“In my opinion, the mere existence of a place like that pleasure house is evil and darkness that can’t be ignored,” Zhu Shi stated flatly.

  I turned to Chang'an. “What exactly did you find?”

  “Since I always went straight to Goldfish whenever I visited, I didn’t wander around much at first. But after going there enough times, I noticed something. There are a lot of very young girls inside—not unusual on the surface; that kind of place runs on youth. I originally thought girls around Goldfish’s age—college students—were already the youngest they’d hire. But then…” Chang'an hesitated before continuing, “…the youngest ones there looked seven or eight years younger than her.”

  “What?” Zhu Shi’s eyes widened in shock. She couldn’t help turning to study Goldfish’s face.

  Goldfish looked roughly the same age as Zhu Shi and me—at most twenty. If someone appeared seven or eight years younger than that…

  Chang'an didn’t go into graphic detail about what those girls were actually made to do. He simply continued with a deeply grim expression.

  “I’m no saint preaching morality from a pulpit, but that crossed a line even I couldn’t stomach,” he said heavily. “At first my only goal was to talk Goldfish out of her revenge plan. After discovering that… my goal expanded. I wanted to bring the whole damn place down.”

  “That place isn’t something you can just tear down,” Goldfish said, glancing at him. “You should know better than anyone—the clients are all rich and powerful. When trouble hits a place like that, it’s not the same as an ordinary vice den going under. The backing is rock-solid. You can’t topple it through normal channels.”

  “How do you know unless you try? If I gather enough solid evidence in secret and report it high enough up the chain, something has to give,” Chang'an replied without wavering. Then he turned to me. “Two days ago I was ambushed—kidnapped and beaten within an inch of my life. The first thing that came to mind was that nightclub.”

  “You figured they’d discovered you were quietly collecting evidence and decided to eliminate the threat?” I pieced it together.

  In other words, the club’s operators—or whoever pulled their strings—might be the freak himself, or at least connected to him. When Chang'an became a danger to the operation, the freak sent a clone to nip the problem in the bud. Why they didn’t just finish him off cleanly instead of going through the trouble of a savage beating was anyone’s guess.

  Still, something didn’t quite add up. I asked, “Then why didn’t you tell me the truth last time?”

  “I was afraid you’d kill someone,” he answered.

  That only confused me more.

  “I don’t follow. Forget for a second that the club’s owners and their backers might be the very people trying to murder you—everything you already uncovered about what they do there is evil enough. Are you saying they don’t deserve to die? Or is it that you think only the law has the right to decide life and death, and individuals don’t get to play judge and executioner? I didn’t realize you had a Batman complex.”

  “It’s not about them,” he said, expression complicated. “If I had to put the exact reason into words… I’m not sure how to explain it to you. It’s just…”

  “Just what?” I pressed.

  “The way you reacted back then—it was way too calm,” he said. “When I later realized things weren’t what I thought, I was genuinely relieved from the bottom of my heart.”

  It took me a second to catch up. “Back then” meant the moment two days ago when I killed those two shadow clones right in front of him.

  At the time, I hadn’t known they weren’t human—and I still killed them anyway. Sure, there was an element of misjudgment, but honestly, it hadn’t stirred much in me emotionally.

  Chang'an, though, clearly saw it differently.

  Only after confirming they weren’t human did he seem to let out a breath he’d been holding.

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  “…For such a trivial reason?” I was stunned.

  Meeting his conflicted gaze, I found it impossible to connect with his thinking. His words felt completely out of place.

  It was like being in the middle of a brutal, blood-soaked fantasy battle saga, only for some character straight out of a cozy slice-of-life urban drama to suddenly start lecturing about the psychological trauma of harming others, why people shouldn’t hurt each other, and so on. We weren’t even on the same wavelength.

  Those delicate, sensitive topics belonged in peaceful everyday stories where falling off a bike and breaking a bone counts as a crisis. In our world, people dropping dead left and right was practically background noise.

  And once that thought crossed my mind, I finally saw the real issue.

  Yes—just as fantasy battle stories operate on one set of values and cozy urban stories on another, the world Zhu Shi and I inhabited wasn’t on the same channel as the one Chang'an lived in.

  I couldn’t demand he judge things by my standards. From his perspective, watching his friend treat killing so casually wasn’t something you could just shrug off with “Wow, you’ve got guts.”

