Chapter 56 - 48: A Tearful, Crushing Loss

After the manager on duty called the police, officers from the precinct responsible for Binjiang University City arrived in about ten minutes.

The investigation was led by a middle-aged policeman, Officer Liu, with a young auxiliary officer, Xiaoli, trailing behind him.

Upon arriving at the garbage disposal plant, the pair was slightly taken aback by the sight of the row of dead rats.

Over twenty rats, all impaled with nails. No matter how you looked at it, something was off.

"Sir, this... it’s not illegal to kill rats. Why’d they call us out in the middle of the night for this?" the young auxiliary officer muttered quietly.

"Xiaoli, you don’t understand!"

"Killing rats isn’t against the law, but intentionally releasing plague-infected rats is a serious crime."

Officer Liu crouched to inspect the rats and immediately realized this could be a major case. He and his apprentice began questioning people and conducting a preliminary investigation at the plant.

A few minutes later, the "white coats" from the disease control center arrived. They bagged up all the rats and took them back for analysis.

After a two-hour wait, the lab report came out, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

None of the tested subjects were carrying infectious diseases like the plague. It was just a false alarm.

"As long as it’s not the plague!"

"Such a large-scale, targeted release... if they were really carrying a virus, the spread would have been massive." Officer Liu, who received the test results back at the station, also breathed a sigh of relief.

They were experts at dealing with criminals, but utterly helpless when it came to infectious diseases and viruses.

After all, every field has its experts. Preventing contagion and curing diseases wasn’t their job.

"Sir, since it’s not the plague, are we still going to open a case and investigate?" Xiaoli asked from the side.

"Investigate! Why wouldn’t we investigate?"

"I’m always telling you, you have to look at things from multiple perspectives! Look at these nails in the rats. You can tell at a glance they weren’t fired from a nail gun."

"That much power! To be able to pierce a rat clean through with a nail, it’s probably a homemade crossbow or a special air gun that fires nails." Officer Liu lectured his apprentice again.

Several nearby universities offered majors in machining and manufacturing. He figured it was probably some college kid who’d secretly built this prohibited device for fun.

After all, in Huaxia, potentially lethal items like crossbows and air guns were controlled implements, strictly forbidden for private ownership or use, just like sharpened Darts. If caught...

"Got it, Sir! I’ll go pull the surveillance footage and look for a suspect right away!" Hearing that the case was a big one, Xiaoli was instantly energized. He headed off to spend the night reviewing footage from the Celestial Eye network to find their culprit.

...

The next morning, Chen Jue woke up automatically a little after 5 AM.

He found that he had been waking up earlier and earlier recently, his biological clock becoming more and more regular. He would start to slowly emerge from deep sleep almost exactly ten minutes before sunrise.

He washed up, put on a jacket, and slowly climbed the stairs to the rooftop of his talent apartment building.

Seeing the pale, fish-belly white of dawn in the sky before the sun had fully risen, Chen Jue started stretching on the rooftop.

After waiting for about three or four minutes, a small sliver of the sun’s outline appeared on the city’s horizon.

The fiery red sunlight shone directly into his eyes, so Chen Jue closed them and began his Eye Health Exercises.

’At sunrise, the sun’s light is at a low angle. When it interacts with the atmosphere, scattering occurs. The blue light in the sunlight is more dispersed, so most of what the human eye can see is orange-red light.’

’And getting outside early to be exposed to low-angle sunlight can more effectively regulate one’s circadian rhythm,’ Chen Jue thought, recalling the information he had gathered online over the past few days as he did the exercises.

In his years working in risk control data, Chen Jue had developed a rather peculiar habit.

Whenever a matter came across his desk, he would try to analyze and research its very source.

For instance, as soon as he learned that red light could improve vision by promoting the activity and growth of retinal mitochondria, Chen Jue went online and collected a trove of relevant literature.

He’d researched, for example, why sunlight only appears orange-red during sunrise and sunset, and how exposure to morning sun effectively regulates the body’s biorhythms—the so-called biological or physiological clock.

The answers to these questions were all backed by scientific research, and he could find authoritative papers on them online. This wasn’t just some wild guess he made up based on his attribute panel.

’The Pre-Qin *Ji Rang Song* contains the line "work at sunrise, rest at sunset."’

’A single line of poetry summarizes the body’s entire biological rhythm,’ Chen Jue marveled as he did his eye exercises. ’I wonder if the Qi Cultivators from before the Pre-Qin era lived even longer, healthier lives than people today.’

About half an hour later, the panel popped up with another notification.

——————

[Ding~]

[You have completed a standard session of red light therapy and eye massage. Your vision has slightly improved.]

[Constitution Attribute +0.01]

——————

[Ding~]

[Proficiency has reached 100%. Skill Level is increasing.]

[Eye Health Exercises Lv2 (500/500) → Lv3 (1/2000)]

[Your understanding of this eye-care massage technique has deepened. Your knowledge of the surrounding blood vessels, acupoints, and muscle contours has grown more profound, and the effectiveness of the massage will steadily increase.]

——————

"It leveled up!"

A strange new muscle memory flowed into the fingers massaging his eye sockets. Chen Jue found that pressing the acupoints around his eyes felt even more comfortable than before.

He slowly opened his eyes, and the surrounding scenery was tinged with a comfortable blue-green halo.