Chapter 52: Nightfall Descends

The night fell like a massive black velvet, enveloping the whole Jiang Hai City.

The three houses located in different parts of the city became three fortresses as solid as a golden broth tonight.

Armed SWAT officers patrolled every three steps, posted a guard every five steps; the infrared security net silently sliced every inch of space, and the sniper point above glowed with a faint red light, like the pupil of Death.

A net of Heaven-Earth Net targeting the unknown Weird had already been laid out.

At the City Bureau's temporary command center, L's ten fingers hammered dense afterimages on the keyboard, while massive streams of data surged across the screen before L.

"Target point one, Team Leader Nie Yang, report ready."

"Target point two, Mozi Xu An, report ready."

"Target point three...... Qin Zhixia, report ready."

"All surveillance feeds normal, life‑sign monitoring system activated, capture operation commencing."

Target point three, the East‑West Lan Villa.

Lin Fan stood in the shadows a hundred meters away, his whole being merging with the darkness.

His left eye remained clear, reflecting the night.

The right eye, however, was a bottomless deep azure.

Within that eerie right eye, the villa's copper walls and iron barriers were as good as nonexistent. He could clearly "see" the airtight security lines, the sniper hidden in the dark, and the scorching Qi racing within each SWAT officer's body.

Official forces had already intervened deeply.

A cold, resentful aura roiled wildly inside him, and a silent thought echoed in his mind.

【Leave... there are too many of them... I'll go alone...】

That was Ling Xinyu's thought.

She didn't want Lin Fan to take the risk.

Lin Fan raised a hand, gently stroking their own eerie blue right eye; the motion was tender, but the gaze was unwavering.

"We promised to stay together."

He answered in his heart.

"With me here, I won't let them discover your true killing pattern."

He intends to use this clash to deliberately expose part of his ability, cast a false bait, and leave enough leverage for the final revenge later.

Inside the villa, the atmosphere was oppressive.

In the temporarily requisitioned study, Qin Zhixia was frantically flipping through the autopsy reports of Huang Mao and Zhang Shao, trying to find commonalities in the deaths to analyze possible killing patterns.

She had shed her police uniform, wearing only a sleek black combat vest; the muscle lines on her arms were smooth and powerful.

"I say, Chief Police Officer Qin, this has been closed for almost half a day, is it interesting?"

An extremely discordant voice sounded.

The protected rich second‑generation "Wang Shao" lay on the sofa, idly scrolling his phone, his face full of impatience.

"Those people outside bring bad luck; how about… you have them withdraw, I'll call a few fresh models over for a party? Guarantee every pretty girl's line‑up, and I'll find you two handsome guys for fun?"

Qin Zhixia's hand paused as she turned the file.

She slowly lifted her head, and the chill in her Crimson Phoenix Eyes cooled the room by several degrees.

Wang Shao felt a shiver under her gaze, but relying on his "victim" status, he still stuck his neck out.

"What are you looking at me for? Am I wrong? Anyway, with you protecting me, can the murderer still fly in? I'm fucking bored to death!"

Qin Zhixia said nothing.

She stood, pulled a photograph from the file, walked to Wang Shao, and flung it onto his face.

"Like this, the next one might be you."

Her voice rose not at all, like a slab of ice.

"Still want to play?"

The photo showed Huang Mao's gruesome death.

His abdomen had been split open by a fragment of a beer bottle, the contents of his cavity spilling out, and his terrified, twisted face stared dead at Wang Shao.

"Ah—!"

Wang Shao let out a scream, rolling off the sofa with limbs flailing; his complexion turned as pale as paper, trembling like sifted chaff.

"Take it away! Quickly, take it away!"

Qin Zhixia looked down from above, her eyes showing no hint of mercy.

"Now, shut up."

Wang Shao crawled and rolled into the corner, his face ashen, daring not to utter another sound.

The whole world finally became clean.

Qin Zhixia returned to the desk and continued reviewing the report.

Her gaze finally settled on two inconspicuous details.

At the first victim Huang Mao's crime scene, the forensic doctor noted: a small amount of inexplicable water stains with a river‑like fishy odor on the ground, and a wet long hair strand not belonging to the victim found in his oral and nasal cavities.

The second victim Zhang Shao drowned directly in his own swimming pool; surveillance showed he seemed to be forced underwater by an invisible force, drowning alive.

Water......

Wet hair......

Qin Zhixia drew a heavy circle on the report with her pen; she vaguely grasped something, yet it was still veiled by a thin gauze.

Night grew deeper.

In the dense forest outside the villa, Lin Fan found an unremarkable manhole cover.

He lifted it with his bare hands, and a foul, putrid stench assaulted his face.

He hesitated not at all, plunging his hand into the bottomless black sludge below.

A weird scene occurred.

His arm, and even his whole body, became transparent and twisted the instant it touched the sewage, flowing like mercury.

He silently merged into the filthy liquid, following the city's sewer network, slipping past all the ground-level security cordons, and quietly sneaked into the mansion's interior.

Ten minutes later.

In an unused restroom on the mansion's Second Floor.

The snow-white bathtub drain suddenly rippled with tiny circles.

Immediately after.

A strand of wet black hair, like a living poisonous snake, slipped silently from the drain's gap and wound across the cold tiles.

More and more appeared, growing denser.

Splash—

A stream of water gushed from the drain and collected in the bathtub.

On the water's surface, a person's figure slowly "rose".

It was Lin Fan.

His body was slightly damp but unstained, only a cold river‑water odor clung around him.

His right eye, a ghostly blue, flickered with an eerie light.

Through the wall, he "saw" Wang Shao trembling in the corner.

Flames of revenge burned in the depths of his eyes.

He did not act immediately; instead, he lifted his head, his gaze falling on the central air‑conditioning vent above the restroom ceiling.

In his eyes, a blue light flickered faintly.

Elsewhere, in the study.

Qin Zhixia was fully focused on analyzing the case, trying to build a behavioral model for the target Weird.

Suddenly.

She caught a faint yet distinct scent on the tip of her nose.

A... river‑water odor, a faint fishy smell.