Bang!

“What do you mean?”

The girl kept smiling, watching Ye Weibai toss his gun aside like a dull star skidding across stone.

“Senpai… you came up here with a gun to catch the culprit, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. To catch the culprit.” Ye Weibai fixed his gaze on her, moonlight washing her school uniform—black-and-white jacket over a tight white blouse. A red skirt snapped like a flag in the high night wind. Long legs traced smooth lines; his sight climbed that gleaming curve toward the inner thigh, a hint of silk-black shine like a shadowed stream.

“Then why are you here?” Ye Weibai asked, voice cool as deep water.

The night wind at this height was a relentless river.

Her ponytail thrashed in the gale, ribbons nearly tearing loose.

She smoothed the hair by her ear and stepped out of the dark, smiling. “Of course, to help you, Senpai,” she said, her smile bright as frost.

That smile burned in the dark like a jeweled lantern, a touch of allure, nothing like the usual Mu Ling.

Bathed in midnight moon, she seemed changed. Glossed cherry lips, damp eyes, milk-white thighs, the blouse pulled tight over a rising-breathing chest—her body gave off a pulse that made hearts lurch and law feel thin, like incense in wind.

Especially—when behind her, a bare child lay bound to a chair by thick rope, unconscious like a snuffed lamp—her allure swelled to a dangerous peak.

But Ye Weibai didn’t blink. His eyes stayed still as stone.

“I never told you about this trip.”

“Speaking of that, I should complain,” she puffed her cheeks like a little drum. “You knew I cared about this case, yet you kept me in the dark.” Then her smile slid sly, like a fox stepping on dew. “Luckily I’ve got my own intel web. I traced your route and got here before you.”

“But… I found the victim.” She pointed at the short-haired girl slumped behind her and shook her head, helpless as a leaf. “Sadly, it’s the same as usual—only a crime scene, no culprit in sight.”

Her face wore regret, resignation like fog.

“Who said… there’s no culprit?” Ye Weibai cut in, voice flat as iron. He pointed at the concrete under moonlight. “The culprit’s right here.”

Mu Ling narrowed her eyes, a thin gleam like a blade. “What do you mean? You mean they haven’t fled?”

“No. [It] never planned to flee, did it, Mu Ling?” His words fell like cold rain.

Clink-clink-clink…

With a clear, small music, a silver bell rolled across the floor—Ye Weibai had pulled it from his pocket and tossed it down like a fallen star.

She looked at him and smiled. “Senpai, that’s something I really like. You just—”

He cut her off, voice frost-sharp. “—like it as a tracker, don’t you?”

“…”

Her smile stiffened, then slowly thinned, like wax in chill air. “Ah. Figures.”

Her smile vanished entirely; a troubled, helpless look surfaced like tide-worn driftwood. “Even with the disguise so tight—of course you’d still notice.”

“Senpai…” Mu Ling tilted her head, eyes up at him, a placating smile like a ribbon. “Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see?”

Ye Weibai said nothing. He simply watched her, cold as winter glass.

“So that’s… no deal?”

The smile at her mouth died. Her face turned suddenly ice-hard, her voice chilling and strange, as if another soul stepped into her skin like a shadow.

“Where did I slip?”

“What good does knowing do?”

“It matters.” Mu Ling smiled, a smile unlike any before, sharp as a crescent blade. “Kill you, break out, and I won’t make the same mistake.”

She spoke of killing like naming a place for dinner, light as lantern smoke.

Was Mu Ling a butcher of men, a soul who saw lives as grass?

—Not at all, was she?

Staring at the girl, Ye Weibai let out a breath soft as ash and said, “Too many tells. The deadliest is your file.”

“I remember destroying every scrap.”

“But you forgot Mangfu Elementary kept a note from ten years ago. Just a throwaway line—but enough to put me on guard.”

“I see.” After a beat of silence, she nodded and looked at him. “But how did you recognize me from a ten-year-old photo? I changed my name.”

“It was inevitable—” Ye Weibai’s smile turned a shade odd, like a mask half-cracked. “If someone wants to know—they can know, can’t they?”

—He implied more, and Mu Ling understood in a heartbeat, like a bell struck.

“Hm?!”

Her smile faltered, eyes dipping. Her voice trembled, a reed in wind. “But, Senpai—”

“Little bell.” Ye Weibai cut her off, sudden and clean. “Shall we keep going?”

