Lu Youxun had always been kind and courteous, speaking and acting with refined grace, as if he were incapable of anger. So when Zhu Shi mentioned his past ordeal—being captured, imprisoned, and experimented on by an underground organization—I found it hard to reconcile that horror with the man standing before me. He seemed like someone who’d sailed through life without a single rough wave, his steady emotions matched by a stable existence.

  Yet right now, he was displaying unprecedented hatred and fury. Veins bulged on his forehead, his face twisted and flushed crimson, his eyes bloodshot—he looked like an entirely different person. If the man in the silver mask from that photo appeared in front of him, I had no doubt he would lunge like a vengeful demon, tearing into the man’s face with his teeth, ripping flesh apart in a frenzy.

  “What is the Humanity Division?” I asked Lu Youxun, though I’d already started piecing things together.

  Zhu Shi glanced at the entranced Lu Youxun, hesitating over whether to explain in front of him.

  He took deep, ragged breaths, struggling to rein in his rage, then spoke. “It’s a shadowy organization that operates completely outside Mount Luo’s order. Across the country, they capture freelance cultivators—freelance demon hunters, and even some from Mount Luo—using any means necessary, all to dissect and analyze their powers with science and technology.

  “Their goal is to create superhuman soldiers who are fully obedient to mundane society, answering only to ordinary human leadership.

  “Mount Luo is destined to rule over the secular world in the future, but they refuse to accept that inevitability. They’re a bunch of lunatics swimming against the tide of history.”

  So the Humanity Division was the underground group that had once captured and experimented on Lu Youxun.

  His words carried a clear bias, and I selectively absorbed what fit while asking, “Is the Monster Maker part of the Humanity Division?”

  “Yes. I’ve crossed paths with Silver Mask—that’s what we called this Monster Maker—before. I’d recognize him even if he were reduced to ashes.” Lu Youxun’s anger still simmered as he spoke. “It all makes sense now. The one creating monsters, the ‘Heart Seeds’ that turn ordinary people into them… this is exactly the kind of thing the Humanity Division would do.”

  The monsters, it seemed, were products engineered by this mysterious group called the Humanity Division.

  At the same time, they were likely connected to the Karma Demons that appeared in the apocalypse.

  But according to Alice, Karma Demons weren’t the result of human experimentation. They arose when survivors in the apocalyptic world were corrupted by a mysterious substance known as “Frenzy” that spread everywhere…

  Could that “Frenzy” also be tied to the Humanity Division?

  A highly contagious “virus” that invades the body, gradually eroding memory and self until the victim becomes a monster—it sounded eerily like something out of apocalyptic horror films.

  In those movies, a terrifying virus suddenly sweeps the globe, transforming humans into zombies or other monstrosities and ultimately collapsing civilization. The virus’s origin is often linked to conspiracy: a forbidden creation born from some massive organization’s attempt to develop bioweapons or pursue immortality research.

  Following that logic, it wasn’t hard to conclude that the Humanity Division might be the direct catalyst behind the apocalypse.

  But could things really be that straightforward? In Alice’s description of the end times, Frenzy seemed more like a side player than the main cause. It was just one among many horrors ravaging the apocalyptic world, not the root of its downfall. Just as many viewers of those films argue that even a real zombie virus couldn’t single-handedly destroy human civilization, I found it hard to believe Frenzy alone could bring humanity to its end.

  Lu Youxun finally regained his composure and poise. His breathing steadied as he turned back to the head. “Where is the Monster Maker?”

  The head, seemingly intimidated by his earlier outburst, answered obediently, “I don’t know.”

  “You used some kind of consumable item to drag us into that labyrinth space earlier. Did the Monster Maker give it to you?” Zhu Shi asked.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Yes,” the head replied.

  “Why would he give it to you? Don’t tell me it was just for self-defense,” Zhu Shi pressed.

  The head gave an unexpected answer. “It was to deal with someone named Kong Da.”

  “Agent Kong?” Zhu Shi was stunned.

  Lu Youxun pressed further. “Isn’t Kong Da a monster created by the Monster Maker, just like you? Why would he order you to go after him?”

  “Because Kong Da recently reached the limit of his current power level, and the Monster Maker wanted him to break through to the next stage,” the head explained. “To advance to the next stage, a monster must elevate their soul.

  “While it’s possible to force the elevation by devouring a massive number of souls, the Monster Maker wanted Kong Da to transcend his inner demons instead. So a week ago, he gave me a one-time key to the labyrinth space and told me to find an opportunity soon to trap Kong Da inside.

