Lin Mou had been on leave for the past few days, recovering from injuries sustained during his last mission.
In his bedroom, the curtains were drawn tight, blocking out every sliver of outside light.
His phone screen lit up with an internal notification from the Bureau.
【Suspected Reincarnator activity detected near the coastal monitoring station. The Third and Fifth Action Teams have been dispatched for suppression. All relevant units, please prepare for emergency protocols.】
Lin Mou set the phone back on his nightstand and closed his eyes to rest.
Reincarnators—those people of unknown origin—brought a bloodbath with them every time they appeared.
Their abilities were varied and bizarre. The Bureau had spent a great deal of effort just to understand a few of their patterns.
They usually descended near the sea. Though few in number, every single one of them was a nightmare to deal with.
The casualty rate for missions involving Reincarnators remained high. Even experienced high-level investigators avoided such assignments whenever possible.
Lin Mou was incredibly grateful for his injuries. At this moment, they were his shield, exempting him from the danger of active duty.
He could use this time off to do what he truly wanted.
He would attempt to refine medicine from a living human!
He pulled a small box from a hidden compartment under his bed. Inside were the materials he had prepared.
Compared to Jiang Kun, Lin Mou was smarter, more ruthless, and far more meticulous.
He wouldn't use some old scavenger as his base material. Even a fool could tell that an old, frail body wouldn't yield anything worthwhile. It would be a waste of time.
Lin Mou had spent the last few days locking onto his target: a man in his early thirties. He was strong, had practiced cultivation, and spent his life in the grey zones, dealing in illicit trades.
If a man like that went missing, no one would report it to the police. Even if someone noticed he was gone, they would just assume it was a revenge killing.
No one would ever suspect that his disappearance was linked to an investigator from the Bureau.
Lin Mou had scouted the area and learned the man's routine. Every night around eleven, he would leave an underground casino and take a specific alleyway home.
Lin Mou disguised himself and waited for him along that path.
The abduction went smoothly. Although the man had some cultivation, the gap between him and Lin Mou was too wide.
Even while injured, Lin Mou only had to wait for the man to round a corner. He lunged from the side and delivered a clean, sharp elbow strike to the temple, knocking the man unconscious instantly.
Lin Mou hoisted him up and brought him to an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city he had scouted earlier.
The factory was massive, hollow, and silent.
Lin Mou dropped the man on the floor, stepped back, and began setting up the ritual.
He had practiced the steps in secret many times, so the setup was lightning-fast and flawless.
The "raw material" woke up halfway through, his eyes fluttering open in a daze. Before he could even register his surroundings, he heard a low, rhythmic chanting.
A split second later, agonizing pain ripped through his body. His flesh and blood dissolved into pure energy. In moments, what had been a healthy young man was reduced to a skeleton and a few traces of inorganic residue.
His essence had been tempered into a bead—the size of a fingernail and completely transparent. It hit the concrete floor with a crisp chime, bouncing a few times before rolling to Lin Mou's feet.
Lin Mou picked up the bead and held it between his fingers.
Something seemed to be moving inside the bead, like a soul that had been compressed to the limit but was still struggling.
Lin Mou could feel the bizarre allure radiating from this "medicine." It had no scent, yet he felt an overwhelming urge to swallow it whole.
Ignoring the impulse, he pocketed the bead and pulled out a lighter and a strange talisman.
He lit the talisman and tossed it onto the skeleton. Black flames instantly erupted, devouring the bones.
Moments later, both the bones and the clothes were gone. Not even ash remained.
He inspected the scene once more, erasing the traces of the ritual and cleaning up every possible clue.
Only after confirming for the third time that there was nothing to prove anything had ever happened did he turn and leave, satisfied.
Back home, Lin Mou didn't turn on the lights. He took the bead from his pocket and placed it on the nightstand.
The bead glowed faintly in the dark, enticing him to eat it.
He stared at the bead for a long time. To prevent his desire from overwhelming him, he eventually chose to lock it inside a box.
He didn't dare consume the "medicine" directly, nor did he dare use it to cast spells.
A gift from an evil god always came with a catch.
He had worked at the Bureau for years and had seen far too many people seduced by power, only to be consumed by it in the end.
They all thought they were the lucky chosen ones. They thought they could master that power. They thought they were smarter, more cautious, and had more self-control than everyone else.
Unfortunately, they were all dead. And they had died ugly deaths.
Lin Mou was not like them. He took pride in being intelligent, cautious, and patient.
He couldn't eat this medicine himself.
At least not yet.
He needed to find someone to test it on first—someone insignificant whose death wouldn't draw any attention. He would make them swallow the medicine and observe the effects and side effects to see if there were any hidden "surprises."
If the results were good and the side effects were within an acceptable range, then Lin Mou would consider taking it himself.
If the effect was poor or the side effects were irreversible, he wouldn't touch it.
It didn't matter. Even if the medicine couldn't be used on himself, it could still be used to poison others.
Furthermore, the refining technique itself was highly lethal. As long as he set up the ritual in advance, it could serve as a perfect trump card for a surprise kill.
...
In the containment center, inside isolation room LK-003.
The Knocking Ghost hadn't been deployed recently. It remained in the same posture inside the isolation room, exactly as it had been during every previous inspection.
Staff checked its status every day. Everything was normal, matching the descriptions in the archives perfectly.
No one noticed that the Knocking Ghost's eyes would occasionally become incredibly vivid.
The body's original consciousness was waking up.
Yu Duanhong didn't know where he was. His last memory was of being enveloped in darkness, followed by a long, sensory-deprived void.
Waking up now, he had no idea where he was or why his body wouldn't obey his commands.
His mind felt like it was stuffed with moldy cotton. His memories were fragmented, scattered pieces that couldn't form a complete picture.
He stayed awake long enough to barely remember his name before his eyelids grew heavy again. His consciousness wavered like a candle in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
Before his consciousness sank back into the abyss, he saw the camera in the corner of the isolation room.
It was small and round, its red indicator light blinking rhythmically in the dark.
An unknown amount of time passed before footsteps echoed in the hallway, stopping briefly outside LK-003.
“Knocking Ghost, status normal. Isolation room, no anomalies.”
The footsteps receded. Inside the isolation room, the corpse's eyelids twitched once more when no one was watching.
Rate on N.U.
