Ding Shi stepped onto the zebra crossing just as a car turned left toward it. By both his estimation and that of any ordinary person, the car—which had not been traveling fast to begin with—ought to spot him and slow down further. Right at that moment, a hundred meters away, a window was caught by a gust of wind, angling sunlight straight into the driver's eyes. Blinded for a second, the driver failed to see the crosswalk or Ding Shi on it.
Faced with a hazard that was not excessively dangerous, a cautious Ding Shi handled it with ease, breaking into a quick two-step sprint to get clear of the car's path.
*Damn it! Two deadly ambushes within twenty meters. Have I really been marked?*
Without the instance's prompt information, Ding Shi would have written it off as mere coincidence.
High up on a building over a dozen stories tall, a welder suspended by a safety harness was working at height. A stray spark danced onto his neck and slipped downward against his skin. Instinctively jerking his clothes, the welder lost his grip on his welding torch, sending it plummeting straight toward Ding Shi walking below.
"Watch out!" a woman's voice called from across the street.
Ding Shi instinctively halted and looked over. Before he could even make out who had shouted, the welding torch smashed onto the pavement right in front of him. A cold sweat broke out across his back. *Air strikes now, you bastard?*
Turning back toward the other side of the street, Ding Shi found his line of sight blocked by a turning box truck. As the truck made its right turn, the left latch on its rear tailgate suddenly gave way. Swept by the turn, the tailgate swung open with the right latch as its pivot. With a resounding slam, it struck a young woman on the sidewalk, knocking her to the ground.
After checking both ways, Ding Shi dashed across the road to inspect her condition. She lay collapsed on the pavement, a pool of blood spreading beneath her head. Ding Shi checked the pulse at her neck, then pried open an eyelid to examine her pupil. She was already dead.
Suspicion gnawed at Ding Shi's mind. The truck hadn't been traveling very fast; its tailgate was nowhere near forceful enough to crush a human skull. Even in a ghost king instance, cheating to this extent was crossing the line.
A patrol officer blew his whistle and came running over. Ding Shi pulled out his credentials first. "I'm Ding Shi."
The officer glanced at the badge. "I'm Liu He."
Unsure whether the other man was a player, Ding Shi wasted no words and recounted what he had witnessed. The truck driver rushed over as well. His name was Zhang Hai, and he stammered through an explanation of the incident, casting fearful glances at the body on the ground.
To clear the way for traffic, the officer and Ding Shi moved the corpse. Only then did they discover a nail impaled in the back of her head where it had hit the pavement—an ordinary nail. In theory, that nail should have been lying flat on the ground. Yet when the woman fell, a nail happened to be standing upright precisely where her head landed.
Ding Shi inspected the truck's cargo bed. A mechanical latch like that didn't just come loose; someone—either through mortal hands or supernatural power—had undone the latch, used the centrifugal force of a right turn to strike the woman down, and arranged an iron nail right where her head would hit.
The deeper Ding Shi thought about it, the more terrifying it became. The woman had stopped solely to warn him. Had she shifted even an inch, or faced a slightly different direction, she wouldn't have died even if knocked over.
This wasn't just the Grim Reaper; this was an AI calculating down to the micrometer.
Ding Shi could not help recalling a classic movie: *Final Destination*. In it, a group of people cheated a fatal disaster, only for the Grim Reaper to fixate on them. One person slipped in a bathroom because of toilet water, only to fall directly onto a wire clothesline and get strangled to death.
Another guy got annoyed with some pigeons, shooed them away, and the scattering birds startled a worker into bumping a lever, sending a sheet of tempered glass plummeting from above to crush him flat.
In the movies, the incorporeal Grim Reaper never killed directly. Instead, it tweaked minor settings—using a gust of wind to shut a door, forcing a target to decide whether to open it, and triggering a chain reaction that created a butterfly effect to finish them off.
This instance was remarkably realistic. Ding Shi could not tell whether the dead woman was a player, nor could he be sure whether Liu He and Zhang Hai were players either.
Ding Shi felt as though the entire world was dripping with malice. Going outside was too dangerous; he ought to head home. But he still had to work his shift tonight; without working, he couldn't leave this world.
In short: *Forcing you to your death.*
*A Hell instance all right. You've really got guts.*
Over the next two hours, everything was calm and uneventful. Tense and looking over his shoulder with every few steps, Ding Shi began to feel the warmth of the world again. Feigning composure while remaining vigilant inside, he walked another two blocks without encountering a single mishap. Did the Grim Reaper not have enough avatars to go around, or was it trying to lull him into a false sense of security?
Ham Town covered quite a bit of ground. Ding Shi had spent half the day wandering on foot and had only managed to cover seven blocks; the town center alone comprised fourteen. Not a single Reaper incident occurred during that time, nor was he able to identify any other players. It stood to reason that players capable of entering a Hell-difficulty instance wouldn't be foolish enough to shout their identities in public.
