Edited by Cloud Chip Cake.
“Impossible, absolutely impossible. I’ve never heard of ‘Ling Yunyun’ before, and I have no enmity with her. How could I have used my logic skill to kill her?!”
Zhao Hen’s intense shock was evident on his face, his dark complexion unable to hide it. He panted heavily, feeling both absurdly wronged and hysterically angry. “Department Head Li, Xiao Jinyu, do you think this is possible? Captain, please, do you think I would kill someone?”
The training room for Zhongdu’s Extermination Squad had long been cleared out, now leaving only Zhao Hen facing off against Xiao Jinyu, Wang Tao, and Li Xiaoxiao.
Wang Tao stood with his arms crossed, silent for a long time before he finally spoke. “No one thinks you would kill him. I know my team members.” Though he addressed Zhao Hen, his cold gaze was fixed on Li Xiaoxiao and Xiao Jinyu. “Have you been to this samba dance class?”
Zhao Hen wiped his face. “Yes, I went when I first awakened my logic skill. At the time, I was just a level one user thinking about how to get to level two and use my logic skill better. I realized that the more precise and better the samba I danced, the stronger my logic skill became. No one is born knowing how to dance samba, so I enrolled in a class and learned for six months.”
Wang Tao quickly asked, “Who enrolled in the class first, you or Ling Yunyun?”
Li Xiaoxiao blurted out, “Ling Yunyun.”
Zhao Hen: “…”
“What kind of logic skill is this?!”
The midday sunlight streamed through the tall narrow windows of the training room, casting clean beams of light and illuminating tiny dust particles suspended in the air. Zhao Hen punched the iron training shield, his knuckles turning red instantly. Hoarsely, he muttered, “She had a fever and ran a red light, a fever, her body overheated. Overheated… my Sexy Samba…”
The empty room fell silent.
***
Zhao Hen couldn’t have killed Ling Yunyun.
Since the beginning, Xiao Jinyu and Li Xiaoxiao had held this belief.
But Ling Yunyun had died because of Zhao Hen.
It wasn’t that Zhao Hen wanted to kill her, but her death was indeed related to Sexy Samba.
Xiao Jinyu asked, “Zhao-ge, when you were level one, what was the function of your logic skill? Can you explain it?”
Zhao Hen quickly calmed down.
He clearly knew he couldn’t have actively killed an innocent person; the real cause of her death couldn’t have been his logic skill.
——There had to be a second logic skill at play.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Zhao Hen replied, “Of course not! I was only at level one then, and using ‘Sexy Samba’ had some restrictions. For example, I had to wear special clothing, like shorts no longer than ten centimeters below the buttocks. This limitation was only removed when I reached level four and modified the logic factors. I couldn’t use the logic skill among ordinary citizens without reason, and I was afraid of hurting others if I lost control. So, I never used the logic skill in the samba class, not even once!”
“So, you never used the ‘logic skill’.”
“No.”
“But Ling Yunyun had an unexplained fever…”
The training room fell silent.
Everyone was deep in thought.
Eight victims, and three of their deaths were linked to logic skills.
Now with Ling Yunyun, she was the fourth.
To Zhao Hen, It didn’t make sense that Ling Yunyun’s death had nothing to do with logic skills. After all, her primary cause of death was a fever.
Li Xiaoxiao proposed the first hypothesis: “Could the real ‘murderous’ logic skill have a causal factor that allows another logic skill within its domain to bypass its usual conditions and directly activate its effects?”
Xiao Jinyu looked at her seriously and said, “That’s very possible.”
However, Zhao Hen immediately refuted this simple assumption. “It’s possible, but definitely not the whole picture. My ‘Sexy Samba’ creates a high-temperature environment, making the air feel scorching hot. If you stay in a high-temperature environment for a long time, your body should show signs of heatstroke, not just a fever. Also, Ling Yunyun was a normal adult, not a fool. If she really got caught in ‘Sexy Samba’ and felt the air heating up, she wouldn’t have kept it quiet from the people around her.”
“So what she really felt was likely just internal heat.”
Zhao Hen explained, “In the three years since I awakened my logic skill, not a single person has shown symptoms of fever. She was the first.”
It wasn’t abnormal external heat but a sudden fever within her own body.
Wang Tao remarked, “So, it not only activated your logic skill but also, to some extent, modified its manifestation?”
Zhao Hen thought for a moment and then nodded vigorously.
Xiao Jinyu, his fingers subconsciously rubbing his lower lip, stared at a distant point in the air. He then turned to Li Xiaoxiao and asked, “Are there any surveillance video records left from that yoga class three years ago?”
Li Xiaoxiao shook her head regretfully. “They’re long gone.” She had confirmed this from the start. “As for the memories of the yoga class teachers and students regarding Ling Yunyun, they all said that Ling Yunyun just mentioned feeling unwell and wanting to go home. She didn’t say anything else. Of course, she didn’t mention whether she had a fever, just that she felt a bit dizzy.”
