Charles Gray watched coldly from the sidelines, feeling that William Sherman didn’t seem to be informing the student’s family about her illness, but rather going through something as difficult as petitioning the authorities—on the other end, the parents, aunts, uncles, each one passing the buck like a game of hot potato, and in the end, not a single person said they would come to check on her.

Even Charles Gray could hear the frustration in his voice, and thought to himself, this is really fucked up.

It’s hard for an honest official to settle family disputes—this is just how some families are. William Sherman had no other options, so he hung up the phone, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the wall, frowning.

He had broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and long legs. The sleeves of his dress shirt were buttoned up tightly, and a pair of rimless glasses rested on his nose. Looking at him like this, he was just like a male model in a perfume ad, exuding an air of asceticism. He stood there in silence for a moment, and Charles Gray almost thought he was about to start cursing, but William Sherman still didn’t say a word.

After a while, the furrow between William Sherman’s brows was still there, but he looked up and smiled at Charles Gray: “Thank you so much for your help today, Officer Guo. How about this—you head back first, I can take care of the student myself. Don’t let this hold up your other work.”

“I... I don’t have any other work...” Charles Gray stammered, just as he met the eyes of Darrin Grant, who was poking its head out of his bag. Under the cat’s emerald gaze, he blurted out, “Director Sullivan just told me to follow her, didn’t say to investigate anything, and didn’t say when I should go back...”

When the hot-blooded enthusiasm that Logan Sullivan had talked him into finally faded, Charles Gray instinctively realized something about this bizarre assignment—he was slow, but not stupid. Tagging along with a sickly girl was hardly a challenging task; most likely, Director Sullivan just found him a nuisance.

And it made sense. Someone as useless as him, who only made things worse, could only get into the Special Investigation Bureau through connections... Not even twenty-four hours in, and he’d already messed up who knows how many things. Who would want a screw-up like that?

“That’s not what your Director Sullivan thinks,” William Sherman said helplessly—though he knew full well that’s exactly what Logan Sullivan thought. “Don’t take it to heart.”

Charles Gray once again wilted into a big, droopy-eared mushroom of gloom.

After a while, the doctor came out and said that Quinn Barnes had been emotionally shocked, and on top of her long-term negative mood, malnutrition, and low blood pressure, she had reacted quite strongly. She’d been given a sedative and was now asleep, and it was recommended that she be hospitalized for observation.

William Sherman had no choice but to arrange for her admission. The odd trio—two men and a cat—stayed at the hospital with Quinn Barnes until the sun set that day, but none of her family came to visit.

Charles Gray asked softly, “Teacher Shen, does her family just not care about her?”

William Sherman didn’t know what to say, so he just sighed.

Sitting by Quinn Barnes’s bedside, Charles Gray suddenly understood why she was so heartbroken, why her emotions were so intense, why she cried until she convulsed, even tried to jump off a building...

Because perhaps the only person in the world who ever loved her was gone. From now on, no one would care about her joys and sorrows, no one would watch her back with both longing and the hope that she could go farther away.

And so, night fell.

Chapter 12 Reincarnation Sundial Eleven …

“This is it, rewind it for me.”

After parting ways with Charles Gray, Logan Sullivan drove back to No. 4 Guangming Road. The first thing he did was head straight to the office and replay the surveillance footage from the university intersection three times, start to finish.

The office looked much more deserted during the day. In the criminal investigation division, only one female officer was on duty.

She looked to be in her early twenties, with her hair pulled back in a simple ponytail and light makeup that showed off her smooth, pretty forehead. Her eyes were half-open, half-closed, looking lazy as if she might fall asleep, but her hands worked deftly.

The female officer wore her uniform on top, but had a long blanket draped over her legs, always sitting in her chair without moving. If not for her rosy complexion, she would have looked like someone just recovering from a serious illness.

Maybe the blanket was a bit too long—one end trailed on the floor, and Logan Sullivan accidentally stepped on it, lifting the other side. Under the blanket, the tip of a giant python’s tail flashed out abruptly, then quickly withdrew. The officer didn’t even look down, her attention still on the footage, as she casually smoothed the blanket back down.

Her name tag was stuck to the corner of the desk—Holly Harlow.