***
At four in the afternoon, Ding Shi stopped by the police station to collect his replacement bicycle. At six, wearing his uniform, he arrived at the station to eat dinner before attending the patrol briefing. The precinct had fifty uniformed officers and two plainclothes detectives. Their equipment consisted of handcuffs, batons, whistles, flashlights, raincoats, and the like. The two handguns were held by the plainclothes detectives.
Fourteen officers were assigned to the night patrol, each responsible for one block. Five officers stayed behind on duty at the station, joined by one plainclothes detective.
The fourteen patrol officers sat down, greeting one another and trading jokes. None showed the slightest unfamiliarity with Ding Shi; to them, he had always been one of their own. From their conversations, Ding Shi also grasped his established persona: quiet, diligent, neither the center of attention nor an outcast, with no close friends and no bitter enemies.
The chief took the stage carrying a stack of files, pinning a new little red flag to the map behind him. Each of the fourteen blocks now had one red flag, while the two factories had two flags apiece.
The chief gestured toward the map. "A total of eighteen intentional homicides have occurred this week."
Ding Shi complained inwardly: *Eighteen homicides in a single week? The residents would've fled long ago.*
The chief continued, "I expect everyone to perform their duties faithfully and protect Ham Town..."
After speaking for four minutes, the chief announced, "Dismissed."
The officers made their way to the armory, exchanging words of encouragement before setting off on their bicycles.
Night Rain Street lay in the southwestern part of Ham Town. Rumor had it that an unusual microclimate caused it to rain frequently over Night Rain Street while other areas remained dry, hence the name. In layout, Night Rain Street differed little from the other blocks—residential buildings, shops, restaurants, and so on. It did, however, possess two unique features: most of the residents living there were young workers from the slaughterhouse, meaning the street was home to a large number of working women.
The air was rather chilly. As Ding Shi approached Night Rain Street, a light drizzle began to fall from the sky. He took out his raincoat from the bicycle's rear storage box and slipped it on. Upon reaching Night Rain Street, he found the streets bustling with people. The movie theater, restaurants, and cafes were packed to the brim. Men and women chatted and laughed together, bathed in peaceful, quiet comfort.
The locals seemed accustomed to the premise of nightly rain. Their umbrellas were large, broad enough to shield two people from the weather. Naturally, single folks could use them too—even better, in fact, since it spared them any debate over who held the umbrella.
Ding Shi first went to a bookstore, intending to take advantage of the system, only to find that every book inside was already present in his island's library.
Next, he helped an old woman cross the street—simply because she walked excruciatingly slow, holding up two cycles of traffic lights. Half-supporting and half-hauling her, Ding Shi dragged her to the other side of the road, completely ignoring her protests.
By eight-thirty, pedestrian traffic hit its peak. Just then, a man in a business suit dashed up to Ding Shi. "Officer, our office was burglarized!" As a patrol officer, Ding Shi was obligated to inspect the scene first before using a public telephone or another phone to contact the plainclothes detectives.
The theft had taken place on the seventh floor of Night Rain Building, at a tea company. That afternoon, they had hosted a major client. After dinner, the client had finally agreed to sign a contract, and several people returned to the tea company to finalize the deal, with the client leaving a five-thousand-yuan deposit. Delighted, the boss opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
Just as everyone raised their glasses, the power abruptly cut out. A few minutes later, an employee threw the breaker in the electrical room to restore the lights, only to discover that the boss's bag containing the cash was missing.
Ding Shi stood at the elevator entrance. The elevator doors stood open, revealing the anxious employee inside. The man urged, "Officer, please hurry!"
Ding Shi wasn't fond of that elevator. It left him with too little control.
"I believe you," Ding Shi said. Turning on his heel, he walked away, exited the building, entered a public telephone booth, dropped in a coin, and called the police station. About ten minutes later, a plainclothes detective arrived at Night Rain Building. Ding Shi explained the situation, falsely claimed he had already inspected the scene, and let the detective ride the elevator upstairs alone.
*System notification: Slacking off on duty. Deducted 10 work points. Current work points: -7.*
*Are you kidding me?! I only get eight points for an eight-hour workday!*
*Wait, why didn't I get any work points for helping that old lady cross the street? At the very least, I cleared up traffic, didn't I?*
By ten at night, the crowds on the street thinned out, and the remaining pedestrians hurried their paces. Yet nighttime activities unfolded in their wake. Women of the night stepped out of their homes, lingering outside rental units and alley shops to flaunt their figures to passersby.
Some saw off clients and returned to wait under the eaves out of the rain, lighting up cigarettes as they called out to prospective customers walking past. Other clients drove up and picked them directly up in their cars.
Ding Shi sat alone beneath the Giant Mushroom. Located in the center of Night Rain Street, it was a stone carving capable of sheltering someone from the wind and rain.
A cold, rainy night; a dull, boring shift. Until a scream pierced the air from an alleyway.
Ding Shi pulled up his raincoat hood and strode toward the alley thirty meters away. The passage lacked streetlights; a few households kept a lamp lit on the ground floor to serve as illumination, but most of the alley remained pitch-black.
