means to adequately protect herself. Life is a game that cannot be replayed; she didn’t want to jeopardize her own existence. However, Fang Zhi’s Death Cycle could provide her with second chances, increasing her margin for error in this game. It would give her opportunities for desperate counterattacks in extreme situations, as well as the potential to restart.
Kui Xin hoped she would never trigger the Death Cycle.
She abhorred death, and if she ever did activate the Death Cycle, it would signify that she had been pushed to a point of utter despair, unlike anything she had experienced before. Kui Xin desired a smooth and untroubled life, ensuring that threats against her would never arise.
She could envision how Fang Zhi’s death announcement would undoubtedly unleash a new storm on the forum. However, her first priority wasn’t to check the forum on her phone but rather to handle the corpse.
Having visited the specimen collection of alien creatures beneath the inspection building, witnessing human corpses now elicited a remarkably calm response from her.
Just as Kui Xin reached out to move the body, blood blisters began forming on Fang Zhi’s skin.
Sensing something amiss, she swiftly retracted her hand and stepped back a considerable distance.
Blood blisters continuously erupted on the corpse’s surface, and within moments, the body dissolved into a pool of blood, leaving behind only a mass of blood-soaked clothing quietly spread on the ground.
“This is… the natural dissolution that occurs after killing a Variant Blood?” Kui Xin was taken aback.
During their subsequent discussions about his work, Shu Xuyao mentioned this phenomenon: only Variant Blood individuals with high levels of Divine Blood assimilation would spontaneously dissolve upon death. However, even these types of Variants could not escape the curse of bodily mutation and eventual demise.
Fang Zhi was an exception; he not only highly assimilated Divine Blood but also avoided any physical deformations.
Kui Xin fell silent.
Not having to deal with the corpse was beneficial, saving her significant effort.
All she needed to do now was clean up Fang Zhi’s clothes and the bloodstains that were left on the ground. It wasn’t necessary to be overly thorough since the traces of the body were already gone. The procedure for determining death is strict, and one crucial criterion is the presence of a body. Without finding either the complete body or its fragments, it cannot be officially declared a death case. Who could have imagined the body would liquefy into mere blood? Even dissolving in sulfuric acid wouldn’t leave such a clean trace.
Anyone investigating later could only conclude from the bloodstains that there had been a fierce fight, but not if anyone had died.
Kui Xin crouched down and used Fang Zhi’s remaining clothes to wipe the blood off the knife. However, blood is notoriously difficult to clean thoroughly. Kui Xin left the tobacco factory and found a puddle to rinse the kitchen knife, ensuring no visible traces of blood remained on its surface. Once cleaned, she secured the knife at her back waist.
The knife couldn’t be casually discarded; although it appeared washed, microscopic genetic traces would still linger. The handle bore an engraved brand name, and if someone found the knife, they might trace it back to her based on this detail.
With the knife in her possession, taking the subway home was not an option.
After Kui Xin finished cleaning up the scene, she took advantage of the rain and overcast sky to use Shadow Shuttling, swiftly making her way home.
At the same moment Kui Xin received the notification of completing her mission, players in the Jingchu Region who had also accepted the task to investigate the Cultist murder case got similar alerts from the Game System:
“Detected: Investigation target has been killed.”
“Players in your area have completed the task before you. Your task is considered failed.”
Silence fell.
In a city located in the southern Jingchu region:
“Who was it?” A composed man thoughtfully gazed out the window at the torrential rain.
Jinshui City.
“Fang Zhi has been killed?” murmured the pale-skinned youth, head bowed. “Someone beat me to it… I haven’t even had the chance to experiment with my superhuman abilities yet.”
Tonglin City.
Su Rong anxiously bit her lip. “Investigation target deceased… Fang Zhi is dead; the forum will surely announce it. Yes, let’s check.”
She opened the forum and indeed found a new red-pinned death announcement thread at the top. The first post contained only one line— “On July 29th, Proxy No. 1286 was killed by Depriver No. 233.”
“Oh my god!” Su Rong was utterly speechless.