The surveillance footage wasn’t very clear, disrupted by some unknown magnetic interference, cutting in and out, sometimes with static. There wasn’t much information in it anyway, since the murder actually happened in a small alley by the university’s side gate, while the camera was at the intersection on University Road. All it caught was a brief moment when the victim, Rachel Lowry, and Quinn Barnes crossed paths on University Road.

The timestamp showed it was around 10:20 p.m. the previous night. Quinn Barnes, just as she’d said, came out the main gate, went into the small supermarket across the street, and five minutes later came out and headed back, just in time to brush past the victim, Rachel Lowry, politely nodding to her.

The footage froze at the moment after they parted, when the victim, Rachel Lowry, had crossed the street and was about to enter the alley.

Quinn Barnes seemed to glance at Rachel Lowry absentmindedly. Because of the poor resolution, her subtle expression wasn’t clear, but then she appeared to be greatly startled, taking a big step back.

Holly Harlow stared at the screen for a moment, her half-closed eyes finally opening wider, revealing a pair of inhuman vertical pupils in her almond-shaped eyes, making her look especially eerie.

“She was looking under the streetlight?”

Logan Sullivan nodded. “Can you make the streetlight area any clearer?”

Holly Harlow zoomed in a bit, but the image quality barely improved. “No, that’s the best I can do.”

“...In a few days I’ll send you to do a part-time graduate program, so you can really improve your technical skills.”

Holly Harlow patted her “thigh.” “That would take at least two or three years. With my, uh, monthly situation, how am I supposed to explain taking time off every few days?”

Logan Sullivan said with a straight face, “Can’t you just say you have period pain? Silly woman.”

“...” Holly Harlow was silent for a while. “You always shatter my beautiful fantasies about you, boss.”

“You know I’m your boss and you still dare to fantasize,” Logan Sullivan tapped her on the head, “Don’t want your bonus anymore?”

Holly Harlow narrowed her eyes even more, sticking out a tongue as thin as a snake’s to lick her lips. “If you’d let me sleep with you for a night, I’d work for you for free, forget the salary.”

Logan Sullivan looked down at her, grinning without smiling. “Really?”

Holly Harlow: “...”

She suddenly had the feeling that their shameless boss really might do something as indecent as selling himself for favors.

“Flirting with your boss during work hours,” Logan Sullivan laughed, “Very good, Comrade Holly Harlow. This year, the Party study quota for our department goes to you. Get ready to improve your ideological awareness.”

Holly Harlow regretted not shutting up sooner, so she changed the subject: “If the surveillance can’t catch it, that means it doesn’t want to be seen. Unless you have the Eye of Heaven open—this girl could see that thing probably because she’s been in contact with the Reincarnation Sundial.”

Logan Sullivan tapped his fingers lightly on the desk. “I know about the Wheel of Return—usually a sundial engraved with aphorisms, more symbolic than practical. What’s special about this one?”

“Actually, when you mentioned the old sundial this afternoon, I thought of it,” Holly Harlow bent down and opened a drawer under the desk, pulling out an old-style thread-bound ledger. “I borrowed this from the underworld. You can take a closer look when you have time. Legend has it the base is made from fragments of the Lifemark Stone, and the scales on the back are from a kind of black fish in the Veilwater, three feet three inches long, with crystal-hard fins on its belly that only grow on one side.”

Logan Sullivan nodded for her to go on.

Holly Harlow flipped open the old ledger. “It’s said that when Pangu created the world and separated yin and yang, the Road of the Underflow and Veilwater were set as boundaries. Later, as more living beings appeared, it became hard to manage, so the rules of the Gates of the Lost were established. Before that, the underworld already had these four sacred artifacts. Later, all four ended up in the human world for various reasons, and the Reincarnation Sundial is one of them.”

Holly Harlow’s slender fingers slid across the page, and Logan Sullivan followed her hand to see the three characters “Reincarnation Sundial” with the words “borrowed life” written in small script underneath.

“Borrowed life?” Logan Sullivan frowned, immediately thinking of the unusual new soul following Quinn Barnes. “What about that check I asked you to do on Quinn Barnes? Anyone close to her who died within the last seven days?”

“Yes, Quinn Barnes’s grandmother, passed away at the end of August.”

Logan Sullivan leaned back and slowly lit a cigarette. “Then that must be it. No wonder the old lady’s soul could appear in broad daylight—turns out the Lifemark Stone is separating her from the living soul. No wonder that girl was spouting so many lies, borrowing life from her elder, how could she...”