Chapter 981: The Heart-Seeker
Su Shan had no idea what had happened to her. Ever since yesterday, she had suddenly appeared on the street, and her memory felt like it had been severed.
She clearly remembered dying in a game. According to what Qin Dingdong had told her, after obtaining an "Echo," dying should have meant opening her eyes in the real world. Yet when she woke up, she found herself standing on a street in the "Endland," with her own corpse lying nearby.
She had no choice but to wander aimlessly in the vicinity. After spending the night inside a roadside building, she finally got up and continued on.
She hadn't walked far when, passing a building, she turned her head casually and caught sight of a familiar silhouette inside—a burly, strong man wearing a black T-shirt.
Su Shan quickened her pace, stepped into the room, and took a closer look. It was indeed an acquaintance she had met before.
"Ah!" Su Shan exclaimed with a hint of delight, then quickly saluted. "You're Captain Li from Inner Mongolia!"
"Huh...?" Officer Li turned around, stunned, his expression extremely unnatural. "You... you're Xiao Su from the Hunan Criminal Investigation Technical Department?"
"Right!" Su Shan nodded with a smile. "It's so great to see you! It's really such a relief to meet—"
Before she could finish, Su Shan froze.
Because she inadvertently noticed that Officer Li's left hand was clutching something dark, foul-smelling, and oddly shaped—something that looked familiar.
His fingers were caked with dried bloodstains, and his pants and arms were smeared with bloody handprints.
She frowned and stared for a long moment before asking cautiously, "Captain Li... is that...?"
Officer Li looked extremely flustered. He quickly stood up and instinctively tried to hide his left hand behind his back. But Su Shan was a police officer after all—even if Li hid his hand behind him, she was already suspicious.
"It's... nothing... Xiao Su... I..." Officer Li seemed completely unprepared for a familiar face to walk in suddenly. He was at a loss for words.
Su Shan thought for a moment, and her eyes suddenly gleamed with a brilliance as dazzling as diamonds.
A ripple passed through her field of vision, and two words appeared clearly around Officer Li. To her surprise, these two words shone far brighter than any she had ever seen before.
A few seconds later, she asked softly, "Pocket Reach...?"
"How... do you know?"
Su Shan withdrew the glow and asked seriously, "Is that your 'Echo'...? But what exactly is that thing in your hand...?"
Officer Li stared at Su Shan blankly for a moment, hesitating, before letting out a bitter laugh. "I... I might be going a little crazy from this place... I'm afraid if I tell you, you'll be scared..."
Su Shan swallowed slightly and quietly took half a step toward the door.
She had thought running into an acquaintance in a roadside building would be a good thing, but he seemed too off. Officer Li was much taller and bigger than her, and as a fellow police academy graduate, he was certainly well-versed in combat. If a fight broke out, she wouldn't stand a chance.
"Captain Li... did you kill someone?" Su Shan asked calmly. "Is that a heart you're holding?"
"I didn't kill anyone, but it really is a heart." Officer Li nodded, pulled the heart out from behind his back, and opened his hand in front of Su Shan.
Though she was a technical officer, this was the first time Su Shan had seen a human heart up close. In ordinary cases, it was rare for a murderer to be cruel enough to dig out a victim's heart.
She had to admit the heart was smaller than she had imagined—only about the size of a fist, shaped like a peach, but it looked as if someone had crushed it, leaving it slightly deformed.
To Su Shan, a forensic investigator, this heart was riddled with suspicious details.
First, all the blood vessels had been neatly severed, as if removed cleanly and completely from the body. Each vessel had signs of bleeding, suggesting the heart was likely still beating when it was taken out.
Second, the blood on the surface had already dried, meaning it had been out of the body for some time. Officer Li's fingers, nails, and even forearms were stained with blood.
From these observations, it wasn't hard to guess that after digging the heart out of a living person, he had been holding and playing with it all along. Given the degree of drying and the residue in his fingers, it had probably been at least a day.
This eerie realization sent a chill down Su Shan's spine.
This was the kind of thing only a dangerously deranged, antisocial murderer would do. As a young officer, Su Shan had never seen anything like it.
Seeing Su Shan step back, Officer Li quickly explained, "Xiao Su, I don't know if you'll believe me when I say this... but I really didn't kill anyone. I've been using this heart to practice 'Pocket Reach'..."
"Practice 'Pocket Reach'...?" Su Shan was taken aback. Her keen police instincts made her blurt out, "The purpose of practicing 'Pocket Reach' with a heart... is to kill?"
"I..." Officer Li faltered, then shook his head helplessly. "Xiao Su... what I want to kill isn't people, but something far more dangerous."
"What...?" Su Shan raised an eyebrow. "Something more dangerous... an 'object'?"
"I once saw those things use 'Pocket Reach'," Officer Li said. "I used to think this ability could only take out small objects... but I never imagined it could remove a person's internal organs. This heart belonged to a brother from the 'Cat'—he was killed by that thing right in front of me... It ripped out his heart and crushed it in its hand. We humans were completely powerless."
The sheer volume of information was too overwhelming for Su Shan to process.
"I thought... if I could get used to the feeling of pulling a 'heart' out of a pocket... maybe I could do the same... Maybe I could pull out the hearts of those things?" Li said with a bitter smile. "But I think I'm going insane... Is what I'm doing even right...?"
He slowly placed the fist-sized heart into his pants pocket, then smoothly pulled it out again.
Su Shan clearly saw that the pocket of his pants was soaked with dried blood, stiffened to the touch. A light brush would send flakes of blackish-red, dried blood dust falling like snowflakes.
"I've repeated this movement thousands of times in two days..." Li said, his expression despairing. "I don't know what I'm even doing... I..."
"You'll succeed." Su Shan replied somberly. "Captain Li... I've been through something similar. The state you're in now... is exactly right."
"Right...?"
"Yeah." Su Shan gave a faint, sympathetic smile. "Qi Xia once taught me that the more desperate people are here, the stronger they become. The ripples of your 'Pocket Reach' are very clear right now."