Chapter 36: Sea Without Light 36
The game system continued to deliver new notifications.
“[Mission Content]: Investigate the cultist murder case.”
“Target investigation detected as deceased, your mission is considered complete.”
“[Investigation Progress]: 100%.”
“You remained calm in the face of a killer with extraordinary abilities, turning passivity into initiative and executing the mission objective on the spot. You demonstrated extraordinary sharpness, calmness, and intelligence, far exceeding that of an average person.”
“You successfully completed the mission, and as a lone wolf without teammates, you are the sole victor of this mission.”
“Based on your performance, you earned the title [Huntress].”
“[Huntress]: You are a hunter with extraordinary perceptiveness; any prey targeted by you cannot escape your tracking and hunting. You can use this title to speak on the forum; when using the title, the prefix ‘Huntress’ will be added to your forum nickname.”
Kui Xin took a deep breath.
Killing Fang Zhi with her own hands was a choice she made, and it seemed her choice was extremely correct.
Once a player dies, the information will be reported on the forum. From the moment she decided to eliminate the pollutants around her, Kui Xin had been considering how to kill without triggering a report on the forum.
After much thought, she planned to take a slight risk and attempt to create an accidental death; she couldn’t kill him directly but had to use other means to kill her prey, such as making him drown or fall off a building… However, Kui Xin did not know the judgment criteria of the game system. If the cause of death due to human factors was also taken into consideration by the system, her schemes would be ineffective.
Therefore, Kui Xin needed to take the risk of conducting a test to examine the game system’s judgment criteria and see if she could avoid the death report from the game system.
However, Fang Zhi’s extraordinary ability dispelled Kui Xin’s calculations.
If his ability was related to saving and replaying, then even risking it, she needed to deprive him of that extraordinary ability.
With such an extraordinary ability, Kui Xin would have greater survival assurance.
She valued her life immensely. In a dangerous place like the Second World, she had no way to protect herself properly. Life was a game that couldn’t be restarted, and she didn’t want to lose her own life. But Fang Zhi’s death rebirth could give her a chance to restart, increasing her fault tolerance in the game and providing her with a potential for counterattack and reboot in extreme situations.
Kui Xin hoped she would never trigger the death rebirth.
She hated death. If she really triggered the death rebirth, it meant she had been pushed to a dead end, an unprecedented dilemma. Kui Xin wanted her life to be smooth, with the people and things that could threaten her never appearing.
Kui Xin could imagine the storm that would erupt on the forum once news of Fang Zhi’s death was reported. However, the first step was not to check the forum on her phone but to deal with the body.
After visiting the biological specimen hall of xenomorphs in the Investigation Building, seeing a human body felt rather calm for her.
As Kui Xin reached down to move the body, a blood bubble formed on Fang Zhi’s skin.
She sensed something was wrong and quickly withdrew to a safe distance.
The surface of the corpse began to produce one blood bubble after another. In a moment, the body melted into a puddle of blood, with a bundle of blood-soaked clothing quietly lying on the ground.
“Is this… the natural dissolution of a Heterogeneous Blooded after being killed?” Kui Xin was taken aback.
Xueyao Shu had mentioned this to her during later work; only Heterogeneous Blooded who had highly digested Divine Blood would automatically dissolve after death. However, this type of Heterogeneous Blooded could not escape the curse of body mutation and death.
Fang Zhi was an exception; not only had he highly digested Divine Blood, but his body also did not undergo any mutation.
Kui Xin remained silent.
Not having to deal with the body was a good thing; she could save a lot of effort.
Next, she just needed to dispose of Fang Zhi’s clothes and the blood stains left on the ground. There was no need to clean it thoroughly, as the trace of the body had vanished. The determination of death has a strict process, with one important standard being the presence of a body. Without finding the body or pieces of it, death cannot be determined. Who would have thought the body had already turned into blood?
If someone investigates here later, they could only determine that there had been a fierce fight based on the blood stains and could not judge whether the person was dead.
Kui Xin crouched down and used Fang Zhi’s residual clothing to wipe the blood off the blade. However, blood is hard to wipe clean, so she left the tobacco factory to find a water pool to clean the kitchen knife. When the surface of the knife no longer showed blood stains, she tucked it into her waistband.
The knife could not be easily discarded. Even if it appeared clean, it would still retain many genetic traces invisible to the naked eye. The handle was engraved with the brand of kitchen utensils, and if someone found the knife, they might trace it back to her.
With a knife on her person, it was impossible to take the subway home.
After cleaning the scene, Kui Xin took advantage of the rain and overcast sky to utilize Shadow Transition to make her way home.
At the same time, as Kui Xin received the mission completion notification, players in the Jingchu region who had also accepted the mission to investigate the cultist murder case received the game system’s mission notification.
