The vehicle transporting the Knocking Ghost drove back to the containment facility under the cover of night.
Inside the compartment, the golden containment box was silent, showing no signs of abnormality.
The driver yawned as the vehicle came to a steady halt. The transport group members stepped down from the cab and briskly opened the rear doors, pushing the containment box onto a railcar.
Following the same path they had taken earlier, they passed through metal doors requiring dual verification of fingerprints and irises before arriving at the LK-003 containment room to push the box inside.
The bolts on the side of the box detached, and the lid flipped open automatically, allowing a surge of frigid air to pour out instantly.
The Knocking Ghost was returned to its containment room, which was then relocked. The entire process went without a hitch.
“Done,” one of them said, clapping his hands. “Time to go back and write the report.”
The other nodded, checking his wristwatch. “Two in the morning. The cafeteria should still have late-night snacks.”
They turned and left, their footsteps gradually fading into the distance.
The corridor lights clicked off one by one until only the green exit sign remained, casting a faint, eerie glow in the darkness.
The containment room was silent. The Knocking Ghost remained motionless, and everything appeared normal.
However, if anyone had still been in the room and had been observant enough, they might have noticed the ghost's eyeballs shifting slightly, its face flickering with a trace of a human-like expression.
As if it were confused.
...
Jiang Kun had hardly slept a wink the night he received his system update gift.
Sitting in his spartan dormitory under the light of an old desk lamp, he transcribed the knowledge etched into his mind into a notebook.
The tip of his pen scratched against the paper with a rhythmic rustle. He double-checked every detail, ensuring nothing was omitted.
Outside, dawn was approaching when he finally closed the notebook. He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed, a brilliant smile playing on his lips.
That damn system had finally updated; he was about to enter a new prime!
Over the following days, Jiang Kun began his preparations.
The raw materials for refining medicine were living humans. Corpses wouldn't do; they had to be people with breath and a heartbeat.
Morality wasn't an issue—technical execution was the key. Jiang Kun carried no moral baggage. He only needed to consider feasibility, not right or wrong.
If he were ever caught refining medicine from living people, he would be finished. Therefore, he had to be extremely discreet.
For his materials, he needed to select individuals whose disappearance wouldn't be noticed quickly.
Solitary elders, vagrants, scavengers drifting in from other cities—the “invisible” people living on the fringes of society like weeds, without official identities or social connections.
The city wasn't large, but there were plenty of targets to choose from.
Jiang Kun's first target was a scavenger in his sixties or seventies, with white hair and a hunched back. He was a man of few words and had no social life.
He lived in an abandoned substation on the outskirts of the city, in a makeshift shelter cobbled together from scavenged wood and plastic sheets.
No one knew his name, no one cared if he had eaten today, and no one would notice if he failed to appear on the streets tomorrow.
That night, Jiang Kun donned a baseball cap and an inconspicuous dark jacket. He rode a second-hand electric scooter to the vicinity of the substation.
The scavenger was already asleep. A sliver of dim, yellowish light leaked from the shack—the weak glow of a small bulb connected to an old battery.
Jiang Kun quietly pushed open the “door”—made of plastic sheets and wire—and stepped inside.
The medicine refining art he had learned from the system didn't require a specific time or place. He had already prepared the ritual and materials in advance.
Now, all he needed was a quiet space, a living person, and his own focus and will as the practitioner.
Jiang Kun chose this place.
Standing before the scavenger, he set up the ritual on the spot. Aiming at the old man curled up in a tattered quilt, he began to chant a spell.
The incantation sounded like the rustling of weathering stone. The syllables rolled out of Jiang Kun's throat, low and drawn out.
The scavenger was jolted awake. His eyes darted in the dim light, and he opened his mouth to speak, but the spell had already bored into his ears.
Immediately, an invisible force squeezed into every one of his pores.
“Ah!”
The scream was short, cut off as soon as it left his throat.
The scavenger's body arched and fell back onto the quilt. His skin began to discolor, turning from sallow to greyish-white, then to a dark bluish-green. Veins bulged beneath the surface like countless wriggling earthworms, converging from his limbs toward his torso and finally pooling at his heart.
Foam bubbled from his mouth, streaked with blood that grew more profuse until it spilled from the corners of his lips.
Jiang Kun felt no pity, showing no mercy even to a lonely old man. The incantation continued, its syllables like an invisible rope wrapping around the scavenger's body, tightening further with every breath.
The scavenger's body trembled violently. His fingers clawed desperately at the air, his nails scraping against the wall and leaving faint white marks.
He felt as though his body were being gnawed by countless mouths, tearing away his flesh, sucking his blood dry, and grinding his bones to dust.
The pain seemed to strike directly at his soul, piercing through every sense he possessed as a living being.
Jiang Kun watched as the scavenger's flesh and blood dissolved at a rapid pace, as if sucked dry from within. Skin shriveled, muscles withered, fat vanished, and organs atrophied.
In less than half a minute, what had been a living person was reduced to a white skeleton. Not a trace of soft tissue remained, leaving only a small amount of inorganic ash.
The dissolved flesh and blood quickly coalesced in the air, forced together by an invisible power. Compressed and refined, they took the shape of a bead.
The bead was almost too small to see—transparent, like a solidified tear. It trembled slightly before hitting the ground with a crisp tick.
The echo bounced between the walls, lingering for a long time.
Jiang Kun bent down and picked up the bead.
“Is this the ‘medicine’?”
“It certainly looks like a pill, but it's just too small.”
“Is it because of the raw material? The old scavenger's physical condition was too poor to yield anything substantial...”
This “medicine” was incredibly light, almost weightless.
It was ice-cold to the touch, as if freshly removed from a freezer. Its surface was smooth, offering no texture to his fingertips.
Yet, Jiang Kun could faintly sense the eternal, anguished wails of the old scavenger coming from within the bead—a marrow-deep shiver that made one instinctively want to flee.
He held the bead up to his eyes, inspecting it against the dim bulb.
The bead radiated a heart-stopping allure, shimmering faintly in the light. It was devoid of impurities, as perfect as a glass marble meticulously polished by God—both terrifying and enchanting.
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