“Judge?” Logan Sullivan raised his eyebrows and smiled meaningfully. “Judge Lord, your news really travels fast. I just went to the hospital during the day, and before midnight, you’ve already been sent by him? I’m fine, just go back and tell him, thank him for thinking of me.”

The person outside the window responded softly, “Yes.” After a moment, that thick aura of yin energy disappeared.

Logan Sullivan fumbled around on the bed, and William Sherman pressed down on his wrist. “Was that a yin envoy? How…”

“Silly,” Logan Sullivan sighed, found William Sherman’s hair, and gently ran his fingers through it, speaking softly, “Others are scheming against you in all sorts of ways… Someone in the underworld knows about ‘William Sherman’, right?”

William Sherman hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He had taken on human form and stayed in the mortal world for decades, just to secretly observe others—such a thing was truly beneath his dignity, so of course William Sherman wouldn’t go around announcing it. But for a Soul Reaper to linger in the human world was no small matter; the Ten Yama Kings had to be informed.

Logan Sullivan frowned in thought, then, still uneasy, said, “With your status, you shouldn’t have to get involved with them. They have their own concerns, and in these matters of humans and ghosts, everyone has their own calculations. You…”

William Sherman asked softly, a bit uncertain, “Are you… worried about me?”

Logan Sullivan paused, then lowered his head toward the sound. “What do you think?”

William Sherman tightened his grip, then suddenly hugged him tightly, burying his face in the crook of his neck for a long, long time. William Sherman was very strong; Logan Sullivan wanted to take advantage of the good atmosphere to do something else, but found he couldn’t break free at all.

William Sherman just held him possessively, as if he intended to keep hugging him until dawn. Logan Sullivan thought for a long time but couldn’t come up with a good solution. Soon he grew tired, and could only fall asleep with ill intentions in his heart, unwillingly drifting off, feeling that he had never slept so aggrieved in his life.

He was so frustrated he almost got a nosebleed.

Maybe it was because William Sherman’s grip was too tight and made him uncomfortable, but as Logan Sullivan drifted off, he began to dream.

He dreamed he was wandering for half the night in a place shrouded in mist, surrounded by ruins. Countless people were prostrating themselves toward the sky. He glanced at them, then continued walking downward.

Next, it seemed he was in a place of utter desolation, darkness all around. Logan Sullivan felt inexplicably irritable, tried to conjure fire with his fingers, but it went out before it could light. Someone sighed in his ear, “I was just saying, why did you have to go this far?”

That voice was hard to describe—it didn’t seem to enter through his ears, but went straight into his heart. The words were like an ice pick, stabbing into his chest, pouring coldness into his heart. Logan Sullivan shuddered violently and woke up. It seemed to be morning already; William Sherman was not beside him, probably out buying something.

Eyes open, it was black; eyes closed, still black. Logan Sullivan’s heart pounded like thunder, thumping in his chest, his lungs nearly squeezed empty, his palms icy cold.

Who… was speaking?

Logan Sullivan sat on the bed, reached up and pinched the space between his brows hard, wiping away a handful of cold sweat. In this state, with a thousand tangled thoughts and total darkness before his eyes, he couldn’t stand even one more second.

Chapter 61: The Merit Pen …

Logan Sullivan quickly tidied himself up, then felt around the coffee table for the gauze and medicine he’d brought back from the hospital. He closed his eyes, wrapped the gauze around his eyes a few times, then found some paper and a pen on the nightstand. Without caring what kind of paper it was, he scrawled the words “I’m going to No. 4 Guangming Road” in messy handwriting, and then, measuring his steps, left the house.

The thunderous heartbeat from his dream gradually calmed as he moved swiftly.

When the elevator opened on the first floor, Logan Sullivan had already steadied his breathing, focusing all his energy on his third eye between his brows, and strode out.

He saw many people walking back and forth in front of him. Soon, Logan Sullivan could distinguish that those with a faint shadow around them were living people; as for those without, he had no idea what they were.

