It had been raining nonstop for half a month.
The small town seemed to be submerged in a giant glass tank, the air thick with the musty smell of mud. The street gutters, long since overwhelmed, allowed murky muddy water to spill onto the sidewalks, carrying along crushed cigarette butts, blackened flyers, and all manner of nameless debris as it swirled around every dim corner.
Benson Yang pushed open the bar’s door, covered in cheap leather, in the pouring night rain. A wave of heat—a mixture of cheap perfume, stale alcohol, and rank tobacco—along with deafening electronic beats, hit him the moment the door swung open.
Unlike the metropolitan core, this town was a lawless frontier. Public safety had always been poor, and the bar district was the most seedy part of it all.
Flashing laser balls sliced the bar into countless chaotic, dazzling patches of color. On stage, a stripper was sensually swaying her hips, while below sat a motley crew of patrons—including johns and male prostitutes, as well as a few well-dressed middle-aged men who had come from downtown to hunt for young prey, luring naive teenagers under the pretense of offering them jobs.
A dazed-looking boy tried to get close, but Benson Yang casually brushed him aside, walking straight to the far end of the bar. He sat down in the corner and ordered the cheapest, lowest-grade whiskey on the menu, with ice.
Only then did he unbutton his pitch-black, stand-collar trench coat, revealing a wrinkled gray cotton T-shirt underneath, and roughly wiped the rainwater from his face.
His reflection appeared in the glass window—scattered stubble clinging to his gaunt jawline, eyes crisscrossed with spiderweb-like red veins, and deep dark circles beneath them, radiating a world-weary despondency born of years of insomnia.
A down-and-out detective cast aside by the system, transferred from the downtown police station’s narcotics unit due to mental health issues, and having just endured a bitter divorce battle that cost him custody of his eight-year-old son—in this cruel world, all that seemed left for him to do was hide in the shadows and drink alone.
The small TV hanging above the bar was malfunctioning, occasionally flickering with static; one moment it showed a soccer game, the next an emergency news broadcast. On the screen, long yellow caution tape had been strung along both banks of a river on the outskirts of town, and several people in bulky protective suits were laboriously lifting bodies wrapped in white plastic sheeting out of the mud.
“...Days of torrential rain have caused water levels downstream to surge dramatically. Three bodies of adult males, in various states of decomposition, have already been washed ashore. Autopsies conducted in the city center reveal that all victims had dislocated limbs, bore multiple signs of binding and abuse, and tested positive for potent sleeping pills... Even more bizarrely, the knife wounds on their bodies all exhibited a symmetrical pattern...”
The news anchor’s voice was quickly drowned out by the surrounding clamor of men and women cheering and the clinking of wine bottles. Yet Benson Yang stared intently at the screen, the knuckles of his hand gripping the wine glass turning slightly white, and the veins on the back of his hand visibly pulsing.
“...All the victims had been frequenting the bar district before their disappearances. Police are urging citizens to avoid going to the bar district alone late at night. Our reporter attempted to ask the spokesperson for the downtown police station whether they had any leads on the identity of the serial killer known as ‘The Nightstalker,’ but the spokesperson did not provide a direct answer...”
Benson Yang’s mouth twitched imperceptibly, and a faint, almost inaudible snort escaped from the depths of his throat. He stirred the nearly melted ice cubes in his glass with his finger, over and over, muttering to himself in a tone as calm as if he were appraising a pile of scrap metal: “Trash. It’s all trash.”
The news switched to an advertisement for a real estate project, and he instantly lost interest. Just as he averted his gaze, his eyes inadvertently fell upon a booth diagonally across the room, catching sight of a figure that was utterly out of place—one might even call it jarring.
A young man had taken a seat there at some point, seeming to exist in a completely different dimension from the bar and the people within it.
The young man wore an off-white shirt paired with gray casual dress pants, topped with a lime-green knit sweater. The cuffs were rolled up slightly, revealing a wrist so pale it bordered on sickly, with faint blue veins clearly visible. His fingers were long and manicured, and he held a glass of a drink as red as blood—whether it was red wine or cranberry juice, he couldn’t tell.
He sipped the drink in small sips, his eyelids slightly lowered, only occasionally glancing around out of the corner of his eye, his gaze carrying a kind of delicate, naive, and purely innocent curiosity.
