Era of Magic and Martial Arts

Chapter 391 - 375: Death God Arrives

On the rooftop of the 24th floor, a fierce wind swirled with torrential rain, the raindrops hitting the glass with a dense "pitter-patter" sound.

A burly musclebound man was hanging upside down, his muscular legs hooked onto the rooftop like steel tongs, his skin an unnatural gray-blue color, covered with blood vessels squirming like earthworms.

Fan-like large hands slowly extended, the thick knuckles covered with a hard shell like a keratin layer.

The next moment, his index finger lightly tapped the top of the floor-to-ceiling window, and at the instant the nail touched the glass, there was a barely audible "ding".

Ripples like on the surface of water spread over the brown glass, with fine cracks quietly spreading from the contact point.

The cracks spread like a spider web, yet eerily made no sound.

Simultaneously, his pupils suddenly transformed into vertical slits like those of a feline, with a faint light flickering within them.

He emitted a sound that was subtle and low, akin to the breeze passing through treetops, barely perceptible to human ears, yet at a frequency unusually sensitive for animals.

Inside the room, a little girl with pigtails was curled up on the sofa, holding her phone and intently watching "Animal World".

A narration arose from the phone screen:

"Spring has arrived, everything is reviving; a mutant crocodile is slowly emerging its head from the sewer..."

Beside the girl, an orange tabby cat was curled up napping on the sofa.

Suddenly, its ears pricked up sharply, whiskers trembling violently, and its amber pupils narrowed into a thin line.

As if sensing some invisible threat, the orange cat leapt up with a start, fur bristling, and frantically dashed around the room.

"Meow——!"

With a piercing cat’s cry, the orange cat kicked off with its hind legs, arching its body into a curve, scratching shallow marks on the tiles with its claws and leaped towards the floor-to-ceiling window.

"Crash!"

The glass shattered in response, the web-like cracks instantly collapsing.

An irregular piece of glass spun and fell, its edges glinting with a cold sharp light under the lamp.

The orange cat kicked off midway, rebounding to the ground, rolling and getting up, its fur bristling in fright; the roaring wind and rain pouring in through the window’s opening.

The little girl stared with her mouth agape, seemingly stunned by it all, yet in the next second, her little mouth emitted an excited shout:

"Mommy, mommy, come quick, Orange smashed the window, Orange has mutated——"

She waddled towards the kitchen with excited flailing arms.

The kitchen door swung open, with the dim emergency lighting casting a particularly slender silhouette of a middle-aged beauty.

"Roar——Roar——"

The broken window let in humid wind, and the curtains danced wildly in the darkness.

The beautiful woman’s gaze swept across the disarrayed living room, fixing on the orange cat curled up back on the sofa, continuously licking its fur.

The little girl, meanwhile, clung tightly to her mother’s leg, the phone still broadcasting the narrator’s voice:

"Mutation is the curse of life, yet it is also a gift from the gods..."

"Meow——"

The orange cat returned to its soft cute appearance, its feline eyes clear but foolish.

The Wild Beast suddenly retracted its abdomen to sit up, its muscles emitting a sound like twisting steel as they contracted.

It aimed its fingertips at the largest piece of glass, pointed lightly, controlling the force perfectly so as not to damage the glass, yet imparting a terrifying acceleration to it and slightly adjusting its falling angle.

Zhao Xing’s head was hanging outside the window, the torrential rain lashing against his cheeks like a whip.

His vision was blurred by the rain, yet he could still discern the outline of the cold chain vehicle below—the truck bed wide open, with rows of neatly stacked frozen fish casting an eerie blue glow in the rain.

"It’s coming...what is coming?"

His brain worked frantically, but could not make sense of it all, the fear of the unknown more terrifying than death itself.

He wanted to turn his head upwards, but the tongue coiled around his neck strangled him tightly, leaving no room for movement.

The suffocation made his vision darken, with a buzzing echoing in his eardrums.

At that moment, he heard a piercing snapping sound from above, like glass shattering.

"No...no..."

Zhao Xing struggled frantically, his eyes bulging and cracking till blood seeped out.

Suddenly, he felt his neck loosen, the suffocating constriction vanishing.

He jerked his head around—

an irregular piece of glass spun as it fell, its edges chillingly gleaming in the rain.

Time seemed to freeze in that moment, Zhao Xing clearly saw his terrified face reflected on the glass.

"So...it was the Death God coming!!"

The glass sliced like a guillotine’s blade precisely across his neck.

At the instant blood sprayed, he saw his blood-drenched face covered in crimson on the glass, his mouth curling into a bizarre smile—a smile of sudden realization before death.

His head fell through the wind and rain, his vision spinning.

In his last conscious moments, he saw his headless body still hanging on the windowsill, blood cascading like a waterfall.

And below, the cold chain truck’s hydraulic rod was slowly rising...

"Bang!"

The head plummeted heavily into the truck bed, splitting like a ripe watermelon.

Brain matter mixed with blood seeped into the frozen fish, forming an eerie abstract painting.

And that lethal piece of glass happened to fall alongside, embedding itself into the belly of a nearby fish, adding a trace of human scent to the fishy smell.

The torrential rain continued, washing away all traces.

Only that cold chain truck slowly drove away, with an unexpected serving of fresh "sashimi ingredient" inside the compartment, along with its mirror...

In the 11th-floor apartment, not a single human shadow remained, only the headless corpse hanging silently by the window, craning its neck expectantly toward its head drifting further away.

On rainy days, traffic jams, the snaking line of cars pays no heed to whether your indicators are blinking red.

hour and 17 minutes later, the detectives from the Patrol Office arrived at the "battlefield."

The crime scene on the eleventh floor was steeped in the aftermath of the torrential rain.

The open floor-to-ceiling window resembled the jagged maw of a wild beast, night wind carrying raindrops through the hollow space, making the curtains sway in a ghostly dance.

The headless corpse retained its forward-leaning momentum, with its clothing hem glued to the windowsill’s edge by congealed blood, the cross-section of the severed neck bones glistening with a nacreous sheen, like a meticulously honed weapon’s blade.

Strewn documents blossomed into dark red paper flowers in the blood pool, with a few pages getting blown out the window by the wind, waltzing in the rain and unwilling to fall for a long while.

One of them happened to catch on the risen clothesline at the window top, its ink wash by the rain, with the words "Prisoner’s Medical Parole Approval Form" dissolving into an ink lotus on the white shirt.

"A typical accident."

The Detective, with a cigarette clamped in his hand, nudged the curtains aside, ash falling onto the corpse’s shoulder,

"Documents blown by the wind, struck by falling objects while leaning out..."

Bai Ye squatted by the water pool, picked up a reflecting glass shard with tweezers, and nodded absentmindedly in agreement:

"Indeed, the only mystery is, where did the deceased’s head end up?"