Puzzle Madness

Chapter 36 Natural Disaster—
Richard put down the telescope, his hands shaking.

He didn't know whether it was due to the cold wind blowing through the high-rise tower cranes at the construction site, or because of what he had just witnessed: fear and cold, sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference.

A young man in a yellow raincoat was carrying out four crooked, scattered bodies from an apartment, piling them up beside the shared stove in the hallway; it was as if they were pieces of freshly slaughtered pork, waiting to be cooked.
The four-man assault team, fully equipped and trained in the urban assault force format, took the lead in the assault; in the blink of an eye, it became like this:

Richard calculated the time; from the moment the team officially began breaching the door to the moment the gunfire stopped, only thirty-two seconds had passed. How much longer had the direct contact and attack taken?
This wasn't even casually outsourced security, but a special forces unit directly managed by the Special Package Handling Section.

Richard had never seen [ecstasy] reach this level of intensity—
Whether I saw it with my own eyes or read it in the files of the Special Package Handling Department
In fact, he had never heard of any sinner or patient who could develop such destructive symptoms of ecstasy - even from the outside, no physiological changes could be detected.

What had this young man done? Had he committed some crime so monstrous it would overturn the very foundations of modern civilization's laws and ethics? Or was there some mental illness, undiscovered even by modern medicine, simmering within him?

[No, there's another possibility: Could it be because of the [package]?]

Until now, Richard still didn't know what the [package] that [the client] was carrying was.
He thought of his deceased partner and the tear duct infection incident two days ago: at the time when John Dou died, Chuck Richard also cried loudly and was about to get conjunctivitis.

I had originally thought it was a case of ecstasy caused by John Dou's near-death experience—there had been precedents for this before; the extreme emotions of people nearing death sometimes led to ecstasy symptoms that were beyond their capacity.
But now, after seeing [Yellow Raincoat] killing people wantonly, he was unsure of his decision.

Is the "package" some special device that can amplify and increase the intensity of ecstatic manifestations? If so, it's no surprise that it's so important. No, the word "important" is probably an understatement.

Richard untied his pager from his belt and turned it on. In the dim green light, he took out the yellowed newspaper clippings he had secretly cut from the city library that day. The paper was already dry.
Gas Explosion: Miracle Boy Unharmed.

The location, time and age all matched; however, the protagonist of the report did not even have a pseudonym. There was only a blurry, overexposed black-and-white photo showing the devastated scene after the explosion.

Richard was surprised at how easily he could find the information - after five minutes of preliminary screening in the library's public database, he found information about the boy in the yellow raincoat: it's just that there seemed to be too many strange things happening in Mong Cai City in recent years, and there had been no further follow-up reports.

[Ecstasy appeared several years ago, but insufficient information makes it difficult to determine the intensity of its manifestations during that period. It's possible that the [package] happened to fall into the hands of Huang Yuyi, causing his ecstasy to increase to such a high level.]

But Richard was still confused - his intuition told him that this was not the truth. Although he also liked the story of a young boy who happened to get a treasure and soared to the sky, the reality was not so complicated.

Does a device that can enhance ecstatic symptoms really exist?

He turned around and looked at the dried white bird droppings on the glass window of the tower crane cab. He felt that the fog covering his eyes was much stickier than this dirt.
-
A moment ago, Richard saw it clearly from the tower crane: after a rough search and confirmation, the four-man team rushed directly into the apartment - the negotiation location that Richard had previously proposed to the Special Package Handling Department through a code.
[Inhabited room.]
So this four-person team was sent by the Special Package Handling Section; their target was actually Richard.

[But why is Huang Yuyi in the new tenant's house? What's going on?]

Before the team officially began the assault, he observed that there was no light in the room at the end of the corridor - the apartment where [Yellow Raincoat] lived; only the window of the new tenant who moved in a few days ago was flickering dimly.

Richard was not panicked by this. He just put a cigarette at the entrance of the corridor that day, and the "yellow raincoat" came up to him - from this we can infer:

As long as the assault team starts to suppress the "new residents" who are closer to the corridor, the man in the yellow raincoat may be attracted by the noise and clash with them in the corridor; in this way, Richard will be able to observe more information.

Even if the guy in the yellow raincoat never showed up from beginning to end, at least Richard could be sure of how much the section chief was willing to pay to kill him.

For Richard, this deal is a win-win situation no matter how you look at it.

Although he knew that the section chief would never really negotiate with him, seeing these corpses being played with like toys still frightened Richard.

more importantly.
The team started the suppression work without any hesitation: perhaps they originally thought that Richard's trump card was just an ordinary method such as taking local civilians as hostages; this method is of course one of the most commonly used cases in textbooks.

But now, Richard knows - his colleagues all think he is just a nerd who only knows how to read textbooks.

