According to the materials I accessed in Luo Shan’s archives, some anomalous phenomena can indeed allow a person to travel between past and future. But those are extraordinary events utterly beyond human replication—rare, fleeting miracles that cannot be summoned at will.

  Luo Shan’s stance on such “irreproducible” and “chance-encounter-only” claims is resolute. You only need to look at their publicly accessible archive to see how seriously they take it. Ritual knowledge related to time-space traversal is displayed openly for anyone to read, and the content can be summed up as: “I successfully traveled to the past/future using the following steps, but for some reason it never worked again afterward. Anyway, here it is—believe it or not.”

  Their attitude toward these accounts isn’t quite as dismissive as mainstream scientists looking at a backyard inventor claiming to have built a perpetual-motion machine overnight, but it’s close. They genuinely don’t take it seriously.

  If the Freak Maker wasn’t lying, he most likely reached the past or future through some equally irreproducible method. Given the innovative nature of Freak technology, the future seems more probable. Of course, he could also have simply obtained future technology through “future foresight” rather than physical travel—though his tone didn’t suggest that. Either way, if I want to make the Seed of the Heart permanently mine, starting from the “future” feels like a viable direction.

  I don’t know how to “foresee the future,” and I have even less confidence in achieving “future traversal.” But with no other leads, I couldn’t just sit idle. I decided to start by experimenting with the ritual knowledge I found in the public archive. Obsessing over all the theoretical difficulties in my head was pointless—better to begin with action.

  So first, I went out to kill.

  My target this time was, of course, another independent superhuman. People who possess special abilities—or “mana,” as we call it—can often substitute for many ritual components. Killing them on-site and using their blood as material for the array can make certain rituals far more effective than expected.

  As a Luo Shan probe, if I started collecting large quantities of ritual materials through channels, someone observant might grow suspicious. Killing was the simplest cover. Besides, my job already made me good at spotting people with mana among the civilian population. It didn’t take long to find a suitable candidate renting in an apartment complex not far from Xianshui University.

  On the surface, he was just an ordinary company employee living on the fifteenth floor of a residential building. In reality, he was a superhuman lying low. The moment I saw him, I caught the rich, fragrant scent of a high-quality soul wafting from his body.

  Using my official Luo Shan identity and years of experience, I quickly earned a degree of trust. After some probing, I learned his ability was “Penetration”: he could turn himself into a phantom state, passing through any object.

  In other words, while the ability was active, no attack could harm him. Probably not even a nuclear bomb or an asteroid—if he kept the power active, he would be untouchable. It was an extraordinarily valuable defensive ability.

  The reason he hadn’t revealed himself was likely lingering awe toward the state and society, combined with disinterest in a flashy, exciting life. Still, the arrogance toward ordinary people was plain in his eyes. He no longer considered himself human. Even while living among the crowd, he probably saw himself as a wolf lurking among sheep—and took quiet pride in it.

  Unfortunately, most “superhumans” with one overwhelmingly long plank can be dealt with the same way: a strike from behind. “Invincible while the ability is active” simply means “a normal human as long as they don’t get it activated in time.”

  I sent my substitute. With a little trickery, it was laughably easy to kill him inside his own apartment. Until the moment of death, he never managed to activate his so-called “invincible” power.

  I used his blood to draw the ritual array. One or two of the key symbols—meant to lock onto a specific point in time and space—couldn’t be filled in because I didn’t know exactly how far into the future the Freak technology originated. As a substitute, I added drops of my own Freak blood to the array. In theory, that should serve as a proxy search condition.

  And sure enough—pure theory. I failed.

  Worse, the mana fluctuation released during the failure attracted the attention of the Luo Shan Impermanence who happened to be patrolling the area at that moment.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Impermanence on duty that day was Zhu Shi. She was far from an easy opponent like the penetration user. I didn’t want to escalate things, so I ordered my substitute to withdraw immediately.

  And that brings us to today—eight months later.

  After repeated hunts, the strength of my Seed of the Heart has finally reached its current bottleneck.

  The Freak Maker told me that breaking through to the next stage required one of two things: overcoming my inner demons so the soul naturally ascends, or devouring enough souls to forcibly elevate it.

  I chose the latter path.

  Many other things happened during these eight months.

  First, the Freak Maker created another Freak in Xianshui City.

