3:00 PM
"The Maritime Power Bureau? Miss, if that is your wish, I will find a way to contact them."
"As for the Narwhal Human Rights Advisory Council, I believe if you can become the image ambassador for the Life Daybreak Education Union, they will come to contact you on their own."
"At this juncture, going to the Keyboard District to establish a social image and polish your reputation is a very correct move. As for what comes after, I think we should deliberate further..."
"Do you need me to find you a more professional photographer? An hour is enough."
Tang Xin got into the car, and the sound of the wind and snow outside, along with Jim's voice, gradually faded. Her ears were suddenly much quieter.
Upon entering, she smelled the scent of fried food, and her brows furrowed slightly. Through the rearview mirror, a strange figure sat in the seat that originally belonged to the driver. The man was eating fried dodo chicken, leaning back lazily in the seat as noisy rock music played in the car.
"May I ask who you are?"
Hearing the young woman's voice from the back seat, Ince set aside his casual expression, wiped the grease from his mouth, turned around, and shook a dodo chicken leg the size of a basin.
"Miss Tang, though it's a bit abrupt, your manster won't be coming back anymore. From today on, I am your dedicated driver plus photographer. Here is my business card."
Tang Xin looked at the man's greasy hands with some hesitation, then used her fingertips to politely take the card.
The name Ince Branc entered her sight, and her gaze was quickly drawn to the photo on the card.
Compared to the scruffy, decadent 'middle-aged uncle' before her, the man in the previous ID photo could be described as fresh and clean. It was hard to imagine what he had gone through over the years.
As Tang Xin compared the card to him, she felt he looked increasingly familiar. She remembered; she had seen him at Belvedere Station. At the time, he was holding a camera and claimed to be a director from the Black Lake film crew interviewing her.
"I recall that I did not hire a photographer," Tang Xin said. "And, Branc is the name of a prison in the Keyboard District, isn't it?"
"Before I was fished out of prison yesterday, I didn't plan on applying to be a photographer either. Explaining it is troublesome. As for my employment report, you can check your curtain email inbox. I was hired through official channels."
Tang Xin opened her email to confirm. This man named Ince Branc was indeed appointed through the company's personnel channels. She, however, had been unaware of it. Aside from people her never-before-seen father had arranged to monitor her, she could think of no other possibility.
"You should make yourself more presentable." Tang Xin opened a newspaper. "Also, I don't like the smell of fried food. Don't let me smell it in this car again."
"As you wish, Miss," Ince said as he opened the window and casually tossed the chicken bone outside.
The bone lay abruptly on the clean, art-like pavement, like a smudge of filth splashed onto a flawless painting.
The sound of car horns echoed in the distance as the snow melted. Pale gold light refracted between the forest of prism towers. In places the light could not reach, the afternoon alleys had already fallen into darkness.
Several figures ran swiftly through the gloom, darting through the gaps of light between high-rise buildings. Wherever they passed, claw marks were torn into the alley walls, and anti-theft window bars were twisted as easily as children's toys.
A shadow swept past, running nimbly across the walls before leaping into the air, tracing an arc and crashing onto the roof of a small sedan. The car collapsed and exploded inward, glass shards flying everywhere, reflecting terrifying faces.
Cars parked in the alley emitted ear-piercing alarms one after another. The shrieks of monsters and the shouts of fixers blended into a rising chorus.
"They ran this way! Split up and chase!" the fixer in the lead shouted. The two people behind her nodded and leaped nimbly, running along the alley walls while ignoring gravity, weaving through the narrow passages with grappling hooks, their gray robes fluttering.
Before long, under the hunters' pursuit and encirclement, the leading figure and its companion were cornered in an alley.
A heavy hammer wreathed in lightning smashed onto the ground, wandering arcs of electricity crackling.
"You pieces of trash, let's see where you run now!"
The lead fixer licked his teeth excitedly. The top of his mimicry weapon was still stained with blood and brains; not long ago, he had used this thunder hammer to crush a monster's head.
"Black Dog, finish it quickly."
A red-haired woman stepped out from behind the man. She had a scar over her right eye and was scratching her messy hair. Lugging a heavy sleeping bag and sporting dark circles under her eyes, she lit a cigarette.