Initially, Su Rong accepted this mission out of curiosity. The Game System didn’t specify any penalties for failing the task or rewards for completing it. Emboldened, she took on the quest, not genuinely expecting to finish it but rather just wanting to join in the excitement…
Now, Su Rong found herself amidst this commotion—and it was more intense than she anticipated!
If Proxy 1286 was Fang Zhi, and Fang Zhi was in Tonglin City, with Depriver 233 being the one who killed him… does that mean Depriver 233 is also in Tonglin City?!
Wrapping her arms around herself, Su Rong vigorously rubbed the goosebumps, her face pale as she muttered, “Don’t panic, don’t panic. Depriver 233 must be targeting Fang Zhi specifically; he doesn’t know me or that I’m a player… Wait, could he possibly recognize me as the celebrity Su Rong from the Second World?”
On the verge of tears from fear, she resolved not to step outside for the entire summer vacation, choosing instead to stay home and focus on her studies.
Su Rong refreshed the forum page, and with a flurry, dozens upon dozens of new posts emerged.
The thread with the highest reply count bore the title: “Beware of Depriver No. 233!!! The first murder might have been explainable by accident or coincidence, but what about the second? I have reason to believe they are selectively hunting players.”
After arriving home, Kui Xin undressed and took a shower. Then she heated a pot of boiling water, dropped her clothes worn during the murder and the used knife into it, and let them simmer.
In various horror movies and crime dramas, scenes often depict murderers dismembering and cooking their victims’ bodies to prevent police from identifying genetic information on the corpses, thus hindering the determination of victim identities through technological means.
Kui Xin was doing something similar—boiling the clothes and knife that might contain blood traces or human tissue fragments, completely destroying any residual substances.
Once the clothes were boiled, she would hang them to dry, tear a few holes to feign accidental damage, pretend they were unwearable, and then toss them into the trash bin downstairs.
As for the knife, she would keep it openly displayed in the kitchen. Naturally, she wouldn’t use this blade for cutting food anymore.
The pot used for boiling the clothes and knife also felt repulsive to her; henceforth, she planned to store it at the bottom of a cabinet, leaving it unused. She had several spare pots at home, sufficient for her cooking needs.
While waiting for the clothes to boil, Kui Xin intended to check the forum’s situation, but suddenly, her phone buzzed with an incoming call.
Her heart skipped a beat as soon as she saw the caller’s ID.
“Hello, is this Ms. Kui Xin? This is…” The male operator on the other end provided the address of the local police station near Kui Xin’s residence.
“Hello, may I ask if there’s something you need?” Kui Xin politely responded.
“Well, here’s the situation. Through the city surveillance system, we found that this morning you followed a male for a considerable distance while passing through Hundred Flowers Avenue. The man is 181 centimeters tall, with a robust build and muscular physique. He was wearing a gray shirt, black pants, and a sun hat… Do you remember anything about him?”
“…Yes.” Choosing her words carefully, Kui Xin volunteered, “At the time, I felt something was off about this man. His appearance somewhat resembled the reported description of a serial killer, so I trailed him to observe for a while. Eventually, he turned around and confronted me, asking why I was following him. Seeing his confident demeanor, it didn’t seem like he could be a murderer, so I stopped trailing him. Could he really be the serial killer?”
“He is,” the operator confirmed. “Please try to remember carefully and tell us which direction the suspect left in. This information would greatly assist our investigation breakthrough.”
“I only remember that he went south,” Kui Xin said.
“Is there any additional information?” the operator asked.
“No, nothing else,” Kui Xin lied without batting an eyelid.
The operator proceeded to ask several more questions. For each query, Kui Xin provided evasive answers, leaving no room for suspicion. Her tone conveyed genuine confusion and surprise.
Finally, the operator said, “Thank you for providing this information. If there are any further developments requiring your input, we will continue to call your number.”
The call ended, and Kui Xin fell deep into thought.
Before she could ponder for even three seconds, another phone call came in.
Kui Xin noticed it was, surprisingly, from the same local police station’s phone number again.
She answered in confusion, hearing a female voice over the line say, “Hello, we’re from Tonglin City Police Station. This morning, you were…”
“Uh.” Kui Xin paused. “Didn’t your police station just call me earlier?”
The woman on the other end, bewildered, responded, “Our police station hasn’t called you at all.”