  “The clearance condition the Monster Maker set for the labyrinth was ‘break through from resident level to established level.’ I don’t know how the labyrinth relates to Kong Da’s inner demons, but unless he met the condition, he’d starve to death in there.

  “I just never got the chance to go after him—he disappeared first. Since you all know he was a monster, that means you killed him, right…?”

  “What exactly is this labyrinth space?” Lu Youxun asked us.

  Zhu Shi explained it to him. After listening, he fell silent for a moment before letting out a long, heavy sigh. “So that’s how it is… I never truly saved him back then. Even at the moment of his death, his mind was still trapped in that ghost wall from twenty years ago…”

  After thinking it over, I asked the head, “I don’t quite get it. Don’t monsters like you summon clones from shadows? Couldn’t you just summon enough clones inside the labyrinth to ignore the clearance condition and force your way out?”

  “The labyrinth space only recognizes entities with true consciousness and perception as individuals at its core. The clones we summon have some degree of intelligence but lack real minds, and we can’t share senses with them,” the head answered. “Kong Da was probably a slight exception. The Monster Maker once told me that Kong Da’s ability is ‘creating substitutes.’ He can temporarily transfer his Heart Seed to someone else, turning them into a puppet he controls while sharing their senses.

  “But he can only control one substitute at a time. To overload and collapse the labyrinth, you’d need at least two thousand perceiving entities moving around inside it simultaneously. Even the strongest of us monsters can summon no more than ten clones at once—I’m one of the more exceptional ones, and even I can only manage dozens. Two thousand is completely out of reach for any monster.

  “There’s another brute-force method to break the labyrinth: unleash an enormous burst of firepower from within—at least on the scale of that recent gas explosion near Saltwater University. That could temporarily tear open a gap. But again, that kind of power is far beyond what monsters like us can produce…”

  So the labyrinth could be cracked with raw force after all.

  And here I’d been racking my brain for clever solutions.

  “Agent Kong could temporarily transfer his power source?” Zhu Shi suddenly understood. “No wonder I never realized he was a monster, even though he was constantly around me.”

  For some reason, Lu Youxun’s expression darkened. “Monsters can summon clones from shadows… Now that I think about it, I have seen that in the records…”

  “There should be other monsters in this city, right?” I asked the head. “Besides you and the now-dead Agent Kong, how many more are there?”

  “Just one,” the head replied.

  “What’s his real identity? Where is he?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know. I’ve only been a monster for ten days. I’ve met the other one once, but I don’t know his real identity. I only learned Kong Da’s because the Monster Maker told me—I’d never even met Kong Da in person before that,” the head said. “All I know is the other monster probably lives in the New District. That’s about it.”

  The one who attacked Chang’an was likely this other monster he mentioned.

  And if I wanted to find Alice, that was the direction I’d have to pursue next.

  Hearing that the head had only been a monster for ten days, Lu Youxun seemed to realize something else. “So the monster that’s been hunting local dignitaries these past two months wasn’t you—it was that other one?”

  “Yes,” the head confirmed.

  “That’s strange. We tracked the monster hunting local dignitaries, and that trail led us to you,” Lu Youxun mused. “I even used divination. There should be a significant causal link between you and this string of events…”

  He pulled out photos of two recent murder scenes and showed them to the head. “Did you do these?”

  One showed an elderly person killed alone outdoors; the other showed a husband, wife, and son murdered together.

  The head’s gaze lingered on the second one for a long moment before he answered, “…The family of three—that scene was me. The other one wasn’t.”

  “I see…” Lu Youxun still seemed puzzled but didn’t press further, simply brooding in silence.

  Zhu Shi stared intently at the head, her voice grave. “Did you become a monster willingly? Or did the Monster Maker force you?”

  “I chose it willingly,” the head said.

  Zhu Shi asked again, “Did he tell you beforehand that becoming a monster would make you crave devouring human souls?”

  “Yes,” the head admitted frankly. “He even warned me that if I went too long without killing or feeding on souls, I’d lose control and turn into a mindless beast obsessed with devouring. And if I refused to become a monster, he’d simply walk away.”

  “And you just agreed?” Zhu Shi said, incredulous.

  “Why wouldn’t I? This was a golden opportunity!” The head’s voice grew fervent as he recalled the moment. “To become something beyond human—to become a superhuman! How could I possibly pass up a chance like that? I absolutely could not let it slip by!

  “Now I’m a being that stands above the masses. If I were transported back to ancient times, I could declare myself a god descended to the mortal world to those ignorant fools—and they would all bow to me, worship me, serve me as slaves!”