At first, for some reason, his vision was blurry, just a vague layer. But as Logan Sullivan slowly walked out of the residential complex, he seemed to get used to this way of “seeing things,” and those figures gradually became clearer.

Gradually, he could see the Samadhi True Fire on each person, even the Three Flowers above their heads. Finally, as Logan Sullivan brushed past someone, he saw clearly—the faint shadow on living people was actually a blurry “membrane” covering them from head to toe, with strange patterns on it.

Logan Sullivan stopped at the intersection and raised his hand to hail a taxi. Since he couldn’t see, he just kept his hand up, relying on luck.

When he finally got a taxi and fumbled into the car, Logan Sullivan could see that the things covering everyone weren’t strange symbols, but writing.

Tiny, densely packed, constantly changing every second. Logan Sullivan couldn’t help staring at the driver for a couple of seconds, only snapping out of it when the driver called his attention twice. “Oh, sorry, No. 4 Guangming Road, just drop me at the entrance.”

The taxi driver glanced curiously at the gauze over his eyes. “Young man, what happened to your eyes?”

Logan Sullivan lied casually, “Got hit playing basketball.”

The driver exclaimed, “Oh? Can you still see?”

“I’ve got medicine on, can’t open my eyes,” Logan Sullivan said. “Guess I’ll be blind for a couple of days.”

They chatted idly along the way. When they arrived at No. 4 Guangming Road, the taxi stopped by the curb. Logan Sullivan thought for a moment, then took out his wallet, opened it, and handed it directly to the driver. “I can’t see either, so just take what’s needed.”

The driver was stunned. “Huh? You trust me that much?”

Logan Sullivan smiled. “There’s not much money in my wallet anyway, just take what you need.”

The driver hesitated, printed the receipt for him, then rummaged through his wallet. During this, Logan Sullivan stared intently at the ever-changing words on the driver. He heard the rustling as the driver moved, heard him take something out, hesitate, then put it back, and after a moment, pull out another bill, take some change from his own pocket, and put it back in Logan Sullivan’s wallet.

Logan Sullivan’s lips curled up—his vision was getting clearer, and he could now distinguish the colors of the words. Some were red, some black. Just as the driver put the change back in his wallet, Logan Sullivan saw a line of tiny red characters flash across the driver.

So that’s what it meant—after thanking the driver and declining his offer to help him inside, Logan Sullivan thought to himself, so those little words are a person’s merit: red for virtue, black for loss. It seemed the driver hadn’t taken advantage of him.

However, Logan Sullivan soon frowned again. He could clearly feel that something inside his body was awakening at a speed too fast to stop, and he couldn’t tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

It all seemed to have started… from the recent earthquake, the one that unearthed the Hangar Tribe’s Terra-Spike.

Was that earthquake really caused by natural tectonic movement?

The gatekeeper in the security room, who liked to whittle bones, saw him from afar, cheerfully put down his file, and greeted him, “Hey, Director Zhao! Eh? What happened to your eyes?”

“Accident,” Logan Sullivan replied calmly. “Uncle Li, come over and give me a hand.”

Uncle Li didn’t have time to come over before someone else suddenly caught up from behind. William Sherman grabbed his outstretched hand, struggling to restrain his strength and voice, and said, “Couldn’t you wait for me? I just went out to buy breakfast, and when I turned around you were gone. You nearly scared me to death! If you do this again, I’ll…”

Do what?

William Sherman took a few deep breaths, his lungs nearly bursting with anger, but still couldn’t say what he meant.

Logan Sullivan turned his head, and through his increasingly clear third eye, for some unknown reason, he saw rows of bright red characters representing merit on William Sherman.

Yet they didn’t last; like waves, they appeared quickly and were immediately washed away by a tide of darkness, leaving no trace, like footprints on a beach that are never left behind.

Logan Sullivan’s eyes stung. He didn’t know where that sudden ache came from, as if an ancient memory buried for millennia had finally been swept clean by a hurricane, revealing a corner of the naked, inescapable truth beneath, stabbing at his heart with wave after wave of sorrow.