Xiao Jinyu asked, “Zhao-ge, do you remember anything from three years ago?”
The dark-skinned man smiled bitterly. “Three years ago, I had just awakened my logic skill and was only a level one user. My physical enhancements were still minimal. I do remember the samba class, but none of my memories include ‘Ling Yunyun’. I can be sure of that.”
Ling Yunyun was dead, and Zhao Hen couldn’t recall anything about her. So, was there no way to retrieve the specific details of what happened back then?
Suddenly, Xiao Jinyu looked up in surprise. “What if we ask ‘Dreamer’ for help? Could they completely reconstruct the scene of Zhao-ge practicing samba three years ago?”
Everyone was stunned.
Zhao Hen exclaimed, “Right! I can guarantee I didn’t use my logic skill back then, but it’s been so long that I can’t be 100% certain. And Dreamer can recall memories in complete detail. If there were any special people or events, she could ‘see’ them all.”
Li Xiaoxiao frowned, reminding him, “Zhao Hen, those are memories from three years ago.”
Zhao Hen also showed a troubled expression, pondering for a moment before saying, “We are both level four users. For memories from three years ago… I should be able to withstand the side effects.”
Xiao Jinyu keenly sensed something unusual. “The side effects of Dreamer’s logic skill are related to the age of the memories?”
……
A77— Dreamer.
A month ago, Xiao Jinyu had entered this level four user’s logic skill chain without any defenses.
Upon exiting the logic skill chain, Dreamer told him that her logic skill could extract memories from the subject but would also make the subject see the most terrifying thing in their life.
Zhao Hen said, “We are both level four users.” He took out his phone and opened the Grow Some Brains APP user leaderboard. “Currently, I’m ranked A79, and she’s A77. There’s not much difference between us. Her logic skill can cause irreversible mental damage to the user, and the further back the memories, the more realistic and prolonged the mental illusion. If it’s within a year, I should be fine. As for three years back, I think I can handle it without getting lost and trapped in the painful illusion.”
Without delay, Zhao Hen contacted Dreamer.
Dreamer was still in Haidu.
Li Xiaoxiao said, “I’ll continue investigating the other four victims and your biological parents, Xiao Jinyu.”
Xiao Jinyu replied, “Thank you.”
The young female department head smiled slightly, “You’re welcome.” Then her expression turned serious, “This is no longer just a personal matter. This is a logic skill hidden in the shadows, secretly slaughtering people. No one knows how many citizens who seemingly died ‘normal deaths’ over the past twenty years were actually killed by it!”
…
In a dark and narrow underground tunnel, a steel train roared forward.
High-wattage spotlights illuminated the way ahead, making the underground train look like a rushing anglerfish, speeding towards Haidu in the distance.
Since awakening his logic skill, Xiao Jinyu had taken the underground train four times in a month and a half, traveling between Zhongdu and Haidu.
“Tap, tap, tap—”
The dark-skinned strong man cast a curious glance at the young man, whose fingers were rhythmically tapping the window’s plastic edge. Xiao Jinyu’s cold face showed no trace of color as he gazed out into the pitch-black space outside the window, his mind racing.
The four confirmed deaths related to logic skills were:
His mother and Wang Mengmeng, confirmed to have died from the logic skills “Pope’s Crown” and “Valiant Knight”.
Professor Huang, who was in the logic skill “Relativity”, died of an acute myocardial infarction.
Ling Yunyun, suspected to have fallen into the logic skill “Sexy Samba”, ultimately died in an accidental car crash caused by fever…
What was the connection between Professor Huang’s and Ling Yunyun’s deaths and the logic skills?
What role did this ‘Third-Party Logic Skill’ play in these cases?
What was its cause and effect?
…
“Arriving at the station.” Zhao Hen glanced at his phone. “It’s six-thirty in the afternoon. I’ve already spoken with Xu Qi, and he’s sending members of the Extermination Squad to pick us up.”
The bustling crowd swarmed out of the train, and passengers from all directions traversed the dim underground passage towards the surface.
Zhao Hen contacted his former samba dance coach and several classmates who practiced with him. Unfortunately, none of them remembered the woman from the neighboring class who died in a car accident.
Carrying his bag, Zhao Hen strode forward with a solemn expression. “I thought about it a lot on the train. Fever might also be a manifestation of ‘Sexy Samba’. If the ‘Third-Party Logic Skill’ confined my logic skill solely to Ling Yunyun, effectively compressing its release area to entirely within her body, her symptoms might be explainable as a sudden high fever.”
—
Ninth Sister: I heard I was supposed to meet my wife in this chapter? [smile]
Fuwa: ……Because I had writer’s block T-T, you’ll have to wait until the next chapter……
Thanks for the chapter!
Thanks for the chapter !!
Thank you for the update 🖤💯