  I made covert contact with this one. He never bothered hiding his crimes and harbored an inexplicable hatred toward the powerful and privileged. Despite being wealthy himself, he resented those richer and more influential. Over the past two or three months, he killed five local elites in succession.

  I despise him. He even carelessly left biological traces at his crime scenes. I deliberately had my substitute leave behind a few hairs with follicles in the fifteenth-floor apartment to distance myself from suspicion—what was his excuse? Fortunately, Luo Shan’s forces in Xianshui still lack modern forensic expertise and have so far conflated the two of us. But sooner or later he’ll expose himself—and drag me down with him.

  Dealing with him covertly isn’t simple. All Freaks can summon mirror clones from shadows, though those clones are far weaker than the original. He also has an innate ability called “Swap Shadow,” which lets him instantly exchange positions with a distant clone regardless of space.

  Worse, the ability has a shameless passive trigger: if he faces a lethal strike he can’t react to, it activates automatically under some mysterious protective judgment. It’s cheating at the highest level.

  Maybe that’s why he acts so recklessly. For now, I’m powerless against him. Zhu Shi is currently handling his case. I can only hope she cuts him down with her sword soon.

  Then, the day before yesterday, I encountered a mysterious superhuman.

  It happened during the day. I was resting in the Luo Shan office across from the public security bureau when an unprecedented commotion erupted on the other side. Someone had broken in and stolen firearms and ammunition—a major incident for them. And I smelled a soul.

  Like a predator catching the scent of blood from a wounded animal, I can more easily locate a soul that has been recently damaged. That’s what I sensed then. I ordered my substitute to move toward the source and eventually found it behind a fried chicken shop.

  It was a pale, exhausted-looking girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, clutching a real gun. Clearly the one who had broken into the bureau.

  From the scent alone, I could tell she had once been an exceptionally powerful superhuman. In her prime, someone like me or my substitute wouldn’t even register as threats to her. But right now she was in terrible condition—barely stronger than my substitute, if at all.

  If I devoured her soul, my Seed of the Heart would surely break through to the next stage—and there would even be surplus!

  I immediately ordered my substitute to ambush her. The result was bitterly disappointing.

  She possessed spatial translocation. Though initially overwhelmed and badly injured, she quickly teleported far beyond the range of my soul scent.

  Not long after, an unexpected development occurred. My superior handed me someone’s file and ordered me to locate her by any means necessary.

  The target was the exact same girl who had escaped me earlier.

  I wasn’t the only one after her. Neither was my superior. Higher-ups and various factions within Luo Shan were mobilizing too. They all knew about her spatial translocation ability and were even preparing to expand the search nationwide. They were determined to capture her at any cost.

  An unimaginable storm had swept into my mind, tossing everything into chaos.

  —Who exactly is that girl?

  —

  Given how massive the situation had become, I didn’t dare target her anymore. I had to focus on something else I couldn’t ignore.

  That something was Zhu Chang’an—Zhu Shi’s older brother. Eight months ago, he had rented the fifteenth-floor apartment—the same one previously occupied by the penetration user—and discovered the ritual array I left behind. And somehow, that array had activated on its own without me noticing.

  I don’t know whether it truly succeeded. According to reports, a mysterious cave appeared at the center of the array. I could only interpret that as the ritual’s effect. When Zhu Shi told me about it and asked me to investigate, I went without hesitation.

  And once again, I came up empty. There was no cave in the fifteenth-floor room. Instead, I found Z.

  Z is somewhat well-known among the local Luo Shan forces. In these increasingly chaotic times, the fact that someone so dedicated to chasing anomalies repeatedly comes up empty-handed is downright bizarre. A few of us familiar probes occasionally gossip about him over drinks. Even my superiors and several local Impermanence remember his name.

  After learning about him, I naturally grew suspicious. Was he really someone who had encountered anomalies but deliberately concealed the details, pretending to know nothing about our world? If so, what motive could he have for hiding his experiences? The most logical conclusion was that he had gained something from a past anomalous event—perhaps even anomalous power itself.

  Or maybe he had obtained anomalous power, which allowed him to escape whatever incident he encountered. Unable to explain his experiences without revealing that power, he chose silence.

  And superhumans with special abilities are precisely my prey.

  But perhaps it was mere coincidence. Every time in the past when I considered investigating and hunting Z, something always came up—some reason or another—and I ended up abandoning the plan. Nothing ever came of it.