Coupled with the small-caliber light weapons on Richard, no matter how dangerous he is, it is limited; a head-on confrontation is enough to kill Richard a hundred times.

After Richard had killed the "invisible man" who came to silence him, sending out such a configuration was reasonable: but according to the previous inference that [the package can enhance ecstasy], such an assault team is not safe enough -
If Richard had come into contact with the [Package], causing him to awaken from a state of trance and become enhanced; then although it would be impossible for him to annihilate the assault team as easily as [Yellow Raincoat], the possibility of successfully escaping would be greatly increased.

Not to mention:
If a special device capable of enhancing delusional symptoms truly existed, and had been taken away by a defector—even Richard, who had been away from headquarters for a long time, knew how terrifying this news was. [If that were true, they wouldn't have sent just John and me in the first place; this kind of thing is more important than everything the entire Special Package Handling Section has handled combined.]

[In other words—the Section Chief really didn't know anything about the [yellow raincoat]; and the possibility that the [package] could enhance ecstasy wasn't as high as I originally thought. The Section Chief isn't a gambler, at least not at work: there's no way she doesn't even know the nature of the [package's] contents.]

[So [Yellow Raincoat] originally had this much strength?]

For a moment, Richard didn't know which inference was more frightening.

The decision made by the section chief cannot be blamed; Richard himself never dreamed that he would encounter such a thing in Mong Cai, and he never thought that the guy in the yellow raincoat would be so terrifying.
The standard configuration for suppressing a maniac was usually just two trained field agents equipped with pistols.

How can such people and things exist in this world?

So the boy in the yellow raincoat might not be a product being secretly developed and protected by some company, nor a project that had mutated while under observation. The assault team's direct intrusion just now at least proves that even the Special Package Handling Department is unaware of his existence.
If you had known a little about the existence of the yellow raincoat, you would not have wasted these resources: this is simply throwing meat buns at a dog - no, if you really throw meat buns at a dog, maybe there would be some dough or something left.

He put down the clipping and stretched his tense shoulders:

Is the boy in the yellow raincoat the core of this vortex?
Impossible: As soon as this doubt arose, he denied it himself - all the clues known so far did not support this.

Instead, it was the divination tape that John Dou listened to before his death that gave Richard another idea:

Ah, a natural disaster. He's right, it really was. It was just bad luck, running into a murderous storm right out of the gate. A typhoon, a tornado, or some other natural disaster. An earthquake, a tsunami, a mudslide, or something like that. But this one can walk and talk. It's just luck, that's all.

【John has bad luck, really bad luck. 】

Another thought that makes people's spine shiver immediately appeared -
In other words: Did I just accidentally drag the guy in the yellow raincoat into this vortex?
So, will this vortex that can shatter a person into pieces become the mouthwash in someone's mouth for brushing teeth?

Perhaps the direction of the situation in the future is no longer predictable to any participant.

Richard grinned and laughed:
[Ha! Forget it, forget it. Now everyone is in trouble.]

The muddier the water, the greater his chances of survival—and Richard knew the weather was going to get bad before anyone else.

Looking down from his high vantage point, Richard saw red and blue lights flashing a block away - a police car was driving slowly along the narrow road between the alleys.

Someone called the police. And that person was not Richard.

This was also a signal of weakness: the commandos on hand were almost completely depleted and lacked support; they could only use this method to "borrow" local law enforcement resources to temporarily put an end to this matter.

This was another tactic used by the Special Package Handling Department; Richard was well aware of it. But he couldn't be certain. Perhaps, like Richard, they had come into contact with it and realized the horror it held, deciding there was no need to increase investment and continue to accrue sunk costs.

【Well, this is more likely.】

The section chief seemed to have unexpectedly few cards in Mong Cai: but this also confirmed Richard's guess - everything that is happening now, as well as the mission not long ago, were just private decisions made by the section chief, and it was impossible to mobilize too many other resources.

But the section chief is the section chief. She is not just an old woman. She has a joker in her hand that can change the game: I just don’t know if she can see that the thing in the yellow raincoat is a surprise to everyone?
The chief genuinely had no intention of negotiating—and he was so ruthless he'd barely even bothered to put on a show. If Richard had been alone in his apartment, facing this heavily armed group, he'd have been left with no room for negotiation and would have likely been reduced to a cold corpse. But Richard had learned not to expect anything from the Special Package Handling Division.

It was indeed a pleasant surprise that the boy in the yellow raincoat killed all the commandos, so the possibility of an ambush in the morgue was even lower.

So no matter what - the current situation is more in favor of Richard.

He let out a long breath and began to climb down from the tower crane, ready to step into a deeper vortex. The ladder was a little shaky, reminding Richard of the fickleness of fate.

It seems that choosing to observe first and then go to the morgue to search for clues is the right decision.
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(End of this chapter)