The room cost twenty yuan, and it looked exactly like that. Neon lights bled through thin curtains, casting sickly violet shadows across the peeling wallpaper, while the air carried the stale, sharp bite of old disinfectant. In the corner, a grainy television hummed like a dying pulse, delivering the flickering news of Fang Heng's death.
For Li Changfeng, breathing no longer felt like borrowing time; it felt as if the world was finally paying its debts.
He watched the screen with a hollow expression. "You didn't die of a heart attack, Fang Heng," he thought, his inner voice cold and resonant. "You died because your past stopped obeying you. The system couldn't reach you, so fate did."
To anyone else, it was a tragedy. To Li, it was the restoration of balance to a broken equation. He wasn't a killer; he was a Savior, pruning the rot to save the tree.
The Countdown: Mastery Over the Measurable
Li pulled the black notebook from his bag. It felt heavier than it should, a physical manifestation of a metaphysical burden. A new rule had bled into the paper, written in ink that seemed to shimmer: Rule 5: You will see your remaining lifespan.
At the bottom of the page, a number glowed with a faint, amber light:
[Current remaining lifespan: 43 days]
To Li Changfeng, mortality was no longer a looming shadow; it was a variable to be optimized. He accessed the Dark Web, his fingers dancing across the keys with surgical precision. He selected his next "node of rot": Wang Feng, the syndicate leader known as "The Dragon."
Li began to plan. He did not think as a murderer, but as a composer. He chose the stage: a glass-bottomed balcony where Wang Feng's own hubris would judge him. The tragedy already had a title: The Fall of Icarus.
The Execution: An Archangel in Moonlight
Midnight arrived with the precision of a ticking clock. At the exact microsecond of predicted structural stress, the glass beneath Wang Feng's feet shattered.
As the syndicate leader plummeted, he did not fall alone. White silk banners, strategically placed to catch the updraft, unfurled and wrapped around his flailing limbs like great, spectral wings. Onlookers in the plaza below gasped, looking up to see a winged figure silhouetted against the silver moon.
The fall ended not with a thud, but with a statement. Wang Feng was left impaled on a sharp modern sculpture, the white silk billowing around him like the broken icons of a fallen cathedral. It didn't look like a crime. It looked like Divine Judgment.
The End of Statistics
The archive room at the Donghai Police Station smelled of dust and old paper. Detective Xia Zhixin sat in the dim light, surrounded by high-resolution photos of the expressway accident the one that had turned Yang Chusheng into a morbid monument of steel and glass.
A metal bar impaling a driver at that exact speed, at that exact angle... it didn't feel like a tragedy. It felt like a calculation.
"One in a million," Xia whispered, his eyes locked on the forensics. The reports insisted it was an accident, but Xia saw the brushstrokes of a master behind the chaos. He looked at Li Changfeng's profile again: a university student, a prodigy in engineering. The kind of mind that could see the city not as a collection of buildings, but as a series of stress points and variables.
Xia felt a chill crawl down his spine. Li had warned Fang Yun, and then Fang Yun died. Now, the entire leadership of the Hengtai group was being dismantled by "coincidences."
"You're not a killer, are you, Li?" Xia thought, his grip tightening on the file. "You're trying to prove the law is obsolete."
The Echo of the Fall
The door to the archive room burst open, snapping Xia out of his trance. An assistant stood there, pale faced and clutching a tablet. "Chief! You need to see the news from Zephyr City. It's... it's happening again."
Xia turned up the volume on the small TV in the corner. The screen filled with images of a luxury skyscraper. At its base, a silhouette was impaled on a sharp sculpture, draped in flowing white banners like broken wings.
"...Wang Feng, the syndicate leader known as 'The Dragon,' fell to his death from a glass balcony at midnight," the anchor reported, her voice trembling. "Witnesses claim the moon caught the white silk banners as he fell, making him look like a falling angel."
Xia stared at the screen, then back at the photos of the expressway. The same theatricality. The same impossible timing.
"He's not just killing them," Xia realized, a sense of dread pooling in his stomach. "He's making examples of them."
The Savior's Morning
Back in the twenty-yuan room, Li Changfeng watched the same broadcast. The air in the room felt cleaner now, or perhaps his lungs were simply functioning with a newfound efficiency. The life energy harvested from Wang Feng had pushed the shadow of his illness even further back.
He didn't feel like a murderer. He felt like he was finally finishing an equation that the world had left broken
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Author's Note: Thank you for reading! This is the very first book I've ever written, and since English is not my native language, I'm still in the process of learning and improving. As a beginner, your support means the world to me. Please consider leaving a comment or supporting me with Power Stones if you enjoyed the chapter. Your feedback helps me grow as a writer!
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