Schedule Update
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The note was on the coffee table.
Chu Xinghe sat across from it with his hands clasped, studying it with the focused attention he gave documents that required careful consideration before signing. The blood had dried to a dark reddish-brown. The dagger lay flat beside it on the lacquered surface.
Is this a threat?
He had turned the question over several times in the last ten minutes. The issue was that he had not met the Doctor yet. They had no prior interaction, no dispute, no reason for hostility. A threat required motive. He could not identify one.
A prank, then.
He looked at the note again. Two lines, blood-written, stabbed to his door with a B-rank weapon. That was a considerable amount of effort for a prank. A sick person's idea of a greeting, possibly, from someone who thought blood and a dagger constituted an appropriate introduction.
He picked up the dagger and examined it properly this time.
It was worn, the handle grip showing real use, the blade edge maintained well despite the general wear. An assassin's weapon, the balance and weight distribution confirmed it. That was not unusual. Many hunters carried tools with that profile.
What was unusual was what he felt when he held it.
Killing intent, dense and layered, soaked into the metal over a very long period of use. Blood energy. The kind that accumulated not from one incident but from sustained, repeated, deliberate work.
He checked the item description out of professional habit.
KNIFE OF THE PALE ONE — Growth Type Monster kills: 1,980 / 3,000 Human kills: 1,000 / 3,000 Current Rank: B. Fills to upgrade to A.
Chu Xinghe read the human kills line twice.
"What the fuck," he said.
That was the second time this week. He noted this with mild concern and set it aside.
One thousand human kills. The monster count was fine, that was standard hunter work, gates produced those numbers over a career. But one thousand human kills on a single weapon meant one person had used this specific blade on one thousand specific people.
This was not a hunter who had seen combat.
This was something considerably more focused than that.
My neighbor, he thought, has killed one thousand people with this knife specifically. Not counting whatever he used for the other ones.
This was not a serial killer.
This was a super sick, abnormal serial killer.
He set the dagger down carefully.
He thought about the mask. The featureless white porcelain with no strap, the mouth that appeared and disappeared. He had assumed it was a hunter ability, something cosmetic or intimidation-based. Now he reconsidered. Maybe the mask was not an ability. Maybe the mask was there because whatever was underneath it was not something you could show in public without causing a significant incident.
He thought about the veins on the clinic walls. Pulsing. Organic. Alive.
He thought about the fact that the clinic had not existed two days ago and now occupied two full floors of the Dao Guild's executive level.
He thought about the blood-written note, and the fact that the blood had healed fast enough to require multiple bites just to finish two sentences, which meant the Doctor's healing ability was operating continuously and automatically, which meant whatever he was, he was not standard.
He stood up. Walked to the window. Looked out at the capital, the boulevard, the ordinary Tuesday morning proceeding below with no awareness of the object currently on his coffee table.
Why does he have to be my neighbor.
Who knows when he is going to come and kill me.
He stood at the window for a moment, seriously contemplating whether he should sleep with his door locked. Then he remembered the door currently had a dagger-sized hole in it and locking it was probably beside the point.
Then his eyes lit up.
Wait.
This must be a test.
He turned back to the room.
If the Doctor could kill this many people and monsters, he was at minimum S-rank. The Guildmaster had introduced him publicly as A-rank. The Guildmaster did not make personal arrangements for A-rank hunters. There was a gap in those two facts that only made sense one way.
They have an alliance. A secret arrangement. And now the Doctor is on this floor and I am on this floor and he left me a dagger with a thousand human kills on it on day one.
This is a test. He is showing me what he is. If I return this dagger, I am signaling that I am on their side. That I understand. That I will keep my mouth shut.
"I have shown you my secret. If you know what is good for you, return it."
"If not, maybe I will come take it myself."
He looked at the dagger.
The logic was airtight. The message was clear. The Doctor was not threatening him. The Doctor was recruiting him. In the most alarming possible way, using a weapon with a thousand human kills as a business card, written in his own blood on a notepad, stabbed to the door with no regard for the woodwork.
This was a very strange man.
But the Guildmaster had chosen him. The Guildmaster's judgment had never failed in twelve years of Chu Xinghe working under him. Which meant that underneath the blood and the veins and the thousand human kills and the mask with no strap, there was presumably a reason.
He was going to have to return the dagger.
He was also going to have to eventually meet this person face to face, and he was choosing not to think about that yet.
He picked up the dagger, wrapped it in the cloth from the coffee table edge, and stood.
What kind of person writes their greeting in blood because they cannot find a pen.
He paused with his hand on the door.
What kind of person has a thousand human kills on a single knife and uses it as a welcoming gift.
He opened the door. The dagger hole in the wood was exactly at chest height. He looked at it for a moment.
He looked down the corridor at the Clinic of the Ruin Gospel, the veins pulsing slowly on the obsidian walls, the slogan visible above the entrance: As long as you're not dead, I can make sure you will live on.
Guildmaster, he thought, with the exhaustion of a man who has been professionally composed for eight years and can feel that record under new pressure, what kind of monster have you brought home. This is not a doctor. This is an unholy assassin.
He straightened his jacket and walked toward the clinic.