Chapter 443: Granting of Authority

Jiang Hai City, East District.

After two o'clock in the morning, there were hardly any living people left in the whole alley.

The streetlamp at the alley entrance had been broken for more than half a year; the property management reported it three times but no one repaired it, and eventually even the repair requester moved away. Darkness spread outward from the depths of the alley, swallowing several old residential buildings until only their outlines remained.

Sixth floor, the room closest to the corner.

The windows were not tightly closed, and the wind made the cheap plastic curtains billow and sag. Inside, a desk lamp with yellowish light glowed; its shade was coated with a layer of greasy dust, dimming the already faint illumination even further.

Zhang Yuanqing lay on the table.

To be precise, half his body was twisted on the tabletop while the other half dangled from the chair armrest, a posture so awkward it could make an orthopedist frown. Four empty liquor bottles—Erguotou from Niulan Mountain, the cheapest kind—lay scattered on the table. The fifth bottle had been tipped over, and the remaining liquor dripped down the table edge onto his pant leg, and he did not react.

The rental room was twenty‑eight square meters, with a monthly rent of six hundred.

Mold grew in the corner, black‑green patches crawling from the baseboard up to waist height like a spreading skin disease. The sink was piled with dishes unwashed for three days, the instant‑noodle broth having dried into a yellow crust. The refrigerator door did not seal tightly, buzzing for an unknown length of time; inside were only two cans of expired beer and a bag of blackened steamed buns.

The bed had no sheet, and the mattress bore holes burned by cigarette butts.

The only clean thing was a row of tools placed on the iron rack by the window.

Scalpel. Bone saw. Tissue scissors. Rib spreader.

A complete set of forensic dissection instruments, polished to a shine and neatly arranged—completely out of place in this dilapidated rental.

Zhang Yuanqing moved.

He lifted his face from his arm, a deep red bruise pressed on his right cheek. His eyes were half‑open, pupils dilated, and he muttered an indistinct curse before lying back down.

But his hands were not idle.

His left hand groped the tabletop and his fingertips brushed a photograph. The photo had been folded many times, its creases whitened, the corners curled. He pulled the picture up to his eyes, straining heavily to bring it into focus.

The photograph showed three people.

He himself, wearing a Doctor's Lab Coat, a badge from the Jiang Hai City Public Security Bureau Criminal Technology Division pinned to his chest. Next to him stood a young woman holding a three‑four‑year‑old girl; the little girl grinned at the camera, her newly erupted front teeth showing, drooling.

Zhang Yuanqing stared at the photo for a long time.

Then he smiled.

As he smiled, his eyes reddened. He slapped the photo onto the table, unscrewed the last partially emptied bottle of Erguotou, tipped a mouthful into the bottle's neck, inhaled most of it into his trachea, and coughed until his whole body hunched like a shrimp.

"Fuck."

He wiped his mouth; the alcohol and tears mingled on the back of his hand, indistinguishable.

Zhang Yuanqing, thirty‑nine years old. Former Deputy Director forensic physician of the Jiang Hai City Criminal Technology Division.

Former.

Adding that word turned every subsequent title into a joke.

Three years ago, a fall‑from‑height case occurred in a high‑rise building within the jurisdiction. The victim was a nineteen‑year‑old female university student; the official conclusion was suicide due to depression. The case file was neatly written, the family signed, and the case was closed.

But when the corpse reached Zhang Yuanqing's hands, he found something amiss.

The hyoid bone was fractured.

Skin tissue not belonging to the victim was found in the nail folds.

The parabolic calculation of the landing point relative to the window position was off—given the victim's weight and the window‑sill height, a free fall should not have landed at that spot.

He wrote a supplemental report, phrasing cautiously but concluding clearly: recommend reopening the case and investigating it as a homicide.

On the third day after submitting the report, the director called him in for a talk.

He closed the door, drew the curtains, and got straight to the point—telling him that the last person the victim had contacted before the fall was the son of the Deputy Secretary of the Municipal Political and Legal Committee. The case was already closed. His supplemental report would not enter the case system. Go delete the hard drive and don't cause trouble for yourself.

Zhang Yuanqing didn't delete it.

He sent a copy of the report to the victim's family.

What followed unfolded exactly like every similar story—the family filed a petition and was intercepted; the media got involved and they were summoned; the online post was published and deleted within forty minutes; the victim's father knelt at the municipal government entrance for two days, his knees bleeding, and received a Maintenance Interview Record and a Psychiatric Hospitalization Certificate.

As for the whistleblower Zhang Yuanqing.

His report was classified as "serious violation of the Forensic Examination Procedure Regulations."

License revoked. Dismissed from public office.

That wasn't enough.

Someone dug up his graduate thesis and accused him of fabricating academic data. Although the data came from publicly available samples from a provincial‑ministerial laboratory, his advisor withdrew the authorship under pressure, the degree underwent retroactive review, and the academic committee "recommended revocation."