In this muddy pool reeking of sweat and animalistic instincts, such delicacy was practically an open invitation to be at the mercy of others.
Sure enough, in less than thirty seconds, a burly man with a rugged face and reeking of alcohol staggered over to the booth. He wrapped his thick, tattooed arm around the young man’s slender shoulders, breathing hot, foul-smelling alcohol into his ear as he sniffed and inhaled.
The young man looked panicked, his shoulders trembling slightly. A fear bordering on innocence shone in his beautiful almond-shaped eyes; he seemed to have forgotten even the instinct to cry for help, letting the burly man’s large hand slide down his spine.
Seeing this, the lecherous glint in the burly man’s eyes intensified. He grabbed the young man as if hoisting a lamb, half-dragging, half-pulling him toward the back door of the bar.
The young man struggled a few times, but his efforts seemed feeble. His steps were unsteady and weak, and his moist, pleading eyes darted around frantically. As luck would have it, his gaze locked with Benson Yang’s for a split second.
Benson Yang narrowed his eyes, decisively set down his glass, placed a crumpled bill on the counter, and stood up to follow them.
The alley behind the bar was a narrow passageway, littered with trash, food scraps, and empty bottles. The rain was still pouring down, pounding against the rust-stained tin roof and producing a continuous, popping sound like beans being fried.
The burly man was pressing the young man hard against the damp, cold stone wall with one hand, while his other hand restlessly tore at the young man’s neat, expensive clothes.
The young man’s voice was faint and trembling, sounding fragmented against the sound of the rain: “Let me go, please? I… I’m afraid of pain… At worst, I can help you…”
“Help with what…” The burly man’s alcohol-addled brain froze for a moment before he processed the request. A flicker of interest stirred within him, and he paused his assault, grinning wickedly. “Hey, how exactly? Tell me.”
Just then, a dark figure materialized silently at the entrance of the alley, like a ghost blending into the night.
Benson Yang moved with a speed that belied his status as a detective exiled to a backwater town due to illness. Without any unnecessary, flashy preparatory movements, he lunged forward before the burly man could even feel a chill run down his spine, slamming him to the ground with a thud.
He concentrated his entire body weight and explosive power precisely into his hands, clamping his palms around the man’s arm like iron pincers and twisting with all his might.
The crisp, decisive sound of bones snapping echoed through the air. Immediately afterward, Benson Yang’s knee shot upward, striking the man’s lower back and abdomen with brutal force.
“Thud!”
The burly man collapsed onto the waterlogged ground like a heap of mud. He didn’t even have time to let out a groan. Just as he opened his mouth wide in agony, ready to scream, Benson Yang’s other elbow had already slammed down precisely and forcefully onto his windpipe.
The movement was as fluid as flowing water, akin to a scalpel tempered to razor-sharp precision—accurate, silent, and lethal.
Although the burly man had completely lost the ability to resist within seconds, Benson Yang did not stop. The sense of despair and world-weariness in his eyes had vanished entirely, replaced by a deathly stillness and indifference as cold as a frozen pond. He stared at the man twitching in his grasp, whose face was rapidly turning purplish-red, while the pressure from his elbow continued to bear down slowly.
The burly man gasped for breath, his eyes bulging, the depths of his gaze filled with terror of death.
The young man, slumped on the ground, took it all in.
By all logic, a frightened “young master” should have been screaming and running for his life at this moment, but this young man did not. He tilted his head back slightly, letting the cold rain beat against his face. His mist-shrouded eyes glowed faintly in the rainy night, fixed intently on Benson Yang’s stern profile, half-concealed by the stand-up collar of his trench coat.
He could tell—this man was different, utterly unlike the masses. He was an executioner accustomed to death, a lone wolf who made a living through slaughter, a wandering traveler trudging alone through the darkness.
The town wasn’t large, and news traveled fast. The young man knew the man before him was a down-on-his-luck detective who’d been transferred here from the downtown police station.
But would an ordinary detective disregard the rules of engagement, kill without mercy, and pursue nothing but a single, decisive strike?
What had he gone through to become this way? Or was he simply born this way, deep down?
The young man’s Adam’s apple involuntarily bobbed up and down. It wasn’t fear, but an intensely exhilarating shiver rising from the very marrow of his spine. His heart pounded wildly against his ribs inside his chest, and every nerve ending transmitted an unprecedented, frenzied craving.
