Chapter Ninety-Three: The Funeral Home

The pitch-black figure raced through the woods at astonishing speed. Before long, Lin Heng had crossed the mountains and returned to the city; Qingxia City now lay within sight.

Standing atop a hill very close to the outskirts of Qingxia City, Lin Heng swept his expressionless gaze ahead. In the next instant, he sprang high into the air and landed on the rooftop of a residential building not far away.

There were clothes hanging there, ordinary garments with a distinctly rural flavor—things that looked as if they had been worn by people in their forties or fifties.

A thought stirred in Lin Heng’s mind. The fur covering his body fell away in clumps to the ground, and then he picked out a jacket and trousers from among those clothes and put them on.

“This would count as theft, I suppose. But the stolen property isn’t worth much, and the amount is under a thousand yuan, so it doesn’t meet the threshold for a criminal case. It should only warrant administrative punishment.”

He spoke to himself. The words carried a faintly dark humor, yet there was not the slightest trace of a smile on his face.

Having put on human clothes once more, as though he had returned to the human world, he stood at the edge of the rooftop and silently gazed toward the mountains and forests in the distance—the direction from which he had come.

Remembering what the gray shadow had told him, and the memories left behind in his mind by the master of the Divine Hall, Lin Heng’s expression gradually changed.

“My enemy...

“The one who caused all this...

“The one who truly killed Xixi...

“Could it really be only Yang Luo?”

In the next instant, he leaped down from the residential building and ran along the road beside it.

...

Several hours later, Lin Heng changed into another set of clothes in his rented room.

Because it was a password lock, he could get in without a key when he returned. That much was indeed convenient.

He found an old backup phone in the rental, and there was still a SIM card inside. After changing into a new outfit, Lin Heng stepped out the door.

He searched the internet on his phone again, and the results were the same as what he had seen in the gray shadow’s presence.

Shen Yunxi was indeed dead. The gray shadow had not lied to him.

And yet... Lin Heng wished more than anything that the gray shadow had lied.

He would even have been willing to trade away all of his current extraordinary power if only everything from before had been nothing but a deception.

If only... if only he and Shen Yunxi had never been caught in that explosion, if only he had not been the sole survivor, if only the overwhelming power surging through him now did not exist at all.

As long as... as long as she was still alive.

Silently, Lin Heng gathered his things and left the rental. Vaguely, he had a premonition that he might not be able to live there many more times.

Even though he still had three months left on the lease.

...

After leaving the rental, Lin Heng set a new destination.

But it was not the provincial headquarters.

At present, he might already have lost any chance of returning there.

As he walked, a gnawing emptiness rose in his stomach.

It was the warning sign of excessive energy consumption within his body, and also the prelude to the beginning of his transformation.

Lin Heng bought a large amount of high-energy food from a convenience store and ate as he walked, saying nothing.

At the same time, he searched the internet for information.

Not about the fire—about other matters.

Among the search results, one item caught his attention. The latest news online read: “Chief of Behavior Analysis, Technical Division of Qingjiang Provincial Public Security Department, disciplined on suspicion of leaking internal secrets.”

After seeing that report, Lin Heng’s eyes sharpened considerably.

By now, he could also guess why the very night after he discovered clues related to Yang Luo—and on the same day the investigation report had been completed—he had been met with that fire and explosion.

Who in this world would know the contents of the report he had written? And who would have the ability to leak it?

Still, once everything had been laid bare, Lin Heng could not help feeling disappointed.

“The chief...”

But that disappointment surged up in his heart for less than a few seconds before he forced it down.

What he paid even greater attention to was the fact that Huang Yuanguang had come under investigation.

That meant someone higher up already knew Huang Yuanguang had leaked the report, which in turn meant they should also know that Yang Luo was inseparably connected to those cases.

And if one thought a little further, perhaps they had already realized that Yang Luo possessed extraordinary powers.

So perhaps an investigation into Yang Luo had already begun, and action against him had already started as well. The only question was how far the authorities had gotten with him.

As for himself, he had been dragged out of the hospital by the gray shadow in a state of severe injury and near death.

Such a bizarre disappearance would probably provoke many people’s suspicions, so perhaps he too was already being searched for and investigated.

Thinking about all this, Lin Heng put his phone into his bag and looked ahead.

The pile of food in his hands had already been finished during his walk, yet his stomach still felt ravenous.

Still, Lin Heng forcibly suppressed the urge to eat, restraining his attention to the hunger in his body as he quickened his pace toward the building ahead.

It was a funeral home.

...

Night was drawing near.

Places like funeral homes were always located in the most remote parts of a city. They were already sparsely populated, and at such a late hour there was naturally hardly anyone around. There was no need to worry about drawing attention.

