"A wolf?"
Ji Jue lowered his gaze, glanced at the screen, and resumed his work.
On the workbench, parts freshly machined from the lathe were sorted and arranged. The unchamfered edges of the workpieces were razor-sharp, having undergone preliminary assembly.
After dozens of reinforcements via Earth Bears and Sea Embraces, the metal had darkened to a hue bordering on crimson. Its sheer presence constantly eroded and consumed the surrounding spiritus and physical matter.
Beneath the surface framework of Three-Phase Alchemy, numerous applications of corruption alchemy were incorporated within, complementing the inherently vicious aura of the materials themselves.
There were no Blessings or complex structures involved. If anything, they were merely ordinary materials whose inherent material properties had been forcibly pushed to their limits. There was no need to treat them with care or delicacy—as long as the expendable item performed its function properly, that was enough.
It was a break-action revolver.
Yet unlike other models, the central cylinder held only three rounds.
With such a minimal capacity, the caliber could be expanded almost to that of a 10-gauge shotgun shell—nearly two centimeters wide.
The ammunition also required custom fabrication, but such a task was hardly a bother for Ji Jue.
It was merely a matter of patient grinding.
Amidst the work that would seem excessively tedious to ordinary people, Ji Jue flicked his fingers. Deus Ex Machina was triggered, once again seizing control of the servers deployed across Tacheng. Instantly, the dark wall of monitors before him flared to life one after another.
They displayed vastly different scenes across various parts of Tacheng. Soon, the footage began moving rapidly, all speeding in the same direction.
At that very moment, within Tacheng—in sewers, on rooftops, in dumpsters, gutters, construction sites... from within the sludge, tiny mechanical spiders suddenly activated. Red lights surfaced in their eyes, trembling faintly as souls were infused into them.
Dispatched and coordinated by the servers, they scurried agilely through the sewers, drifted with the currents, climbed up walls, or leaped between buildings with astonishing speed.
In less than ten-odd minutes, just as the police officers had departed, the spiders had completely surrounded the entire crime scene.
Immediately after, they infiltrated every crack and crevice.
As the rookie officer's car started up and drove off, they had already entered the empty villa, moving nimbly across walls, floors, and ceilings. Soon, recorded by high-magnification cameras, a detailed miniature model of the scene rose from the churning Quicksilver at Ji Jue's feet.
An extinguished fireplace, a blood-soaked carpet, a floor crawling with maggots, and half-rotted, gruesome corpses.
One, two, three...
The master, wife, daughter, son, maid, gardener...
Six victims.
On the screen beside Ji Jue's hand, a summary report retrieved from the property address and social media platforms had appeared. The master of the house was the owner of a real estate firm, primarily dealing in mid-to-high-end residential and apartment rentals and sales for employees dispatched by Tacheng's various major corporations.
His criminal record was completely clean. Naturally, in a damned place like Tacheng, nobody's hands were clean, yet everyone's resumes and criminal records looked spotless. With just a bit of money, one could wipe away their record from afar; it couldn't serve as a basis for judgment.
Still, while alive, the deceased had been relatively clean... Because he held no real power and his bank account balance wasn't particularly large. At most, he was a high-class scavenger picking up scraps behind the behemoths.
Compared to warlords, arms dealers, pharmaceutical brokers, middlemen, and other professions damned by the heavens, he could be called pure and harmless.
There were no apparent suspicious motives.
If one had to point out an outstanding quality, it was, at best... good meat texture.
Ji Jue waved his hand. Within the projection, the blurred areas rapidly zoomed in, and the nauseating corpses came into sharp focus, flashing before Ji Jue one after another before finally stopping on the son and daughter.
Judging from the stage of decomposition, the time of death had likely been around the arrival of the typhoon, when all of Tacheng was in utter chaos.
Deducing from the scene's conditions, the assailant had likely broken in through the back door, first killing the gardener who was repairing a water pipe in the garage basement, then the maid who had come to investigate. Upon entering the living room, the master had already found a gun and pulled the trigger, leaving a bullet hole in the wall.
Then, he was decapitated.
Next was the wife.
The last to die were the two children, who had been dragged to the dining table to be savored.
One tender and soft, the other firm and chewy. On those two decaying, mutilated corpses, faint tooth marks remained on the shattered bone fragments...
The hearts and brains had all been devoured.
This was the most direct evidence, beyond the staining of the Plague of the Lord of the Flies.
At that moment, Ji Jue could not hold back from drawing a deep breath.
He reined in his long-lost excitement and anticipation.
Finally, he had seized a solid clue!