He wanted to get to know this person. He wanted to tear away this decaying human façade. He wanted to see the truest, most primal, and darkest core beneath that surface.
And then…
Benson Yang sensed that intensely burning gaze.
The moment those faintly glowing almond-shaped eyes met his own, he froze—as if a pause button had been forcibly pressed, or as if he’d been disrupted by some intense, synchronized frequency. His movements halted, and he abruptly released his grip.
The burly man coughed violently and retched on the ground, then scrambled away, rolling and crawling, until he vanished at the end of the dark alley.
Benson Yang stood up, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of the cool air. When he opened his eyes again, the muscles in his face twitched twice in an extremely awkward manner, and that expression of world-weariness tinged with nervousness returned to his face.
“Sorry…” he muttered hoarsely, averting his gaze from the young man. His hand nervously plunged into the pocket of his long overcoat, rummaging around for a while but finding nothing. “I… I’ve got a little quirk. I can’t control myself when I get angry. It’s really nothing. Um… a lighter. Do you have a lighter? I want to smoke.”
“Sorry… I don’t smoke. I don’t have a lighter on me.”
“You’re a rich kid like you and you don’t smoke? I don’t buy it.”
The young man slowly pushed himself up against the damp, cold wall, walked over to Benson Yang, and held out his hand as if to shake it.
Benson Yang looked a little disappointed. As soon as he caught the scent of men’s cologne on the young man’s hand, he immediately slapped it away, his tone turning harsh: “Benson Yang, town police detective. I never would’ve thought I’d run into a ‘distinguished, refined gentleman’ in a place like this.”
“Detective Yang, it’s a pleasure…”
“Don’t give me that handshake-and-small-talk nonsense. Just spit it out—which family’s golden boy are you? The old mayor’s kept man, or some real estate tycoon’s illegitimate son he’s hiding on the side? Are you of age? Where’s your ID? Hand it over!”
The young man paid no heed to this crude insult. He calmly pulled his wallet from his pocket, took out his ID, and handed it over.
“My name is Dorian Yun. I’m a clinical psychologist—in layman’s terms, a psychiatrist. I moved here three years ago. I was just out for a stroll tonight, and I never expected to be targeted by criminals. Thank goodness for you, Detective…”
The moment Benson Yang heard the word “psychiatrist,” undisguised disgust flashed across his face. He glanced at the name and date of birth on the ID card and casually flung it back at him.
“Screw you and your ‘doctor’ title. Get out, get out, get out. Just seeing you clean-cut types spouting all that jargon gives me the creeps. Not only do you swindle people out of their money, but you go out of your way to ruin other people’s careers.”
Dorian Yun calmly picked up the ID card, then took out a gold-embossed business card and handed it over. “Detective, regardless of anything else, thank you for saving my life today. If you’d like, you’re welcome to stop by my clinic anytime for a chat.”
“No thanks. I hate going to the doctor—it’s expensive and useless.”
“I don’t charge for the first visit.”
“Alright then, might as well go since you’re offering. You said yourself there’s no charge. Let me see… Oh, the clinic’s in the town upstream, right? That’s several kilometers away. What a hassle…” Benson Yang grumbled for a moment, took the business card, and stuffed it into the pocket of his long coat. “Hey, why are you still standing there? Why aren’t you going home? If you don’t leave soon, I’m going to suspect you’re out here illegally selling yourself with a fake ID.”
“Well then, I’ll be waiting for you to pay me a visit.”
Dorian Yun smiled faintly, turned, and walked into the rain. In an instant, his figure vanished at the alley entrance, leaving only a faint scent of men’s cologne mixed with rainwater lingering in the air.
Benson Yang stood where he was until he was certain no one was around. Only then did he pull the business card from his trench coat, hold it up, and examine it by the dim light of a streetlamp in the distance.
The card was made of the finest paper, with gold-embossed lettering that was exquisite and neat, glinting in the faint light.
“Dorian Yun Clinical Psychologist”
“Dorian Yun…” Benson Yang murmured the name under his breath. He reached into the inner pocket of his long trench coat and pulled out a transparent, waterproof sealed bag.
Inside the bag was a photocopy of an ID card and a business card that had been studied so often its edges were slightly frayed.
Upon comparison, the information matched exactly what he had just examined.
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