Ding Shi flicked on his flashlight and swept the beam forward. A revealingly dressed woman in red lay collapsed on the ground outside an apartment door, blood pooling around her as both hands gripped her handbag in a death grip. A man dressed in a dark raincoat held a dagger in one hand while wrenching at the bag with the other. Seeing her refuse to let go, he raised the blade, preparing to stab.
*The Rainy Night Butcher.* In an instant, Ding Shi recalled the villain haunting Night Rain Street. Rumor had it that the Butcher's face was horribly scarred from severe burns. The police had questioned people based on that description without finding anyone who matched it. One look was all it took for Ding Shi to tell that the guy's burn scars were merely makeup. When the police traced the stolen goods, they had apprehended a female suspect who claimed she had simply found the items on the street.
Ding Shi blew his whistle and charged toward the Rainy Night Butcher. The killer shot Ding Shi a glance, dropped the bag, and bolted.
Ding Shi faced a choice. Option one: stay and aid the woman in red, notify the station, and administer basic first aid; there was a chance she might survive. Option two: abandon the woman in red, leave her to her fate, and pursue the Rainy Night Butcher.
Option two seemed callous and heartless, but letting the Butcher slip away now would virtually guarantee another victim. Then again, option two violated basic morality and professional ethics.
*Damn it, is everyone living around here dead?* Following the sound of the whistle, lights in the surrounding windows snapped off one after another. A few residents pushed open windows to gawk, but in the pitch-black darkness, nobody could spot a thing.
*So the system is forcing a choice between two evils?*
As a police officer, Ding Shi should have picked option one. But as an undercover operative, he picked option two. As an undercover agent, his goal was not to rescue citizens, but to eradicate evil.
After a hesitation of a dozen seconds, Ding Shi gave chase. His Agility Origin Force turned him into a running man—not a sprinting leopard, because in pitch darkness, running too fast risked smashing into a wall. Getting hurt was a minor concern; knocking down a wall would deduct points.
Seeing that Ding Shi hadn't immediately followed, the Butcher had already slowed down, preparing to peel the disguise from his face, only to find Ding Shi tearing after him. One pursued, one fled, spilling out of the alley as the gap rapidly closed.
A cyclist passing by was knocked over by the Butcher. The killer hauled the bicycle upright and pedaled furiously to escape. Ding Shi snapped his fingers, summoned his electric scooter, and sped off in pursuit.
After fleeing a hundred meters, the Butcher glanced back. Seeing Ding Shi less than five meters away, he was scared half out of his wits. Standing up on the pedals, he pumped his legs so hard sparks seemed to fly from the crank. Ahead lay a set of railroad tracks where the crossing gate had already lowered, the ground vibrating noticeably from an approaching train.
*Goddamn movie cliches.* Ding Shi cursed under his breath. The Butcher squeezed right through a gap in the crossing barrier, but Ding Shi chose to brake. Under pressure from the Grim Reaper, Ding Shi suspected that if he forced his way through, nine times out of ten he would fall into a trap.
Sure enough, the train rumbled past, barely grazing the rear wheel of the Butcher's bicycle. What was even more sickening was that the train showed clear signs of accelerating.
Ding Shi pulled up and sighed, watching car after car rattle by. Suddenly, a ceramic mug was hurled out of a train window. Ding Shi instinctively threw a punch at it. The mug bounced off his fist, slammed against the moving train, ricocheted right back, and smacked him across the forehead. Clutching his brow, Ding Shi burned with white-hot fury.
The instant the train cleared the crossing, Ding Shi throttled forward, opening the accelerator fully as both tires threw up twin rooster tails on the waterlogged road.
After another two hundred meters, Ding Shi spotted the bicycle.
It lay at the top of a long flight of downward stairs. Ding Shi stopped and peered over the edge. The drop exceeded seven meters, leading down into Night Rain Street's shantytown. The Butcher was sprinting forward along a path parallel to the upper road, separated by elevation—one below, one above.
Ding Shi immediately rode along the upper level in pursuit. Seeing the Butcher about to slip beyond the reach of the streetlights and disappear into the pitch-black shantytown, Ding Shi conjured the Wildcat crossbow in his left hand. He braked, rested the bolt quiver on the handlebars, drew a bolt, and loaded it.
The Butcher had already crossed ten meters into the dark zone.
A black crossbow bolt shot forth through the air, striking the Butcher in the back and piercing clean through his chest. The Butcher pitched forward onto the ground.
Ding Shi drew a second bolt, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bolt slammed into the Butcher's shoulder.
Ding Shi drew a third bolt, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bolt punched straight through the Butcher's skull.
Only then did Ding Shi put away the crossbow. Turning around, he stowed his electric scooter, made his way down the stairs on foot, remounted the scooter at the bottom, and rode over to where the Butcher had fallen.
Yet the Butcher was gone. Vanishing was one thing, but what was the big idea taking the crossbow bolts with him?
Chapter 86