Haoran Lu had killed seventeen people.Not sixteen. Not eighteen. Seventeen.
He was proud of every one of them. The only thing that bothered him, as he stood on the skyscraper's edge with the night air flowing around him, was that the number felt… incomplete.
The sirens below were a distant, irrelevant wail. This was not an escape; it was the final stroke of a masterpiece. His breathing was calm, his mind a fortress of cold order. The eighteenth victim would be his most perfect.
He smiled—a thin blade of a grin—and stepped into the abyss.
Air roared in his ears. The city lights fractured into smeared constellations. His stomach rose; his mind was utterly still.
Then—no impact.
Just a sickening lurch as reality tore apart.
He awoke to silence.Not the absence of sound, but a silence so profound it pressed against his eardrums like water.
The first sensation was the sharp scrape of gravel against his back.The second, the acrid smell of iron and ancient, dry stone.The third, a distant, rhythmic clink… clink… clink… that hammered on without soul or purpose.
He opened his eyes to a sky the color of dirty dishwater.
He sat up, the motion clumsy in a body that felt alien, weaker than the one he'd discarded. It was his, but… flawed.
A tingle traced his spine—the instinct of a hunter sensing prey.But it was inverted. Twisted.
A cold dread crawled over his skin.
It was the same crawling fear he'd seen in the eyes of his victims. Feeling it on his own flesh was… obscene. It did not belong to him.It was a stolen sensation, and he wanted it gone.
A single, manic bark of a laugh escaped his throat.
His gaze lifted to the rim of the vast, gray quarry.
Figures stood silhouetted against the sky, motionless as statues. Their presence was a palpable weight, a spiritual pressure that suffocated the air.
He stood, his eyes sweeping the bleak tableau below:
- The stooped backs of miners bent in permanent defeat.
- The wet, rattling cough of a man whose lungs were collapsing.
- The brutish, greedy shuffle of another guarding his meager space.
- The vacant emptiness of a soul long fled from its shell.
This was the Xiao Shi Keng quarry. Not a prison. A pen.
He drew a breath and felt the fine, insidious dust coat the inside of his throat. He understood its purpose instantly.
Each breath was another shovel of dirt over his own grave.
This place was a tomb with a two-month deadline.
His spectator-like mind took inventory. He had nothing. No tools. No resources.Only a frail body in simple clothes.
His hand went to his chest, feeling the cool, intricate metal of the Lotus of Fate.
Two assets, then:
1. His own unbound, calculating mind.
2. This mysterious artifact.
Powerless. Trapped. Dying.
To any other man, the hunt would be over.
To Haoran Lu, it was simply a new board.
The first step to becoming the predator here…was to sink his teeth into the weakest sheep in the flock.