Chapter 5 – New Identity

Wei An chose the best guest room.

At this moment, the room was bathed in the dim light of dawn. The decor was simple and comfortable, the floor polished to a mirror-like shine. The living room window took up an entire wall, and there was a large balcony overlooking the murmuring river below.

Though no one would actually be staying here, Wei An had meticulously prepared everything that should be available.

“You’ll stay in this room,” he said to Gui Ling. “Everything you need is here. Take a shower first and change your clothes. There’s a wardrobe—our sizes are similar, so you can wear anything inside.”

He turned to look at the person behind him.

“Your hair… needs a trim,” he continued. “I’ll arrange a new identity for you and explain what you need to know about living here. In a while, I’ll find an unimportant occasion to introduce you to others. By then, you’ll need to look completely like an ordinary person.”

Gui Ling looked at him as if he were insane.

After saying all this, Wei An turned to input Gui Ling’s information into the AI system, placing him in the “family members” category. It felt strange to set it up this way, but it would save a lot of trouble.

“I’ve registered you as a member of the Riverside Residents’ Association, so you can freely enter and exit the community,” Wei An said. “This is a nice place. The riverside scenery is beautiful, the views are open, and it’s uplifting—perfect for a slow-paced life. This river has raised the average property prices in the area several times over, but it’s worth it.”

The monster stood in the shadows by the window, covered in gunpowder residue, staring at him. He seemed completely uninterested in sunlight, property prices, or a happy life—only in miserable existences and the destruction of the Federation.

He said to Wei An, “But you won’t be staying here for long either. They’ll catch up with you, won’t they?”

Wei An looked up and gave him a standard comforting smile straight out of a family drama.

“No, they won’t. I’m very careful,” he said.

“Everyone says that before they die,” Gui Ling replied.

“Actually, most people aren’t that careful,” Wei An said. “No matter how professional their work is, people always have things they can’t let go of—a person, a memento, a place, a recording… any of it can be used to trace them. I have none of that. I’ve killed everyone I needed to kill, destroyed everything that needed to be destroyed. Don’t worry.”

He pressed the confirmation key on the AI interface, which beeped, indicating the settings were successfully applied.

Wei An felt like what he was about to say next sounded like a real estate advertisement, and the other’s expression was definitely that of a nightmare customer. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You’ll like it here,” he told Gui Ling. “This is the kind of place where people live their dream lives.”

Wei An returned to his own bedroom.

He walked to the desk, sat down, pressed his forehead with his hand, and froze for a moment.

He remained like that for about ten seconds before lowering his hand, his expression calm, and opened the local civil administration system webpage to the relevant section.

First, he needed to secure a legal identity for Gui Ling, then erase all traces of surveillance footage from their journey.

Whoever was behind this matter hadn’t yet realized that Gui Ling was no longer in the ruins of Silver Bay—those people had been busy enough lately.

But it wouldn’t be long before the storm arrived.

Wei An spent a few seconds thinking of a new name for Gui Ling.

It didn’t need to be complicated—Wei Ling would do. Best to make him a local of Taoyuan who had come to Tongyun… Wei An thought of Gui Ling’s face and figured he could say he was here to break into the entertainment industry.

He let out a nervous laugh, then stopped, realizing how jittery and overly tense he was being.

Fine, this person had military experience. They had known each other before, so Wei An had hired him as a bodyguard. Taoyuan was unstable lately, and as a wealthy man, he needed protection.

Since this identity lacked further supporting details, Wei An placed it within one of Taoyuan’s larger-scale accidents—events like these often resulted in lost personal information, creating an information black hole perfect for inserting someone who didn’t belong here.

He skillfully crafted Gui Ling’s new identity. He was extremely professional in this regard—likely one of the most skilled in the Federation. And this wasn’t the work of a hacker modifying data; he had official clearance, allowing him to directly add or delete records without leaving any trace.

Step by step, he would transform Gui Ling into an ordinary person who could appear in anyone’s life.

Years ago, Wei An had come across some files on Gui Ling—material that wasn’t accessible even in the darkest corners of his usual work.

One of them was a video spliced together from surveillance footage taken half a century earlier during a coup in Star City, the capital planet of the Federation, the central hub where all resources converged.

The Federation, nearly four hundred years old, was a nation unified in bloodshed. Though nominally a federation, it now existed in name only, functioning more like a tightly knit principality. As the largest known human nation, it was prone to turbulence, its elite families inherently ruthless and ambitious, with the highest echelons of power serving as their hunting grounds.

