Chapter 421

Jiang Hai City, Old City District, Wutong Road.

This street has never been touched by the Weird Domain, making it one of the few places in the city that still remains unchanged. The French Chinese parasol leaves have mostly fallen, the bare branches stretch under the gray sky, the noodle shop by the road continues to steam, and the vendor selling candied roasted chestnuts pushes his cart at a leisurely pace.

"Listening to Rain Residence" is hidden deep in an alley; the old wooden door is mottled with peeling paint, and even the large sign above the entrance is too lazy to be replaced. Pushing the door open brings a scent of aged wood mixed with the fresh aroma of tea leaves.

When Qin Zhixia arrived, Chu Che was already seated at a window-side seat on the Second Floor.

He wore a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, topped with a thin dark brown jacket. The Gold Thread Glasses caught a flash of the daylight streaming through the window, and he looked impeccably clean—few people can still live so decently in these times.

"You're here?"

Chu Che looked up, smiled at her, and casually lifted the teapot. Amber-colored tea poured into the blue‑glazed cup opposite, the water line steady, the pour clean, not a single drop splashing onto the table.

Qin Zhixia pulled out a chair and sat down.

She unusually hadn't tied her hair into a ponytail today; her loose hair covered her left shoulder—the junction where her mechanical prosthetic arm meets the shoulder joint, which she prefers not to expose when wearing casual clothes.

"It's been a long time since I've had proper tea."

Qin Zhixia lifted the cup and blew on the steam. The moment the tea touched her tongue, a gentle warmth spread, allowing her to relax a breath. In the Investigation Bureau, they always drink instant coffee and functional drinks, bitter enough to twist a person into a rope from the inside out.

Chu Che placed the pot back on the stove, his fingers habitually nudging the frame of his glasses.

"You've lost weight."

Qin Zhixia rolled her eyes, "The total sleep I've gotten in a month probably still doesn't match a single week of yours."

Chu Che smiled—a perfectly standard, faultless gentle smile.

"You've worked hard."

"Enough, stop the polite talk," Qin Zhixia waved her hand and leaned back into the chair.

Her gaze passed over Chu Che's shoulder and settled on the leafless Chinese parasol outside the window. Through the gaps in the branches, she could see the distant façades of several buildings, their exteriors half‑cut by the Weird Domain boundary; the cross‑sections were smooth, and the reinforced concrete at the cut surfaces was covered with something indistinguishable between mold and something else.

"Are you still at the hospital lately?" she asked.

"Yes. The emergency schedule is tighter than before; we're short on staff," Chu Che poured himself a cup of tea, "Since the Weird Domain was exposed, trauma patients have surged, and the surgical departments of ordinary hospitals are under great pressure."

"Hmm."

Qin Zhixia nodded, saying nothing further.

A few seconds of silence.

An old song played from the tea room's speakers, volume set low, the melody drifting in fragments.

"Chu Che."

"Hmm?"

"Actually, I joined the Federal Weird Investigation Bureau."

Chu Che's hand paused for a moment while pouring tea—barely half a second—then resumed, the motion smooth with no trace of hesitation.

"I guessed it," he set the teapot down, hands folded on the table, relaxed, "You were never the type to have idle time before."

Qin Zhixia did not deny it.

She turned her head, looking again at the overly quiet street outside. An elderly woman slowly walked by, carrying a vegetable basket from which a few green tips of garlic sprouts poked out.

"Did you know that in the past three months, the national criminal crime rate fell by forty‑seven percent year over year?"

Chu Che raised an eyebrow, "That figure is astonishing."

"It's so shocking it gives you goosebumps," Qin Zhixia lifted her tea cup without drinking, her thumb brushing a tiny crack on the cup wall:

"Those who used to walk sideways—bullying the city, trading power for money, hiding in the shadows—disappeared one after another. Not captured by us, nor sanctioned by law. They were devoured by the Weird."

Her tone was oddly flat, as if reciting statistics.

"Smiling Dummy, Midnight Nightmare, Laughing Demon... these things kill without checking IDs, without due process, without a three‑court trial. If you're guilty, you die. It's swift, it's clean."

"The old order rotted to its roots, and new fear performed surgery on it. Those who rose by connections, who oppressed with background, who smoothed everything with money—suddenly found that money and power are useless before the Weird."

"And now the emergence of the Weird Domain is driving humanity into a single rope, working together in unity."

Qin Zhixia set the cup down.

"Sometimes when I sit in the command center watching data reports, a bizarre illusion arises."

"What illusion?"

"It's like... an invisible hand pushing humanity forward in the darkness."

She lightly clenched her right hand's five fingers, then released.

"It's cruel. The price is countless lives. Yet the direction... the direction is actually correct. Crime rates are falling, society is restructuring, and the rotten, tangled lesions of the old system are being uprooted one by one."

"I wonder, could there really be such a 'shepherd'?"

When she uttered those final three words, Qin Zhixia herself smiled, a bitterness she couldn't quite articulate.

Chu Che did not respond immediately.

He leaned back in his chair, his right index finger lightly tapping the table, the rhythm neither fast nor slow.

Outside, a wind had begun at an unknown time; dry branches brushed the window frame, producing faint rustling sounds.

"Interesting."

He spoke. His tone was as gentle as usual, like discussing an academic paper.

"Then what about you, Zhixia?"

Qin Zhixia looked at him.

Chu Che's index finger paused. He leaned slightly forward, elbows resting on the table, chin perched above his interlaced fingertips. The eyes behind his Gold Thread Glasses were very still, as still as a bottomless pool.

