Chapter 375: Death Has Arrived

On the 24th floor top floor, a gale wrapped in heavy rain howled, raindrops striking the glass with a dense "patter" sound.

A burly muscle-man hung upside down, his knotted muscular legs hooking the rooftop like steel pincers; his skin showed an unnatural gray-green, its surface covered in blood vessels wriggling like earthworms.

A palm-leaf-sized large hand slowly extended, thick knuckles covered in a keratin-like hard shell.

The next instant, the index finger lightly tapped the top of the floor-to-ceiling window; the moment fingernail touched glass, it emitted a barely audible "ding".

The brown glass surface rippled with a ring of wave-like patterns; fine cracks spread silently from the contact point as center.

The cracks expanded like a spider web, yet eerily made no sound at all.

Simultaneously, his pupils suddenly turned into feline vertical slits; faint light flickered within the pupils.

His mouth also emitted a faint, low sound, like a breeze passing through treetops — human ears could hardly detect it, but for animals it was an exceptionally sensitive frequency.

Inside the room, a little girl with horn-like pigtails was curled on the sofa, hugging a mobile phone and watching "Animal World" with rapt attention.

The mobile phone screen sounded narration:

"Spring has arrived, all things revive; a mutated crocodile is slowly emerging its head from the sewer..."

Beside the little girl, an orange cat was curled on the sofa dozing.

Suddenly, its ears shot up, whiskers trembling violently, amber pupils contracting to a thin line.

As if sensing some invisible threat, the orange cat sprang up, back fur bristling, fleeing frantically around the room.

"Meow—!"

Amid the shrill cat cry, the orange cat kicked off with its hind legs, body arching into a curve; its claws scratched a few shallow marks on the tiles, leveraging the force to leap at the floor-to-ceiling window.

"Crash!"

The glass shattered on cue; the spider-web cracks instantly collapsed.

An irregular glass shard rotated as it fell, its edge gleaming with a grim cold light under the lamp.

The orange cat kicked once and immediately retracted, using the rebound to roll on the ground and scramble up; frightened trembling fur bristling, the howling wind and rain poured back in through the window hole.

The little girl's expression went blank as she opened her mouth, seemingly stunned by all this; however, the next second, a high-pitched excited cry came from her small mouth:

"Mama, Mama, come quick, Orange smashed the window, Orange mutated—"

She toddled on short legs, waving arms and legs as she ran toward the kitchen.

The kitchen door was pulled open; in the dim yellow emergency light halo, a middle-aged beautiful woman's silhouette appeared especially frail.

"Roar—roar—"

Damp wind poured through the broken window; curtains danced wildly in the darkness.

The beautiful woman's gaze passed through the messy living room, freezing on the orange cat curled back on the sofa, constantly licking its fur.

The little girl clung tightly to her mother's leg; the phone still played the narration:

"Mutation is life's curse, yet also a god's gift..."

"Meow—"

The orange cat returned to its soft cute appearance; cat pupils clear and foolish.

The beast suddenly curled its abdomen and stood up; muscles emitted a sound like twisting steel bars as they contracted.

Its fingertip aimed at that largest piece of glass, lightly pressed a finger; the force was controlled to perfection — neither damaging the glass nor failing to impart a terrifying acceleration, while slightly adjusting the falling angle.

Zhao Xing's head hung outside the window; heavy rain whipped his cheeks like whips.

His line of sight was blurred by rain, yet he could still see clearly the outline of that cold chain truck downstairs — cargo compartment wide open, neatly stacked frozen fish gleaming with an eerie blue light in the rain curtain.

"What's coming what's coming?"

His brain spun frantically but could not sort a clue; unknown fear was simply more terrifying than death.

He wanted to turn his head to look up, but the tongue around his neck strangled his neck tight, allowing not a sliver of turning room.

Suffocation blackened his vision; eardrums buzzed.

Just then, he heard a sharp crisp sound from above, like the sound of glass exploding.

"No no."

Zhao Xing struggled madly, eyes bulging until they split and oozed blood.

Suddenly, he felt his neck loosen; that suffocating binding vanished.

He violently turned his head—

An irregular glass shard rotated as it fell, its edge gleaming with a grim cold light in the heavy rain.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment; Zhao Xing clearly saw his own terrified face reflected on the glass.

"So... it's Death coming!!"

The glass sliced across his neck with the precision of a guillotine blade.

The instant blood sprayed, he saw on the blood-stained glass his face covered in crimson, yet the corner of his mouth eerily curled up — that was the smile of sudden realization before death.

His skull fell in the wind and rain, vision spinning.

In his final consciousness, he saw his own headless body still hanging on the windowsill, blood pouring down like a waterfall.

And downstairs, the cold chain truck's hydraulic rod was slowly rising.

"Bang!"

The skull heavily fell into the compartment, bursting like a ripe watermelon.

Brain matter mixed with blood diffused among the frozen fish, forming an eerie abstract painting.

And that fatal glass shard happened to also follow along and insert into a fish belly beside it, adding a trace of human stench to a truckload of fishy smell.

The heavy rain continued, washing away all traces.

Only that cold chain truck slowly drove away; the compartment unexpectedly gained a fresh "sashimi ingredient", and its mirror...

In the 11th floor room, where was there even half a human figure? Only that headless corpse hanging by the window, silently gazing, craning its neck waiting for its head drifting farther away.

Rainy day, traffic jam; the winding car dragon doesn't care whether your car flashes red lights or not.

One hour and seventeen minutes later, the Divine Detectives of the Patrol Bureau arrived at the "battlefield."

The murder scene on the eleventh floor was soaked in the lingering echo of the heavy rain.

The open floor-to-ceiling window was like a giant mouth with interlocking beast fangs; the night wind carried rain silk through the hollow, stirring ghostly shadows' dance on the curtains.

That headless corpse still held its forward-leaning inertia, its hem glued to the windowsill edge by congealed blood plasma, the cross-section of the fractured neck bone gleaming with a mother-of-pearl luster, like a carefully polished murder weapon's cut.

Scattered documents bloomed into dark red paper flowers in the blood pool; a few pages were blown out the window by the wind, dancing a waltz in the rain curtain, long unwilling to fall.

One page happened to be caught on the raised clothes-drying pole at the top of the window; after the ink stains were soaked by rainwater, the words "Prisoner Medical Parole Approval Form" bloomed into a cluster of ink lotuses on the white shirt.

"A typical accident."

The Divine Detective used the hand holding a cigarette to push aside the curtains; cigarette ash fell onto the corpse's shoulder.

"The documents were blown away by the wind, and when leaning out, he was struck by a falling object from above."

Bai Ye squatted by the standing water, using forceps to pick up a reflective shard of glass, nodding absentmindedly in agreement:

"Indeed so; the only mystery is where the dead man's head ran off to?"

End of Chapter