Hacker skills can indeed be very convenient at tis.
At 10:45 p.m., Orff scoured the web and finally discovered a “death video” for sale on a dark web site claiming to sell anything. Using the Bitcoin in Abel’s account, he purchased it.
To verify whether the video was real, Orff boldly clicked play when he received it. Luckily, Everly and Misha were beside him. Sensing danger, the two girls each slapped him—one on the left, one on the right—snapping him out of the trance before he beca too absorbed.
“Th-that was close…”
Rubbing his stinging cheek, Orff closed the video. He then logged into the t*rture-streaming site, uploaded the video to the backend, and set it to loop from 00:00:01.
Click.
The mont the mouse clicked and the “Upload Successful” notification popped up, Orff caught a faint blue glow in the corner of his eye.
Following the light, he looked toward the forest and found that what should have been pitch-black was now filled with “people.”
They were ghostly, blurred figures of deep blue. Their faces shrouded in white mist, featureless, they stood silently in the dark, quiet woods, watching the three in the car without moving—like trees rooted in the forest.
The silent woods had transford into a vast graveyard.
A cold wind swept through like a soft sigh. The girls’ spirits dissolved into mist, embraced by the vast, encompassing forest, and sank into the land of death, free from pain and resentnt.
…
An earth-shattering event occurred in the otherwise obscure Dalami City!
First, Chief Charlie and an officer nad Dumpsy at the city police station suddenly scread wildly at the air and inexplicably dropped dead in front of everyone. Imdiately afterward, two similar deaths occurred at a local university.
The two university victims had been injected with a controlled sedative before death. Their bodies were bound, suggesting they may have been manipulated, yet the forensic examination revealed that their fatal injuries originated from their brains.
“Have you ever played with water marbles? Those resin beads that you throw into water and they slowly absorb it, swelling bigger and bigger? That’s what happened inside their brains—countless tiny beads absorbed water rapidly, expanding and expanding, until the brain simply couldn’t contain them. Boom! Their brains exploded, killing them instantly.” The forensic officer spread his hands and mid a dramatic “explosion,” sending chills down the spines of everyone who had seen the victims’ bodies.
The school had no surveillance caras, so no one saw who bound Abel and Ronald. The ropes used were ordinary nylon ropes easily found on the market, impossible to trace. As for the sedatives, the police discovered the owner—the deceased Professor Abel had purchased them through unofficial channels!
So why were these two the ones who died? What connection did they share?
The police shifted focus, trying to investigate the victims’ electronic devices. Unfortunately, they had been manually wiped, revealing nothing.
Just as everyone was baffled, Chief Sawitt suddenly received a hard drive. It contained evidence of hundreds of cris committed on a t*rture-streaming website, including those involving Chief Charlie.
The evidence showed that Chief Charlie and Professor Abel were operators of the site, while Ronald was a paying mber. Moreover, Dalami City was hiding two additional operators of the t*rture website, nad Michael and Mark…
Using the information on the hard drive, the police tried logging into the site and discovered that it was continuously looping the infamous “death video.” The people at the police station nearly fell victim themselves.
The police were furious and imdiately tried to contact the cybersecurity departnt. But anyone familiar with U.S. governnt agencies knew their response speed was painfully slow. On top of that, once the cybersecurity team began their work, they were blocked by an unknown hacker. A brutal, exhausting cyber battle ensued, with the cybersecurity team steadily pushed back, eventually having to call in cooperating hackers for support… In short, for various reasons, the police were forced to abandon the dark web site lead before the cybersecurity departnt could succeed.
Angry, the police sent teams to try to apprehend the other two operators of the site. Yet it seed as if they were cursed with “always one step too late.” By the ti they arrived, the other two operators were already dead, killed in the exact sa manner as Chief Charlie.
In “Butcher” Michael’s basent, they found the t*rture-streaming filming location and laptops filled with various t*rture videos.
The basent corners were stacked with the belongings of the murdered girls, residual blood and human tissue still present, and the laptops cramd with t*rture videos. It was clear proof that everything on the hard drive about the livestreaming site was genuine.
Even more shocking were the countless bodies discovered in Mark’s secret basent. He appeared to have conducted so kind of research there, but all records of his findings were gone. Only the blood-stained room and grimy tal experint beds hinted at what had occurred.
“Chief Charlie had been shielding the livestream all along! Damn it, I actually thought he was a good cop.”
“Don’t you feel like all of this is the vengeful spirit of the girls taking revenge…”
“Scandal… a massive scandal! Jack’s incident must be covered up, or the public will lose all faith in the police system!”
The police station plunged into chaos. Sawitt advocated for full transparency and a fair handling of the case, but both the police chief and other officers involved voted against him.
