December 30th, 2995.
At No. 20 Mark Street, tucked away inside a hidden alley far from the bustling center—a place thoroughly saturated with gloom and soul-crushing exhaustion, mirroring the exact sensation Quân was enduring at this very moment.
"Mmph~ Mmmph!"
Tears brimmed in Quân's eyes. He wanted to cry—he desperately wanted to sob—but the last shred of his pride and dignity kept him from regressing into a toddler.
After all, he was bound tightly to a wooden chair, a gag stuffed into his mouth that he couldn't spit out, subjected to the most horrific form of psychological torture known to mankind: Mathematics.
And not just regular math, but SPATIAL MATHEMATICS.
Yes, Quân—a guy who had dropped out in the 9th grade, meaning he never even touched high school curriculum, a bastard who didn't know the first thing about derivatives or the area of a circle. The only thing he actually understood was gambling statistics and over-under dice odds.
And now, he was tied securely to a chair by Ron, forced to listen to Ron's breakdown of the bizarre maze he had just escaped.
*'What the hell are Fractals and flat Euclidean space? Gabriel's Horn??
WHAT THE FUCK IS A POTENTIAL FUNCTION?! A METRIC?! FINITE OR INFINITE?! WHAT THE HELL ARE THREE-DIMENSIONAL COORDINATE AXES?!'*
The only thing Quân managed to grasp was Ron proving that the space he inhabited was a Gabriel's Horn; that was the sole sentence he comprehended before going into anaphylactic shock.
Yet, every time he passed out—just as his eyes rolled back and heaven beckoned—Ron would scrape a fork against the chalkboard to snap him awake.
"MMPH MMM HH MMF!!!"
Quân thrashed like a hyperactive maniac, jumping frantically with his six limbs until Ron finally used monofilament wire to suspend him mid-air to make him stop.
"Alright, that's enough for today. You cooperated very well. What we covered today was merely some basic advanced mathematics."
"MMPH MMF MM MMF MH!!!!"
Quân screamed, desperately trying to awaken whatever human empathy was left in Ron before the man could transition to the next lesson.
It was currently 5:00 PM, and Ron had forced him to train for over three hours. Train what, you ask?
Martial arts, observation, literature (?), playing the lute (wtf?), and mathematics.
But he shifted subjects continuously not because he wanted to, but because when he practiced martial arts, he had to deliver a thousand low kicks into a sandbag until his ankle sprained; when studying literature, he accidentally spilled an inkwell all over the page; and when playing the lute, a few strings inexplicably snapped.
Fine, those were accidents—nothing more.
Once Ron finally removed the dog muzzle, Quân—with the sheer nature of a rabid dog that feared no death—lunged forward to bite Ron despite still being suspended in mid-air.
"Duh. I thought the last two generations were bad enough. How did we spawn this little demon?"
Moris, wearing a shapeless black hat, sat on the sofa. He toyed with a newspaper, sipping his tea right through his mask.
"Grrr!! Motherf@@k#r$$$"
A relentless torrent of graphic insults aimed at Ron's personal anatomy erupted from Quân, unleashing the absolute misery pent up inside him.
And frankly, who could blame him? He was peacefully skipping out on sleep at old Keil's place, only to suddenly wake up in a completely alien, beautiful building that reeked of dust. It was infuriating.
Yet, Ron wasn't about to leave him in peace, as his next words revealed the true motive.
"I already told you, tonight is an important mission, and both you and I need to go. You pocketed my allowance and burned it all away, remember?"
"Work? What kind of work do you guys do that recruits a fifteen-year-old?"
Quân blurted out, the word sounding completely foreign to his ears. He had never known what "work" meant in his entire life. Aside from being a parasite and racking up debts, what use was he?
Moris let out a dry chuckle, then directed a question toward Quân.
"We know you took Ron's money and gambled it away at a nearby den. Could it be that you've been dabbling in drugs, which is why you're so irritable? You an addict?"
"Addict? Addict your fucking mother, I'm no addict!"
Quân roared like a declawed dog. Even without fangs or claws, his throat was still intact; a dog that doesn't bite is a dog that barks loud.
"…I've dealt with plenty of junkies. Back in the day, you couldn't take three steps here without hitting white powder.
So don't try to pull a fast one on us."
"Stop teasing him, Moris."
Moris added a closing remark. He still held the newspaper without having read it, tossing it over to Ron instead.
"Here."
Ron caught the newspaper, quickly snapping it open to scan the news. Splashed across the front page was a public appeal.
A call to hunt down a killer lurking within society—a murderer who had consumed over a dozen liters of human blood.
This wasn't an ordinary newspaper; it was the internal bulletin of Jinlus village. Therefore, it was understood as an appeal, a warning, and a sweet invitation.
It is well known that human psychology is highly skeptical and tends to rationalize plots.
While the police would undoubtedly receive plenty of false leads, a lotus could bloom from the mud; perhaps a breakthrough was imminent.
"Hey Quân, you asked what we do for a living, right?
We're going to start practicing our trade from tonight right through tomorrow morning."
Ron finished speaking and closed the newspaper, but his hand suddenly froze.
A drop of blood was trickling down the newspaper. It came from his face—yet while there was blood on his face, there was no wound.
Ron calmly wiped the blood with his finger, then smeared it over his nose.
"Man, I ate way too much spicy food. Got a nosebleed."