She froze for a breath, then, after a quiet pause, let that alluring smile bloom again like night flowers. “Why not? Don’t be fooled by the college freshman look—I’m quite confident I can kill you.”

“Then let’s continue.” Even with someone speaking his death, Ye Weibai waved it off like dust.

She flexed her hands and drew in a small breath, steady as a runner at dawn. “Even if you prove I was the little girl molested ten years ago—that still doesn’t prove a thing, does it?”

Yes. Ten years ago, when Mu Ling was just a child, she was molested. It mirrored the recent cases; like the girl tied to the chair behind her now, she had been stripped, bound, and caged for three days and nights, like a bird on a cold perch.

More precisely—she was the last victim in the serial child-molestation case ten years back. After that final crime, the culprit vanished like mist, and the victim was Mu Ling.

“Little bell.” Ye Weibai said her nickname softly, a hand across still water. “I explained [Stockholm syndrome] to you, didn’t I?”

“So what?” Mu Ling looked at him, a scoff like a flicked fan. “You want to say I fell in love with the molester?”

“Shouldn’t you have?” Ye Weibai asked back, voice quiet as night snow. “A [Lonely] little girl suddenly bathed in someone’s whole-hearted love—no matter how twisted, no matter how sickly—the fullness of [Being Needed] is real, isn’t it?”

Mu Ling fell silent, the quiet heavy as winter soil.

“For a girl still young, she never dreamed someone would like the ‘extra,’ ‘impure’ version of her,” Ye Weibai sighed, a breath like a slow tide. “Like her enough to even commit a crime. That gave a lifelong [Lonely] heart a shock—a quake so deep that, even defiled, I think… she didn’t mind. Maybe she even felt joy.”

“And so… when that person vanished, her heart filled with confusion and loss like drifting fog. Because she fell back once more into [Lonely] ground.”

Her eyes flickered, like listening to someone else’s tale by candle. Softly, she asked, “Then… what would that girl do?”

Ye Weibai sighed, a sound like rain on paper.

“She’d chase.”

“Chase…” Mu Ling lifted her eyes to the outer world. The round moon floated in the void, a soft lamp, bright as polished bone, close enough to touch yet far as a myth—384,400 kilometers away.

384,400 kilometers… too far by oceans—at such a tense moment, that odd thought broke across her mind like a ripple.

She pulled her gaze back and looked at Ye Weibai, head bowed like a willow tip.

“So what?” she said, serious voice like a drumbeat. “Even if what she chases is something the World condemns—so what? That’s no one else’s business, right?”

At some point—

The air between them had turned strange and stiff, like actors holding a script, trading lines on a bare stage.

As if blind to the oddness, Ye Weibai answered with the same solemn steadiness, like a monk at dusk.

“Of course. Whatever goal someone pursues is her own matter. Success or failure, justice or evil, flight to the stars or a plunge into the abyss—she bears it alone. A person can only save herself.”

“…Then?”

“But [Freedom] is never an excuse against [Responsibility]!” Ye Weibai’s face went grave, like a mountain in storm. “You can chase anything bravely. That never grants you license to ignore everything and rampage. Living in this World, inside this society, you must realize—your actions ripple across everyone around you.”

“If you did wrong, you fix it.” He paused, a beat like a bell. “If you can’t fix it, you get punished.”

“Then that little girl… what did she do wrong?” Mu Ling suddenly smiled lightly, voice soft as a fawn, as if she were truly an innocent child.

“Mu Ling, do you know?” Ye Weibai asked, eyes steady as ink.

“What?”

“When you crave someone, crave them past the limit, and you still can’t have them. You’ll—” He looked at her, gaze bright as moonsteel.

“You’ll what?”

“You’ll live into his shape.”

“What’s wrong with that?” As she spoke, Mu Ling stepped in, drawing close, like a tide nosing the shore.

“What shape you live in doesn’t matter,” Ye Weibai said, not moving a finger, as if her nearness were only wind. “But you shouldn’t press your own [Principles] onto others. Not every girl’s [Loneliness] needs saving with something so violent. Hearts are fickle; sometimes the [Loneliness] you think you see is a petal in passing, not as deep as you judge. Yet you force your [Loneliness] label on them—and push them clean into the abyss.”

Ye Weibai’s lips twitched, as if holding back the last line—what looks like [Principles] finally curdled, becoming desire dressed in pretty robes, nothing more than hunger.

“I see. You sound right, Senpai—” She stopped, mouth curving like a fox-kit, sly and naive. “But—I still like my way. It’s fun.”

