Don’t kill me.

When I felt the eyes embedded in the wall weeping, a chill ran down my spine, but I was no longer the timid guy who used to associate every eerie scene with ghosts. I quickly regained my composure. I reasoned that, regardless of whether these eyes had been removed from their sockets, they must belong to the dead—there was no way they could still shed tears. The reason they appeared moist was probably because they had only recently been taken, their eyeballs freshly removed from the sockets.

But I soon dismissed that hypothesis. Judging by the situation, Kong Wei did not have time for so many murders. He was in such a hurry that he hadn’t even finished burning the courier slip—how could he possibly have killed people and gouged out eyes on the spur of the moment?

By now, Jin Ze had stripped off all the wallpaper, and in that instant, the pungent smell of chemicals filled the room. It suddenly struck me: the moisture on the eyeballs wasn’t tears, but some kind of preservative, likely meant to keep the eyeballs from decaying. It seemed that Officer Kong Wei was truly deranged; even under such chaotic circumstances, he still remembered to apply chemicals to the eyes in the wall. Clearly, he treasured them. Had he not fled in such a hurry, he probably would have pried all these eyes out to take with him.

Lost in thought, I heard Jin Ze suddenly turn his head and ask, “Chen Mu, how does it feel to lie in bed and look at all these eyes on the wall?”

I shrank back and replied, “It’s terrifying. It’s like a crowd of people standing there, spying on me—how could anyone sleep in such a room? Kong Wei must be a real sicko. How could a pervert like that become a detective?”

Jin Ze said to me, “Detectives are human too. In fact, because they deal with so many twisted cases, some of them end up psychologically warped, developing a compulsion to imitate what they see. I think Kong Wei’s mind must have been twisted by a particular case, which led to this bizarre obsession with embedding eyes in walls.”

I immediately added, “If that’s the case, then Kong Wei might be the real traitor in the bureau. But if Kong Wei is the mole, why would that psychopath leave clues for us to find him? Is he cutting off his own accomplice? Or maybe Kong Wei isn’t the psychopath’s mole, but is actually working for Dawn?”

Jin Ze thought for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “I doubt Kong Wei is with Dawn. There’s no trace of corpse-oil perfume here. As for whether he’s the killer’s inside man, that remains to be seen. Normally, a murderer wouldn’t deliberately expose his own accomplice to the police, but that madman never follows the rules—anything is possible. Once we find Kong Wei, the truth will come out.”

With that, Jin Ze opened the door and called the other officers in, while I got up from the bed. I understood now why he’d wanted the room cleared—only in absolute silence could he notice the tiny clues that led to the discovery of the strongest odor coming from within the wall. As for having me lie on the bed, I suspected he wanted me to experience Kong Wei’s own sense of horror. After all, Jin Ze liked to play little tricks on me, like the time he knocked out the eyeball from my ceiling without warning, just to give me a fright.

Once the officers came in, they brought tools and carefully chiseled open the wall. It took considerable effort, but eventually, they managed to extract all the eyeballs.

I glanced at them—nearly twenty in total, meaning at least ten victims.

But were these ten people killed by Kong Wei? Or had he taken their eyes from some other corpses?

As I pondered, Jin Ze took the transparent bag containing the eyeballs from one of the officers. Holding it up for a closer look, he quickly noticed a detail that also caught my eye immediately.

Among the nearly twenty eyeballs, seven or eight had numerical tags affixed to the backs, much like the ones we’d previously found inside the wax balls from the snake’s stomach—each marked with a number.

Jin Ze ordered these tagged eyeballs to be separated—eight in all. Whether this number had any significance remained to be seen. Eight digits couldn’t be an express tracking number or a phone number, but perhaps a telephone or QQ number.

As Jin Ze stared at the eight numbered eyes, lost in thought, the numbers seemed to expand within my own vision, like a hallucination. Suddenly, I was struck by a possibility.

Since these are all numbers, and the last time I went to that cave with Xia Tian, I also saw numbers on the glass jars containing heads—could these numbers mean the same thing? Could the numeric tags on the eyeballs also be points?

After all, in a killing game, there has to be a way to keep score. If heads can be used to count points, couldn’t eyes serve the same purpose?

If my guess was right, then the owners of these eyeballs were also members of Dawn. But who killed them? Was it my former deranged self, that lunatic, or someone else entirely?

Somehow, I had a vague sense that it was someone else. In a killing game, there must be competitors. To differentiate who killed whom, perhaps the scoring system was different. On my side, heads were used for points—did my opponent use eyes?

It seemed highly possible, but with so many officers around, I couldn’t share my theory with Jin Ze, so I kept it to myself.

We soon left the scene. Back at the station, while waiting for the lab to analyze the eyeballs, I pulled Jin Ze aside and shared my thoughts.

Jin Ze agreed my deduction was plausible. In this killing game, I might not be the only participant—there could be another side as well. Last time, Xia Tian said my points were too low and I was about to lose. She probably meant I was losing the killing game. So far, I had only eight or nine heads to my credit, while the other side had close to twenty eyes.

Fewer points meant losing, and the punishment for losing could be death at the hands of the game’s creator. No wonder Xia Tian was so worried and kept warning me I was going to die again—she meant not just that lunatic would kill me, but that losing the killing game meant death.

As for who the other side was—the one scoring points with eyeballs—we had no way of knowing. Perhaps Kong Wei knew. On my side, I was aware of the madman and Xia Tian. No wonder the madman wanted me to recover my memories and become a killer again—he didn’t want to lose either!

At that moment, Jin Ze received a call and stepped out, leaving me to mull things over.

He soon returned with two pieces of news.

The first: not all the eyes found at Kong Wei’s home belonged to humans—some were from dogs. Only those with numerical tags were human eyes.

The second: all of Kong Wei’s recent deliveries had been tracked down. The sender was always the same person, and not from our city but another. The sender hadn’t used a real name, only the alias “Scar.”

Jin Ze asked if I knew anyone by that name. I racked my brain but came up empty.

Just then, Jin Ze’s phone buzzed again—not a call, but a message. After reading it, he frowned, clearly troubled.

He turned to me and said, “It’s a text from Kong Wei. He wants to meet me—and he wants you to come too.”

I was startled. “Are you and Kong Wei close? Why does he want to see you—and why bring me?”

Jin Ze replied, “We’re fairly familiar. He was my junior at the police academy. As for why he wants you there, I’m not sure. But if Kong Wei is an insider, he must know a lot. Maybe he has something to say to you.”

I asked if we should go—could it be a trap? Jin Ze said we had to, for the sake of the case.

I wondered if it would just be the two of us. Jin Ze explained that was Kong Wei’s condition, otherwise he wouldn’t reveal anything. Still, Jin Ze said he’d have backup follow discreetly, prioritizing my safety.

I agreed. Jin Ze arranged for Fang Qinghe to coordinate the supporting officers. When everything was set, he took me along.

Kong Wei had asked to meet at an abandoned factory on the outskirts. When we found him, he crawled out from behind an old oil tank, looking utterly defeated and tense.

Puzzled by his terrified, soul-lost appearance, I suddenly saw Kong Wei drop to his knees before me.

With a voice full of dread, he pleaded, “Brother Chen, I beg you, please don’t kill me. Spare my life.”