A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

In the darkness, lit by a sliver of moonlight, Ke Mingqing saw the figure sitting outside his window from the corner of his eye.

The man wore a black swallowtail trench coat and an owl mask that concealed his hair and ears. A V-shaped band of red light glowed at the center of the pitch-black mask.

At the same time, the man’s Superhuman panel surfaced in Ke Mingqing’s vision.

[Superhuman Codename: ”Owl Judge”]

[Type: Mutant]

[Danger Rating: A++ Rank]

[Superhuman Profile: Mutated by a stroke of fate, he crossed paths with Black Hand Zorro of the anti-hero organization Solomon, and became an anti-hero himself. His ability is the manipulation of black moonlight.]

Seeing the Superhuman panel jolted Ke Mingqing fully awake. He wasn’t dreaming; everything unfolding before his eyes was completely real.

He forced himself to calm down and quickly assessed the situation.

First, an eyeball encased in a metal box floated in midair, staring unblinkingly down at him. Second, a masked man in a black swallowtail trench coat sat just outside the windowsill, bathed in moonlight as he played with his phone.

The rain falling toward Owl Judge seemed to strike an invisible barrier, sliding off completely without touching him.

The sound of the rain was gone, as was the chirping of cicadas hidden within the storm. The world had plunged into dead silence, yet a deafening string of thoughts exploded in Ke Mingqing’s mind.

’Owl Judge? Is that the superhuman who slaughtered those two players in Haian City?’ he thought. ’Why is he outside my bedroom? And what’s with this eyeball hovering over me?’

Though completely lucid now, Ke Mingqing kept his eyes shut and continued to feign sleep.

Outside the window, Owl Judge stared down at his phone screen, murmuring to himself, ”A player’s eyeball can see the ID hovering over another player’s head. By scooping out their eyes and rigging them into a scanner, a red light means the target is a player... and a green light means they aren’t.”

He tilted his head. ”But this thing seems busted. Why didn’t any lights turn on when it looked at A’Qing?”

A player’s eye?

Ke Mingqing froze before realization dawned on him. ’Did Owl Judge scoop out the eyes of the two players he killed and turn them into some kind of detection device?’

At the thought, a wave of goosebumps broke out across his skin.

That had to be it. The eyeball hovering in midair belonged to either Liu Haitao or Xu Yiyi, the two players murdered the other day. That unlucky bastard’s eye had been stuffed into a metal box and hooked up to an imaging device, feeding whatever it saw straight into Owl Judge’s phone.

But there was still one glaring issue: how did Owl Judge know his name?

’Could it be...’

Even as Ke Mingqing pondered this, the hovering metal box was enveloped by black moonlight. It zipped out the window and dropped into Owl Judge’s hand.

Tossing the box playfully, Owl Judge dialed an unknown number.

Leaning against the windowsill, he wedged the phone against his ear and said flatly, ”A’Xue, this scanner you built is garbage. I only tested it on Xiao Li, and it’s already broken.”

Ke Mingqing listened in silence. Owl Judge’s voice, heavily filtered by the mask, carried a magnetic, metallic timbre—exactly like Rain Crow’s.

A moment later, a cold, crisp female voice rang out from the speaker.

”I only gave you a beta version to play around with. The final product isn’t finished yet.”

The night was deep and utterly silent, allowing Ke Mingqing to hear the voice on the other end with perfect clarity. Instantly, the ice-cold, indifferent face of his second sister, Xia Lingxue, flashed into his mind.

’Second Sister?’ he thought in shock. ’Then the person on the phone with her has to be... Eldest Brother?’

Owl Judge’s next words confirmed his suspicions.

”Alright, alright. I’ll leave the rest of the family to you then. I only tested Xiao Li, and she doesn’t show any signs of having been replaced by a player.”

”Didn’t I tell you to test Dad first?” Xia Lingxue asked coolly.

”Dad isn’t home. What was I supposed to do?” Owl Judge said carelessly. ”As for Mom, I don’t think any player could ever pull off an impersonation of her.”

”Why not?”

”We’d be able to tell at a glance if Mom got replaced. There’s zero need to use a scanner on her.” Owl Judge shrugged.

’Haha, but can you tell that your mom is an alien?’ Ke Mingqing mocked inwardly.

”Forget it. I wasn’t expecting much from you anyway,” Xia Lingxue said. ”But let me make this clear upfront: if there really is a player in our family, what are you going to do about it?”

Owl Judge fell silent.

A moment later, he let out a low, dark chuckle. The V-shaped band on his mask flared with a crimson glare. ”For starters... I’ll use him to vent my anger. I’ll make him wish he were dead, and then I’ll chop him into pieces and feed him to the pigs.”

”But he’d be wearing a family member’s body,” Xia Lingxue pointed out calmly. ”Are you sure you could actually go through with it?”

Owl Judge froze. ”Oh, right... Then I guess we shouldn’t rush to kill him. We need to figure out how to get our original family member back first. Why don’t you ask Dr. Toy from the Roundtable to look into it?”

”Idiot... Sometimes you’re so thick you could give Mom a run for her money,” Xia Lingxue said coldly. ”Forget it. We’ll discuss the details when I get back in a couple of days. I’m hanging up.”

With that, she hung up the phone.

A dial tone beeped from the speaker. Owl Judge put away his phone and slid the French window shut. He turned his head, casting a glance at Ke Mingqing’s sleeping face through his mask.

Silence.

A dead silence so absolute it was maddening.

More than ten seconds passed before Ke Mingqing cracked his eyelids open just a sliver. The silhouette outside the window had completely vanished. He lay flat on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling.

By the time he snapped out of his daze, his back was drenched in cold sweat, his pajamas clinging clammy and wet to his skin.

His heart hammered with lingering dread. ’If that scanner had actually caught something, wouldn’t Eldest Brother have just quietly butchered me before I even woke up?’

’No, wait. That scanner Eldest Brother threw together might not even work on me. My exclusive talent is Disguiser.’

’But judging from their conversation, Second Sister isn’t exactly ordinary either. She’ll be back in a few days to take over testing the family... I need to make foolproof preparations before then.’

At that thought, his turbulent emotions refused to settle. ’It would be great if I could just run away, but the problem is that I can’t escape Leijing right now. It would be far too easy for the Crow Men to track me down.’

He let out a long exhale, dispelling his chaotic thoughts.

’I’ll just have to take things one step at a time. It’s pretty fun this way, regardless.’

Ke Mingqing muttered to himself as he lay back down, turning his head to watch the curtain of rain outside the window.

With Owl Judge gone, the rain was finally hitting the glass once more, the pitter-patter of the drops blurring the pale moonlight.

He closed his eyes, and the rest of the night passed in silence.