Right now, Shi Rang was lying at the bottom of a deep pit.
He floated high above, watching himself get buried by the cascading dirt, entombed deep underground by the very fear he thought he had already conquered.
If he had not spoken to her that day, he would never have experienced the happiness that followed. But would the tragedy have been avoided as well?
It was all his fault.
The keys to their new home, which Ying Shang had once handed to him, emerged from the depths of the dirt. Shi Rang did not reach for them.
They persistently pressed against his palm, but he avoided them once more.
Suddenly, the keys forced their way right into his mouth, lodging between his teeth and lunging down his throat—
Shi Rang struggled to open his eyes as an intense light exploded into his vision. He violently twisted his head away to escape the blinding glare.
The fingers clearing the dirt from his mouth vanished, instantly replaced by an entire hand slapping his cheeks hard—first the left, then the right.
"Open your eyes, get up!"
He had not yet fully broken free from the dream. He wanted to bury his head back into the depths of the dirt and hide forever, but that hand began shaking him vigorously again until Shi Rang, annoyed beyond belief, reopened his eyes.
Beneath the dazzling glare were numerous swaying silhouettes. As his vision cleared, the deep blue police uniforms worn by those figures were revealed.
With the bright, sunny sky at their backs, they formed a circle above him.
Seeing that Shi Rang was awake, one of them yanked his arm and, without a word of explanation, slammed him face-down back onto the ground. With a sharp click, a pair of handcuffs locked onto his wrist.
"Move fast, record the arrest scene."
"...You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say will become evidence in court—"
Shi Rang's rationality rapidly snapped back online, and he immediately roared:
"I am a journalist! I have investigation rights!"
This declaration halted the belatedly arriving police officers in their tracks.
The police inspector who was about to cuff both of Shi Rang's hands also stopped. He scrutinized the mud-covered man from a towering height. "You were holding a gun when you were arrested. Everyone saw it. Suspects do not have rights—"
"I have investigation rights! My badges and documents are all in order. Try touching me without evidence and see what happens!"
These deceitful words could no longer fool Shi Rang. Back when he first arrived in this foreign land, unaware of the sheer chaos of the Tenth District and filled with beautiful aspirations of freedom, his luggage had been robbed on the very day of his university registration. He went to the police station to report it, only to be left sitting on a cold bench for half the day. Then, inexplicably, he was told to sign a document, and under a barrage of threats and heavy pressure, he nearly became the suspect in a completely different case. If Jun Zi had not arrived quickly to pay the money and bail him out, Shi Rang would have ended up in prison before he even stepped through the university gates.
The blue uniforms were only slightly better than the gangs, but that did not stop him from absolutely loathing these two-faced cops of the Tenth District. Their attempt to frame him only further ignited Shi Rang's fury. Old grudges and new hatreds coiled around his heart, bursting forth with a strength from his weakened body that completely swept away the self-pity brought out by his nightmare.
"If you don't let go right now, you can go explain to the Alliance why you are obstructing investigation rights!"
The hands pinning his arms and legs released their grip.
Shi Rang climbed up from the ground, realizing that the sun had actually risen directly overhead.
Dizzy and disoriented, he identified his surroundings and dug out his camera from beneath the scrap pile from last night, along with the small badge pinned to it.
After scraping off the grime with his fingernail, the shiny golden background was revealed.
Seeing this, the blue uniforms all showed expressions of disappointment and annoyance. Their case-solving rate directly affected their funding, but one look at this scene made it obvious that it was the result of a gang war. To avoid antagonizing the gangs, they had deliberately waited until the incident was over before showing up. Naturally, they could not catch any proper suspects.
To make matters worse, the Alliance had intervened in handling this, so they could not just pretend they hadn't seen it.
Now, they had to deal with a money-losing case without a scapegoat.
Before the officers could disperse, Shi Rang took large strides toward the man wearing the police inspector epaulets and thrust his arm right under the man's tightly pinched nose.
The handcuffs dangled back and forth from his wrist.
"Unlock it. Also, I am responsible for investigating this matter. I have the right to first-hand knowledge."
As the blue uniforms scattered to excavate the vicinity with police dogs, many fellow journalists swarmed the scene from all directions right on cue, like mosquitoes catching the scent of fresh blood.
The mud coating Shi Rang's body had dried into hard crusts, flaking off in chunks as he walked. He stripped off his ruined shirt, tossed it into a newly erected yellow trash can, and walked around the scene bare-chested. Any fellow journalists who tried to come over and curry favor with him were driven far away by the pungent cadaveric odor. Shi Rang was more than happy with this arrangement.
With a dark expression, he continuously snapped photographs—not for a news report, but purely out of a desire to disgust this crowd.
