After AFK for five years, I returned to be number one in the entire server.

Qin Wei collapsed to the ground. She told Lin Ye to leave, but Lin Ye raised his hand and made strange gestures.

Then Lin seemed to suddenly understand her words and jumped off the balcony.

Pei Xiao was still using her abilities on the room, which was now unrecognizable as it had been, completely reduced to ruins.

After a while, Pei Xiao stopped using his abilities. He himself couldn't tell whether he had killed the other party or not; only powder remained on the ground.

But at least he was still alive, and the other party showed no intention of attacking again. He observed the situation closely for a long time to make sure the danger was truly over.

"Are you alright?"

The reinforcements sent by the branch arrived quickly and surrounded the two men.

They retreated from the boys' dormitory and found Lin Ye downstairs.

That evening, the Ningchuan branch received a transferred alarm record.

In Jinlan District, a resident of a residential building noticed that the door to the apartment next door was half open and the light was on when he was on his way home. He called out a few times but received no response. Peeking inside, he saw a person lying on the living room floor.

The branch sent people to the scene. The body was a young man in his early twenties. The cause of death was a broken cervical spine.

By comparing entry records, the chain of forged documents, and the scattered data fragments left by the Queen Mother of the West, it was confirmed that the deceased was indeed Shi Gu.

There were no traces of a second person at the scene, the door lock was intact, and there were no signs of forced entry.

Zhou Ping instructed the technical department to retrieve all the surveillance footage around the building, but no suspicious persons were found.

The fact that the bone-eating poison died is a good thing in itself, as the threat has been eliminated.

But now there is another unknown entity, and we don't even know what its purpose is, which makes the Tian Shu branch uneasy.

The investigation continued for some time without progress.

One evening, Qin Wei found Lin Ye in an alley outside the school.

He was sitting on a plastic stool at the potsticker stall, with a plate of freshly cooked potstickers in front of him, and no one else around him.

Qin Wei walked over and sat down opposite him, asking directly, "That day in the dormitory, when I told you to leave, before you jumped, you seemed to be making some strange movements. What were you grabbing for?"

"I was nervous, my hands were shaking."

The smoke from the potsticker stall drifted over, the hot plate sizzled, and the owner flipped over a row of new potstickers, oil splattering onto the surface.

"Your hands are shaking?"

The situation was quite dangerous at the time, and even the members of the operations team were driven to the point of losing their minds. It's not unreasonable for Lin, a college student, to have his hands trembling with fear.

But seeing Lin Ye's calm demeanor, as if the sky were to fall, she didn't quite believe that his hands would tremble.

This conversation did not resolve her doubts, and Zhou Ping found her when she returned to the branch.

"The bone-corroding ability has been investigated."

"What is it?"

"A mental clone—he can project a portion of his spirit to form an independent clone that can directly attack a person's spirit," Zhou Ping explained the function of this ability.

Qin Wei suddenly realized how those combat team members had died.

Why is it that no matter how hard everyone tries, they can't find his location or launch an effective attack against him?

Qin Wei returned to her workstation, a thoughtful expression on her face, as she recalled Lin Ye's strange behavior that day.

He said his hands were shaking, but it actually felt more like he was grabbing someone.

She sat for a while, then turned on her computer and pulled up the location of the agonizing death.

Jinlan District.

She was dressed in business attire and climbed from the first floor to the fourth floor. The door to room 402 was sealed with tape, and the gaps in the door were sealed shut.

She stood in the corridor and looked around. There were four households on the fourth floor, which was really unlucky.

She knocked on the door of room 401, but no one answered.

The person who opened the door to 403 was an elderly woman in her sixties, wearing a floral cotton-padded jacket, with gray hair and a wary expression.

Qin Wei showed his identification, and the old lady looked at it for a long time before shaking her head and saying that she had gone to bed early that night and knew nothing about it.

The last room was also empty.

Qin Wei went downstairs and walked around the community. There was only one person on duty in the property office, a middle-aged man. Qin Wei asked if any residents had reported anything unusual on the night of the incident.

The middle-aged man checked the records and indicated that there were none.

Qin Wei then asked several residents living on lower floors. Most of them had similar attitudes: either they didn't know about buying it, or they knew something had happened but hadn't seen anything.

She expanded the scope, not limiting herself to Building 6, but visiting all the surrounding buildings.

Finally, as evening approached, she found a resident, a woman in her twenties, who opened the door and showed half her face, holding an orange cat in her arms.

Qin Wei explained his purpose, and the girl hesitated for a moment before opening the door.

"I didn't hear anything that day; I was just taking pictures of the cat from the window."

"Can I see the photos?"

The girl nodded, took out her camera, flipped through it for a while, and handed it to Qin Wei.

The screen displays a series of photos of an orange cat crouching on a sofa by the window.

Qin Wei scrolled through the photos one by one until she saw one.

The photo was taken at an angle; the cat's body is tilted to the right, taking up most of the frame, while a window of the building opposite is visible on the left.

There were no curtains in the window, so you could see inside. Half of a person's face was wedged into the window frame.

From the side, the contours extend from the cheekbone to the jawline, and a small section of the shoulder.

The image was blurry and the shooting was very noisy, but Qin Wei still recognized it.

"Could I have this photo? I need it for my research."

……

……

Downstairs at Songyuan dormitory, Qin Wei stood gracefully by the streetlight, quietly waiting for Lin Ye to come downstairs.

"What is it now?"

"Shall we take a walk?"

Lin followed her along the pebble path toward the artificial lake. There weren't many people on the road. She handed him the printed photos.

Lin also glanced at it for two seconds.

Qin Wei said calmly, "The time of Gu's death is very close to the time the photo was taken, and the time you jumped off the building also matches the photo."

"I don't know how you did it. Maybe you have a similar ability to Bone Erosion."

"I'm the only one who's seen the photo. The original owner no longer has this photo. The surveillance footage from the technical department didn't capture you. The branch currently classifies Erosion's death as an unknown factor."

She spoke at a steady pace, as if reading from prepared material, but her eyes remained fixed on Lin Ye's reaction.

"Do you need me to do something?"

Qin Wei smiled and said, "Yes."

"Speak."

"Join Tian Shu."

Lin hadn't expected that this was what the other party wanted him to do. He hadn't agreed directly before because he was afraid of the trouble, since he would have to accept orders.

"After joining, is this the end of it?" He didn't want to be traced back to the source; his method of killing the Bone-Eater was much more violent and direct than using a similar ability.

"Sigu killed so many people. No one will be unhappy about his death. As for who killed him, the branch hopes to find out, but if it can't be found out, it won't keep investigating."

After saying that, Qin Wei stopped talking and left him alone.

"OK."