Chapter 1: Level Six

December 14, 2100. Late at night.

This was Hokkaido's only psychiatric hospital, and it had relatively few patients. Its buildings covered about as much ground as an ordinary secondary school, and the walls had deliberately been painted in soothing colors. Outside one of the rooms on the second floor, two fully armed men wearing the uniforms of troops under HL's direct command stood guard. Tea Immortal's arrival had evidently made this case a much higher priority for the local authorities.

Shimaki led Tea Immortal into the room and closed the door.

“Would you like this recorded, sir?” Shimaki asked.

“No.” As Tea Immortal answered, his eyes remained on the young man sitting on the hospital bed, staring into space. Ikeda now seemed like the walking dead, silent and oblivious to the two strangers standing before him.

“He was brought in yesterday, correct?” Tea Immortal asked.

Shimaki replied, “Yes, at around four yesterday afternoon. He was already like this when they found him.” He paused, then added, “They also found the body of his father, Ikeda Takeshi, beside him. And Jingniao… died in the street outside his house.”

Tea Immortal took a few steps forward and addressed Ikeda. “Ikeda-kun.”

Ikeda did not respond, so Tea Immortal called to him a few more times, with the same result. He waved his fingers in front of Ikeda's eyes, but the young man's gaze remained vacant, and he said nothing.

Tea Immortal let out a long sigh. “It seems we won't get anything out of him for a while. Let the hospital proceed with normal treatment. Perhaps he'll recover in time.” He turned around. “There's no need to keep him under special guard like this, either. Withdraw all the guards.”

“Yes, sir.” Naturally, Shimaki dared not question the orders of someone so august. He would simply carry them out to the letter.

Leaving the oppressive hospital room, Tea Immortal recalled what Tian Yi had told him over the phone earlier. “Plenty of fresh clues are waiting for you.” This was more than a simple taunt. The remark itself was a hint. “Fresh” implied that some evidence had a limited window of usefulness. Miss it, and the trail might well go cold…

The two left the psychiatric hospital and set off by car for HL's Hokkaido branch.

By the time Tea Immortal left Ikeda's room, he had already worked out a detailed plan for the next steps in the investigation. As the car pulled away, he said, “Mr. Shimaki, there are some materials I need you to prepare.”

“Your instructions, sir.” Shimaki responded respectfully to everything Tea Immortal said.

“As for documents, I need the records of every case reported in Hokkaido over the past month, including those that never became formal investigations—bicycle thefts, for instance, where there's only a report and no case file. I also need detailed information on Second Lieutenant Kuwabara Junichi: both the network of personal relationships associated with his cover identity and the details of his identity within HL. Finally, arrange for me to examine the scene of Second Lieutenant Kuwabara's murder first thing tomorrow morning.”

Shimaki committed each item to memory, not daring to make the slightest mistake.

…

Half an hour later, Tea Immortal lay alone in his guest room, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

His earlier phone call with Tian Yi had taken place in the small hours of the fourteenth, local Hokkaido time. After that call, Tea Immortal had hurried straight from the waters near Hell Island to Sakura Prefecture. Once ashore, he had gotten a rough account of the situation from Shimaki, who had come to meet him, then rushed to the bookstore. As expected, all he found was a huge black inverted cross.

The information he had gathered so far flashed through his mind, intersecting and combining in countless possible ways as he worked through the implications…

If Tian Yi had told the truth over the phone, then in the fewer than ten hours between killing Kuwabara and making that early-morning call, he had vanished along with the entire bookstore and left Sakura Prefecture.

This closely resembled previous cases involving Tian Yi. Whenever Tea Immortal caught wind of something and arrived, Tian Yi and that fabled bookstore were long gone. By that reasoning, he must possess some extremely advanced teleportation device. No… advanced was the wrong word. It must surpass the highest scientific capabilities of the present age.

If teleportation was the only technology he possessed, that would be manageable. The fear was that he had an entire advanced scientific system at his disposal, rather than a single piece of technology. In that case, spatial teleportation would be only the tip of the iceberg. In the future, countless devices more dangerous still, perhaps even threatening the survival of all humanity, could end up in the hands of someone like Tian Yi. The very thought was chilling.

Then there was the way he used chain reactions set off by small events to change the fate of a person, or even a group of people. Was that intelligence, or some kind of ability? Or both? And what was his purpose in committing these crimes?

Without realizing it, Tea Immortal had once again shifted his attention from analyzing the case to analyzing Tian Yi himself. This dangerous madman was a knot in his mind he could never untangle. Since joining HL, he had arrested countless criminals, including some remarkably clever and powerful individuals. Take Divine Key, for instance, whom he had sent to Tidal Prison just yesterday. It had taken over half a month of matching wits and strength with that crafty fellow in Australia before he finally subdued him.

Over the years, every criminal who had dared compete directly with Tea Immortal had ultimately lost, without exception. The best way to deal with him was to follow a certain Mr. Zuo's example and make a habit of fleeing at the first sign of trouble. Only by making groveling second nature could one remain at liberty.

Tian Yi, however, was the exact opposite. He wasn't going out of his way to provoke Tea Immortal. He treated everyone like this. If someone's intelligence or abilities were limited, he really couldn't be bothered with them. His attitude was very much, “If I toy with you, it's because I think you're worth it.”

Over the past few years, Tea Immortal had submitted only one proposal for reforming HL's system. In addition to the existing danger levels one through five, he proposed a further danger level—six.

This level had nothing to do with combat strength, nothing to do with an ability user's rank, and nothing to do with whether the wanted person was even still alive. Anyone placed at this level would remain on the list forever.

As a certain organization put it, the person dies with the body, but the spirit lives forever. The most threatening people need not rely on their fists. Perhaps a pen alone could overturn the world.

Tea Immortal's proposal was soon approved. Perhaps being a prince had helped on that occasion. In any event, there was currently only one person on Earth listed at danger level six, and that was Tian Yi.

Tea Immortal spent the night awake, turning these thoughts over until daylight came. He had gone nearly thirty hours without rest, yet he was still full of energy. Unlike Gambling Snake's highly efficient way of resting, this was no technique. It was something he was born with.

The communicator on the wall rang a few times. Tea Immortal did not answer. He simply got up and walked out of the room. He knew the arrangements at the scene were complete.

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