Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Corpse
「The next day.」
A downpour in the middle of the night had left the morning air unexpectedly heavy and cloying. The whole world felt drenched, humid and sweltering.
The white-bricked path outside the Sword Hall was darkened by the rain. The steady *pad-pad-pad* of footsteps echoed on the path, joined by the increasingly heavy panting of a young man out for a run.
Su Yu was up exceptionally early.
He had gotten up to exercise just as the sky was beginning to brighten.
Normally, Su Yu would never have gotten up this early. But with only two months to prepare, time was tight. To better protect himself in the Capital City, Su Yu had no choice but to shake off his old, lazy habits.
Su Yu ran one, two, three—all the way to ten laps around the Sword Hall.
Only then did a drowsy yawn, followed by the *patter* of feet on the floorboards, sound from inside the Sword Hall.
"Eh? Yu, why are you up so early?"
"It’s finally summer break. Shouldn’t you be sleeping in?"
Su Xing yawned, slid open the wooden door with a RATTLE, and looked out at Su Yu, who was already on his morning run. He spoke, a hint of surprise in his voice.
"No thanks, bro. From now on, I’m going to try to be more disciplined. No more sleeping in for me."
Su Yu replied between breaths as he kept running.
The Sword Hall where Su Xing worked was massive; one lap was at least a kilometer. Su Xing quickly lost sight of Su Yu as he rounded a corner, though he could still hear his voice.
"Why is a high schooler trying to be so healthy?"
"When I was in high school, I was up all night chatting and playing *Sanguosha* with my roommates. I was always late for morning reading the next day."
Su Xing joked, sitting down on the steps in front of the Sword Hall.
He rubbed his face vigorously, trying to bring some clarity to his sleep-fogged eyes.
Su Xing gazed toward the nearby lakeshore. Scenes from the previous night flashed through his mind, but his expression remained blank. He just stood up, dusted off his pants, and said:
"How about it? Still going? Want your big brother to run with you?"
"Sure! It’s boring running alone."
Su Yu panted out his reply. Though he was getting tired, he never refused his brother’s suggestions. Besides, his brother was just an ordinary person. ’By the time I’m completely exhausted,’ he thought, ’Su Xing will probably be done for, too.’
But,
things didn’t go as Su Yu expected.
After who knows how many laps, Su Yu’s face was flushed red. His legs felt light and wobbly, on the verge of giving out. He couldn’t take it anymore and stopped, pressing a hand against a nearby wall. He puffed out his cheeks and then swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to be sick.
Su Yu finally caught his breath and looked at Su Xing beside him. "Bro... you have amazing stamina. My future sister-in-law is going to be one lucky woman."
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting, you little brat?"
Su Xing fetched a cup of tea from inside the Sword Hall, cursed at him, and handed it to Su Yu, who looked like he was about to vomit.
Su Yu took the tea and downed it in one gulp. He let out a long breath, feeling as if he’d been brought back to life.
Only then did Su Yu look at Su Xing, who was standing beside him with a concerned gaze. Su Xing was completely composed, with just a few beads of sweat on his forehead, as if he hadn’t been running at all.
’What the hell kind of physique is that...’
’If a normal person is a one, and I’m a two, then my brother has to be at least a two-plus. And he got that just from working out?’
Su Yu’s astonished gaze swept over Su Xing’s well-defined muscles. ’What a shame,’ he thought. ’My brother hasn’t awakened a Sequence. Otherwise, he’d definitely be one of the really talented ones.’
"Huh?"
"Bro, look over there. What’s going on?"
As Su Yu was studying Su Xing,
he caught sight of a crowd gathering by the distant lakeshore out of the corner of his eye. It seemed to be a group of local residents.
This place was quite remote.
There weren’t any amusement spots around,
so a crowd like this was rare. It could only mean something had happened.
"No idea."
"Let’s go take a look."
The words had barely left Su Xing’s mouth, but his legs were already moving. Of course, he knew exactly what had happened. He was very familiar with that location.
