Chapter 3 "Thanks for the Inspiration" Subtitle: "Signed, Your Biggest Fan" Alternative title: "From the Diary of a Reluctant Muse"

  The vision didn’t st much longer.

  "See? When you antagonized me three days ago, did you ever imagine this would happen?"

  Gou Ming found himself sitting atop the freshly turned earth, patting it with mocking condescension—as if congratuting his new "guest." Sarcasm dripped from his words.

  Yet again, he confirmed this scene didn’t match the case files.

  The killer held no apparent grudge against his victims.

  ‘Three days.’

  He noted the timeframe.

  "Perfect."

  Then, he reconstructed the exact setting Gou Ming had witnessed before the vision began:

  "If reincarnation exists, may you return as a crawling stray—no, a maggot—forever crushed beneath human heels."

  Cursing under his breath, Gou Ming gathered his tools and walked away slowly.

  His emotions were eerily pcid. He felt nothing at all.

  The fshlight flickered once more—seemingly on its own.

  A shadow stirred at the edge of his vision.

  Time was running out.

  The crime-scene repy began fracturing into shards of light, then shattered completely.

  The oppressive darkness and blood-red world swallowed him again.

  For abrupt, disorienting return.

  One moment he was in the killer's mind, the next—silence. No blood-red filter. No phantom sensations. Just the too-loud sound of his own breathing in the actual crime scene.

  The voices and conversations echoing in the background sounded muffled, as if heard through a thick wall—until finally, his hearing snapped back to normal.

  "This..."

  "Analysis suggests it’s not a human body. This isn’t the same case we’re investigating."

  Not human?

  Gou Ming couldn’t suppress a strange expression.

  If this wasn’t a homicide, what had he been doing all this time? Wasting effort? Burning his brain analyzing nothing?

  ---

  Ji Xiahan gave it one final check and smiled. It was done.

  Five chapters introducing the protagonist, his life, and the story's initial hook. Plus a small alteration for his own personal satisfaction that didn't feel incongruous.

  He published them quickly.

  Stretching zily, Ji Xiahan grew bored. He found himself wondering - were the monkey's remains still there? Or had they already been eaten?

  Ji Xiahan’s lips split into something too sharp to call a smile—the expression of a man already rehearsing his alibi in the mirror.

  What did it matter?

  If it were solely up to his preferences, the monkey would rot inch by inch—its flesh peeling like overripe fruit, its bones picked clean by patient insects. A slow, silent decomposition he could savor in his mind.

  But he was somewhat anxious for the only evidence from st night to disappear quickly - illegal hunting carried heavy fines.

  Should he go check?

  No.

  Too many people had already seen him coming and going from the western forest for four straight days. If he kept going, suspicions might arise and someone might even report him.

  Four days of footsteps leading to the same damned forest—each trip a thread in the noose someone might soon tighten.

  He’d return when the moon was blind and the world slept—when even ghosts wouldn’t witness him kneeling in the dirt to count what remained of his vengeance.

  For now, he contented himself with reopening the document—cursor blinking like a live wire. His fingers hovered over the keys. One more edit. One more perfect detail borrowed from st night’s... fieldwork. The chapter’s victim now screamed with the monkey’s voice when set on fire. Art, after all, demanded honesty.

  Growing hungry, he microwaved a cheap package of dumplings, eating straight from the pstic tray. The steam fogged up his reading gsses as he scrolled through reader comments on his previous novel - written from a killer's perspective:

  "That dissection scene felt so real!"

  "How do you research these details?!"

  Ji Xiahan licked grease from his fingers and replied:

  "Life is the best teacher."

  The readers' comments were sacraments:

  "Your vilin is terrifying!"

  "How do you get inside such a twisted mind?"

  He responded: "Darling, I am the door."

  Then deleted it. Too obvious. The sheep couldn't handle meeting the wolf among the flock.

  At that moment, an appropriate passage from a recently viral meme fshed through his mind:

  Let them all watch. Let them all praise. Let them never notice the blood between the keys.

  Ji Xiahan ughed at the absurdity.

  His day passed like any other - reading comments, plotting the next volume's storyline. Later, he visited the corner convenience store.

  He needed bleach and energy drinks (for all-night writing sessions). Somehow, he also ended up buying a single ripe peach (impulse purchase).

  The cashier frowned at his bandaged hand.

  "Cat again?" she asked.

  Ji Xiahan smiled, flexing his fingers where he'd accidentally cut himself st night:

  "Something like that."

  Back home, he washed the bloodstained clothes from the previous night with precision:

  Cold water only (hot sets protein stains)

  Salt scrub for the miraculously surviving shoes- Hung to dry indoors - no evidence fpping in the wind.

  The rhythmic squeak of the faucet matched his humming. An old nursery rhyme.

  After finishing, he inadvertently paused before the bathroom mirror.

  Not to check for stains, but to admire how the dim light sculpted his features into something statuesque - a face too refined for guilt. The bandage on his hand wasn't a wound; it was an accessory, a temporary fw that only heightened the artistry of his existence.

  Indulging in narcissism, Ji Xiahan spoke to his reflection with a seductive smile:

  "Even my scars tell better stories than most men's lives."

  "Hahaha..."

  Time passed until nightfall, when as sleep took him, his brain whispered: What if the monkey's corpse wasn't where you left it? He dreamed of returning to the crime scene - but the grave was empty.

  Only the cardboard remained, now with new words written in his own blood:

  "THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION."

  He awoke with a choked scream, the sheets twisted like strangling hands.

  Breathing heavily, Ji Xiahan checked the antique wall clock. Just 2 AM.

  "Maybe I should stop watching horror movies for a while."

  It had genuinely frightened him - he'd thought the police might have tracked him through clues left in his novel and would now make him pay the fine.

  To get back to sleep, he even left the bedroom lights on - though normally he was so miserly that his fshlight suffered, repcing house lights both night and day.