Chapter 241: Death Warrant

After finishing lunch, Lan Shiwen brewed himself a cup of tea, spread a list out on his desk, and crossed off two names with a red ballpoint pen.

The list was very long, taking up several sheets of standard A4 paper. Most of the names written on it started with "Liu," and they were marked with bright red crosses. Lan Shiwen checked it several times; only one name remained.

"Liu Hongwen..." Lan Shiwen held the teacup to his lips, his fingers tracing the last name on the list.

Liu Hongwen was the most talented among the direct descendants of the Liu family's current generation. His keen political instincts allowed him to realize, after receiving a death threat from Lan Shiwen, that the Liu family had become isolated and helpless. Without even taking much of his wealth, he fled overnight, escaping a disaster.

Meanwhile, his brothers and sisters were still pinning their hopes on the mutual protection and tangled web of interests among officials in Yunzhou, hoping that the madman surnamed Lan would be wary of collateral damage.

Pinning hopes on fantasies only leads to those hopes being shattered along with the non-existent expectations.

Lan Shiwen set down his teacup and poured himself a fresh cup, feeling worried: "This Liu Hongwen is rather troublesome."

Liu Hongwen and his wife and children had already fled to the territory of the Europa Federation. Even though the Yunzhou Governor had personally made stern representations multiple times, demanding that the Europa Federation deport them, the other side's attitude remained ambiguous.

It was highly probable that Liu Hongwen had sought refuge with some noble faction in Europa, exchanging some special bargaining chips for protection. It was just unclear what exactly he had paid to persuade those old nobles—who never hawk without seeing the rabbit—to bear the pressure exerted by the Nine Provinces.

"It's a pity Yeyao refuses to cooperate... If he were willing to infiltrate Europa as Van Dai Ke, a powerful noble with a title, he would surely be able to eliminate Liu Hongwen soon and resolve this thorn in my side."

Lan Shiwen set down his teacup and sighed. He had almost forgotten that there was still the matter of Van Dai Ke to deal with.

"... Perhaps this could work: if the Europa side still insists on refusing to extradite Liu Hongwen, I will announce the news of Van Dai Ke's death and imply that this is the consequence of their arrogance. If they continue to refuse to cooperate, more nobles will be killed in the future..."

After thinking about it, Lan Shiwen felt this was feasible. As for diplomatic issues or whether such vicious events like assassinating high-level officials of other countries would trigger a full-scale war... he didn't care at all.

Lan Shiwen only cared about one thing now:

—To kill everyone in the Liu family, even if the world were to end the next second.

Even if Liu Hongwen's death would lead to the destruction of the world, causing the entire Earth to explode instantly and the human race to go extinct, Lan Shiwen would definitely kill him. There would not be a shred of hesitation, not a hint of wavering, regardless of the cost.

He was just that kind of extreme person, hopelessly radical.

If he weren't radical, he wouldn't be Lan Shiwen.

*Gurgle, gurgle*—the water boiled. Lan Shiwen bent down to lift the kettle off the fire, pouring the scalding water into the teacup to brew a fresh cup. The rich fragrance swirled in the steam, and a few drops of tea splashed onto the paper on the desk.

"Xiao Lan?"

"Hm?"

A soft call suddenly rang out from behind him. It was his girlfriend's voice, but Lan Shiwen remembered locking the door before entering the study. How did she get in?

"What's wrong?" Lan Shiwen turned his head to look back in confusion. At the same time, a gust of eerie wind blew past.

An invisible, fierce ghost quietly wrapped itself around him, resting its cold chin on his shoulder. Inside its tongue-less mouth, it was empty, with only a cold, eerie wind blowing out to extinguish the yang fire on his shoulders.

Lan Shiwen died.

"Hm?" After a momentary trance, Lan Shiwen opened his eyes abruptly. He was gripping the familiar steering wheel; he had just returned home and parked the car.

"I'm back?" Lan Shiwen's eyes burned as he quickly sorted out the situation: "I parked the car, returned home, entered the study, and was drinking tea while checking the Liu family list, then I suddenly heard my girlfriend's voice behind me, and then..."

And then he died.

Was his house haunted? No, that possibility was slim.

Was it an assassination by a Gridded or a Granted?

Lan Shiwen remembered his last death return was just the previous time. There had been no warning, no signs; he had simply dropped dead in his office for no apparent reason.

Death then return, return then death—dying over and over again until Lan Shiwen was numb to it, only then did he finally determine from the endless cycle that the person killing him was Ning Zhe.

So who killed me this time?

Lan Shiwen pondered for a while, and many candidates immediately appeared in his mind. There was no helping it; he had offended too many people. His enemies who wanted to kill him could line up from the Yanzhou estuary all the way to the snow-capped mountains of Cangzhou. If not for the heaven-defying rules of the death return, Lan Shiwen would have long since been picked clean to the bone by that group of Gridders who were fiercer than ghosts.

"First, I died after hearing my girlfriend's voice, but I had locked the door, and she doesn't have the key to my study, so she shouldn't have been able to get in."

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"Even if I remembered wrong and forgot to lock the door, she should have knocked before entering."

Lan Shiwen was very confident about this point. His girlfriend was the daughter of a high-ranking official in Yunzhou and had some basic awareness of the existence of the Strange World. She knew not to enter his private space casually, or it would lead to a major disaster.

"Therefore, the person standing behind me calling my name wasn't her, but someone who forged my girlfriend's voice to attract my attention. The moment I turned my head, a cold wind blew across my body, and my cause of death is related to this..."

Lan Shiwen used clear logic to quickly summarize the process of his death:

Hearing the voice, turning to check, the eerie wind blowing past, the body turning cold, death.

"Is the condition for triggering death... responding?" Lan Shiwen thought for a moment, noted this guess down temporarily, and then pondered other possibilities.

Besides the process of death, there were other suspicious points.

Lan Shiwen remembered that the voice he heard at the time was very clear, without any distortion caused by recording and playback. It was definitely not a stolen recording; it was as if someone was truly standing behind him, calling Lan Shiwen's name in the voice of the woman he was most familiar with...

So who was the person who killed him? Why did they forge his girlfriend's voice? And how did they forge such a realistic voice?

Forging it to that degree wasn't even a matter of passing off the fake as real, because it was real.

"... Could it be?" Lan Shiwen thought of that possibility, and cold sweat crawled up his spine, making him shudder.

At this moment, a familiar voice rang out from the back seat of the car, eerie as a death-summoning ghost:

"Xiao Lan?"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 242 =====