  I glanced at Zhu Shi. She was already looking back at me.

  Then she turned to Chang'an. “And after that? If you believed the nightclub was behind the attack, why did we just see you walking out of there? What were you doing inside? Weren’t you afraid they’d try again?”

  “I was planning to hand over all the evidence I’d collected directly to the proper authorities. But before that, I wanted to get Goldfish out first,” Chang'an answered honestly. “As for whether they’d attack me again…”

  “I don’t fully understand what you two were just talking about,” Goldfish cut in, “but they’re not going to make a move on a customer in broad daylight. Anything they do happens in the shadows. On the surface they keep everything smooth and friendly—otherwise no one would ever come back.”

  “That’s part of it,” Chang'an said. “But mainly I realized they were unusually wary of me. Probably because the attempt two days ago failed—they couldn’t figure out how deep my connections ran. I figured I could bluff a little, play up the tiger-skin act, and use the momentum to get Goldfish out safely. But then you two showed up outside and ran into us. They’ve probably noticed by now. After thinking it over, I decided it was better to just tell you everything.”

  “You should have told us from the start,” Zhu Shi said, exasperated. “Even if you wanted to get her out first, you could have asked for help. If you didn’t want to talk to Z, you could have come to me. Where did you pick up this habit of trying to handle everything alone?”

  Chang'an reflexively glanced at me.

  Wait—was that aimed at me?

  “I see…” Alice suddenly spoke up. “Then the person currently leaning against the door eavesdropping on our conversation—is he also from that nightclub?”

  “What?” Chang'an and Goldfish both jolted.

  Zhu Shi remained perfectly calm.

  I was about to light up a “firefly” to sense whether someone was really out there.

  Before I could, the private room door was pushed open from outside.

  A man in a black suit—thirties or forties—strode in with arrogant confidence.

  “Sharp little girl! Since you’ve already noticed, there’s no point pretending. If you’d acted clueless, I’d have let you live a bit longer.” He spoke in a low, menacing tone, then turned to Goldfish. “From the way you were talking earlier, you really are on Zhu Chang'an’s side. I knew it—his movements when he was sniffing around for clues were far too precise. You must have been feeding him information from the inside. The boss thought so highly of you, and you betrayed her trust.”

  “Hmph…” Fear flickered across Goldfish’s face, though she fought to keep it hidden.

  Zhu Shi asked evenly, “So the club owner let my brother take Goldfish outside just to test whether she was a mole?”

  “That was incidental. The real purpose was for me to tail them and gauge Zhu Chang'an’s true strength.” The man in the black suit closed the door behind him with casual authority. He looked at Chang'an. “The boss was originally wary that you might have hidden power. But you just tore off your own tiger skin with your own mouth. Looks like surviving two days ago was pure luck—you have no real strength at all. And since these people only ran into you outside by chance, they aren’t your backup either. You’re finished.”

  “Who is he?” I asked Goldfish.

  “He’s the boss’s most trusted right-hand man,” she answered, unable to fully hide her fear now. “I heard he used to be a professional killer. Now he handles her personal security. In the past, anyone who tried to interfere with the club’s business… just vanished. Rumor is they all died by his hand.”

  “You still have time to chat?” The man sneered. “Or do you think five against one means you don’t have to be afraid? I don’t even need weapons to deal with you lot. But since I’m here, why not shatter your last hopes? Let me show you something truly terrifying—something beyond anything you’ve ever imagined in your pathetic little lives…”

  He snapped his fingers.

  The room underwent an immediate, unnatural shift.

  Shadows oozed like spilled ink from every seam and edge of the wallpaper, pooling into deep, inky blackness on the floor.

  One by one, demonic figures crawled up from the dark pools—like creatures straight out of hell.

  These were the freak’s shadow clones.

  Goldfish trembled violently at the nightmarish sight. Chang'an tensed on reflex.

  “How about it? These demons are soldiers gifted to me by the boss’s partner. They obey my every command.” The man spread his arms wide in exaggerated triumph, grinning like an emperor holding life and death in his hands. “This is power beyond ordinary mortal understanding. If you don’t want these demons to start gnawing on your fingers and toes, you’d better follow my orders obediently…

  “…Hm? You three over there—what’s with those expressions? Why are you looking at me like that?”