As she spoke, she bent fast, a lightning flick, and snatched up the gun Ye Weibai had tossed—swift as a hawk.

Only… when her fingers touched the cold grip, they shook for a beat, like a string plucked too hard. Then it was gone—she had the gun and rose, smooth as silk.

Snap.

She chambered a round. The muzzle leveled at Ye Weibai, steady as a stake. Her grip was firm and familiar, as if she’d held guns a thousand times—even Bai Ye wouldn’t be steadier.

“Senpai, you’re too confident.” Her finger settled on the trigger; the next breath, the bullet would howl out like a comet.

Ye Weibai watched her, face bare of fear, and asked, “Little bell, I’ve got a question.”

“What? Your last words?”

“You said you were happy—are you really happy?”

Her right hand trembled a hair; a mocking smile climbed her face like frost. “Senpai, are you scared silly? If I’m not happy, why would I do all this?”

Ye Weibai held her gaze and smiled, warm as dawn. “No. You’re lying.”

“I—”

“I know—” he cut her off, voice light as drifting ash. “Even if there’s happiness, it’s only inside the [Setting], isn’t it?”

“You—?!”

She gasped. Color drained from her face like water pulled from clay. Shock she’d never shown before seized her, a fear sharper than when he unmasked her identity.

As if she’d heard a thunderclap secret, her whole body shook, not just her right hand. Her pupils tightened. Horror crept across her face like frost crawling on glass.

Under the moon, Ye Weibai’s smile shone bright, a clean flame—the truest smile he’d worn since the [First Day] of this tale.

Because he finally spoke the words he’d longed to say.

For a moment, their places traded—though she held the gun, it felt like Ye Weibai was the one aiming.

Ye Weibai bent slowly and picked up the silver bell he’d thrown, fingers careful as a priest lifting a relic.

Mu Ling stared without blinking, tracking every move, nerves taut like strings, afraid he’d make a sudden play.

“Mu Ling, remember what you said?—This thing is your ID.” Ye Weibai chuckled, light as wind, then casually tossed his right hand back.

A silver bell carved a graceful arc beneath silver moonlight, spinning through thirty meters of empty air as it fell. The torrent swallowed it whole without so much as a single spray.

Shock hit first. The girl stared at him, disbelief cracking across her face.

“So, without an ID, you—” Ye Weibai smiled. His smile was soft as moonlight, light as drifting cloud, there and not there, a veil of haze.

Understanding struck like ice, and panic flooded the girl’s features. It was the kind of terror you feel facing the end of the World and the edge of your life.

“No!—Don’t say it!”

“You’ve alrea—”

—Bang!

The shot rolled like thunder, reared up, and tore through the silent fields.

The instant she fired, every fear on Mu Ling’s face fell away. In its place came release, and a small, aching reluctance.

And then, in the next heartbeat, everything shattered into disbelief.

—Faster than the gunshot flew the rose-silver bullet!

It rode a blaze of starfire, howled out, split the dark and the moonlight, thudded into flesh. Blood and flecks of meat geysered with it before it vanished into the far night.

“Wh—?!”

Shaking, Mu Ling stared at the gun. Smoke still curled from the barrel.

—Clang-clatter.

The heavy pistol slammed into the ground.

“Why—why—why?! It was empty! It—there were no bullets!”

“Cough… cough, idiot.” Blood burst from Ye Weibai’s abdomen. He dropped to a half-kneel with a dull thump. Loss of blood drained him; his face went white as snow, dead-ash pale. He’d chosen this pistol. He knew its bite. He was dying, yet he smiled—bright, sunlit—because he had reached his goal: the last scene of this story.

“Asking—cough, cough—asking a question like that—”

Coughing blood and still laughing, he forced his head up to look at the girl, frozen and frantic where she stood. A consoling smile warmed his face.

“Of course—cough, cough—of course it’s—”

His voice grew small, a mosquito’s thread, then broke off clean.

“No, no, no—”

Cold clamped over Mu Ling. As if her soul had circled the Void of a starless cosmos and finally fallen back into her body, she saw—then broke.

“No—don’t—don’t!”

She screamed, ran, wild as a storm.

But those few meters stretched like a lifetime.

She fell to her knees and reached out, but in the moment her fingers sought his body, Ye Weibai’s weight tilted. He slipped, soft as a loosened rope, off the floorboards.

Mu Ling’s hand touched nothing. Her eyes flew wide, and hopelessness filmed her gaze. Her senior’s body spun in midair; blood flowered across the sky; then he hit the roaring river and was gone.

