“Hahaha... After Walter Reed killed the person, he even staged it as a suicide; after Walter Reed killed the person, he still remembered to close the door behind him; during the process of Walter Reed killing, not to mention fingerprints or footprints, he didn’t even leave a single strand of hair; finally, before Walter Reed escaped the scene, he saw you, and he was able to hide calmly in the shadows and watch until you left before he withdrew.” Ethan looked at Samuel Grant with disdain: “So... who do you think is more likely to be caught by the police, you or Walter Reed?”

Upon hearing this, Samuel Grant felt as if boiling water was surging in his chest, his blood rushing, and a strange emotion easily shattered his reason. Every word from Ethan pierced the most subtle weaknesses of human nature, luring Samuel Grant to take the next step.

“What do you want me to do?” When Samuel Grant asked this question, his expression had already become like that of an addict.

…………

December 11th, 4:53 a.m. Owen Brooks was wearing a shabby leather jacket, squatting beside the corpse and devouring a red bean bun.

He had been at the scene for more than ten minutes, and his colleagues had not yet arrived. After briefly questioning the security guard and surveying the surroundings, he climbed onto the table himself and took the corpse down.

“Getting out of bed before dawn, braving the cold to come to the school, makes me feel ten years younger.” Owen Brooks joked to himself as he examined the body.

“Hey, hey... what’s going on here...” Right before Owen Brooks’s eyes, a pattern gradually appeared on Henry Clark’s pale face.

It was two intersecting vertical black rectangular lines, each more than two fingers wide. The longer black line ran from Henry Clark’s forehead, down the bridge of his nose, and extended to his chin, as if splitting his face into left and right halves; the slightly shorter one stretched from his left cheek to his right, as if a strip of tape was sealing his mouth.

“After untying the rope and laying the body flat, the blocked blood finally reached the head through the neck, and now it’s showing up...” Owen Brooks muttered to himself as he looked at Henry Clark’s face: “A black inverted cross... what could it mean? Did this guy become obsessed with some strange cult and use this extreme method to kill himself, or is it a new mark invented by some deranged serial killer... Hmph, things are getting interesting.”

Chapter Five: Old Friends

Night.

The moon was dark, the wind was high, thick clouds, and few stars.

Atop the roof of St. Mark’s Basilica, a figure stood.

His name was Ethan.

The scene before his eyes at this moment even made Ethan feel surprised.

The spires, crosses, and statues on the church roof, as well as the outer walls, balconies, and even St. Mark’s Square outside the doors, all seemed to have been drenched in a rain of corpses. Severed limbs, internal organs, blood, bones, and brains—everything was there, except for a single intact body.

So human blood really can flow like a stream, and to see hundreds of tragic corpses piled up in such a beautiful place—what a sight it was.

In an instant, he opened his eyes and saw the familiar ceiling.

“It’s that dream again...” Ethan yawned, looking thoroughly displeased. The light seeping through the gap in the curtains showed it was a fine day, and such weather only made Ethan feel more listless and depressed.

That dream had haunted Ethan for ten years. Although it had appeared less than ten times in all those years, it was enough to make someone like Ethan uncomfortable.

Who was it that killed those police officers in Venice ten years ago? Ethan really wanted to know the answer. He was very interested in that murderer, but afterward, he couldn’t track down any trace of the person. Even after using all the resources in the bookstore, the killer’s identity remained shrouded in layers of fog.

To cruelly kill a single person isn’t too difficult, but to cruelly kill so many people is extremely hard. Even if one has the ability to do such a thing, the psychological endurance required is almost unimaginable. Just how insane must the killer have been to reach that level?

The thought that such a person existed in this world made Ethan want to study them, but fate kept them apart, and there was nothing he could do.

He grabbed the half-cup of cold, leftover coffee from his nightstand and splashed it on his face, shivering from the chill, then tumbled out of bed and rolled out from under the covers.

He actually slept in a suit, shirt, and trousers. After getting up, he wiped the coffee off his face with a filthy towel that looked like a rag, and considered his washing up done.

He left the narrow living area at the back, closed the door behind him, then skillfully stepped over the piles of books on the floor, flipped the sign at the shop entrance from CLOSE to OPEN, turned on the heater, and sat down behind the desk—another day of business had begun.

It was noon on December 12th.

Ethan’s first pot of coffee hadn’t even finished brewing when a customer arrived.

“It’s you again, you bastard.” As soon as the person pushed the door open, these words blurted out of Ethan’s mouth.

The person who walked in didn’t seem to mind Ethan’s harsh words: “Did you know I had a close call recently?”

“Compared to the disaster your IQ has suffered, that’s nothing.”