The light of the flame dispersed the darkness of the alley, making the targets of these fixers visible. Their bodies were hunched and twisted.
Their arms were as thin as bamboo poles. They were entirely hairless with morbidly pale skin, and their facial features were mixed together like melted paint, looking like monsters a child had haphazardly put together with mud.
Most bizarrely, there was no color on them other than black and white.
The current location was the boundary between the Queen's District and the Keyboard District, known as Black Rose Alley. Seen from above, it was a long alley stretching to the horizon, the sky above filled with a deathly gray, like an ugly scar on the city, devoid of any beauty.
The small figure in the lead looked like a child under ten years old. It crouched low, suddenly baring its fangs and claws to try and frighten away the figure that brought it a strong sense of danger.
A mouth on its forehead quickly opened and closed, mechanically and coldly repeating the word "run," while an eye in the original position of its mouth blinked rhythmically. Eyes also grew on its cheeks, but they lacked eyelids and lashes, their constricted pupils staring dead at the red-haired woman.
Instinctive premonition of danger caused it to ignore the man in front, focusing all its attention on the red-haired woman. Its remaining intuition told it that compared to the Black Dog swinging the thunder hammer that crushed its companion's head, this red-haired woman was far more dangerous!
"Hey, hey, where are you looking!"
Black Dog roared, his thunder hammer sweeping toward the monster's head, smashing it into a spray of bloody mist and pulp.
"And you! I'm going to crush every single one of you!"
Seeing this, the remaining monsters suddenly ran toward each other, curling into a ball. Their skin and organs melted like liquid, clinging and merging. In an extremely short time, they condensed into a shape like a giant hand, which suddenly grabbed the man and slammed him frantically against the nearby walls and old residential buildings.
The red-haired woman seemed long accustomed to this. Expressionless, she shielded her lighter with her hand and exhaled a long puff of smoke.
Behind her, Black Dog was embedded into the ground like a dead dog as the condensed hammer-form struck him again and again, driving him deeper into the earth.
These monsters were the depleted, also called the faded by some. The Art Star blessed people with the Stars, granting constant inspiration and harvests, but they were also cursed by the starry sky above. Once their inspiration ran dry and they could no longer create any form of "art," the color would fade from their bodies, and they would become these monsters.
As the head of the Tuner's Office, she was already used to seeing people in residential areas like apartments fade into the depleted, attacking the city and endangering public safety. It was not surprising even for a famous artist to suddenly run dry.
One thing bothered her slightly: the sighting reports of the depleted these days had more than doubled compared to usual. It was likely the influence of "The Artist."
She had witnessed too much of the city's morbid state. People pursued art in a pathological way, enduring pain, resistance, and fear time and again, leaving themselves covered in wounds. This gave birth to the Ascetic Sect, urban eldritch creatures like "The Artist," and countless numbers of the depleted.
Countless families fell apart because of this, and social relationships were shattered. Everyone knew the city was sick, yet no person of influence had ever stood up to point out the city's morbidity.
There was a pathetic barrier between everyone; invisible, thick shields separated person from person. Thus, people always watched coldly from the sidelines, standing to applaud the end of a tragedy on stage while remaining indifferent to the tragedies happening in reality.
As an enforcer, she did not know the cause of the city's illness, nor did she care. She knew well that she could achieve nothing alone. Perhaps, at some point, she too had become one of the onlookers beneath the stage, her initial emotions long since worn down.
She had handled such matters so many times that now, seeing those dim, lifeless eyes, she only felt a sense of absurd mockery.
Self-inflicted.
She could only think of that term. This was all the punishment of the heavens upon them.
"Senior Katina," a girl's hesitant voice came from beside her.
"Oh, Iris."
Katina smiled tiredly and greeted the girl. She liked this enthusiastic and lively girl; at least the other provided some joy to her unchanging life.
At the same time, she sympathized with the girl's choice to become a tuner at such an age. She hoped that in the days to come, the tragedies performed day after day would not break her.
At least, don't let her have to do it herself.
"A question has been bothering me for a long time, Senior." The chestnut-haired girl clutched the book in her arms, and after a moment, she finally voiced her confusion.
"Why is it that when people of the Art Star run dry and turn into monsters, they lose all their color?"
