Chapter 787: Chapter 654: Assassination

Midnight.

The oil lamp on the second floor of the old bookstore had long gone out.

Jeming lay on the bed upstairs, eyes closed, fingers lightly resting on his abdomen, his breath steady like a still pond.

Anyone witnessing this scene would think this was merely a young man in a harmless sleep, dreaming amidst a room of old books.

Suddenly, the walls of the bookstore trembled slightly, and something in the air was torn open.

The thing that was approaching seeped silently towards this place, following the fine thread-like connection between it and Jeming.

In an instant, all the gaps inside the bookstore welcomed it.

The gap widened by years at the bottom of the door frame, the barely two millimeter crack where the wooden floor meets the corner wall, the dark compartment between the drawer and the tabletop...

All the narrow spaces unnoticed by ordinary people seemed to come alive, trembling slightly, as if whispering to its kind.

Then, the Fissure Man seeped out from between the cracks in the walls and floorboards.

The entity of Fissure Man, similar to Shadow Thief, is an extremely faint and dark silhouette, looking from the side it is just a line that nearly doesn’t exist.

Its surface was covered with tiny patterns, like fingerprints magnified countless times.

After leaving the gap, the body of Fissure Man crawled up from the foot of the bed.

The process was slow, as slow as a black plant struggling to grow from a rock fissure.

Its body spread upward along the fibers of the bed sheet, whose texture seems dense and smooth to ordinary people, but to its perception felt like a wide river.

It followed the directions of these rivers, crawling inch by inch over Jeming’s ankle, over his calf, finally covering his torso.

And then, it pressed down on the man in bed.

It was a power extremely slow but filled with a suffocating inevitability.

It was an exceedingly strange force, although the quilt did not deform nor did the clothes wrinkle, yet the compressing force was real.

Just like something attempting to flatten Jeming’s body from three dimensions into two.

Trying to make him as thin, as flat as itself, thin enough to fit into the crack at the corner of the wall, or the compartments behind the wardrobe.

This is its method of killing.

To come from a fissure, and return to a fissure.

It would compress its prey inch by inch, until all thickness is lost, turning into a thin human-shaped paper, then stuffed into a corner no one would ever notice.

The compression of Fissure Man focused on Jeming’s chest, directly over the heart.

If it were an ordinary person, at this moment the sternum should have already emitted a brittle crack of collapse, the thorax at least compressed thin like paper.

But Jeming’s skin did not dent even one millimeter, steady like a sheet of tempered alloy.

The body of Fissure Man began to tremble slightly.

It changed strategy, its body altered form, shifting from uniform wrapping to concentrated piercing.

Screech!!!

The piercing sound of metal friction suddenly exploded in the silent night, sharp like someone forcibly dragging steel against steel.

But Jeming’s body remained unharmed.

The force slid away along his body, as if someone attempting to press flat a piece of cast iron with fingers, ultimately merely making noise futilely in the air.

But this was only natural, after all, it was the Refined Void Body.

The true body Jeming forged from countless materials, at this moment casually receiving the power from the rules layer, then dissolving it into nothingness.

The bed gently shook.

Jeming opened his eyes.

His gaze was calm to the point of laziness, like a naturalist discovering a peculiar insect never seen before in his garden, tilting his head with curious interest.

"Oh," his voice carrying a tranquility of complete expectation, "so it’s this thing."

From the moment this anomaly stepped within ten meters of the bookstore, he had sensed it.

After all, this bookstore had been modified by him over time, with layers of seals, interwoven senses, even a bacterium slipping through the door would not escape his notice, let alone an anomaly with intense foreign energy fluctuations.

From the moment it began to approach along the connection, Jeming was already awake.

However, he had not set up additional defenses, just lay there quietly, waiting for it to come.

This was certainly not because of negligence.

But because he wanted to see it clearly.

Seeing this outcome, the body of Fissure Man froze.

The layer of flat black film abruptly solidified less than a centimeter from Jeming’s chest, like a piece of black paper suspended in air.

It was perceiving, using its sensory system completely different from humans to desperately analyze: why hadn’t this prey been flattened?

As for the already awakened Jeming... the intelligence of Fissure Man was insufficient to support it in contemplating more complex issues.

Jeming cared not for the anomaly’s ignorance towards him.

A glow silently ignited in the depths of his pupils, the golden light on his forehead similarly lit up.

The All-Purpose Eye operated at full speed.

The Fate System started in synchronization.

Various streams of information confluenced, overlapped, and verified each other within Jeming’s consciousness.