Over the past few days, the ceaseless false alarms had almost numbed him to it. He hadn't expected to find such tangible proof.
This was the symptom of White Stag corruption—cannibalism!
Even a wolf was no exception; if anything, it was intensified... The ever-expanding appetite constantly urged the corrupted to prey upon flesh and blood, temporarily easing the hunger originating from the soul.
This impulse for cannibalism could be suppressed and delayed, but it could never be eradicated. Once a Celestial Chosen succumbed to that deep inner craving for their own kind, this bone-deep corruption became unavoidable.
Wolves were forged from this insatiable hunger; how could they betray their own nature?
The stronger the wolf, the more voracious this appetite became, and the more it yearned for stronger prey.
Still... they must have been enduring it with immense difficulty, right?
To have reached such a state of indiscriminate hunger, they likely had no opportunity in everyday life to unleash their brutality and satisfy their thirst, only able to restrain themselves in vain and suppress their nature.
Perhaps they had chosen their target long ago and were merely waiting for an opportune moment.
And so, when the typhoon arrived, a famished wolf, disturbed by the aura of the White Stag in the storm, finally could no longer hold back. Amid the howling wind and pouring rain, it began its cheat meal.
Unfortunately, the indulgence didn't seem to have concluded smoothly.
Perhaps something happened, or perhaps some unexpected factor disrupted it, forcing it to end hastily and make a rushed retreat—without even enough time to fully destroy the scene and cover its tracks.
It had only sloppily splashed a layer of gasoline, but couldn't find a lighter, as none of the family smoked. Luckily, it finally found a cheap one on the gardener's corpse.
Who knew whether it had marveled at its own luck.
After hastily lighting it, it turned and left, vanishing into the storm.
Regrettably, the gardener who died in the basement hadn't been able to finish his work. The pipe burst, sewage backed up, and the increasingly violent gale shattered the windows. Misfortunes never come singly.
The scene failed to burn completely.
Instead, on that lighter, it left behind the mark of its spiritus staining.
Careless.
Retrieved by the mechanical spiders, the broken lighter soon arrived before Ji Jue.
Meanwhile, even more spiders had already swarmed out through the broken windows, dispersing into the night, silently following that faint, elusive trail forward.
Over walls, across barbed wire, stretching all the way outside the city.
And then, they discovered that the target's trajectory had vanished into the flooded slums...
A trail that should have been traceable had disappeared beneath the disaster's deluge.
"How cautious," Ji Jue rubbed his chin, clicking his tongue in marvel. "Even at a time like this, they deliberately took a detour?"
Creatures like wolves truly had paranoia etched into their bones.
No wonder when the Dual Fingers of the House of An spoke of wolves, their faces were filled with disgust. At the slightest sign of trouble, they would immediately swap identities and vanish, and when they went undercover, each looked more normal than the next. Unless one went on a massive killing spree, who knew how long it would take to catch them through conventional means.
Perhaps the Hunting Finger still passed down some secret tracking method that outsiders weren't privy to.
But it didn't matter. Crude methods had their own advantages.
Effort wasted here could be put to use over there.
Ji Jue had taken such pains for so long, laying net after net across Tacheng—wasn't it for this very moment? When one door closes, another opens. As long as the target remained within Tacheng, they were destined not to escape the pursuit of the Plague of the Lord of the Flies...
As for why? The spiritus hue the target left on the lighter was already enough for Ji Jue to compare against the sea of "false alarm" cases in the database one by one!
The Plague of the Lord of the Flies would self-terminate upon encountering the aura of a wolf, leaving behind a stain undetectable to anyone other than their kind, meant for tracking.
The nature of the Lord of the Flies' residual spirit fragments was constant, but wolves were different, which meant the colors left by different wolves were distinct as well!
No matter how similar two wolves were, they were not the simulacra of the White Manor; they could never possess identical spiritus residues.
Among the massive wave of false alarms in days past, Ji Jue had had no way of knowing which traces were left by an actual wolf. But once the crucial anchor point of the puzzle was found, everything that followed was merely the tedious, patient work of matching and piecing things together.
It was unexpectedly fast.
Soon, matching hues and collection locations appeared on the map.
Scattered here and there across various corners of Tacheng.
And the densest, most frequent cluster gathered to the west, just outside Tacheng. Aside from Yuanshan Port, it was at the only other large harbor in Tacheng—Offshore Port!
In an instant, half of his burning excitement was doused.
"Tch..."
Ji Jue lowered his gaze, staring at the two overlapping maps and the large area marked out on them, letting out a silent sigh. "Now this is a bit troublesome."