After that, his wife took their daughter back to her parents' home.

The divorce agreement was handed over through a lawyer; he never even saw the other party.

His mother‑in‑law said over the phone, "Yuanqing, you're a good person, but my daughter can't share your misfortune."

Zhang Yuanqing said nothing.

Good person.

He chewed those two words and swallowed them; the taste was hotter than Erguotou.

Since then he opened an Underground Black Clinic in the East District. He stitched wounds for people who dared not go to a hospital, gave shrapnel removal to brawling thugs, performed health checks for smugglers—any dirty job, charging three to five hundred per case, enough to pay rent and buy liquor.

Forensic knives were used to cut living people.

That was also a skill.

He lay on the table, the alcohol making his consciousness heavy and sticky. Outside, the screech of wild cats fighting drifted in, sharp and grating. The desk lamp's light flickered, and Zhang Yuanqing thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.

There was no visual illusion.

The lamp truly dimmed for a moment.

It wasn't a voltage fluctuation flash; the light itself was partially absorbed by something.

Zhang Yuanqing lifted his head.

In the corner of the rental, at the junction of mold and shadow, a person stood.

No, that's wrong. There was nothing there a second ago.

Zhang Yuanqing's drunkenness cleared by about thirty percent. His professional instinct made him scan the figure instantly—height roughly one‑eighty‑plus, slender, wearing a meticulously tailored dark Windcoat. Most striking were the gold‑rimmed glasses; their lenses reflected the desk lamp's yellow light, splitting the overly handsome face into light and shadow.

His hand was very white.

The kind that glows white even in the shadows.

A surgeon's hand.

Zhang Yuanqing recognized that kind of hand. He had been in the system for over a decade, and there were not a hundred, but about eighty clinical surgical experts who cooperated with the forensic center. The steadiness cultivated over years of gripping a scalpel, the muscle lines from fingertip to wrist, could not be faked.

"Who are you?" Zhang Yuanqing didn't stand up; his voice was hoarse, heavy with alcohol.

The newcomer gave no answer.

He simply stood there, looking at the empty bottle on the table, at the moldy water stains in the corner, and at the row of spotless Dissection Instruments on the iron rack.

His gaze finally settled on the clamped photograph.

"The forensic knife is well maintained."

His voice was soft, unhurried, enunciated cleanly, with a strangely reassuring magnetism.

Zhang Yuanqing's brows knit together.

He confirmed the door was locked—dead‑bolted, chain lock with a latch, impossible to enter from outside. The window was on the sixth floor; unless the person could fly, there was no reasonable way he could have appeared in the room.

Yet he had appeared.

He stood in the corner as if he had always been there, completely natural.

"Go get a knife or call the police; you have five seconds," the newcomer adjusted his glasses, his tone overly gentle, even with a hint of a kind smile, "but I suggest you listen to me for a moment first."

Zhang Yuanqing didn't move.

It wasn't that he didn't want to.

His body was telling him—don't move.

It differed from the feeling he had years ago when he faced a suspect alone at a homicide scene. Back then he would get nervous, sweat, adrenaline would surge, but at least it was a confrontation between people.

Now it wasn't.

He couldn't articulate it, but the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The man stood before the mold, his Shadow cast on the wall, yet the Shadow's outline didn't match the man's. It was off by a hair, extremely subtle, but Zhang Yuanqing had made a living all his life by noticing such details.

The Shadow was a ring larger than the man.

Moreover, the Shadow moved. When the man stayed still, the Shadow moved.

"Zhang Yuanqing," the newcomer read his name in a flat tone, as if reciting a patient record, "Jiang Hai City Criminal Technical Division, entered service in '31, specialized in forensic pathology, has issued over 2,300 autopsy reports, handled homicide cases with a 91.7% clearance rate. Capability is fine."

He paused.

"It's a system issue,"

Those six words pierced Zhang Yuanqing's ears, more effective than any alcohol he had drunk before.

"What the—"

"What was the name of that nineteen‑year‑old girl?"

Zhang Yuanqing sealed his mouth.

"You still remember," the newcomer said without pressing further, merely stating, "You even recall which rib she fractured and the angle of the break. You printed three copies of the supplemental report: one submitted, one given to the family, the third—"

His gaze shifted to the lowest shelf of the iron rack.

There was a Waterproof Document Bag tucked inside.

"Hidden behind the Dissection Instruments. Three years. You still keep it now."

Zhang Yuanqing's breathing grew coarse.

It wasn't fear, but something else had been pierced. He refused to let himself think about it. The things he usually suppressed with alcohol were being unearthed, sentence by sentence, by this man who seemed to appear from nowhere, in the calmest tone.

"What do you want?"

"I want to give you something."

