As he sprinted down the street, the sound of gunfire became brighter and more urgent.
Malin led the half-humans over the low walls, cutting through someone’s backyard, flipping over the fierce watchdog with a small branch. He was the first to vault the wall, landing in a yard filled with dead bodies.
"They all have weapons, damn it." The half-human squad, after scaling the wall, scrambled for cover, rolling and crawling. Malin turned over a corpse and examined the bullet hole on the face—a revolver wound, the bullet entering below the eye and turning the back of his head into a verb in past tense.
He got up, raised his firearm, and Malin twisted his neck, causing the bright flashlight on his helmet to start working.
By then, the leader of the half-human squad had reached the back door. He pulled out a flare from his waist, released the safety, and tossed it through the slightly ajar door.
With no gunfire following, the half-humans pushed open the door. Malin yanked the leader back and then entered, gun held high.
A narrow corridor with a fallen body, the entire head gone, only the remaining tissue on one side told Malin how it had disappeared—if he was not mistaken, it was a hollow point bullet, caliber 12, that had entered through the mouth and broke the connection between the spine and the skull. That’s why the jaw was still intact.
Malin walked a few steps, and the half-human teams’ captain kicked open the bathroom door: "There’s a dead person."
So Malin continued forward, staying close to the wall, gun pointed at the corner. As he nearly reached it, another half-human jogged to the opposite side of the corridor and stood opposite Malin. He took a flash grenade from his waist, pulled the pin, and tossed it to Malin.
Malin caught it and bounced it off the wall facing the corner. The long, rod-shaped illuminator rebounded into the living room.
The light flashed, and Malin, holding his gun low, peeked out, swiftly scanning and fired two shots.
By now, the half-human had entered the living room, lying on the carpet with a flare gun in his hand, firing at the ceiling. The illuminated flare with a nail head got stuck on the ceiling, brightening the space and revealing the grim scene in the living room to Malin.
The leader of the half-humans had also crawled into the living room, given Malin a look, and then at the dead person, now with two additional holes: "Good shooting."
"Average." While Malin introspected upon seeing the glowing bald head, he counted the dead in the living room: "Eleven dead."
"Yeah, the killer is very professional. He even killed these poor sods through the wall." The half-human captain confirmed the bullet trajectory and pointed to a spot on the wall.
Malin glanced at that wall, which had eleven bullet holes.
Not one more, not one less.
"A Transcendent murder case?" Malin asked, curious.
One of the half-humans following him overturned a body and found a small object that overthrew Malin’s earlier thought: "Father’s Love?" Malin looked at the letters on the round badge, puzzled.
"Your excellency, coming from Carterburg, naturally you wouldn’t know. Father’s Love is a small but notorious Chaos sect in the Central Administrative Province." Having confirmed the victims’ identities, the captain of the half-human squadron was less secretive. While speaking to Malin, he knocked over the corpse of a Chaotic Believer sitting on the pool table, flipping it onto the table: "Now I’m rather curious about the identity of the killer."
"What do you think?" Malin drew two bullets from his waist, opened the dust cover of the gun chamber, and asked while loading the ammunition.
"There are many possibilities, judging by the fact that the killer didn’t remove the tattoos from their bodies and simply left the scene, it doesn’t seem like the work of money-hungry mercenaries or Demon Hunters."
"He must have left through the front door." A half-human pushed open the slightly ajar door, looking out onto the bustling street market: "These fellows unexpectedly had money; they even etched a sound dampening Array inside the house."
Meanwhile, Malin, using a dagger, cut open the outerwear of a corpse and saw their tattoos: "No, they are not members of Father’s Love."
Although Malin didn’t know what Father’s Love’s tattoos looked like, they definitely shouldn’t be the All-Seeing Eye—that was the tattoo that should belong to those under Mimicking Bird’s command.
The half-human captain also saw the tattoo, his brow furrowed as he checked the other two bodies and found that indeed, the tattoos on them were the All-Seeing Eyes, typically associated with the Mimicking Bird sect.
"They... seem to be posing as members of Father’s Love?" The half-human captain observed, looking at the badges they found in their pockets.
"Maybe they were planning to frame someone." Malin said, also noticing two half-humans dragging a body down from the second floor.
"Mr. Malin, captain, we found our fellow congregant on the second floor, he’s dead." The two half-humans moved the body onto the couch; as for the half skull that had been sitting there, it had naturally been moved by other squad members.
Malin approached the body, confirming the tattoo on it was indeed a pattern beseeching a bountiful harvest, "Do they want to pin the murder on Father’s Love? Why?"
"I can’t fathom, the level of madness in Mimicking Bird far exceeds our imaginations, Your Excellency," the half-human captain shook his head.
"Your Excellency, we found the entry point of the murderer," a half-human came out from the corridor.
Thereupon, Malin followed over and on the other side of the corridor, he saw a window that had been opened.
Immediately, Malin pieced together the course of events—the murderer climbed in through this window, killed the people inside the house, then opened the front door, making it seem as though he left through the main entrance, before turning back to kill the Chaotic Believer in the backyard, and then took off.
How did he cover up the sound of his gun, and where did the gunshots we heard come from?
With such doubts, Malin kicked something and looked down to see a round metal sleeve; he bent down to pick it up, and upon closer inspection, he recognized its structure—it should be a part from a steam vehicle, with holes on both sides. One side had a natural engineering hole with threads, the other side... was a very obvious bullet hole.
Malin thought for a moment, then fitted the object over the muzzle of the gun in his hand.
It matched unexpectedly well.
At that moment, someone knocked on the front hall door.
Immediately, Malin leaned against the wall beside the door, the half-human captain did the same on the other side, and his men found cover.
Then came an orderly knocking from outside the door.
Malin switched the firearm in his hand for a revolver. The gnome across from him reached out to open the door, and Malin aimed the muzzle at the visitor outside.
The latter was startled for a moment, seeming to realize that the person who opened the door was not an acquaintance.
Malin was also startled because the one knocking was a newsboy.
"What is it?" Malin asked.
"A gentleman asked me to deliver something to you," the newsboy said and took a box out of his bag.
Malin’s brows involuntarily twitched—he recognized what it was.
An arcane remote-controlled bomb box, a favorite of the Church, typically used for situations unsuitable for open confrontations.
Malin had the boy set down the box, then stood in front of the door, made the sign of the Harvest Church across his chest, then quickly darted back behind the door, tossing the newsboy a small tip of one gold coin—a gift for the audacious little rascal, as it were.
The half-human hastily closed the door: "How could it be our box!" He too saw the box.
As they spoke, the door was knocked once more, this time with a rhythm familiar to Malin—the universal rhythm of the Harvest Church.
The half-human opened the door again.
Once more, Malin looked toward the door.
Outside stood a man, disheveled, with a heavy violin case in his hand.
"Goddess of Harvest be merciful," he said, while placing his left hand over his heart.
"Mother Earth be merciful," Malin lowered his gun, stretched out his hand to take the violin case passed to him: "Greetings, fellow believer, you look like you have a very long story to tell me."
"Indeed, but before that, I must disarm this little gift inside the box," the man said, then reached out to pick up the box: "After that, my story might just surprise and astonish you."