Chapter 137: No Snowflake in an Avalanche is Innocent |
The Communication Device captured the squeal of a rusty door opening—a dark omen.
Soon after, a woman's voice rang out; it was Wang, one of the deceased.
"Xinxin, who is at the door?"
Amidst the noisy interference of a range hood, her voice sounded distant.
"It's a police officer, just like they taught us in kindergarten!" The little girl's voice moved away from the door, her words brimming with absolute trust. "Brother, a police officer is here!"
As the two children whispered to each other not far away, a slightly stern male voice spoke up from much closer.
"Police?"
Xing Jianyuan flipped his badge open and shut with a sharp clack. "I'm from the local precinct. I need you to come with me down to the station to answer a few questions."
The footsteps of the man of the house approached.
Xu walked from the bathroom toward the front entryway.
Just as he was about to pass the kitchen and reach the door, he suddenly turned and sprinted into the kitchen, yanking a heavy meat cleaver from the knife block with a loud scrape.
"Huiling, call the police! He isn't a cop!"
"Drop your weapon—"
As the floating halo that tracked the husband's position rapidly closed in on the front door, Xing Jianyuan drew his gun. However, the distance between them was simply too short. The husband, a seasoned detective himself, closed in on the Field Agent in the blink of an eye.
A metallic clatter rang out as something was knocked away, tumbling into the distance and creating a fleeting new sound source on the map.
The apartment instantly descended into chaos. The Communication Device captured the sounds of the two men grappling. They grunted, shouted, and desperately struggled for control of the cleaver. Finally, the blade sank into flesh with a heavy thud, followed by several more sickening chops.
A body collapsed by the front door with a muffled thud, bringing the violent struggle to an end.
"Dad!"
The two children began to wail.
Xing Jianyuan panted heavily like a wild beast, completely silent.
At that exact moment, amidst the crying, the children's terrified screams, and the panicked, hyperventilating gasps of the nearly fainting woman nearby, a new, incredibly faint voice emerged.
"Hello, 110."
It was the voice of the emergency dispatcher coming from the wife's phone.
This flawlessly professional voice shattered the fragile equilibrium within the room, acting like an innocent feather that added the final, fatal weight to a man dangling off the edge of a cliff.
After that, there were no more human voices. There were only bursts of noise echoing throughout the apartment—so chaotic, so horrifying, that only the post-analysis annotations could help anyone distinguish what those sounds actually were.
[Sound of shattering glass, running footsteps, screaming, bones snapping, heavy objects smashing...]
The doctor paused the playback. Over Xing Jianyuan's agonized breathing echoing off-screen, he switched the feed to the security camera outside the apartment door.
Seven minutes and fourteen seconds after the operation began, the front door that Xing Jianyuan had pulled shut behind him swung open once more.
A teenage boy stumbled out and collapsed onto the floor. He reached out his right hand, desperately trying to grab the railing in the corridor.
He was then dragged back inside.
The door slammed shut again.
Three minutes later, the door opened.
The doctor paused the video.
"It wasn't me... It wasn't me... It was Eguan. I, I know now that he's a delusion, but at the time I truly... I originally wanted to explain things to his wife. I thought he was being influenced by an Anomaly. I dropped the knife, I really threw it down, but Eguan told me right then, he said... he said... he said they were all Anomalies, that Xu Guangrong had already attacked me, and I had to eliminate the root of the problem. Then he picked up the knife and lunged at that little girl..."
"Calm down, it's alright. You've already done very well."
Only after a long while did the doctor continue his questioning.
"But in reality, you already know that Eguan is merely a fabricated persona. You were the only one involved in that operation."
"Yes...
"
"So, you were the one who sliced Wang Huiling in half while she was still alive?"
"I... I... I can't remember clearly..."
"Comfort zone, Xing Jianyuan. You need to try and step out of your mind's comfort zone."
"Y-yes...
"
"Were you the one who destroyed the heads of the corpses?"
"Yes! It was me! I did it!"
"It's over now, it's alright. You've stepped out of the cave your mind built for you. It's not dangerous outside, there is nothing out here. You are safe."
Xing Jianyuan seemed to clutch his head, panting heavily for a long while before stuttering out, "Thank you.
Thank you... I understand everything clearly now."
"Don't be afraid, you're safe, but your treatment isn't over yet. We need you to continue cooperating. You will face punishment, and perhaps you'll never be able to participate in containment missions again, but that doesn't mean you've lost your qualifications to work at the Bureau. We will make proper arrangements for you; it's what is best for everyone."