"Suppose you held an absolute power that could overturn everything—beyond law, beyond borders, beyond all current human limits of force. Would you still become such a shepherd?"

"Drive the flock with fear. Slay the sick sheep. Herd the rest toward the direction you deem correct."

The old song in the tea room finished precisely on its last syllable, and a brief silence came from the speakers.

Qin Zhixia did not answer immediately.

Her gaze fell on her left hand—the mechanical prosthetic arm hidden beneath the sleeve. The metal joints emitted a faint hum beneath the fabric, the sound of an internal micro‑energy core at work.

This arm was cut by Yan Ming.

She personally killed Xiao Zhang in the unfinished building.

Within the Investigation Bureau, three hundred eighty‑six Fake Person corpses were cleared by Jiang Yuan alone in the middle of the night.

The price.

All of it is the price.

"It won't."

Qin Zhixia's voice wasn't heavy, but each word was enunciated very clearly.

"Why?" Chu Che asked.

"Because the shepherd sees no sheep in his eyes."

She stared straight into Chu Che's gaze.

"Only numbers. This one is sick, kill. That one runs slow, chase. The remaining ones are useful, keep them for breeding to produce wool. The shepherd doesn't care whether the sheep feels pain, only which direction the flock moves."

"The crime rate dropped by forty‑seven percent. Good, it dropped. And then? Among those devoured by Weird, how many were truly heinous criminals? How many merely made minor mistakes, went astray, and still have a chance to turn back?"

"Midnight Nightmare kills minors, Chu Che. Children. Fourteen‑ or fifteen‑year‑old kids. Some may have stolen, some may have fought, some may have said things online they shouldn't have. By the shepherd's standards, they are sick sheep, to be killed."

"But they are human beings."

Qin Zhixia's right hand clenched the teacup, her knuckles turning slightly pale.

"The order built from the weak's bones is not redemption; it's a slaughterhouse. No matter how beautiful the data reports, blood lies beneath them."

Chu Che did not interrupt her. He listened quietly to the end, his facial expression remaining perfectly gentle, like a mirror polished to perfection—reflecting others' emotions but not his own.

"You're too idealistic, Zhixia."

When he said that, his tone was still gentle, as if comforting a lost friend.

"Human civilization has reached this point not because of one or two bad people, but due to systemic decay. The things you saw as a detective—rent‑seeking power, capital oppression, institutional cover‑ups—do you think patching them up can cure it?"

"When one idealist falls, another takes the spot, continues to burn, continues to pour human lives into that rotting machine as fuel."

"This is not salvation. It's a burial offering."

Qin Zhixia's eyelashes twitched.

Not out of anger, but because the words were so precise, precise enough to pierce.

She, of course, knew. Every night she watched the Casualty List at the command center, she knew.

But she still shook her head.

"Perhaps."

"Maybe I'm just too idealistic. But this 'perhaps' is the last thing I have left to prove that I'm still an individual."

She released the teacup.

"The shepherd you speak of stands above, overlooking all beings, calculating gains and losses, adjudicating life and death. Each time he kills a person, his heartbeat doesn't quicken; each time he destroys a family, his eyes don't blink. Because what he sees aren't Zhang San, Li Si, Wang Wu, but variables, parameters, replaceable components."

"Such a thing has a name: God."

Her gaze did not evade.

"But humanity doesn't need God, Chu Che. Humanity should be its own master. Even if we walk slowly, even if we take the wrong path, even if we fall and bleed—those must be our own steps."

The tea room fell silent again.

Chu Che looked at her.

The gaze behind the glass showed no temperature fluctuation, no emotional rise and fall. He stared at Qin Zhixia for a full five seconds, then smiled.

It wasn't the previously social, gentle smile.

The smile was shallow, shallow enough that only the curve of his mouth changed. Yet if someone were keen enough, they'd read from that curve some extremely complex things—appreciation, regret, affirmation, and a near‑pleasant sense of destiny.

"You're right."

He lifted his own teacup and gently clinked it against the one before Qin Zhixia.

The blue‑white porcelain met, emitting a crisp sound.

"Humanity should be its own master."

He repeated the sentence, his tone impeccably sincere.

Qin Zhixia didn't notice Chu Che's oddity.

She felt that, although the conversation touched some sensitive areas, it at least proved one thing—Chu Che truly was one of the few kindred spirits she had.

Chu Che was also pondering something.

He had run countless simulations. Using an editor, he modeled hundreds of possible trajectories for human society. In every "optimal solution" he found, sacrifice was necessary, fear a tool, and the shepherd the only role that could stand at the finish line and look back.

He completed all the mathematical problems, each answer pointing to the same conclusion.

—He will become a god, and is destined to become a god.

But the words Qin Zhixia just uttered were beautiful, scorching, and resonant.

But they couldn't solve the problem.

Thus he is destined to move forward, to a place no one can comprehend.

And she, the woman before him who, despite a missing arm, can keep her spine perfectly straight, will be the most perfect obstacle he meets on this path.

It might be a bit tricky.

Yet it makes one very eager.

Chu Che set down his teacup, leaned back against the chair, his gaze passing over Qin Zhixia's shoulder to the parasol tree outside the window. Its barren branches swayed in the wind like an open palm, grasping nothing.

"Another cup?"

He asked, his voice warm as before.

Qin Zhixia nodded.

The teapot tilted, hot water poured into the cup. The two sat opposite each other across a narrow tea table, the sky outside dimming by half a shade, and the distant barrier's blue light beginning to sharpen.

No one got up to leave.