He had just been about to stand at attention and salute when Logan Carter raised his hand to stop him. In the next second, Logan Carter, with a movement so fast it was almost impossible to see, took the officer’s sidearm from his holster in half a second, turned, and walked toward the nearby police motorcycle. “I need to requisition your vehicle and sidearm now. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Twenty seconds later, while the officer was still in shock, Logan Carter was already gone, riding off on the officer’s motorcycle with his sidearm in hand.

In less than ten minutes, he had sped all the way to the “Sunshine Youth Behavior Correction Center” located in the suburbs of Linyi City.

Just from the exterior of the building, it was clear that this place had been around for quite a few years: the white-painted walls had turned a yellowish-gray; the main gate was still an electric iron fence from the last century, and the material had already rusted and changed color; even the barbed wire atop the surrounding walls had rusted into a dark brown.

However, the large sign on the front of the building was relatively new, looking like it had been replaced in recent years; the parking lot facilities were also quite advanced, and from a distance, several expensive cars could be seen parked inside.

Logan Carter stood at the entrance for a few seconds, observed, then thought for a few more seconds, and then walked straight in.

He didn’t bother to talk to the gatekeeper, because there was no one there at all, and the gate was open.

Even an ordinary person would find this situation a bit unusual… let alone a patrol inspector like Logan Carter.

Years of casework and rigorous training were like two fingers—whenever there was a whiff of danger nearby, they would immediately start winding a spring called “alertness,” tightening Logan Carter’s nerves.

Before he even reached the main entrance of the building, Logan Carter’s hand had already slipped into the right pocket of his jacket, gripping the sidearm he’d taken from the officer earlier.

Federal police vehicles, guns, I-PENs, and other standard equipment were all activated by fingerprint or iris scan, and every use left an electronic record; in special or emergency situations, officers could use equipment belonging to other officers of the same or lower rank, but after use, they had to file a report explaining the reason, and the original owner had to confirm with a digital signature.

However, patrol inspectors were not subject to this restriction. The fingerprints and irises of every federal security patrol inspector could activate the public and private electronic devices of all police personnel below deputy bureau level (including deputy bureau level) as well as all ordinary citizens. Although this would also leave a record, those records could only be decoded internally by the FCPS; whether they were made public externally… depended on the situation.

This was the meaning of “rank” and “authority.” In this highly digitized world under federal rule, these two things were the main weights that determined a person’s degree of freedom and self-worth in society.

Sssht—

As Logan Carter reached the main entrance, the automatic door on the first floor of the building slid open on its own. As the two panels moved aside, a corridor came into view.

There was nothing special about the corridor itself: the floor was paved with light-colored tiles, the walls were painted white on top and light blue on the bottom, and the ceiling was fitted with recessed fluorescent lights emitting a white glow.

But at this moment, the scene in the corridor was rather frightening.

At first glance, Logan Carter saw three corpses—at least, that was his initial assessment.

The three had died in this way: three human heads, each lying in a separate pool of blood.

Calling it “blood” wasn’t quite accurate; it was more like a thick “slurry.” To use an analogy, it was as if a whole person, clothes and all, had been thrown into a high-powered blender: first a round of “high-speed pulverization,” then “medium-level mixing,” followed by “external boiling and internal stewing,” and finally, what was left was a puddle of skin, muscle, fat, organs, bone, clothing fibers, and other substances—uniform, viscous, thick, and multicolored sludge.

“An ‘ability user,’ huh…” Logan Carter only pondered for a few seconds before coming to this conclusion in his mind.

After all, he was a senior agent of the federal government, and all sorts of high-tech weapons far beyond civilian technology were nothing new to him. Although the Federation did have devices that could turn people into this kind of mush… as far as he knew, those machines were still in the development stage; besides, the size of that machine was enormous—so big it had to be disassembled and shipped in several containers, making it impossible to use here.

Therefore, he quickly ruled out the idea of “killing with a device”; and as for the absurd notion that “the killer threw these three people into a giant blender and then poured the slurry into the corridor,” he naturally wouldn’t consider that either…

All things considered, the only method he could think of that could do this to a person was undoubtedly “supernatural ability.”

“Hoo…” After adjusting his breathing slightly, Logan Carter simply took the gun out of his pocket, held it level in front of him, and entered through the main door.

As he advanced cautiously, he thought, “The cuts on the necks of all three are extremely clean. The killer clearly left the heads on purpose, but… why?”