You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

At this moment, in the Seattle industrial area, the rain had changed from a light drizzle to a torrential downpour, with large raindrops pounding on the roof of the van, producing a series of dull and chaotic metallic knocking sounds.

Carlos drove the Ford slowly through this steel jungle, the wheels splashing up large sprays of murky water as they drove over deep puddles.

"Boss, there's not a soul in sight here."

Carlos glanced at Leon through the rearview mirror while turning the steering wheel.

"We've already circled around here three times."

"To be honest, if I were one of those drug dealers, I wouldn't choose a place like this, where even the drainage system is broken, to store my goods, unless I planned to use ice as a salted fish."

Lyon didn't respond to his comment.

His eyes remained fixed on the shadows rushing past the window.

Although his sense of danger hadn't kicked in, his intuition told him that something shady was hiding beneath the oppressive silence.

Just as the car rounded a dead end piled with abandoned shipping containers and was about to turn onto the dirt road leading to the main road, Lyon's gaze was suddenly drawn to an extremely incongruous patch of color in the roadside bushes.

It was a camouflage single-person tent, crookedly stuck between two rusty oil pipelines.

In this place where there is nothing but steel, cement, and oil stains, the tent's presence is as abrupt as an insurance box in a church.

Even more strangely, there was no sign of homeless people clustered together within a radius of several hundred meters.

In Seattle, homeless people often live in groups for relative safety and to share resources and information.

The tents that appear alone deep in remote industrial areas like these exude a chilling aura.

[Mission: Deal with this suspicious tent]

[Note: Some things shouldn't be here.]

[Reward: 50 Justice Points]

Lyon's pupils contracted slightly.

The system never pops up tasks for no reason, and this one is worth a full 50 points. This reward is definitely not something you can get just by collecting a tent. It means there's definitely something to do in this tent.

"Carlos, pull over, stop."

Lyon spoke abruptly, his voice ringing out clearly in the cramped carriage.

"ha?"

Carlos slammed on the brakes, and the momentum caused Mia, who was dozing in the back seat, to slam headfirst into the back of the front seat.

"Fuck! Sir, are you planning to take care of your personal needs on the roadside?"

Mia covered her forehead and looked up with a resentful expression.

"Or are you planning to help that homeless man who's having a sweet dream in his tent cross the street?"

"Stop talking nonsense."

Leon unbuckled his seatbelt and casually pulled a tactical flashlight from the storage compartment in the car door.

"Something's not right here. Carlos, don't turn off the engine, look around. Jacob, put your snacks down and look in the rearview mirror."

FBI agent Perkins also frowned.

"Officer Vance, our target is that transit warehouse. This kind of time-wasting chores..."

"In Seattle, every tent that shouldn't be there could be hiding a corpse or a kilogram of explosives."

Without turning his head, Lyon opened the car door, and a cold wind mixed with icy rainwater instantly poured into the dry car.

"I'll go check it out and be right back."

He jumped out of the vehicle, his tactical boots slamming heavily onto the muddy grass, splashing up a puddle of foul-smelling mud.

He didn't draw his gun immediately, but instead slung the rifle diagonally across his chest, holding a flashlight in his left hand. A beam of light shone directly onto the camouflage fabric that was constantly being battered by the rain.

As he approached, an extremely subtle odor, yet impossible to detect with his enhanced sense of smell after reaching 15 points in physique, entered his nostrils along with the moisture from the rain.

That wasn't the sour, foul smell commonly found on homeless people.

It smelled of rust, mixed with the smell of some kind of biological tissue.

Lyon stopped a meter away, shining his flashlight on the zipper of the tent.

Very clean.

In Seattle's awful weather, a tent pitched in the mud had not a single speck of mud on its zipper, and the metal padlock even gleamed coldly in the flashlight beam.

This is not the lifestyle a homeless person should have. Those drug addicts who rummage through trash cans on the street would love to smear all their belongings with marijuana and the smell of urine.

This excessive cleanliness was more jarring to Lyon than a pile of corpses.

"Sir..."

A faint footstep came from behind, accompanied by a "plop" sound as someone stepped into a mud puddle.

Leon didn't turn around, but just by listening to her somewhat unsteady and awkward gait, he knew that poor Mia had followed him.

"Didn't I tell you to stay in the car?" Leon asked in a low voice.

"Jacob is chewing his burrito so loudly, it's giving me a headache."

Mia, carrying Glock in one hand and supporting her waist with the other, sidled up to Leon.

She wiped the rain off her face, squinted at the tent under the flashlight beam, her face pale.

"This place... feels off. I have a feeling I'm going to throw up last week's breakfast."

"Then keep your mouth shut."

Lyon's right hand had already reached for the gun handle at his waist, while his left hand gripped the zipper with two fingers and yanked it down sharply.

"Sizzle—"

As the curtains were pulled back to the sides, an extremely strong, almost tangible smell of rust instantly wafted out of the small space.

It was the smell of fresh blood mixed with the odor of oil that had congealed rapidly due to the low temperature.

Before Mia could even complain, her pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

"vomit……"

She suddenly covered her mouth, her stomach convulsed violently, and she vomited to the side.

The scene before us could no longer be described as a murder scene.

This is a miniature slaughterhouse.

The inside of the tent was covered with an extremely thick, opaque transparent plastic sheet.

A thick iron pipe runs horizontally in the center, with a stainless steel hook hanging from it.

Half a carcass of meat, already skinned and gutted, was hung upside down on a hook, just like a live pig in a supermarket cold storage.

The yellowish fat and reddish-brown muscle fibers are clearly visible.

The remaining half of the door had been dissected in a highly professional manner.

The flashlight beam swept across the folding table next to it.

The components, already categorized, were neatly arranged there:

The two legs were cut into standard segments and neatly arranged.

The ribs were removed one by one, and even the bits of meat on them were scraped clean.

Various organs were packed in different colored food storage containers, making them look like specimens just taken out of the laboratory.

A blue plastic bucket lay on the ground, filled with dark red blood that hadn't completely congealed. Rainwater occasionally dripped in through the gaps in the tent's roof, creating ripples on the surface of the blood.

The entire interior of the tent was exceptionally clean, and all the cut marks were shockingly smooth.

"Boss...this isn't the drug dealer we're looking for, is it?"

Mia's voice trembled violently, and her fingernails gripped Leon's arm tightly.

"Is this...preparing ingredients?"

Leon didn't speak, and the lack of a strong scream from his sense of danger indicated that the killer had already left.

He bent down and shone his flashlight on a pile of discarded clothing scraps in the corner.

It consisted of several dirty, sweaty old pieces of coarse cloth, and a dirty sock with a hole in it.

That was the last trace this homeless man left in this world.