Hearing the snoring from inside, Zuo Lin'an was slightly surprised.
Was this criminal really sleeping so soundly?
Or was it an act?
He slowly shook his head, dismissing the thought.
That was unlikely.
It was probably because there were very few people here, they had plenty of food, and there was nothing of value for them to fight over. Over time, they had naturally let their guard down.
Zuo Lin'an approached the window, quietly peering through the holes in the shattered panes.
Fortunately, even though he was in a living body, his physical attributes had been significantly enhanced because he was a Human-Specter Symbiont. This allowed him to clearly make out the layout inside despite the darkness.
The room was tiny.
It looked to be only about twenty square meters, extremely crude and cluttered. Only a few crooked tables and chairs stood inside, surrounded by piles of junk and garbage.
It resembled a landfill.
In the corner lay a bed, and on it, a man.
The man was obese, and his snoring was thunderous.
Zuo Lin'an frowned slightly.
He looked at the man's massive, rotund frame, then down at his own slender build.
“I can do this.”
Zuo Lin'an didn't think the man would be any match for him.
Especially since the target was completely defenseless and dead to the world, he immediately decided to make this man his first target in Sin Hunter City.
He circled around to the front of the house.
When he saw the crude wooden door, he paused. It was woven from straw and thin twigs.
A closer look revealed that the door was practically riddled with gaps.
It was left ajar, not even closed.
Then again, even if a door like this were shut, it wouldn't be of much use.
He casually pushed it open. It was incredibly light, feeling like he was pushing aside a small bundle of straw.
Immediately, a pungent stench wafted from inside. Zuo Lin'an frowned, but he didn't back away. Instead, he stepped around the clutter on the floor and made his way toward the bed.
As he drew closer, he could see the sleeping man more clearly.
A complete stranger, someone he had never seen before.
But that didn't matter. The criminals in Sin Hunter City deserved to die anyway.
He pulled out his pocket watch and turned the hands.
Moments later, he had adjusted the time to exactly eleven o'clock.
“It is now eleven o'clock!”
Next, he had ten seconds.
Ten seconds.
This meant he had to capture the target and initiate his rule within this window.
Once the execution began, how much time it actually took to kill the person could be adjusted at his leisure.
It was just like his Death Rule.
To execute his Death Rule, he had to successfully capture his target between the exact hour and fifty-nine seconds past it. This time, however, that one-minute window was compressed to a mere ten seconds.
Zuo Lin'an quickly adjusted the time. To prevent the man from struggling, running, or crying out, he planned to immediately cripple his limbs.
The boning knife in his right hand flashed in the darkness. Moving with fluid precision, he stabbed twice into the man's knees, instantly crippling both of his legs.
“Hmm?”
The man seemed to feel something, showing signs of waking up.
But he was sleeping too deeply.
Or perhaps the boning knife was simply too sharp; despite the sudden pain and shock of the two stabs, he failed to wake up completely.
Seeing this, Zuo Lin'an didn't waste a second. He swiftly crippled the man's arms and dragged him off the bed.
With a heavy thud, the fat man crashed onto the floor.
“Ow!”
This finally woke him up.
“Who are you—mmph!”
Before the man could finish, Zuo Lin'an pinned him face-down onto the floor.
With his face buried in the trash and his limbs useless, he could only squirm and wriggle feebly on the ground, completely unable to resist.
“That should do it.”
Zuo Lin'an placed the tip of his knife against the back of the man's neck and swiftly sliced open a wound.
Execution, begin!
Right then, the ten seconds ran out.
Timing it perfectly, he pressed a button on the pocket watch. The hands spun backward in a blur, returning to the correct time in the blink of an eye.
This was the auxiliary rule Zuo Lin'an had formulated.
It could accelerate any non-on-the-hour time to the hour, affecting only himself, with the effect lasting for ten seconds.
His Death Rule was killing on the hour.
In other words, only he needed the time to reach the hour.
Thus, he only accelerated his own time rather than the time of his surroundings. When he used this in dungeons in the future, he wouldn't need to accelerate the dungeon's time either.
However, his accelerated time couldn't be maintained indefinitely. The ten-second duration was specifically to give him enough time to initiate his Death Rule. Once the ten seconds were up, his time would revert.
Of course, he might be able to upgrade this auxiliary rule in the future using a Rule Sublimation Stone.
For instance, expanding the acceleration effect to cover a certain area instead of just himself.
But that was a matter for the future.
Right now, he still had to finish off the man before him.
“Mmph, mmph...”
“Who... are you... let go...”
“My arms, my... I can't feel them!!”
Completely ignoring the man's struggles, Zuo Lin'an moved with swift, fluid efficiency. Within a few minutes, he had flawlessly executed his Death Rule.
When he stepped out of the shack, he barely had any blood on him.
Practice truly made perfect.
Zuo Lin'an casually pulled the drafty, gap-ridden door shut.
At that moment, a vague, instinctual feeling arose in his heart.
“Fifty.”
This time, he only needed to kill fifty people to meet the standard for converting his auxiliary rule.
“And there are sixty-one people here.”
While he needed to kill fifty.
Wasn't this calculation a bit too precise?
On top of that, they had specifically chosen this kind of small settlement where all the residents lived separately.
Plus, it was currently not even 11:00 PM.
If everything went smoothly and he killed one person every ten minutes or so, it would only take him a single night!
Meaning he could even make it back to the training base's cafeteria for breakfast tomorrow morning.
The more Zuo Lin'an thought about it, the more he felt this couldn't be a coincidence.
“Could it be because of Brother Bai?”
It made sense.
When they were chatting in the cafeteria earlier, even Instructor An had asked if he had met some incredibly influential figure.
“That must be it. This is special treatment from the higher-ups.”
Furthermore, it was assistance that perfectly aligned with his needs while ensuring no one could possibly find any fault or trace of favoritism.
They had even calculated exactly how many people he needed to kill to complete his rule conversion.
“They must have learned about the rule I formulated this time from Instructor An, and then specifically selected this criminal settlement.”
He had to admit, having someone look out for him felt amazing.
It was as if everything had been meticulously laid out for him, leaving him to only execute the final step.
“Well, regardless, taking care of business comes first.”
Zuo Lin'an lightly flicked his boning knife, shaking off the few drops of blood clinging to the blade.
Onto the next one.
Rate on N.U.