“Target investigation detected as deceased.”
“Players in the same area as you completed the task ahead of you, and your mission is considered failed.”
“…”
In a certain city in southern Jingchu.
“Who is it?” A calm man pondered as he looked out at the pouring rain.
Jinshui City.
“Someone killed Fang Zhi?” A pale-skinned boy mumbled with his head down. “Someone got ahead of me… I haven’t even had a chance to test my extraordinary abilities.”
Tonglin City.
Su Rong nervously bit her lip. “The target has died… Fang Zhi is dead, the forum will definitely report it… Right, let me take a look.”
She opened the forum and saw a new, prominently marked death report at the top. The first line of this post read — “Proxy 1286 was killed by Remover 233 on July 29.”
“Oh my god!” Su Rong was left dumbfounded.
Su Rong had taken on this task out of curiosity. The game system did not specify any penalties for failing the mission, nor did it mention rewards for success. With boldness, she accepted it, never planning to complete the task but just looking to join in the excitement…
Now she had certainly found herself in quite the excitement — and a huge one at that!
If Proxy 1286 was Fang Zhi, and Fang Zhi was in Tonglin City, then Remover 233 was the one who killed him… which means, Remover 233 is also in Tonglin City?!
Su Rong hugged her arms, feeling goosebumps rise, her face turning pale as she mumbled, “I must not panic; I must not panic. Remover 233 must be targeting Fang Zhi; he doesn’t know me and doesn’t realize I’m a player… Wait, he might recognize the star Su Rong from the Second World?”
She nearly cried out in fear, resolving to stay indoors and study hard for the entire summer.
Su Rong refreshed the forum page, and dozens of new posts suddenly popped up.
The post with the highest number of replies had the title: “Beware of Remover 233!!! The first time they killed may possibly be explained by accident or coincidence, but what about the second time? I have reason to believe they are intentionally targeting players!”
……
After arriving home, Kui Xin stripped off her clothes and took a shower, then boiled a pot of water and tossed the clothes she wore while killing and the used knife into the pot to boil.
In various horror movies and crime dramas, there’s often a segment where the murderer dismembers and cooks the victim’s body to avoid having the police identify the victim through genetic information.
Kui Xin was now doing the same, boiling the clothes and knife that might have remnants of blood or human tissue to thoroughly destroy any residual substances.
After cooking the clothes, she would dry them, tear a few holes in them, pretend they accidentally got damaged and couldn’t be worn anymore, and then throw them in the trash bin downstairs.
As for the knife, she would leave it out in the open in the kitchen. Of course, she wouldn’t use that knife for cutting vegetables.
The pot used for boiling the clothes and knife was annoying to her. She planned to place it in the bottom of the cabinet to leave it unused; the kitchen had several spare pots, which were sufficient for cooking.
While waiting for the clothes to boil, Kui Xin was about to check the forum for updates when her phone suddenly buzzed with a call.
Upon seeing the caller ID, Kui Xin’s heart skipped a beat.
“Hello, is this Ms. Kui Xin? This is…” The male operator on the other end reported the address of the local police station.
“Hello, is there anything wrong?” Kui Xin said politely.
“It’s like this, we found you on the city surveillance system, and earlier today you followed a male for a long distance on Baihua Avenue. That male is about 1.81 meters tall, of sturdy build, wearing a gray top and black trousers, with a sun hat… Do you remember anything?”
“…I do.” Kui Xin carefully considered her words and responded, “I thought something was off about that man; he looked a bit like the murderer reported in the news, so I followed him to observe for a while. When he turned around and questioned me about why I was following him, I thought he seemed too confident to be a murderer, so I stopped following… He can’t really be a murderer, right?”
“He is,” the operator said. “Please recall carefully and tell us which direction the suspect left; this will greatly aid in our case breakthrough.”
“I only remember he went south.” Kui Xin answered.
“Any other information?” the operator asked.
“None.” Kui Xin stated, maintaining a calm facade while lying.
The operator asked a few more questions, and Kui Xin answered each one without missing a beat, her responses vague and ambiguous, her tone seemingly confused and surprised.
Finally, the operator said, “Thank you for your information. If there are any other situations that require further inquiry, we will contact you again.”
After hanging up, Kui Xin fell into deep thought.
Before she could even think for three seconds, another communication call came in.
Upon seeing the local police station’s number again, she felt puzzled as she answered, only to hear a woman’s voice say, “Hello, we are from the Tonglin City police station. This morning, you were on…”
“Uh,” Kui Xin paused, “didn’t your station just call me?”
The woman on the other end replied, puzzled, “Our station hasn’t called you at all?”
