Chapter 655: Assassination

Midnight.

The oil lamp on the second floor of the old bookstore had long been extinguished.

Jie Ming lay on the bed, eyes closed, fingers resting lightly on his abdomen. His breathing was as steady as still water.

Anyone who saw this scene would think it was nothing more than a sleeping young man, dreaming harmless dreams surrounded by a room full of old books.

Suddenly, the walls of the bookstore trembled faintly, and something sliced through the air.

The approaching entity followed the thread-like connection between itself and Jie Ming, silently infiltrating the area.

For a moment, every crevice in the bookstore welcomed it.

The gap at the bottom of the doorframe worn wide by years of use, the less-than-two-millimeter crack where the wooden floor met the wall corner, the dark interlayer between the drawer and the desktop…

All those narrow spaces ordinary people never noticed seemed to come alive, quivering faintly as if quietly calling out to their kin.

Then, the Rift Dweller seeped out from the gap between the wall and the floor.

The Rift Dweller’s physical form resembled a projection—extremely thin and shadowy. Viewed from the side, it was almost nothing more than a nearly nonexistent line. Its surface was covered in fine patterns, like fingerprints magnified countless times.

After leaving the crevice, the Rift Dweller’s body crawled onto the bed from the footboard.

The process was very slow, like a black plant struggling to grow out of a stone crack.

Its body spread upward along the fibers of the bedsheet. To ordinary people, the bedsheet’s texture was fine and smooth, but in its perception, those were wide rivers.

It followed the direction of these rivers, inching past Jie Ming’s ankle, over his calf, and finally covering the area above his torso. Then, it pressed down toward the man on the bed.

It was an extremely slow force, yet one carrying an suffocating inevitability.

It was an extremely eerie power. The quilt showed no deformation and the clothes showed no wrinkles, yet the crushing force was undeniably real. It was as if something was trying to flatten Jie Ming’s body from three dimensions into two.

It sought to make him as thin and flat as itself—thin enough to be stuffed into a wall corner crack or the interlayer behind a wardrobe.

This was its method of killing.

Coming from the crevice, returning to the crevice.

It would compress its prey inch by inch until the target lost all thickness, becoming a thin human-shaped paper cutout, then stuffed into some corner no one would ever notice.

The Rift Dweller’s compression focused on Jie Ming’s chest, directly over his heart.

If it were an ordinary person, the sternum should have already emitted a brittle crack under the unbearable pressure, and the chest cavity would have been compressed to paper-thin. Yet Jie Ming’s skin did not sink even a millimeter, as steady as a meticulously forged alloy plate.

The Rift Dweller’s body began to tremble slightly.

It changed tactics. Its form shifted from even envelopment to concentrated piercing at a single point.

Screech!!!

A harsh metallic scraping sound suddenly exploded in the silent night, sharp as if someone were dragging steel across steel.

Yet Jie Ming’s body remained completely unharmed.

The force slid off his body as if someone had tried to dent a block of cast iron with their finger, only managing to produce futile noise in the air.

But this was only natural. After all, this was a Void Refinement body.

It was the true body Jie Ming had forged with countless materials. At this moment, it casually received this rule-level force and dissolved it into nothingness.

The bed swayed gently.

Jie Ming opened his eyes.

His gaze was calm to the point of laziness, like a naturalist who had discovered a never-before-seen strange insect in his own garden, tilting his head to observe it with interest.

“Oh,” his voice carried a calm that showed no surprise, “so it’s something like this.”

From the moment this Strange had entered the ten-meter range around the bookstore, he had sensed it.

After all, the bookstore had undergone his modifications over this period—layered seals, interwoven perception arrays. Even a bacterium slipping through a door crack could not escape his notice, let alone a Strange carrying intense heterogeneous energy fluctuations.

He had woken the moment it began approaching along their connection.

However, he had not set up additional defenses. He simply lay there quietly, waiting for it to arrive.

Of course, this was not due to negligence.

It was because he wanted to see it clearly.

Seeing this outcome, the Rift Dweller’s body froze.

The flat black membrane solidified abruptly less than a centimeter above Jie Ming’s chest, like a sheet of black paper frozen in mid-air. It was perceiving, desperately analyzing with its sensory system so different from humans’: why had this prey not been flattened?

As for the now-awake Jie Ming… the Rift Dweller’s own intelligence was not enough to ponder higher-difficulty questions.

Jie Ming did not mind the Strange’s disregard for him.

Deep in his pupils, light silently ignited. The golden light on his forehead also brightened.

The All-Purpose Eye operated at full speed.

The Fate Subsystem activated in sync.

Various streams of information converged, overlapped, and verified one another in Jie Ming’s consciousness.

In his vision, every detail of the entity was crystal clear.

