Master of Kaidan
Chapter 140: Evidence is a Double-Edged Sword

Chapter 140: Chapter 140: Evidence is a Double-Edged Sword

"Arrest, arrest, arrest..."

Listening to the police siren echoing through the streets, Feng Xue sat on a bench in the park, her lips slightly upturned. She couldn’t help but marvel at how Infinite City’s South District was different from other places. It had been almost two months since she came to Victoria, and not one of her four peers had been caught. In fact, they were intentionally developing distinctive crime patterns.

The first was keen on Destroying religious venues, blasting almost every church in Bakerland within less than two months. Now that there were no churches left to bomb, they had started targeting buildings with crosses, to the extent that many surrounding hospitals stealthily covered their red crosses to avoid "antichrist" collateral damage.

The second liked to attack streetwalkers and female clients by the riverside at night. Whether it was due to some overlap between the world he had crossed from and this one, his modus operandi shared many similarities with the legend of Jack the Ripper, including sending a kidney to West Vila Field. Thus, the media, eager for a sensation, dubbed him the twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper. However, perhaps due to illiteracy, he didn’t send a Taunting letter as history had recorded. At least, no such letter had been published in the newspapers.

The third seemed to be deliberately creating a style reminiscent of Cultist sacrifices, always drawing large and small magic arrays and meaningless symbols around the Corpse using the victim’s Blood. As someone blessed with the translation of demon yams, Feng Xue could assure that the runes in those newspaper photos were nonsensical.

Compared to the first three, the fourth’s notoriety fell short. This individual didn’t deliberately create any symbols but simply followed the victims home, then tortured and killed them in front of their families, disregarding other witnesses. While this indeed garnered a Precise recognition from the relatives of the victims, it was merely the act of an "ordinary" psychopathic Murderer. As for the likelihood of these four individuals inspiring Kaidan entries, this person would undoubtedly rank lowest.

As for Feng Xue...

"Having Culture really is beneficial!" She tossed the newspaper, which mocked West Vila Field for its inaction, into the trash can and started walking toward a nearby supermarket.

Compared to those four who were still murdering to Plunder [Identity], Feng Xue had already moved on to something greater. The Kaidan she was currently creating was not only spreading at a visible Speed, but it was also harvesting the "surplus value" of her four peers.

After all, in a city plagued by Jack the Ripper, a psychopathic Murderer, bloody Cultists, and church bombers, the presence of a demon "working hard" every day naturally led people to believe these incidents were all "the work of a Demon."

However, Feng Xue wasn’t concerned about offending those peers since they weren’t entitled to this dividend anyway.

It was like a capitalist who saw a street vendor making money, copied their idea, registered a trademark, attracted customers and investors, and ended up with a national chain. This didn’t harm the street vendor’s earnings. In fact, it might even have promoted them—as long as no one specifically told him (or unless the imitator accused him of infringement), he might remain oblivious to the value his Creation had been exploited.

But after all, this value reaped from exploitation was the lesser part. For Feng Xue, the true significance lay in the urban legend, gradually spreading among housewives, about a Demon that would enter homes in the afternoon to borrow ingredients and prepare a delicious dinner.

After a few attempts, which nearly saw her labeled as a pervert, Feng Xue suddenly realized an issue, one she had always known but had overlooked—

Old Li had actually told her how to become a Kaidan.

Feng Xue had been fixated on how to galvanize a new tag but had forgotten that Old Li, when explaining the meaning of tags, had said that they were essentially for anchoring the Infinite to the real world.

Multiple tags anchoring to each other could Precisely pinpoint an entity, and this anchoring, in Feng Xue’s current view, was undoubtedly the entry of a Kaidan!

So, unlike those who had always only played roles within the framework of Infinite City to obtain labels, Feng Xue, who had already acquired multiple labels from the real world, actually didn’t need to consider how to increase her labels, but rather how to connect the existing ones to construct a "Kaidan" that could simultaneously recognize all labels.

After some simple contemplation, she realized that the label most suited for her to develop wasn’t the [Instructor] just offered by Yan Country, nor the [Money Printer] that could attract ATMs, nor the heavily fantasy-oriented [Demon], but the very first one, the one she had least valued and always left gathering dust in the corner, provided by only one person with a bit of [Knowledge]—

[Cook].

Compared to other labels, the [Cook] label was very plain, so plain it could be subconsciously overlooked, but it was precisely because of this plainness that it had great potential for expansion.

For a person to be recognized as a [Demon] was very difficult; even if you did many bad things, the final perception might only be that of a bad person or a criminal.

For a person to be recognized as a [Money Printer] was also difficult because this required you to provide a large amount of benefit.

For a person to be recognized as an [Instructor] was no simple matter either, because you at least had to be able to teach something the other person was willing to learn; otherwise, you were just indoctrinating rather than guiding.

However, for a person to be recognized as a [Cook] was very straightforward—all you had to do was make delicious food!

It didn’t even matter if it was an ordinary person; as long as you could make tasty food, strangers would start to think, "Could you possibly be a professional chef?"

And using a chef as a foundation, in a country with a rich religious atmosphere, by utilizing language and displaying extraordinary power, it would naturally follow to construct elements of a "Demon," which would also benefit the label of an [Instructor] through culinary teaching.

In fact, if Feng Xue wanted, she could easily add the [Money Printer] label, such as leaving behind a large sum of money under the guise of "ingredient fees," which would easily produce corresponding associations.

But after some thought, Feng Xue decided not to do this, because what she needed was an urban legend, a Kaidan, and for a Kaidan, it was necessary to minimize the involvement of "physical evidence."

In this way, even if she never acted again, there would be people who would claim to have met the "Demon Chef" because it didn’t cost much to lie; after all, the ingredients used by the "Demon Chef" were also purchased by the housewives themselves, and just one photo of a pretty enough dinner could serve as dubious "evidence."

What makes a Kaidan a Kaidan is that it can neither be proven nor disproven; as long as one prepares a table of good meals, anyone can claim to have seen the "Demon Chef," with no one able to refute your lie.

But if one were to leave behind money or other "physical" rewards, it would add a shackle to the spread of the legend, raising the threshold for those "Cloud Experiencers" who falsely claim to have seen the "Demon Chef."

After all, the psychological burden of telling a lie that could not possibly be exposed is completely different from that of a lie that can easily be uncovered.

And this, too, was the first principle Feng Xue had deduced in creating a Kaidan—

To avoid leaving behind physical items that could prove one’s existence as much as possible.