The doctor spoke a few more procedural words before pressing the stop button on the recording and shutting down the device used to play back the evidence logs.
However, Shi Rang remained inside.
An intense, incorporeal wave of nausea washed over his consciousness.
The device shutting down didn't mean the data disappeared. He was currently residing within a computer connected to this medical site. He had sneaked in earlier by Mounting onto a Researcher's Communication Device and slipping through when they returned to charge their equipment.
What lay before him was a tragedy—one born from the accumulation of countless major and minor mistakes.
Shi Rang had already located the operational blueprint drafted prior to the mission.
It detailed that in order to deal with the two hostile adult Entities inside the apartment, Xing Jianyuan was supposed to be accompanied by a partner when entering the scene. On top of that, two scientists responsible for establishing the Containment Room were supposed to act as backup—a completely standard operational setup.
But once the operation commenced, everything fell apart entirely.
Xing Jianyuan's partner failed to arrive on time due to departmental chaos and traffic control. Meanwhile, the two backup scientists, lacking any combat capabilities, didn't follow him upstairs, leaving Xing Jianyuan completely alone at the scene.
The direct catalyst for the conflict was that when the scheduled time for the operation hit, Command Headquarters—which had been waiting for his delayed partner—lost its patience. After repeatedly submitting intelligence only to receive feedback that it was 'inaccurate,' the Commander forced Xing Jianyuan to act solo. He was ordered to first expel the four Entities from the apartment, and then conduct an immediate internal reconnaissance.
However, the man of the house, Xu Guangrong, was a detective. He was intimately familiar with police operational protocols—dispatching a single officer to a scene was against regulations. He saw through Xing Jianyuan's disguise in an instant. Faced with an intruder armed with a potentially real gun breaking into his home, Xu Guangrong bravely stepped forward to protect his family, a decision that ultimately led to his tragic death.
Following that initial tragedy, Xing Jianyuan suffered a mental breakdown, triggering symptoms akin to schizophrenia. He genuinely believed that an external consciousness was manipulating his actions.
And thus, the horrific massacre of an entire family came to pass.
Having listened to the full audio recording, Shi Rang leaned toward believing that this Field Agent he had never met harbored no subjective malice, and was truly drowning in guilt and agony. Through continuous medication and psychological therapy, and subsequently transferring him out of field duty, the Bureau had technically delivered a punishment. Perhaps it wasn't enough. Perhaps the man was merely feigning illness to escape prosecution. But none of that was the main issue right now.
The real issue was that he was extremely dissatisfied... with how the rest of the incident had been handled.
The doctor was currently drafting a report. Judging by several files stored on the computer, aside from Xing Jianyuan, the punishments handed out to the other individuals involved were no more than a slap on the wrist. That Commander was merely going to receive a verbal reprimand.
This entire operation had been a farce. The initial assessment claiming there was an Anomaly in this apartment was based purely on the misfortune of the previous tenants—who had either committed suicide, committed felonies, or vanished without a trace. Yet these pieces of 'evidence' were highly likely just a string of unfortunate coincidences.
There was no Anomaly. There was no hostile Entity.
A family of four had perished senselessly, reduced to nothing more than acceptable collateral damage in a botched operation.
This could have happened to absolutely anyone. Any ordinary person outside of the Bureau could senselessly become collateral damage.
At this exact moment, Shi Rang felt incredibly grateful for the high-level authority of his mysterious Councilor 13 identity.
With just a bit of maneuvering, he could deliver a heavy dose of real punishment to everyone involved.
But he didn't act immediately. Instead, he remained hidden within the mainframe to continue plotting, waiting to see if any new clues would surface.
After a while, as a plan of retribution gradually took shape in his mind, Shi Rang noticed something strange.
While in a Mounted data-link state, he didn't actually need to 'look' to receive information. The data would simply flood directly into his brain; whatever he encountered, he instantly comprehended.
Right now, he realized there were a few oddities within that operational recording.
They were minuscule discrepancies, completely imperceptible to the human ear.
To use a concrete analogy, it was like a straight line drawn on a piece of paper, where a few segments had slightly different shades of ink—a tiny variance that an experienced artist could spot at a glance.
It wasn't the same as background noise. It was more like...
The audio recording had been carefully doctored.