Tao Yueyue watched the little mice digging through the wood shavings and hesitated. The smile on Zhou Xiao's face gradually dimmed. "Hurry up. Don't make me repeat myself."

She pointed out four little mice timidly. Zhou Xiao took them out and asked the boss to put them in a small green iron cage.

Zhou Xiao carried the iron cage and led her into a dark housing district. He hummed a song all the way to the door of an apartment, looked for his keys all over his body, and then took out a pair of lock-picking tools and handed them to Tao Yueyue. “Let me see what you can do."

"I... I don't know how."

Zhou Xiao kept smiling and slapped Tao Yueyue in the face, catching her off guard. Her eyes went dark and her ears were still buzzing for a long period of time. Zhou Xiao said, "Don't lie to me. You can't imagine how much I know about you."

Tao Yueyue's cheeks were hot, like something was attached to it. Grief and anger filled her chest, but she forcibly resisted the urge to cry in front of this man.

Thus, she took the lock-picking tools, poked it into the keyhole, fiddled a few times, and with a click, the door opened. It only took around twenty seconds.

Zhou Xiao whistled. "You’re someone with unmatched talent, Tao Yueyue!"

The environment in the apartment was very normal. Tao Yueyue glanced at the shoe rack. It seemed to belong to a family of three. There were scratches on the wall, fallen objects on the TV cabinet and a few drops of dim blood on the carpet. It faintly suggested that the people here had already been met with misfortune.

Zhou Xiao put the iron cage containing the little mice on the coffee table, fell on the sofa, and smoked with his neck raised up. He said, "There’s things to eat in the refrigerator."

Tao Yueyue stood motionless. When Zhou Xiao's dark eyes turned over, she moved her legs and said to herself in her heart, What are you doing? The general policy right now is to please and obey this man so that there’s hope of escape.

There was a large refrigerator at the entrance of the kitchen. When she opened the refrigerator, it turns out that the top compartment was a freezer, which was full of large pieces of flesh and bones. There were clots of blood on it, and the icy freezer fan exposed a fluffy white thing. At first, Tao Yueyue thought it was a melon, but when she looked at it clearly, she found that there were ears and a nose on the melon...

Zhou Xiao burst into a mischievous laugh. "You actually didn’t scream, haha! The food is below!"

It took five seconds for her soul to return to Tao Yueyue's body. The person in the freezer was probably the owner of the house. She felt a deep tremor in his heart. This person could actually kill someone, put them in the refrigerator, and then live in the home of the deceased like this. There was no trace of human emotion in his empty heart.

Tao Yueyue dared not eat a bite of the food taken out of the refrigerator. She could only think of the people stuffed in the upper layer of the refrigerator. Zhou Xiao went to the kitchen to fetch a cutting board, put it on the table in the living room, and poured a box of thumbtacks on top. Then, he grabbed a little mouse from the cage and asked Tao Yueyue to look at it.

He slowly pressed a thumbtack into the front paw of the little mouse and nailed it to the chopping board. The little mouse twisted desperately and made a squeaking cry as its little black bean eyes seemed to have liquid oozing out of them. Zhou Xiao seemed to enjoy the process very much. He pressed down on the other front paw of the little mouse and nailed it down with another thumbtack.

Looking at the struggling little mouse, Tao Yueyue trembled ceaselessly. Zhou Xiao asked, "Do you know why I can do this so easily?"

"Because you’re an animal..."

Zhou Xiao showed that scary smile again. Tao Yueyue regretted her recklessness. She was afraid of being beaten again. Zhou Xiao said, "Because you will never feel the pain of others. Look at how much this little thing struggles. It’s miserable, but do I have any feelings? Not at all. No matter how much you torture and abuse another person, the pain only lies with them. When you figure this out, you’ll become invincible."

Zhou Xiao held up a thumbtack with his fingertips and handed it to Tao Yueyue. "Come on. Pin the back two feet down."

Tao Yueyue took it slowly. The mouse's miserable movements were as though it was desperately begging for mercy. The other three mice in the cage were infected by this and jumped around wildly, making sad cries of sadness for their own kind.

She couldn't cross this boundary in her heart. She knew very well that Zhou Xiao did this to make her abandon her sympathy, to gradually become as numb and cold as him.

"Faster!!!"

Tao Yueyue was shocked by his sudden roar. Suddenly, she made up her mind to end the pain of the little mouse. She grabbed the ashtray on the table and smashed it down. The little mouse twitched and stopped moving.

Zhou Xiao was slightly startled. "Good fellow. Why did you finish your next piece of homework ahead of schedule?"

Tao Yueyue threw down the ashtray, rushed to the bathroom, and vomited in the toilet so much that tears came out.

She grabbed the edge of the toilet and thought about going out and fighting this devil, but she still gave up this plan. If she couldn't survive, it would be meaningless.

How many people had Zhou Xiao killed over the past ten years? He was playing hide-and-seek with the police in the huge Long’an. Nothing would change even if one more girl died in his hands.

"Come here when you're done!" Zhou Xiao ordered.

Tao Yueyue walked over to him slowly. Zhou Xiao had cleaned up the cutting board and re-arranged it. There was a fierce light in his small but long eyes. "Don’t think you can choose the easy way out. Take a mouse out and nail all four feet down!"

"I... Can I not learn this?!" Tao Yueyue pleaded.

"Oh? Do you think this is unnecessary to learn, or do you disdain this kind of learning?"

"You... you want me to be an undercover agent and provide you with police intelligence. What use is it for me to learn this?"

Zhou Xiao held his cigarette butt, pulled Tao Yueyue’s hand over and looked at her tender palm. Fear screamed in Tao Yueyue’s mind. She trembled without stopping. Zhou Xiao slowly took out his cigarette butt. "What a beautiful hand. It was the first time you’ve killed, right? It’s not that you didn’t have the courage to kill, nor did you lack the power. It’s the sympathy, kindness, and morality that those people instilled in you that’s restricting your nature. I did all this to liberate your true nature. Only if you learn to kill will you not be afraid of others. Then, you’ll be truly powerful!"

As he said so, he smiled distortedly, and then let go of his hand.

Tao Yueyue looked at the three little mice huddled together. "We don't need to start with them if we’re killing people!"

"You mean to say that if I bring you a living person back right now, you have the guts to kill them?"

Although she knew it was drinking poison to quench her thirst, Tao Yueyue nodded desperately. She could only delay second by second. She really couldn't do harm to the little mice, even if she were to die.

Zhou Xiao smiled in a way where you couldn’t make out what he was thinking about. "Okay, take an early rest and we will continue our classes tomorrow!" He pointed with his finger. "You go to that room to sleep. Go to the bathroom first. You’re not allowed to come out at night."

Tao Yueyue nodded. Just when she was about to leave, Zhou Xiao said, "Come back."

"..."

"How do you and Song Lang say goodnight to each other?"

"We don’t do anything..."

"Say goodnight to me! In a more familiar way."

Zhou Xiao leaned on the sofa and stared at Tao Yueyue like an interviewer. Tao Yueyue could only nod her head against her will. "Uncle Zhou, good night."

"Okay, very good. I will make you forget Song Lang!"