Unfortunately, the main gate was already locked.

That posed no obstacle to Lin Heng. With a light push from his feet, he climbed the wall at the side like a gecko and swiftly scaled it.

Before long, he had dropped into the funeral home’s courtyard.

Cold light faintly spilled from the building ahead; that was the place where the bodies were stored.

And right in front of that building, there was only a guard booth, where the lone watchman had already dozed off.

Lin Heng slipped silently past the guard booth and entered the building, searching for the person he had come to find.

Before long, he found her.

It was a metal gurney covered entirely by white cloth.

On the small paper tag beneath it, handwritten characters identified the name of the body’s owner.

Lin Heng’s body trembled as he approached the gurney.

Even now, he was fully capable of controlling the rhythm of his breathing, even the rise and fall of his lungs, the beat of his heart.

And yet, as though he could not bear it, Lin Heng drew in heavy breaths, taking several deep, uncontrolled breaths in succession.

At last, he reached out and lifted the white cloth.

Beneath it lay that person’s face.

A face he knew all too well.

Though it had been scorched by flames into mottled cracks, and though cosmetics intended for the dead had painted the skin an eerie, deathly white, it was no longer the same as it had once been.

And yet it was still her.

Even unable to breathe, even burned until she had shattered inch by inch, even if reduced to ashes, she was still the one in his memory.

Lin Heng gently placed his hand on Shen Yunxi’s face and stared at her without moving.

After a long while, he finally spoke his first words.

“I’m back.”

...

When Lin Heng finally came out of the morgue, the night had already sunk into utter darkness. He had intended to imitate his earlier move and climb out of the courtyard, but just as he was about to leave, a heavy, stifled sound of sobbing startled him.

Lin Heng moved at once, following the crying to the hall nearby.

There, bodies were laid out, all scheduled to be cremated into ashes the next day.

At that moment, someone was making a final farewell to the corpse of a family member.

That was the source of the sobbing he had just heard.

Lin Heng quietly walked to the doorway and looked at the owner of the voice. It was a woman, seemingly in her forties or fifties, with the wear of time etched across both her body and the side of her face.

She clutched the gurney, sobbing uncontrollably over the body covered in white cloth.

“How could you... just die like this...”

“The child has only just finished university and started working. It was supposed to be the time for a little happiness... You’ve worked yourself to the bone all your life, so why was your fate so bitter...”

“You won’t even get to look at me and the child a few more times...”

Lin Heng looked up toward the top of the gurney, and the face in the portrait there entered his eyes.

It was the honest, straightforward face of a middle-aged man.

He had only seen that face once, and only in passing, but Lin Heng’s now formidable memory went to work. In an instant, he recognized whose face it was.

It was the face of the second person who had died in that explosion.

The truck driver.

Lin Heng’s complexion turned deathly pale in an instant.

He stumbled back several steps, a fierce wave of remorse crashing through his heart.

In that explosion, the person dragged into it because Yang Luo wanted to kill him had not been Shen Yunxi alone.

Yet from the moment he entered the funeral home, the only person on his mind had still been Shen Yunxi. If not for being startled by the sobbing, he might never have remembered to look at the other innocent victim again.

Why had he paid attention only to Shen Yunxi and ignored the other casualty?

That man had a wife, a child, a family of his own... and his own life as well. The pain his family suffered was surely no less than his own.

Why was it that, to some extent, the man who had died because of him had not stirred more guilt in his heart when he saw his photograph earlier?

“If I simply forget them, forget these innocent people who died because of me, then what difference is there between me and Yang Luo... and those exalted gods?”

That thought suddenly rose in Lin Heng’s heart, and his gaze slowly grew firm.

He looked once more at the black-and-white portrait, deeply and carefully, fixing that honest, warm smile firmly in his heart, making sure he would never forget it again.

Then he turned and left the mortuary, leaping over the courtyard wall and out into the night beyond the funeral home.

But someone had already been waiting for a long time.

A great many fully armed soldiers had surrounded the funeral home. The atmosphere was solemn, the security tight and severe.

Yet the soldiers’ gun muzzles were not aimed at Lin Heng.

At the front of the formation, a dark-skinned man stepped forward and raised a hand toward him.

There was no surprise on Lin Heng’s face.

He raised his own hand as well and shook the man’s.

Looking at Lin Heng, the man’s eyes filled with eagerness.

“Hello, Officer Lin Heng. I’m Jiang Chao’an from Section Nine. I’m currently responsible for liaison work between the domestic authorities and extraordinary individuals... May I ask whether we can have a proper talk?”