The officer gave a slight nod to my question, though his verbal response stayed cautious: “At least that’s what the current evidence suggests.”

  No wonder the same officer investigating Alice’s case had shown up here.

  If we took his statement at face value, then Alice was both the serial killer who’d struck in the past two or three months and the murderer who killed the previous tenant in that apartment eight months ago.

  Yet according to Alice herself, she had only crossed over from the apocalyptic era to this time yesterday—and that timing served as her perfect alibi.

  There were ways to reconcile these seemingly contradictory claims, but I won’t go into the details right now. Any such theory would require fully believing Alice’s story in the first place.

  I have to admit: part of me does crave chaos. I secretly hope for an apocalypse massive enough to shatter every established order.

  It’s not that I want the end result—“human civilization reduced to ruins.” What I truly desire is the process: everything colliding violently with whatever cataclysm might bring that ruin—and me being caught up in the middle of it. During that world-shaking upheaval, I might be terrified out of my wits, laugh at how naive I once was, or discover entirely new sides of myself.

  Still, from a rational standpoint, I remain skeptical of the future Alice described. In other words, the possibility that she really is a serial killer hasn’t been ruled out in my mind.

  For one thing, the police have a photograph of her.

  Not some blurry street snapshot caught by chance—a proper, formal headshot. Normal people don’t usually take photos like that unless there’s a specific reason. That piece of evidence alone seriously undermined her claim of having “only arrived in this era yesterday.”

  The impression Alice gave me didn’t feel like someone who would kill indiscriminately—but if we judged everything based on vague impressions, what would be the point of reasoning or evidence?

  “Can we go now?” Chang'an asked. Learning the killer was still active in the city had made him restless.

  “Not yet. Both of you need to give statements first.”

  The officer switched to official mode and led us to the small pavilion in the residential complex.

  “We’re not going to the station?” Chang'an asked.

  “No need,” the officer replied curtly.

  Seeing Chang'an still look confused, I explained: “We’re not suspects. There’s no requirement to take statements in an interrogation room. Doing it outside is fine.”

  Chang'an had run into the police a few times back when he was constantly causing trouble, yet he still hadn’t picked up even the basics—unlike me, the supposedly law-abiding citizen.

  Though at this point, that “law-abiding” label felt more like dark comedy.

  The officer seemed to ask casually: “You seem to know a lot. Been questioned before?”

  “Just read a lot of novels,” I answered.

  He sat down in the pavilion, took out paper, pen, and a recorder, then looked at me. “In that case, we’ll start with you.”

  I sat up straight across from him, feeling a flicker of nerves.

  It wasn’t just a guilty conscience—the real gun hidden in my backpack felt like it was burning through the fabric and scorching my back.

  The statement was just routine questions and answers. In the end, he couldn’t ask me anything too complicated anyway. I wasn’t the tenant of the fifteenth-floor apartment; the bulk of the questions were directed at Chang'an.

  During a brief lull, I seized the chance to ask: “The ‘magic circle’ in that apartment—was it left there by the killer eight months ago? Didn’t the crime-scene investigators notice it back then?”

  A magic circle hidden under the carpet might go unnoticed by an ordinary tenant for a while, but for police specializing in homicide scenes to miss it would be inexcusable.

  Yet judging from this officer’s attitude, it seemed the authorities had only become aware of the circle’s existence today—eight months later.

  There had to be some crucial clue here that I still didn’t have.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “That’s something you’d have to ask the officers who handled the scene at the time,” he deflected smoothly, then added, “And don’t interrupt. I’m the one asking questions now.”

  As expected, I wasn’t going to get a straight answer so easily. I was just an ordinary citizen; he had no obligation to share case details with me.

  I verbally agreed, then changed tack and tried to indirectly probe for information about Alice.

  Last time, the officer had openly called her a “serial killer.” Procedurally speaking, without any trial, even with overwhelming evidence, she should still only be referred to as a “suspect”—not a “criminal.”

  Of course, that’s just the strict legal terminology. In casual conversation, calling someone with ironclad evidence a criminal rarely draws complaints.

  What I really wanted to know was whether the authorities already had conclusive proof that Alice had committed murder.

  But this officer remained tight-lipped about the case. I couldn’t pry out a single useful detail.

  Soon he finished questioning me, glanced at Chang'an, and said to me: “Next I need to speak with him alone. You can go.”

  “Huh?” Chang'an looked puzzled.

  I had a rough idea of what the officer planned to say to him next.

  “Got it.” I stood up, then told Chang'an, “I’ll wait for you outside the complex.”

  —

  Even though I said I was leaving, there was no way I was going to be that obedient.

