38: Chapter 38 The Silent Reaper

Seven days.

During the day, Yan Zheng opened his shop as usual; at night, he would lie on his bed to activate Material Perception, and in the early hours of the morning, he would dispatch the Skeleton Soldier through the underground pipes to collect.

The process was fixed, the efficiency stable, like an automatically operating assembly line.

In these seven days, Material Perception captured a total of eight gray light spots.

Five were within the reachable range of the Skeleton Soldier's underground passages, and the collection was successful.

Three were too far away or located deep within buildings where the pipes could not reach, so he gave up on them.

Five corpses, all ordinary humans.

Three were casualties of gang conflicts, with gunshot and knife wounds; their state of death was not pleasant to look at, but their bones were intact.

One was a drug addict who died of an overdose next to a sewer manhole cover; the Skeleton Soldier had almost dragged the person inside by reaching out from beneath the manhole cover.

One was an unnamed woman who died from domestic violence in her rented apartment's bathtub; the maintenance access point of the pipe downstairs was less than two meters directly below the bathtub.

Yan Zheng: ( ˘ ꒳ ˘ )

"Five ordinary materials, not a lot, but having them is better than having none."

He organized the week's material inventory on a folding chair in the Underground Room, his fingers sliding across the system panel.

"A total of eleven units of ordinary bone materials, enough to replenish the wear and tear of three ordinary Skeleton Soldiers."

"The upper limit of my Mental Power has increased by another half a point this week, from eleven to eleven point five."

"The rate of increase is slowing down, which means the efficiency of ordinary human materials in improving Mental Power is diminishing."

"I need higher-quality materials to maintain the growth curve."

He closed the system panel and picked up his cup of hot Water, only to find that the Water had gone cold again.

"Forget it, cold Water is drinkable too."

May 14th, 2:00 PM.

The doorbell chimed.

Yan Zheng looked up and saw the gray trench coat appearing outside the glass door again.

Burns pushed the door open and walked in, this time carrying a brown paper bag in his hand.

"Mr. Yan, sorry to bother you."

"Mr. Burns, a rare guest."

Yan Zheng stood up and walked to the front of the counter, his tone as familiar as if he were hosting an old friend.

"Are you here to look at antiques or drink tea today?"

"Neither."

Burns placed the paper bag on the counter and took out a bottle of liquor.

"I was passing by, bought a bottle of liquor, and decided to drop by for a sit."

Yan Zheng glanced at the label—Irish whiskey, mid-range price, neither cheap nor expensive.

"Does Mr. Burns's security company reimburse employees for alcohol?"

Yan Zheng: ( ˊ ꈊ ˋ )

Burns chuckled; it wasn't hearty, but it was two parts more relaxed than when he came last time.

"Mr. Yan, I have to apologize to you for what happened last time."

"Which matter?"

"The matter regarding the abnormal activity in the underground pipes that I came to ask you about last time."

Burns sat on the wooden chair with his hands resting on his knees, his posture much more casual than before.

"We conducted some follow-up investigations and found that the heat source signals from those underground activities have completely disappeared in the last week."

"Disappeared?"

"Cleanly, there is nothing left."

Burns's single eye looked at Yan Zheng, his tone carrying a hint of "as expected."

"It seems the previous abnormal signals really had nothing to do with you or your shop; it might have been a temporary base for some underground gang that withdrew after using it."

"That's good."

Yan Zheng put on a look of relief, his acting perfect enough to win an award on Broadway.

"To be honest, after you left last time, I spent several days alone in the shop thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the more scared I got, and I almost moved away."

"It wasn't that serious."

"After all, they were ninjas; it sounds scary just hearing about it."

Yan Zheng: ( ꒳ ꐦ )

Burns chuckled again.

"Mr. Yan, don't worry, we will continue to monitor the security situation in this area."

"With a security company like yours around, I feel much more at ease."

Yan Zheng took out two tea cups from under the counter, opened the whiskey, and poured two glasses.

"Since you brought the liquor, sir, it wouldn't be right to let you drink alone."

The two clinked glasses across the counter.

Burns took a sip, put down the glass, and chatted casually about the recent security situation and rent increases in Hells Kitchen, his tone as relaxed as a community volunteer.

Yan Zheng chatted along, answering every sentence perfectly, neither overly enthusiastic nor overly distant.

Fifteen minutes later, Burns checked his watch and stood up to leave.

"Come by again when you have time."

"You are always welcome."

Yan Zheng walked him to the door and watched the gray trench coat disappear around the street corner.

This time there was no black SUV; he had come by taxi.

Yan Zheng closed the door and locked it.

Then he walked to the window and scanned the area with his peripheral vision.

There was no one on the bench in front of the bakery.

The white van was gone.