Through his research on The Strange during this time, the All-Purpose Eye had also “updated” various inspection “modules” specifically for The Strange, making Jie Ming’s detection of them increasingly simple.

The All-Purpose Eye peeled apart the Rift Dweller’s internal structure layer by layer: channels of energy flow, distribution of core structures, nodes connecting to the outside world… everything became transparent in his sight.

Moments later, a complete outline of this Strange formed in his mind.

Existing within crevices—between walls and cabinets, doorframes and floors, all the gaps people overlooked.

Lurking by day, seeping out deep in the night.

Using compression as its method, it would reduce the target to infinite thinness, stuff it into cracks, hide it in interlayers, making people vanish into the folds of the world.

“…Interesting.”

Jie Ming thought softly in his heart.

The quality of this energy was surprisingly similar to the Shadow Thief’s.

Though not entirely identical, they shared a certain fundamental undertone at their core.

If one had to describe it, both originated from the dark corners of human perception.

Both parasitized spaces that went “unnoticed,” feeding on human indifference and fear.

A thought flashed through Jie Ming’s mind like lightning.

Twin-born.

These two Stranges were born as a pair.

They perhaps shared the same origin, or were bound together by some power from the moment of their birth.

The Shadow Thief was responsible for “biting.”

Stealing life force and exhausting its prey completely.

The Rift Dweller was responsible for “containment.”

Compressing prey that had lost their shadows into the world’s crevices, thoroughly erasing all traces.

The Shadow Thief absorbed their life force and soul, while the Rift Dweller disposed of their physical bodies.

But the Shadow Thief had been captured by him.

So the Rift Dweller had come looking for it.

Undoubtedly, there existed some form of induction between these two Stranges. Even if the Shadow Thief was sealed inside a metal box covered in runes, that connection would not completely disappear.

Following this invisible thread, the Rift Dweller had found the old bookstore, found this bedroom, and found him.

Then it had tried to press him into a sheet of paper.

Jie Ming stared at it for a moment and came up with an idea.

“You like crevices, huh?” He sat up from the bed, his tone casual as if speaking to an old friend. “You brought this on yourself.”

His voice was soft, like muttering to himself.

Although it lacked much intelligence, the Rift Dweller’s instincts made it react.

Its body began retreating rapidly, attempting to escape through the wall crevice it had come from.

Jie Ming gave it no chance.

His right hand emerged from under the quilt, palm facing up, fingers spread.

With a surge of spiritual power, he cast a wizard spell: Spatial Stabilization.

This was one of the few spatial-type wizard spells he had mastered.

In the wizarding world, this spell was typically used to lock down space, stabilize areas, and prevent teleportation.

But this time, Jie Ming made some modifications. He created two stabilized spatial zones at once, positioned extremely close to each other, forming a “crevice” above his palm.

A crevice reaching nanoscale width silently opened above his palm.

The naked eye could not discern a gap at this scale—it was countless times narrower than the finest hair.

But the Rift Dweller could sense the crevice’s existence.

As a Strange that parasitized “crevices,” its sensitivity to all kinds of gaps far surpassed any living being.

Its body jerked violently as if electrocuted and fled toward the bottom of the bed at several times its incoming speed.

After completing his preparations, Jie Ming casually reached out toward the Strange.

His movements were not fast, even carrying a leisurely unhurriedness, but his trajectory perfectly sealed off all possible escape routes for the Rift Dweller.

His hand was like swatting away a fly that had wandered into the room. With a casual wave, he forced the Rift Dweller back toward the spatial crevice.

Even as the Rift Dweller tried desperately to dodge, Jie Ming’s fingertips still easily touched its flat edge.

The Strange emitted a strange sound, like paper being crumpled, attempting to slip through his fingers.

But Jie Ming’s entire palm had already closed in, firmly grasping it. With a nearly brutal smoothness, he forcibly pressed it into the spatial crevice.

After stuffing part of the Strange’s body into the spatial crevice, Jie Ming released his fingers.

Yet the Rift Dweller could not escape. As its body fell into the gap, its edges were “sucked” in the moment they touched the crevice.

Jie Ming used his spiritual power to push its entire existence deeper into the crevice. Then, the patterns of a sealing formation spread from his fingertips like rapidly growing vines, completely sealing the crevice in an instant.

Snap.

A crisp finger snap.

Jie Ming retrieved a thin sheet from his internal cave heaven and precisely affixed it to the spot where the spatial crevice had opened.

The patterns of the sealing formation appeared on the sheet’s surface like a brand. The runes briefly glowed with a faint light before dimming.

Jie Ming looked down at the thin sheet in his hand, patted his palm, and nodded in satisfaction.

Rift Dweller—sealed.