  As I walked away, I secretly placed a “firefly” near the pavilion to eavesdrop on the entire statement process.

  As expected, Chang'an stubbornly insisted he had genuinely encountered something supernatural in the fifteenth-floor apartment, yet he had no proof to back it up. Most of the officer’s questions were perfectly reasonable and grounded in common sense.

  But did the authorities truly know nothing about things “beyond common sense”? There were people like me with superpowers, and phenomena like the basement on the fifteenth floor. Even if many extraordinary secrets stayed hidden from the public, the authorities must know about at least some of them.

  The very fact that the public remained unaware of such anomalies was itself evidence of some “invisible hand” suppressing information. To enforce information control on that scale, there had to be a sufficiently large organization working behind the scenes.

  The question was—why would the authorities do that? Were they afraid widespread knowledge of the supernatural would cause social panic? That excuse felt far too weak.

  Or perhaps there existed anomalies capable of spreading harm through human perception alone, forcing the authorities to take such drastic measures?

  Of course, there was one other possibility—though I found it unlikely: maybe things like me and the fifteenth-floor basement were so exceedingly rare that virtually no one knew about them.

  “Um, Officer—why do you need to talk to me alone?” Chang'an finally couldn’t hold back. “Is there something my friend can’t hear?”

  The officer didn’t seem to notice my hidden “firefly.” Under my watchful gaze, he answered: “Sort of. But mainly it’s to warn you.”

  “Warn me?” Chang'an looked confused.

  “In the past two or three months, that serial killer has taken five lives. All the victims share one trait: they were either extremely wealthy or held high positions—business tycoons or important officials. You’re not an entrepreneur or official, but your family background is just as exceptional, so…”

  I’d already read about this in the news, but Chang'an clearly hadn’t. His face went pale with horror. “You think I could be the next victim?”

  “I’m just saying we can’t rule it out. From now on, we’ll have people watching over you discreetly.” The officer spoke with reassuring firmness.

  Chang'an panicked, then suddenly showed a flash of sharp thinking and spotted a gap: “Wait—that doesn’t add up. Was my previous tenant one of those ‘extremely wealthy or high-position’ types?”

  The fifteenth-floor unit was in an ordinary residential complex. From my earlier investigation, the former tenant had been nothing of the sort—just an average company employee.

  “No. He was just an ordinary office worker—the only exception in this string of incidents. We’re still looking into any potential connection between him and the other victims.” The officer shook his head, then warned, “Even so, don’t let your guard down. Haven’t your parents or elders mentioned the recent disturbances?”

  At that, Chang'an’s expression darkened. “Well…”

  Others might not know, but I did: things weren’t exactly smooth for Chang'an at home.

  The officer didn’t know the family situation and skipped over it. “In short, stay alert. Avoid deserted places and be wary of suspicious people. Especially—if you ever spot signs of large wild animals, do not stay in the area.”

  “Large wild animals?” Chang'an asked cautiously.

  “All five recent victims—and the former tenant of that apartment—had extensive tearing and bite marks on their bodies. Animal hairs were also found at the scenes.” In front of Chang'an, the officer revealed details he hadn’t mentioned before. “Although no large predators have escaped from the Saltwater City Zoo, and there have been no sightings or surveillance footage of wild beasts in the urban area, it’s better to be cautious.”

  Tearing and bite marks… so the victims really weren’t killed by gunfire?

  But according to what he said last time, the serial killer was supposedly a rebellious teenage girl who’d somehow gotten her hands on a handgun and used it to wreak havoc.

  I recalled the scene when I first found Alice: her hospital gown had been badly torn in several places, which made me think at the time that she’d been attacked by someone with a bladed weapon. But if I reinterpreted those tears as the result of a large animal mauling, it suddenly fit much better.

  In other words—was Alice actually a victim? Had she encountered the serial killer and been gravely wounded by them? Yet in the end, beneath all that blood, she was completely unharmed. How?

  And why had the finger of blame turned back on her as the murderer?

  “That’s all for now. Later, contact your landlord and terminate the lease on that apartment. Also—hand over the keys. We still need to secure the scene.”

  “Oh, sure.” Chang'an handed them over.

  “My colleague will call you shortly to coordinate. I have other important duties, so I’ll take my leave.”

  With that, the officer packed up his paper, pen, and recorder and walked away.

  I felt a twinge of confusion. If they were planning to protect Chang'an, shouldn’t they take him to the station or some safe location right now and have his colleague meet him there? Leaving him alone in the meantime—if the killer struck during that gap, it would be a disaster.

  The more I thought about it, the more suspicious this officer seemed.

  I couldn’t help wondering—was he really a police officer?

  I directed the “firefly” to tail the mature-looking man as he left.