In his vision, every detail of that thing was revealed clearly.

Through his research on anomalies over time, the All-Purpose Eye had "updated" various inspection "modules" aimed specifically at anomalies, making Jeming’s detection of anomalies increasingly simple.

The All-Purpose Eye peeled back the layers of the Fissure Man’s internal structure: the channels of energy flow, the distribution of core structures, the nodes connecting to the outside world... everything became transparent in his vision.

Moments later, a complete outline of this eerie entity took shape in his mind.

Existing within crevices, between walls and cabinets, door frames and floors, all the gaps people ignore.

Lurking by day, seeping out deep into the night.

Compressing targets to unimaginable thinness, squeezing them into cracks, hiding in layers, making them vanish into the folds of the world.

"...Interesting."

Jeming murmured to himself.

The texture of this energy was so similar to that of the Shadow Thief.

Though not completely the same, there was a certain shared undertone at their core.

If anything, they both originated from the shadowy corners of human perception.

Both parasitized those "unnoticed" spaces, feeding on human indifference and fear.

A thought flashed through Jeming’s mind like lightning.

Dual nature.

These two eerie entities were born in pairs.

Perhaps they shared the same origin, perhaps they were bound by some force at their inception.

The Shadow Thief was responsible for "biting."

Siphoning life energy until its prey was exhausted.

While the Fissure Man was responsible for "enclosure."

Compressing the prey that lost its shadow into the world’s crevices, erasing all traces.

The Shadow Thief absorbed life energy and souls, while the Fissure Man processed the bodies.

But the Shadow Thief had been captured by him.

So the Fissure Man came searching for it.

Without a doubt, some sort of sensing existed between these two entities. Even though the Shadow Thief was sealed within a rune-etched metal box, that sensing wouldn’t completely vanish.

The Fissure Man followed this invisible thread, finding the old bookstore, finding this bedroom, finding him.

Then attempting to flatten him into a piece of paper.

Jeming stared at it for a moment, an idea forming in his mind.

"Like gaps, do you?" He sat up from the bed, his tone light, as if speaking to an old friend, "This is what you asked for."

His voice was soft, like a soliloquy.

Lacking much intellect, yet the Fissure Man’s instinct triggered a response.

Its body began rapidly retreating, trying to escape through the crack in the wall it came from.

Jeming didn’t give it a chance.

His right hand emerged from under the covers, palm up, fingers spread wide.

As his spiritual power was mobilized, a witchcraft was cast: Space Stabilization.

This was one of the few spatial magics he mastered.

In the Wizard World, this magic was typically used to seal spaces, stabilize areas, and prevent teleportation.

But Jeming made some modifications when he cast the magic this time, creating two areas of stabilized space in one go, extremely close together, forming a "crack" above his palm.

A crack at the nanometric scale silently opened above his palm.

The naked eye couldn’t discern such a minuscule gap; it was countless times narrower than the thinnest hair.

But the Fissure Man could sense the crack’s presence.

As a creature parasitizing in "crevices," its sensitivity to all kinds of gaps far exceeded any living being.

Its body convulsed as if electrocuted, sliding under the bed at several times the speed it entered.

Completing his preparations, Jeming nonchalantly reached out toward the eerie entity.

His motion was unhurried, almost leisurely, yet the trajectory precisely blocked all of the Fissure Man’s possible escape routes.

His hand waved as if shooing away an insect that had mistakenly entered the room, effortlessly driving the Fissure Man back toward the spatial crack.

Even as the Fissure Man desperately dodged, Jeming’s fingertips still easily touched its flattened edge.

The eerie entity emitted a strange sound, like paper being crumpled, as it tried to slip away through his fingers.

But Jeming’s entire palm followed smoothly, firmly pressing it into the spatial crack with an almost forceful grace.

Once part of the creature had been forced into the spatial crack, Jeming released his fingers.

The Fissure Man couldn’t escape; its body plunged into the fissure, with the edges "sucking" in upon encountering the crack.

Jeming used spiritual power to push its entire existence deep into the crack, then the runes of the Sealing Array spread from his fingertips, like rapidly growing vines, sealing the fissure completely in an instant.

Snap.

A crisp snap of fingers.

Jeming retrieved a thin piece from his Inner Grotto Heaven, precisely placing it where the spatial crack had opened.

The runes of the Sealing Array appeared like a brand on the thin surface, briefly glowing before dimming.

Jeming glanced at the thin piece in his hand, clapping his palms together, nodding in satisfaction.

Fissure Man, sealing complete.

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