The blue sedan in the back alley had also driven away.

"The surveillance has all been withdrawn."

Yan Zheng walked back behind the counter, picked up that glass of whiskey, and downed it in one gulp.

"Bringing liquor, apologizing, withdrawing surveillance."

"Doing all three things at once means they have already downgraded their assessment of me internally."

"From 'Key Subject of Interest' to 'Temporarily Excluded from Suspicion'."

He placed the empty glass on the table and looked down at the remaining liquor at the bottom of the glass.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ˊ ᗜ ˋ ˵ )

"Mr. Burns, thank you for the liquor."

"And thank you for telling me one thing."

He picked up the business card he had put away two weeks ago and turned it in the light.

"You use satellite infrared to scan the underground pipes."

"This means your satellite is always circling overhead; as long as there is a heat source anomaly underground, you can see it."

"So when my Skeleton Soldier was moving in the pipes, its body temperature was only half the ambient temperature; you saw the data, but couldn't determine what it was."

"Now that the Skeleton Soldier has stopped for a week, the data is clean, so you downgraded me."

Yan Zheng put the business card back into the drawer.

"Conversely, if I send the Skeleton Soldier through the pipes again in the future, the infrared signal will appear again."

"So, the frequency of using the underground passage route must be restricted in the future."

"I can't go on night patrols as brazenly as before."

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to think for a while.

"Fortunately, there is the Material Perception function; most of the time, the Skeleton Soldier doesn't need to travel long distances, only short-range sorties for collection."

"The shorter the path, the shorter the infrared exposure time, and the lower the probability of being captured by the satellite."

"Acceptable."

Yan Zheng opened his eyes, intending to close the system panel and go back to the second floor to sleep.

May 14th, 11:07 PM.

He lay on the bed as usual and closed his eyes to activate Material Perception.

The pulse spread out, ripples expanded, and the heat map within a two-hundred-meter radius unfolded in his consciousness.

The dark red light spots of living people were sparse; it was late at night, and most people were sleeping.

The gray light spots of the deceased, Zero.

Yan Zheng prepared to turn off the perception and sleep.

Then, at the very edge of the perception range, in the southeast direction, about one hundred and eighty meters away, a light spot lit up.

It was not gray.

It was gold.

Yan Zheng's eyes opened.

Yan Zheng: ( ꉺ ᗜ ꉺ )

He zoomed in on the perception image in his consciousness, focusing on that golden light spot.

The light spot was flickering, its frequency unstable, dimming and brightening, like a star burning out.

The system panel popped up a notification, the font color of which was a gold-red he had never seen before.

[High-value dying organism detected. Direction: South-southeast, straight-line distance approximately 180 meters. Material assessment: Mutant gene (Quality: Rare), bone material (Quality: Excellent), unknown ability residue.]

[Note: Target's vital signs are rapidly decaying, estimated survival time is no more than thirty minutes.]

Yan Zheng sat up from the bed.

His heart rate jumped from seventy-two to ninety.

"Mutant."

"High-level Mutant."

"Dying."

"One hundred and eighty meters."

He stepped barefoot on the cold wooden floor, walked to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain, and glanced toward the southeast.

That direction was a dead end, and at the end of the alley were the most dilapidated apartment buildings in Hells Kitchen.

The golden light spot in the perception image was getting dimmer, and the interval between flickers was getting longer.

"Thirty minutes."

Yan Zheng turned and walked to the closet, pulled open the closet door, took out his suit jacket and put it on, giving instructions in his consciousness while dressing.

"Underground Room, Skeleton Soldier No. 1, activate."

"Take the east drainage pipe, target direction south-southeast, one hundred and eighty meters."

"Shortest path, fastest speed."

He put on his gold-rimmed glasses, and the lens reflected the dim night scene of Hells Kitchen outside the window.

"Rare quality Mutant gene, waiting to die 180 meters from my doorstep."

Yan Zheng muttered to himself as he went downstairs, his voice carrying an irrepressible tremor.

"With this kind of luck, I must have served tea to the King of Hell in my past life."

He pulled open the secret door to the Underground Room, stepped onto the stairs, and his footsteps echoed rapidly in the darkness.

"But luck has always been a bully that picks on the weak."

Yan Zheng walked to the bottom of the Underground Room; the Reinforced Skeleton Soldier No. 1 had already awakened from dormancy, its dark gray skeleton glimmering in the darkness, waiting for orders.

He looked at the increasingly dim golden light spot on the panel, his fingers gripping the scalpel in his pocket.

"Twenty-five minutes."

Yan Zheng squatted down and patted the Skeleton Soldier's shoulder blade, his voice as soft as if whispering to a hunting dog about to set off.

"No. 1, run faster."

"That gentleman is dying, and I don't want to keep him waiting too long."