Katina pressed her thumb against her brow and, after exhaling a puff of smoke, spoke words full of meaning.
"Because the colors of their souls couldn't wait to escape their broken bodies."
"What supports those monsters is just an empty shell."
Iris stood dazed, silently repeating the sentence as if trying to grasp its meaning.
Soon after, she stepped forward and took Katina's hand. "If this city is sick, Senior, with your power, you can surely change something."
"At least, you can lessen people's pain and let tragedies happen as little as possible..."
As the girl spoke, her voice became weaker and weaker, thin as a mosquito's hum.
"You overestimate me. I'm just a plain grade 5 fixer." Katina flicked her cigarette butt to the ground. "Not to mention my emotions and energy were depleted long ago, and I have no interest in such noble devotion."
"Don't forget, a person who remains indifferent at their mother's funeral can be sentenced to death."
Iris frowned, clearly not understanding the meaning behind those words.
"You think Belvedere is the instigator of all this, and that resolving him would end everything?"
"If someone stood up and pointed out the morbidity of this city, I guess, without waiting for Belvedere to speak, the enraged masses would tear her wings apart, dismember her body, and feast on her flesh. Heh heh heh." Katina let out a chilling laugh.
"Yo, Department Head, all sorted. Where's the next target?"
In a flash, Black Dog had already finished off those depleted ones. He walked back with the thunder hammer on his shoulder and pointed a finger at his nose excitedly.
"Haven't you always wanted to know what it's like inside the Keyboard District? Come on, I'll show you around."
Katina yawned and waved for the two of them to follow.
Meanwhile, within the Dawn Society.
"The Association is very clear about the situation in the Art Star. You've seen how things are now. Two suppression attempts both ended with the Association paying a heavy price. 'The Artist' cannot be truly killed; it could be born in any artistic creation within the Art Star," Aivmey said.
"The power hierarchy of the Art Star is rotten from top to bottom. The Association finds the situation here troublesome as well. A total overhaul is impossible, and the assassination attempt targeting Belvedere personally failed not long ago."
Chen San circled Belvedere's portrait on a whiteboard with a marker.
Unbeknownst to the public, 'The Artist' had actually undergone a fourth resurgence two days ago, though that time the scale was relatively small and within controllable limits.
"Are you saying the Association believes 'The Artist' may have developed some kind of connection with Belvedere?" Tao Shier could not believe what she was hearing.
"But the fact is exactly that. During the assassination mission against Belvedere, 'The Artist' suddenly appeared. In two seconds, an entire team of grade 4 fixers was wiped out, including members dispatched from our Dawn Society," Chen San said heavily.
"Until the Association confirms this connection, it's unrealistic to restart any assassination plans. We have to find a way to reshuffle the members within the Starry Gallery and have Belvedere step down through legitimate means."
"The probability of that is lower than a meteorite falling directly on Belvedere's head. Damned long-life species. The power hierarchy of the Art Star is almost entirely that old vampire's people. To have him step down legitimately? Is that even possible!?" Amy cursed.
"We don't have any other options. Universal Heavy Industries has, in a sense, abandoned the Art Star. Since 'The Artist' was born, its economic status has plummeted. Other hive cities avoid the artworks from here like the plague, fearing they might bring 'The Artist' to them. It's like plague prevention."
"Currently, the family members are desperately suppressing this news to transfer family industries and capital chains, which is the only reason the inflated economic bubble hasn't burst yet."
"These parasites. At a time like this, they only think of themselves," Amy said indignantly.
"I don't think the status quo can last another two months. When that time comes, the situation here will likely be dire to the extreme."
"As for the Association, as long as the Art Star maintains this delicate balance, 'The Artist' manifesting here and killing tens of thousands of people is essentially inconsequential to them. Whether the people here suffer has nothing to do with those high and mighty figures."
"The idea of the conservative faction is to cut all ties with the Art Star and turn it into an isolated island. This would minimize the chance of 'The Artist' being born in other hive cities. They plan to let the people here fend for themselves."
"The more radical lunatics intend to call 'Deep Blue Tide' over to destroy this place directly, eliminating any possibility of a world-class urban legend descending upon other worlds."
"In other words, this place has been completely abandoned."
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