They completely sidelined Sawitt. After internal discussions, the departnt decided to cover up the death of Chief Charlie to protect the station’s reputation.
Then, overnight, identical pinned posts began appearing on all the major forums in Dalami City:
[Shocking! The Chief’s Actions in a Two-Year-Long Female Disappearance Case…]
Soone had exposed the t*rture-streaming operation publicly!
At first, the title seed vague, but once clicked, the content was explosive—far more shocking than the headline suggested. The post instantly caused a citywide sensation.
Soon after, Seradiya’s “death video” began to take effect. One by one, people suspected of being “paid mbers” of the site went to rooftops and jumped to their deaths. The case, involving female disappearances, police corruption, dark web livestreaming, and vengeful spirits, spread beyond New Osebuch State and even appeared on national trending charts.
Gossip is human nature, and hackers were no exception. Curious hackers traced the leaked information online and uncovered people who had watched or donated to the t*rture livestreams—ranging from ordinary office workers to politicians, celebrities, wealthy businessn, and even well-known philanthropists.
The entire U.S. erupted in chaos. Massive protest marches filled the streets, with people demanding the governnt fully investigate the case, arrest the local police chief, and strengthen asures against dark web cris.
The aftermath of the case lingered for a long ti. Even Christmas and New Year couldn’t wash away the public’s anger.
anwhile, Everly and Misha had successfully finished their final exams and boarded a plane ho.
Winter break had begun.
Winter break lasted from just before Christmas all the way to the end of January, so Everly naturally wanted to go ho and spend so quality ti with her grandfather.
Because the journey ho from university was long, she chose to fly again. This ti, her connecting route was Concord → Gegha → Sunken. Concord and Sunken are the capitals of their respective states, while Gegha was the city that experienced the “Ten Biblical Plagues” this past August.
According to gossip Everly had gathered online, the series of disasters that ravaged Gegha quickly drew the attention of the Church. To resolve the calamity, the Vatican dispatched a special team of exorcists, priests, and nuns to investigate Gegha in person.
The difficult investigation lasted from August through November. What exactly happened in that period, and how the disasters were ultimately resolved, remained unknown to outsiders. In any case, by late November, the Ten Plagues of Gegha had finally concluded, and the city entered a post-disaster recovery period, calm and uneventful.
This was one reason Everly chose this particular connecting route.
As she had hoped, everything went smoothly. Traveling from Concord to Gegha, and then boarding the direct flight to Sunken, there were no incidents at all. During the 36-hour layover in Gegha, Everly and Misha even had ti to stroll around the city, sampling its famous deep-dish pizza and Frango mint candies.
The flight from Gegha to Sunken was a night flight. Once on the plane, Misha quickly grew sleepy, nuzzling Everly’s shoulder like a little animal and closing her eyes to sleep.
Everly, on the other hand, kept the overhead light on and continued reading. She was reading Illustrated History of Native Aricans in the U.S., a pictorial and educational book by Arican anthropologist Oliver La Fache, which traced the history of Native Aricans from their arrival in North Arica up through the 1950s.
The reason she was studying such a dense, difficult book was because of the clue about the Fountain of Youth that Orff had given her.
The tiline goes back four days, to December 19th at midnight.
When the hands of the clock completed a full circle and the ti rolled over to the next day, Orff looked at the updated date on his phone and was overjoyed to realize that his death loop had finally ended.
“Thank you, Everly, and Misha! If it weren’t for you two, I honestly wouldn’t have known what to do…” he cheered, instinctively reaching out for a hug for his companions—but both of them flatly refused.
“All right. I’ve given you what I promised, so now it’s ti for you to give the reward you promised,” Everly said, pushing away his tear- and snot-streaked face with a look of disdain, ready to receive the Fountain of Youth clue.
“Yes, of course. You saved , so giving you the promised clue is only right. But I hope you’re prepared, because this clue… well, it’s a little unusual.”
“Unusual how?”
“It’s not a direct clue. It’s a poem.”
Orff said this as he rummaged through the car’s storage compartnt for Everly’s notebook and scribbled down a few lines with his pen.
[The Poem]
On the right side of the land where the sun rises,
On the day Venus crosses,
Pawuka Oris Ananino,
Slowly rises from the realm of Poseidon.
Proceed along a flat and dark straight road,
Where there are no highs or lows,
At the foot of the mountains that encircle the world,
Aurelbis has laid His trial.
Heavier than all stones in the world,
A thing of another realm, a stone of heaven,
Give the key to the flaming angel at the gate,
And you will earn the right to ascend the steps.
The Source of Life flows from on high,
A bridge connecting earth and heaven,
Drink from it, bathe in it,
And you shall reclaim the ti of youth.
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