Chapter Ninety-Five: Fire Seeds Credited

The Azure Generation apartment district was mostly home to working-class families, with a considerable number of housewives among them.
So when it came to difficult work, neutralizing the aberration itself was only part of it; doing so without alerting the residents was another matter entirely.

In truth, from the aberration’s point of view, if you have not discovered it, it prefers to hide, avoiding being found and reported.
But if you make a scene, you stir up the crowd and at the same time alarm the aberration, letting it know it has been singled out… what follows then is unpredictable.

Of course, arousing a larger crowd increases the burden on the intelligence unit, and the intelligence unit is not easy to offend, so concealment is still the better path.

At the gate of the estate, the two were stopped by security.

Chen Ziang had plenty of experience with situations like this. He quickly pulled the gate guard into a corner and discreetly showed him his credentials.
“Security officer. We have confirmed that an escaped murderer is staying here. Please cooperate with our work.”

After comparing the photo and face for a moment, the guard believed him and asked quietly,
“Which building, which unit?”

“Top floor, Block Seventeen,” said Chen.

After checking in with the floor supervisor, they were finally allowed in.

“Take the elevator?” Rina Moon-Palace asked once they reached the building.
“Wait,” Chen said, studying it closely.

Block Seventeen was a detached tower with only one unit—one entrance, one elevator, one staircase.
“I’ll go up by elevator. You stay here and guard in case the target comes down the stairs.”

“No way. I’m going up with you, Senpai,” Rina said, pouting.

“Don’t tease me!” Chen snapped. “If he’s hiding at the second-floor stairwell and sees us taking the elevator, he’ll drop down and run straight away. We learned that with blood!”

“Two of you!” the guard who had let them in came hurrying over, still uneasy. “This is Seventeen, you—”

“You arrived at just the right moment,” Rina said, beaming. “You stand here. We’ll take the elevator. If someone with suspicious signs comes down the stairs, call this number.”

With the guard made responsible, the crafty girl got her way and went up with Chen.

When the elevator reached the 35th floor, they turned into the stairwell. Chen kept a hand on his sword, and Rina drew her gun; together they moved carefully toward the rooftop.

The roof door was not locked.
Usually, to prevent residents—especially children—from entering and falling, roofs are kept locked by building management.

But this one was not only unlocked; it was half-open. Chen checked for a moment and found the lock had been tampered with, the surface bearing marks of a sharp instrument.

“Hold this spot. I’ll check the front.” Chen instructed.

There was a water tower for cover up there. If the target slipped around and escaped through the entrance, it would be bad.
Keeping his sword ready, Chen methodically swept the area. At last he saw a man in a coat, leaning against one of the towers and squatting on the ground, breathing in great heaves.

“I… think… I’m going to die, aren’t I?” the man said weakly.

“It doesn’t count unless the virus has broken out yet,” Chen said, taking out his phone to call for backup.

“No trouble,” the man gave a weak smile. “I know this illness can’t endure injury, and I have severe gastrointestinal ulcers—probably internal bleeding already.”

Internal bleeding… there was no way around that.
“Do you have any last words?” Chen asked.

“I already sent my dying message to my family,” the man said with an effort. “You won’t… review it, will you?”

A review would definitely happen. Private messages weren’t in the pre-delivery censorship system, but they were still in the surveillance list. If you send family anything tied to the mystery, those relatives will eventually be memory-wiped—for their own good.

But seeing the man’s pitiable, near-death state, Chen could not bring himself to tell him the truth.
“There are too many personal messages. It’s impossible to check them one by one.”

“That’s… good,” the man said, relieved. “My final request…”

“Kill me. I don’t want to die as a monster…”

Chen hesitated.
In the past, he could slit and kill aberrations without mercy, but only after they were already aberrations. What lay before him now was still human. Did that count as a crime?

In that moment of doubt, the man suddenly coughed up a great mouthful of blood. When he lifted his head again, the fangs of a ghoul had already pushed out over his lips.

Without hesitation, Chen drew the Mandrake Spellblade, slipped forward, and in one rush drove the blade into the ghoul’s chest, killing it cleanly.

Though the disturbance had been removed, he let out a sigh.
Perhaps he had not needed to hesitate. The man might have died as a human, instead of becoming that hideous aberration.

Then came the alert: Fire Seeds have arrived.
Six Fire Seeds: three were drawn by the Mandrake Spellblade, and three came from the Shadow Cloak reward—the Shadow Cloak appears to have counted every ghoul produced by infection from Nishikawa Miho as an enemy of the flesh faction.
Well then. I did what I could.

Chen turned back to the stair landing and heard Rina ask, “Senpai, all done?”

“Mm.”
“I sent Shadow on a sweep nearby,” Rina said. “Apart from your side, there were no other hidden aberrations in the other directions.”

“Good then. Let’s go.” Chen sighed.

He pulled out his phone, opened the software, and submitted the case as closed.
A third-party agency would come later to handle the aftermath.

He checked the time again: it was now half past eight.
At this hour, Xiao Zhu had surely already eaten dinner, so there was no immediate worry.

On ordinary nights Chen would have gone straight home, but his mood was sour tonight, so he asked almost by reflex,
“Want to go for a drink?”

The moment he spoke, he realized the person beside him was not another male colleague, and embarrassment caught him.
Fortunately, Rina did not let him dwell on it long. She smiled and said,
“Sure. I’ll tell Uncle Uemon to come and pick us up later.”

“Uh… Actually, after work I usually go for drinks with male colleagues, especially when it’s just the two of us,” Chen explained.

“Then I’m honored if I can steal your first one,” Rina probed lightly.

“That’s not what I mean… never mind.” Chen waved it off in helplessness.

Sometimes Chen felt the girl was so clever it was like she could read his mind; at other times, she was sweetly stupid.

“I know an old place. Come with me there later.”