As long as he did not hand his materials over to the Alliance, the police and other reporters could not publish anything about it in the papers. This was the domineering power of investigation rights.
Pressing the shutter over and over, he gradually felt an unprecedented wave of exhaustion wash over him.
Shi Rang's anger, which always flared up fast and faded just as quickly, had finally burned itself out.
What was the point of this anymore?
He had stayed at the newspaper office, bearing humiliation and heavy burdens, all to constantly conduct interviews and investigate the trail of clues extending from Grey Dog.
Now that the trail had gone cold, was there really any need for him to remain in this industry?
Shi Rang stopped beside some of the excavated remains. They were laid out in a row on the dried mud, while more black body bags sat with unzipped openings, waiting for new occupants.
Ying Shang was not here.
She would not be here.
He could find a higher-paying job, which would give him the financial leeway to travel to other cities and continue searching for her. The world was so vast; she could appear anywhere across the twelve major districts. Since there were no clues in the Tenth District, he would just go to the other eleven districts and keep looking.
He needed a better job because the mortgage payments could not stop. He had to keep that house, just in case Ying Shang suddenly returned one day, only to find she no longer had a home.
Shi Rang walked past the victims, as if circling a funeral procession.
The pit the police officers were currently digging was the exact spot he had crawled out of yesterday. His escape had left traces on the surface, making it the very first place to be discovered.
Standing next to the body bags, Shi Rang did not find the corpses frightening.
Under the brilliant sunlight, the dead's twisted limbs huddled against their chests only looked frail and pitiful.
He took one last photograph of the people whose deaths had covered his tracks. He wanted to take a few more pictures of the collapsed factory, but the camera's battery died.
The spare battery and his other luggage were still up on the mountain. Yet, he felt absolutely no attachment to the lighthouse on the distant peak or his belongings. He wanted to just turn around and walk away, to vanish from the Tenth District and head to the next place where he might find his love. But his sense of responsibility told him he needed to return the borrowed equipment to its rightful owner first.
Yes, that was the plan. After finishing this final job and collecting his payment for such a massive scoop, he would set off to search for her, working odd jobs along the way to make a living.
Some hikers spent over a decade walking across the entire continent; he could do the same.
He had already severed ties with the cowardly version of his past self.
A light had entered his life, ensuring he would never have to walk through the dark night alone again.
Even if this light had disappeared, he would find her all over again.
Shi Rang approached the police's mobile command vehicle, his stench driving away the others who were eating lunch there. He grabbed one of the boxed meals, twisted open a bottle of bottled water, and swallowed the food down whole.
His own sense of smell had gone completely numb from the stench, but judging by the expressions on the others' faces, the odor was intensely overpowering.
The blue uniforms were obviously displeased, but they were desperate for him to leave as soon as possible. Thus, they let him raid their supplies and gorge himself without interference.
"Your stuff."
As Shi Rang set down his empty food container, an officer tossed a wiped-clean plastic card onto the table from a distance.
[Headhunting Company Manager and Alliance Investigator, Scarlett]
It was the item left behind by that woman last night.
It must have slipped from his grasp when he passed out and was pulled from the pit.
'A headhunting company? More like a company of assassins hunting for actual heads...'
As for the Alliance Investigator title appended to the end, he naturally ignored it.
'I can't possibly believe everything printed on a piece of paper, right?'
Shi Rang shoved it into his pocket, keeping it together with his cracked mobile phone.
Perhaps there would come a day when he might need to use it.
He had no intention of providing any clues to the police. Even disregarding their old grudges and new conflicts, he still could not comprehend the events of last night himself.
His lingering impressions of those two mysterious intruders were pitifully scarce.
In the chaotic, near-pitch-black conditions, he had absolutely no leads aside from "one super tall giant" and "a woman with a long braid, muscular enough to kill him with a single punch."
In fact, he completely failed to connect the two figures covered head-to-toe in combat gear with the duo who had helped him out of a tight spot half a day earlier.
Gazing at the ruins of the chemical plant, Shi Rang shrugged dismissively.
Having eaten his fill and now standing in the bright sunlight, he had steadied his nerves. He was no longer jumpy and easily startled.
Monsters? Intruders? Supernatural phenomena?
Shi Rang did not care about those things, nor did he want to care. His fascination with the supernatural was merely a coping mechanism born of the despair of failing to find his lover, serving as nothing more than a pastime to kill the hours.
Returning to reality, last night was probably just an insanely well-armed, multi-sided gang war.
Darkness and tragedy could drive a man to madness, couldn't they? He couldn't even trust what his own brain had perceived.
He was still alive, and that was enough. How he had climbed out of the pit, or whether there had been someone else at the scene—none of that mattered anymore.
Shi Rang marched up the mountain to retrieve his bag.