Chapter 13: Intersection

The sky was overcast, the air damp. There were barely any pedestrians on the little street that afternoon.

An athletic man appeared in the distance. Nearly two meters tall, he was powerfully built, with well-proportioned muscles, and looked like a mixed martial artist or a champion swimmer.

He strode up to a bookshop and removed his sunglasses like an action star, revealing a textbook tough-guy face. After two seconds' consideration, he decided to tear the door off with one hand to give his entrance more impact.

But just as he was about to act, someone opened the door from inside. It was the bookshop's owner, Tian Yi, whom he had met once before.

“This bookshop can block any effect a mental ability user directs into it from outside. You should already be aware of that.” Tian Yi went straight to the point.

Blood Owl replied, “I did notice. Even now, with you standing less than two meters in front of me, I still can't sense any emotions.”

Tian Yi said, “Let me point something out. What you should have gathered from that remark is that I already know what your ability is. The question is how I know.”

Blood Owl sneered. His mind certainly didn't work as fast as Gu Wen's or Tea Immortal's, extracting all sorts of information and implications from a remark he'd heard two seconds earlier. But he had his own distinctive “Blood Owl style” of doing things, which could essentially be summed up as “no restraints whatsoever.” So it didn't matter to him if he was slow to catch on to certain things, or never caught on at all.

He rolled his neck, putting on an indifferent air, his expression seeming to say, “Fine, I'll ask.” Sure enough, he sighed and said, “So how do you know?”

“When a target gets close enough, I can read everything about them on the physical plane... So I now know your ability inside out,” Tian Yi said.

Blood Owl said, “Finished? Then... what comes next? Futile resistance?”

Tian Yi took a step forward, out of the bookshop. In that instant, Blood Owl's expression changed dramatically. He looked as though he had seen a creature that couldn't possibly exist in this world, and a very unfriendly one at that.

Tian Yi said, “Can you feel it? The negative emotions in me, or rather, so-called ‘evil.’”

A feverish gleam appeared in Blood Owl's eyes. One corner of his mouth curled up in an excited smile. “Are you really human?”

Tian Yi didn't answer, merely saying calmly, “Clearly, you're beginning to understand me. But under the present circumstances, I don't think curiosity alone will persuade you to spare my life. So I need to give you a reason.” He let out a long breath. “Fear, greed, hatred, envy, sloth, and so on. All humanity's negative emotions are sin. That's your food. Your ability turns those things into strength. But... this ability is also a curse. When you came within my range of perception, I put that together with what you've been doing all these years and deduced the ultimate goal you've been pursuing.

“You want to ‘cure’ yourself, because you've been unable to feel those ‘negative emotions’ since birth. You're afraid of nothing, feel guilty about nothing you do, find nothing worthy of pity, and no one can make you truly angry enough to lose your reason.

“But the most terrifying thing about this ability is that you have no feelings of your own, yet you can sense the fluctuations in other people's minds. Lies, fear, melancholy, and so on... It's hard to imagine how, as a child, you endured the filthy thoughts in the minds of adults for a kilometer or two around, and all the psychological harm, day and night, without going mad. Oh, no... perhaps you were already mad by then, or simply used to it.

“In any case, as I see it, this ability, enough to drive someone to suicide countless times over, stopped troubling you long ago. What you want is to find a balance through experimentation, a way to stop experiencing other people's negative emotions and restore your own feelings without losing your ability.

“When it comes down to it, you just want to know what being alive actually means.”

Blood Owl's attitude remained much the same. “You certainly seem to know a lot. But that only makes me feel there's even more reason to kill you.”

Gu Wen came out through the door behind Tian Yi and cut in. “Didn't you get it? The boss is implying he can find a way to cure you.”

Blood Owl looked Gu Wen up and down. “And who the hell are you?”

Gu Wen replied, “My surname is Gu. My given name is Wen, written with a single Chinese character.”

“Ha... So ‘Consultant’ is actually your name, Gu Wen,” Blood Owl said. “Let me remind you that you're both on a list called ‘Scum I'm Going to Kill.’ If that boss of yours is just stalling for time, this whole affair is going to end very bloodily.”

Gu Wen replied, “Putting myself in your position, I don't think who you kill, or how many people you kill, matters much to you. Now that your ultimate goal is clear, I see only two ways for you to reach it. The first is to kill every other human on this planet. Then, even if you still have no feelings of your own, you won't be able to experience anyone else's negative emotions either. And considering you'd be living on a planet without any of your own kind, whether you had emotions would hardly matter. The second way is for your experiments to succeed. Allow me to address you respectfully as Professor Chev Kirios. With your profound insights into biology, psychology, and chemistry, I'm sure you wouldn't mind someone lending a hand with a research project that's made no progress for years.”