Chu Che extended his right hand.

Palm up.

Between his five fingers, a cluster of dark‑red glimmer materialized out of thin air. Smaller than a fingernail, flickering, like a dying ember, yet the ember was wrapped in a pulse that made the scalp tingle.

It wasn't light.

It was alive.

Zhang Yuanqing's pupils contracted sharply. He had worked three years at the Underground Black Clinic, had seen countless underworld sights, but this clearly physics‑defying thing—after the Weird was exposed worldwide, he had seen similar footage online.

The Gospel Church's crimson seed? No, it seemed even more—

"You are......"

"Not important," Chu Che interrupted, his voice still gentle, like soothing a post‑surgery anxious patient during rounds, "What matters is whether you want to reclaim what's yours."

The dark‑red glimmer floated up from Chu Che's fingertips.

Without waiting for Zhang Yuanqing to answer, to refuse, to struggle, or to make any choice—the speck of glimmer went straight into his forehead.

Silently.

Like a drop of water falling into parched earth.

Zhang Yuanqing's whole body froze on the chair.

His mouth hung open, no sound emerging. Fine blood vessels burst across his eyeballs, the veins at his temples throbbed. Something unfolded inside his skull—cold, massive, bearing an order beyond comprehension.

It wasn't pain.

It was information.

A torrent of information surged in, shattering the worldview he had built over thirty‑nine years. He saw the Rules. He saw the color of resentment. He saw those who had died on his dissection table, the remnants lingering in bone cracks and blood, never truly dissipated.

Then he heard.

A cold—rumble.

It wasn't heard by the ears. It was a resonance deep in his consciousness. The editor's sub‑authority rooted in his spirit, unfurling a tiny interface, the dark‑red glimmer outlining vague parameter fields and a Rules box.

Zhang Yuanqing lowered his head and saw a dead mouse by the table leg.

It's unknown when it died, shriveled, belly up, limbs curled. Near the Black Clinic there are many rats; the smell of chemicals and trash draws them up from the Sewer, and no one cleans up when they die in the corner.

But now they saw something different.

A thin layer of Gray Mist floated over that rat. They had not seen it before.

Resentment.

It was so faint it was almost zero, yet it truly existed. A rat trapped on a glue board, struggling in lethal poison for several hours before dying, also harbors resentment in its final moments.

Zhang Yuanqing stretched out a hand.

The instant his fingertip brushed the Gray Mist, the rat's shriveled corpse twitched lightly.

A dark‑red editing interface popped up a line of small text.

【Material Acquired: Miniature Grudge Spirit (Quality: Poor)】

【Editable Type: Small Legend】

Zhang Yuanqing's hand trembled.

It wasn't fear.

He lifted his head. The desk lamp's yellow light fell on his face, clearly highlighting the wrinkles etched at the corners of his eyes and his forehead. The marks left by three years of alcohol, destitution, and chronic self‑destruction on this face were now being covered by something else.

Excitement.

No, deeper than excitement.

It's like the feeling when a seed buried in soil for three years finally breaks through the ground—a wild, reckless, bursting life force.

"I can edit it..."

He muttered to himself, his voice trembling, but the ending rose, carrying an uncontrollable grin.

"I can make it become—"

His gaze shifted to the row of gleaming Dissection Knife Set on the iron rack, then to the clamped photograph on the table, and finally rested on the truth tucked in a waterproof bag in the corner of the wall, a truth no one had cared about for three years.

The smile vanished.

In its place was a hatred seeping from the cracks of his bones, a hatred that had completely abandoned any pretense.

"I... am wrong."

He stood up. The chair was kicked over, toppling an empty bottle; the glass shattered on the floor.

He stepped on the broken glass to the window and pushed open the loosely sealed window. The night wind of Jiang Hai City at three A. M. rushed in, carrying the lingering scent after the quarantine zone's searchlights swept past.

"Adam."

He whispered the name into the darkness. The corners of his mouth twisted, exhilarated.

"I am Adam. The first person of the Weird World."

He turned his head, trying to locate the man who had given him this gift.

Perhaps that is the god who has guided everything to this point.

But the corner was empty.

Mold spots lay quietly on the wall, the shadows were just shadows.

Chu Che was no longer inside the house.

—Three miles outside.

On the rooftop, the wind was far stronger than at ground level.

Chu Che stood at the edge.

The wind blew into his coat sleeves, forming bubbles. His right hand was in his pocket; his left hand rose, slowly nudging his Gold Thread Glasses.

Beneath the lenses, those eyes surveyed the entire city's outline.

The light of that rental in Old City District, from a thirty‑seven‑story height, was just an insignificant yellow dot. Yet Chu Che knew that beneath that dot lay a soul on the verge of overflowing, boiling.

The scapegoat has already been shackled; now all that's needed is a splash of bloody spark to ignite this script.