Not because the location was remote and hard to find, nor because transportation was too convenient to track, but because... of the glaring red warning zone on the map.
Now, he could determine the wolf's hiding place.
"—The Imperial garrison base."
Two hours later, as dusk began to fall.
Outside the Imperial garrison base, amidst the bustling and noisy market, Ji Jue—disguised as a local with a turban and beard, his back hunched—listlessly pushed a handcart laden with low-grade fruit, shuffling forward step by step.
Just like an ordinary old fruit vendor found anywhere.
Tired from walking, he sat on the ground, tilted his head, and smoked a water pipe, his eyes wandering toward the brightly lit, heavily guarded garrison base with deliberate nonchalance.
After comparing the two nearby samples earlier, he was now entirely certain: the target was hiding inside the garrison base.
Furthermore, judging from how the target had fed indiscriminately, they must hold the kind of strict, high-profile position where one couldn't easily leave their post or standby area.
Then the problem arose: as a lackey of the Federation garrison, a corporate representative of Haichao Armaments, an unyielding troublemaker who had nearly dragged everyone down into mutual destruction, and the notorious Tacheng Whirlwind Shi... how was he supposed to get in?
Not a chance in hell.
Especially since his abilities were no secret at all; word had spread long ago. There was no need to mention how threatening he was to a violent system like a military force.
He estimated that if he showed even the slightest trace near the Imperial garrison base, the Imperial Security Bureau would probably sound the alarm immediately.
Ji Jue pulled a long face and couldn't help sighing.
Still too young.
He had played his good cards too early. Otherwise, he could have had the Evil Transmutation Cult stage another attack to muddy the waters and seek another opportunity...
Lu Changsheng's identity carried too much baggage; it probably couldn't be used either.
A matter like this had to be resolved as quickly and securely as possible before anyone could react. Startling the snake prematurely would only cause him to forfeit the opportunity for nothing.
He needed to plan carefully...
Pondering, he pushed the cart with a limp, turned a corner, and prepared to head back.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of wind behind his head.
Something hit his neck.
A chill.
Immediately after, a reasonable yet belated reaction of terror surfaced from him. The hunched old man clutched at the back of his collar in fright, only to realize that what had fallen into his collar was an Imperial copper coin.
"Hey, old timer! You, yeah you, over here..."
Not far away, at a brightly lit, lively Mid-Continent pilaf stall, several burly men looked over. Still wearing Imperial military uniforms and already flushed with alcohol, the one who had tossed the copper coin was waving at him: "Fruit! How much for the fruit?"
"Ah, yes, right away, my lord!"
The hunched old man hastily forced a fawning smile and wheeled his cart over. "All fresh, sir, absolutely fresh! Picked just this morning from my own garden. There are apples, persimmons, durians, and grapes, as well as golden fruit and lemons, mixed with chilled yogurt and honey—this is the way the Victory Army used to eat them!"
"Stop your damn babbling. How long has the fucking Victory Army been dead and gone?" The man who asked waved his hand, cutting him off impatiently. "Be quick about it. How much?"
The old man hurriedly held up his hands: "Five—no, four as!"
"Fine, I'm in a good mood. Keep the change, just serve whatever you see fit."
The heavily tattooed man grabbed a handful of copper coins from his pocket and tossed them over, exceedingly generous, looking like a man who didn't care about money.
"Right away, right away! Thank you, my lord!"
Tears of gratitude welling up, the old man shuffled closer and caught them with both hands, only to curse inwardly... There were only five or six coins in this handful—barely anything at all. Stingy as hell, yet putting on such a grand show!
More importantly...
Under the dim light, Ji Jue couldn't help but squint, scrutinizing the other man's face: "Huh?"
"Huh?"
Hiccuping with booze, the Swarm mercenary covered in dreadlocks noticed the change in the old man's gaze and instinctively looked over with a frown, only to realize he had never seen this old codger before.
Yet why did that pair of eyes make his heart skip a beat with dread?
Oh shit, could he be here for revenge?
"Hmm..."
As Ji Jue studied that increasingly familiar face, his gaze grew more and more meaningful. Suddenly, from the bottom of his heart, he grinned.
So familiar.
"Huh?!"
At that moment, Tang Qian, who had still been grinning stupidly, finally realized something was off.
Instinctively, his eyes went wide.
His vision went black in waves...
*You dog named Ji, I only overcharged you by a dozen-odd gold coins! Did you really have to chase me all the way to Mid-Continent?!*
Chapter 587