Chapter 6: Night Assassination

The night grew thicker.

Amy’s faint snoring gradually ceased.

The herb garden was utterly silent.

A soft creak—barely audible—marked the opening of the wooden door, yet it did not shatter the night’s stillness.

“Who’s there?” Yilan’s drowsy voice rang out.

“It’s me.”

“Huh? Gao De? What are you doing here?” Yilan was still half-asleep, his mind foggy.

“Yilan, I figured you’d be sound asleep at this hour, so I came to see you.”

“What do you mean?” Yilan started to sit up, but in the moonlit dark, he saw a hazy figure—already moving to the side of his bed during their exchange.

A dark silhouette cast on the wall raised a sharp knife, and as the figure’s hand descended, it drove toward him.

Aah!!

Yilan’s heart jolted in terror; all drowsiness vanished. He instantly woke, his skin prickling with gooseflesh. Instinctively, he raised his right hand to block the expected strike.

Too late.

A wet thud.

A piercing pain stabbed through his chest.

A sharp, cold object pierced through his heart.

It was a dinner knife—used in the dining hall to slice rye bread—not particularly sharp, but sufficient as a deadly weapon.

Gao De pressed his knee against Yilan’s throat, his left hand pinning Yilan’s body down, while his right hand gripped the dinner knife with steady control.

Thud! Thud! Thud! He pulled the knife free and stabbed again, and again, and again. Crimson blood soaked his hand—warm in the cold night, yet offering Gao De not a single trace of warmth.

He only felt sick.

Only when Yilan’s body went completely limp, with no further struggle, did Gao De stop.

He gasped for breath, deep and ragged.

“So this is killing…”

Everything unfolded exactly as Gao De had planned—and even more smoothly.

Yilan, still half-asleep and never imagining Gao De would dare kill him, offered no resistance whatsoever to the night assault.

It was far simpler than he’d imagined.

Yet the discomfort of killing for the first time did not vanish just because it was planned.

“The Jade Emperor is easy to deal with; it’s the minor demons you can’t escape. Even if Yilan can’t directly kill me like Ceda the Mage, he’s always harbored hatred toward me—who knows what petty tricks he might pull to torment me.”

“Besides, his constant surveillance makes it hard for me to act freely. Unless he’s dead, I can never rest easy!”

“And besides, I’ve already died once because of Yilan’s betrayal in the drug trials. This is a life-and-death grudge—blood must be repaid with blood. It’s only right.”

“He forced me to do it.”

Gao De’s hands still trembled. He kept searching for reasons to force himself to calm down, to adapt.

He had to adapt.

Gao De understood: in his situation, if he didn’t want to die, others had to die.

Clang! Suddenly, Gao De’s pupils dilated wildly—as if he’d seen something horrifying. He dropped the dinner knife from his hand; it clattered against the floor with a sharp ring.

After killing, Gao De’s hands had trembled, but not enough to lose grip on a dinner knife.

This shock came from pure surprise.

Just then, Gao De clearly sensed the crescent moon gem in his mind—something he’d never understood—suddenly activated, glowing with flickering spiritual light.

Immediately after, a familiar interface appeared before his eyes, one commonly seen in games and novels:

Origin:

0th Circle—【Human】(1/7)

Spells:

0th Circle—【Mage Hand】, 【Mending】

The interface was simple, even crude—only two information fields: Spells and Origin.

The Spells section displayed exactly the two cantrips Gao De currently knew. Behind each spell, a small yellow plus symbol flickered.

Any gamer would instantly recognize this design.

“Level up.”

Gao De tentatively focused his mind on the yellow plus beside Mending.

In the next instant, information surfaced in his mind like implanted memory.

“Insufficient Origin.”

Clearly, leveling up consumed Origin.

Gao De’s attention naturally turned to the Origin field on the interface.

【Human】(1/7).

The message was brief, with no further explanation—but Gao De understood instantly.

His gaze shifted to Yilan’s corpse on the bed.

“So I must kill seven humans to gain one point of Origin?” Gao De murmured.

The sky had not yet lightened.

Ceda the Mage was awakened by the sudden, inexplicable commotion from the herb garden.

At his age, sleep was always shallow.

And his temper was always fierce.

He stormed out of his room, irritated, and seized a passing apprentice.

“What did you say?!”

Upon hearing the apprentice’s trembling report, Ceda the Mage himself froze for a moment.

He passed through the long corridor and arrived at the apprentice living quarters, a place he rarely visited.

“Master Ceda…” An apprentice spotted him, trembling, voice quivering: “Yilan—he—he’s dead.”

“What happened?” Ceda’s voice remained steady, but its icy chill was unmistakable.

“I just got here…” The apprentice stammered, unable to answer.

Ceda lost patience. He strode forward, face cold, through the long corridor, and finally halted before Yilan’s door, gazing inside.

There, Yilan’s slender body lay sprawled across the wooden bed beside the wall, his chest a bloody mess, eyes wide and glazed white.

Clearly, he was dead.

The cause was simple: stabbed to death.

The weapon appeared to be a blade similar to a dagger.

Ceda frowned, suppressing his fury, and turned his gaze to another corner of the room.

There sat a boy. On the floor beside him lay a bloodstained dinner knife.

His hands were caked in crimson.

Ceda rarely paid attention to these apprentices—but his memory was sharp.

No mage ever had a poor memory.

He remembered this boy: the only apprentice who had survived the drug trials over the years.

“You did this?” Ceda asked, voice thick with displeasure and coldness.

“Yes.” Gao De replied, his face still pale, but his eyes utterly calm.

“What happened?” Ceda asked again.

“First, I stole the dinner knife from the dining hall—the one used to cut rye bread.”

Gao De pointed to the bloodied knife on the floor.

“Not very sharp—but enough.”

“Then, when night fell and I judged him sound asleep, I crept over,” Gao De explained. “He’s older and stronger than me. If I didn’t choose the right moment, I might not have killed him.”

“And now—he’s dead. Killed by my hand.”

Thank you to my brother Weiming Chen Guang for the patronage! Boss, you’re clueless! (End of Chapter)