His heart pounded like a drum.
He racked his brain, wondering if he’d missed anything last night. He felt a wave of relief when he concluded he couldn’t have left any traces.
Su Xing had no desire to become some Zhang San, an outlaw on the run.
"Hey! Bro, slow down!"
...
Rubbernecking is human nature.
The moment there’s a spectacle to watch, a crowd will gather, far denser than usual.
By the time Su Xing and his brother reached the scene, the area was already packed with people, layered inside and out. Seen from above, it looked like a three-layered cut of pork belly.
The innermost layer consisted of several police officers in uniform.
Their expressions were grave as they gazed at the bloody scene.
The second layer was the crowd of onlookers who had arrived earlier. They were frantically recording with their phones, muttering "Holy shit" and "The fuck?" Most had never seen anything like this in their lives. Of course, some with weaker stomachs were already on the ground, vomiting.
The outermost layer was made up of latecomers like Su Xing. All they could see were the backsides of the people in front of them.
Suddenly, a voice cut through from the center:
"A special department is taking over this incident. All unauthorized personnel must leave immediately."
When the announcement was made,
the onlookers barely reacted. They had never heard of any "special department." In the eyes of ordinary people, the military was number one, and the police were number two.
A special department? They’d never heard of it. What the hell was that?
The police officers in the center, however, flinched. They immediately understood the gravity of the situation and began dispersing the crowd with the utmost speed, urging the innocent bystanders to leave at once.
Those with jobs to get to went to work; those with homes to go to went home.
In the end, people still respected the police. With their guidance, the dense, three-layered "pork belly" of a crowd quickly broke apart, like a cluster of tiny beads scattering suddenly.
The area was suddenly as empty as it usually was.
"You two should get going, too. It’s dangerous here!" a police officer said urgently, noticing Su Xing still standing nearby.
"We will. Thank you, Officer."
Su Xing gave a friendly smile and led his brother away by the hand. Su Yu kept his head down, an expression of worry creeping onto his face.
After they had walked a good distance, Su Xing suddenly looked back.
Thanks to his system-enhanced body, Su Xing could see the situation by the lakeshore with perfect clarity.
At the lakeshore, four police lines cordoned off a square area. Inside, officers held their pistols at the ready, their faces taut with vigilance.
Besides the police,
the most eye-catching things in the area were two kneeling corpses. One was soaking wet, as if just pulled from the water. The other was in pajamas, as if they had met their end at home.
Both corpses were kneeling with their heads touching the ground, their hands stretched out flat before them as if in prostration to some unseen deity.
The man from the special department strode into the cordoned-off area and lifted the back of the shirt on one of the corpses.
Only then did Su Xing see it.
For some reason, the backs of both corpses’ clothes had been cut open. Inside the opening, there was no smooth skin of a living person, nor the pale flesh of a dead one. There was... nothing.
The two bodies
had been cut open from the back,
and all their internal organs had been hollowed out.
The other police officers turned pale at the sight, but the man from the special department remained calm, as if he had seen this countless times before.
"Is this the ’Filthy Ritual’?"
Su Xing stared at the scene in the distance and muttered to himself.
He thought back to what had happened last night.
There were two kneeling corpses there.
Judging from the soaking wet one, that must have been the victim whose body was dumped.
In other words, besides the two believers Su Xing killed last night, the so-called Spiritual Sect still had other members here.
"Bro, what are you looking at?"
Su Yu looked in the same direction as Su Xing. He could only make out a few police officers handling something; the details were too blurry. ’There’s no way my brother can see anything from here,’ he thought.
"Nothing."
"Just curious about what happened."
Su Xing flashed a smile. "Come on, let’s go home."
"Okay."
...
「A guest room at the Sword Hall.」
Su Yu sat there alone in silence.
He opened his phone and sent a message to a contact named "Sequencer Brother Ming":
"Brother Ming, what happened?"