That coup was one such incident.

What set it apart from others was that the rebels had high-ranking insiders within the Ministry of Science who had obtained Gui Ling’s contract.

This turned the chaotic scene into something absurdly horrific. During the climax—a period of one hour and forty minutes—the monster first killed the newly appointed president and his entire security detail. Then, as authority shifted hands, he slaughtered the entire rebel headquarters.

The video Wei An had showed the latter part, where Gui Ling eliminated the rebel command center.

In the footage, a group of well-dressed rebels walked out of a hotel lobby—this was a hidden facility under the Ministry of Defense, no less lavish than anything today.

These ambitious figures chatted and laughed, clearly pleased with how things were going.

Gui Ling walked at the edge of the group, his hair slightly shorter than it was now. He looked like he had just endured a brutal battle—his jacket was torn and singed in places, stained with blood.

From the distant camera angle, he kept his head down, appearing half-dead.

The leading minister, wearing a striped suit fashionable at the time, turned to say something cheerful and casually slung an arm over Gui Ling’s shoulder.

Gui Ling took half a step back to avoid it but failed. He allowed it with an expressionless face.

For a moment, this became the center of attention—when the minister spoke, everyone eagerly played along. From afar, it looked like any other self-satisfied gathering of powerful people.

Gui Ling stared at his bloodstained boots.

Wei An guessed they must have been expensive, now completely ruined. He just kept staring at them.

The scene of these successful men exchanging pleasantries lasted two minutes before Gui Ling lifted his head to look in one direction.

His face was fully visible in the frame, and at the time, Wei An had thought he looked like the male lead in a classic film. His expression was almost dreamlike as he scanned the exquisitely decorated lobby. Then, from somewhere unseen, a sound arose—

One that no human could hear. Something more distant, more terrifying, existing on a higher plane.

Then Gui Ling abruptly shook off the minister’s arm and walked away from the group toward the bar by the lobby.

The hotel was fully serviced, and for guests waiting in the lobby, there was a well-stocked open bar.

The suited schemers turned to watch him, momentarily dumbfounded.

Gui Ling walked to the bar, took a glass, and slowly selected a bottle before pouring himself half a drink.

—He actually took a moment to pick out the liquor before settling on one with an expression that said, Well, this’ll do.

It was a strong spirit, no ice.

Back then, a younger Wei An sat in a rundown hotel three blocks from a Ministry of Science outpost, watching the ancient footage while chain-smoking, his head aching all the while.

The ashtray in front of him overflowed with cigarette butts, some even spilling onto the table. The room smelled of mold, gasoline, and secondhand smoke. But watching this scene, he felt like he had fallen into some surreal dream.

In the video, from the shadows behind the hotel lobby’s crystal chandelier, a pitch-black triangular fish slowly swam downward, its body about two meters wide, moving through the air with a terrifying grace.

It bore no resemblance to real-world fish—darker, with an ancient, tarnished hue, as if it were a reflection from an old and illogical version of reality.

It glided through the opulent lobby like a ghost ship appearing from fog in a fairy tale.

Wei An had been in this line of work for years and was numb to most things, but the sight of that thing sent chills down his spine.

From the dark corners of the lobby, more fish slowly came into view—some small and shadow-like but unmistakably aquatic in nature.

Then they bared their fangs.

Gui Ling took twenty minutes to finish the job.

The entire time, he sat on a sofa in the lobby, drinking one glass after another.

In that grotesquely bloody and surreal scene, his human form seemed like a loose disguise. He carried a viscerally strange, aristocratic air—fitting, given that to a modern civilization like the Federation, he was just that: a beast from a mysterious alien world.

In that moment, the luxurious hotel seemed to sink into the depths of the ocean. The crystal chandelier reflected faint light in fractured glimmers as the fish swam past, creating a scene that was beautiful, fantastical, and eerily grotesque.

This was ancient technology—incomprehensible, overwhelmingly powerful. Human firearms, radar, and defense grids were nearly useless against it. It belonged to another era, one of an astonishingly vast civilization, now long reduced to myth.

This had been a major operation by the Federation’s powerful elite—people who always had escape plans and damage control measures. But at this moment, all their weapons, resources, rules, and exit strategies dissolved into nothingness.

Gui Ling sat on the sofa, a fine drink in hand, watching the massacre of those who, just moments ago, had been dreaming of glory—his eyes those of something from a vast and ancient tomb.