“No—no—wrong—uh—wrong! It shouldn’t be like this… Uh! Uhh, uhh—No!—this isn’t what we agreed—uhhh! This isn’t the [Setup]!”

Crawling on the filthy, blood-slick floor, she dragged her trembling hand back. She scraped her palm hard over the rough stone, let grit pierce the skin until blood and dust painted both hands. Tears poured, silent and unstoppable. She choked, sobbed, and then her fingers touched something—fallen where her senior had knelt.

“No…”

She opened it, shaking.

It was a sheet of paper, soaked in blood-warm red. On it were only a few words—

“No—”

Breath was stripped from her. For an instant she went voiceless; the World went dim and tilting. The next instant she howled—like a dying cub left in open country by its mother, full of despair and grief.

“Nooooooo!”

“Don’t—aaah!”

“No!—Dabai—this—”

“This—freedom—”

“Uhhh—aaah!”

“This thing—damn you—Dabai—”

“I—I—I don’t want it!”

…

…

At that same moment, in the dark, a gunshot cracked. A figure dropped.

“Captain Bai!!!”

Xiao Meng’s voice burst out, almost a sob.

Faster than her cry, a panther’s shadow lunged.

The A+ man from the Armed Division, all in black, launched like an arrow. His steady face knotted; veins swelled on his brow; killing intent shook the grass into a green storm.

Wind whooshed past the onlookers. He was already ten meters out.

Momentum surged, a force that split obstacles like bamboo. Right now, anyone in his path would be sent flying.

And the charging bull was stopped by a single slender forearm.

Boom—!

Wind burst wild. Grass blades thrashed and shot like darts.

Two fists met midair—one big as a stew pot, one slender like a young girl’s—colliding hard in the empty air.

They matched each other. The man even staggered back half a step.

“Mia!!!”

Heiling throttled down the killing rage burning to explode. Eyes red, he locked on the tall woman who had appeared.

She wore office attire, hair long, body tall enough to look a six-footer in the eye. Curves proud, lines elegant but alive. Skin held the warmth of wheat. Muscle shaped and sure, not harsh or bulky—full of breath and life.

This was Mia—the final boss of the Gluttonous Fox Detective Agency. She was the one who’d invited Bai Ye into her Detective agency.

She, Bai Ye, and the man before her—Heiling—shared one more bond: they had fought side by side as members of an S+ agency.

“Heiling. Go back.” Her voice was husky and tired. Her long eyes were heavy with water; her face stayed calm, but the tremor in her tone betrayed the storm inside. “This is also Old Bai’s wish.”

“He—” Heiling’s pupils opened a fraction. He understood what she meant. He understood what “Old Bai’s wish” was.

Breathing hard, he clenched his fists. “Was it—really Old Bai?”

Mia sighed. “What use is that question now?”

His face twisted. “No! Even if it was Old Bai—so what! The three of us together—who would dare touch him?!”

“You still don’t get it!” For a heartbeat, Mia’s calm cracked; killing intent flashed. “Out there—Old Bai was alone!”

“Then who fired—” Heiling’s words died on his lips.

He understood. Completely.

“Damn you—Old Bai!!”

Head bowed, fists tight, he growled low, like a trapped beast nursing a wound.

Lips pressed tight, Mia lifted her gaze to a round moon in a starless sky. Her face looked steady, but it wasn’t. Her fists clenched so hard her nails bit into her palms; blood dripped, pat… pat… to the earth.

“Yeah. He’s a vain, self-righteous bastard—we should’ve known that long ago.”

…

…

Same time.

“Shaohan, what are you doing, cooking up a storm this late at night?”

“Making dinner.”

“Oh-ho, you’re learning to cook? Is it for Grandpa?”

“Uh, sort of. Mostly it’s for someone else who’s lazy to the bone.”

“Someone else? There’s someone luckier than this old man, getting my good granddaughter’s cooking? Shaohan, don’t you go starting a romance this early.”

“Grandpa, what are you even thinking. I just—I just want to cook for a certain bastard—”

“Eh?”

Smiling mid-sentence, the girl suddenly felt her cheeks go cold. Two icy tracks fell straight from her eyes.

“What’s… happening to me—”

She’d been laughing a heartbeat ago. The next, a vast grief knifed into her heart. Holding her chest, she wiped at her eyes, now spring-fed and spilling.

“—I’m crying?”