Blood Owl considered this for a while. His ability also told him the other man wasn't lying, so he replied, “Fine. You've convinced me. Nothing comes free in this world. I think we can make a deal. You help with my research, and I guarantee I won't kill you before it succeeds.”

Tian Yi said, “Sounds fair.” That was his agreement.

Gu Wen forced out two loud, mocking ha-has. What he was thinking was, Blood Owl, old pal, it won't be long before you're being swindled and unwittingly helping the swindlers along.

Just then, Tian Yi turned toward the empty street to one side and said, “Tea Immortal and Paper Hero are coming too. They'll be here in five minutes at most.”

Blood Owl said, “What did you say? Paper Hero?” As far as he remembered, he'd sent that fellow to the underworld back in Venice.

Tian Yi continued, “They've been tracking you all along. I've been leading you around the world to keep you from stopping and clashing with Tea Immortal.” He paused. “If you're going to ask why I chose this moment to meet you, it's because there's a monster in the bookshop now who might be able to hold you off for a while. He hadn't been able to join us before. Of course, once I sensed your ability, I thought the conversation would go more smoothly than expected, so I simply came out myself.”

Gu Wen said, “What now? Move again?”

“I'm afraid it's too late.” The voice came from overhead. As the words ended, a dark figure dropped from the sky and landed in the street. Who knew how far he'd jumped down from. A patch of asphalt shattered beneath his feet.

Blood Owl smiled. “Another interesting target...”

Mirror Face ignored the other two men. Tian Yi's face was reflected in his mirrored mask. “You must be wondering why you didn't sense me approaching...”

Before Tian Yi could speak, Gu Wen cut in disdainfully. “Isn't the answer right in front of us? That outfit covering every inch of you must have been specially made to counter the boss's ability. From that, we can deduce you've met him before. Why make a suit to counter his ability? Clearly, you're an enemy.”

Tian Yi said to Mirror Face, “See? This armchair strategist of mine has already seen right through you, asking and answering his own questions.”

Gu Wen caught the mockery in “asking and answering his own questions” and retorted, “I can't help it. Talking to myself is the only time I feel I'm conversing with a wise man.”

Mirror Face said, “Do you remember me, Tian Yi? To take my revenge on you, I crawled out of the flames of hell and became this thing, half man, half ghost.”

Tian Yi tilted his head. “Oh... I see. You're taking advantage of being undetectable to come in first and hold me here, with Gambling Snake following to back you up. Not bad. You've calculated my perception range quite accurately.” As he spoke, he had, of course, noticed Gambling Snake racing closer, leaping across the rooftops.

But Tian Yi hadn't answered Mirror Face's question, which undoubtedly enraged him. It was as though someone had murdered your entire family, and when you charged up to him years later, armed to the teeth, he couldn't remember who you were and wasn't the least bit afraid.

Blood Owl couldn't help laughing. “Tian, just how many enemies do you have?”

Tian Yi said, “Living ones? In theory, none. As for him... He's actually brought Gambling Snake over to his side? Could he be...” Once again, he stopped halfway through. “Blood Owl, too many troublesome people have turned up today. I think we'd better leave. Care to join us?”

Blood Owl replied, “I find this quite interesting. Every one of them is worth killing.”

Tian Yi said, “Without my ‘sin’ to sustain you, you might not beat them.”

“That makes me all the more eager to try. Feel free to hide in the bookshop. I wasn't counting on your help anyway,” Blood Owl said.

Gu Wen leaned against the bookshop's display window, sounding like a street thug. “A complete and utter lunatic. Even I want to see him fight.”

As they spoke, a black car approached from a distance. Three seconds after it came into view—or rather, the instant Paper Hero, sitting in the back, saw Blood Owl through the windshield—a tremendous force ripped the roof clean off. The dozens of sheets of paper he carried tore easily through steel. Paper Hero leaped out through the opening, his coat spreading open in midair. It must have been lined with paper too, sending him hurtling straight toward them as though he could fly.

The white paper filling the missing part of the left side of his face had now turned bloodred. His whole face was savage, his killing intent overwhelming. Newspapers scattered along the surrounding streets and all kinds of paper in homes for kilometers around burst through windows or shot skyward. They gathered in the air into something like a visible current, following close behind Paper Hero as he bore down on the entrance to Tian Yi's shabby little bookshop.

The car behind Paper Hero had stopped. The other man in the back seat seemed perfectly composed. He calmly opened the door and stepped out. Blue hair, a dashing military uniform, a complicated expression. With a single glance, he knew which one was Tian Yi. At last, he had met his archrival, the world's most dangerous criminal. No, sinmonger.

This was a very interesting moment indeed, so yet another very interesting person appeared. The bookshop door opened from inside, and Gunsmith came stumbling out, shouting as he ran, “Tian Yi!! Why is Darkwater in the bookshop?! Where did you get him from?!! You've got a turtle trapped in a jar here!!”