Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 90: A Gift for the 3rd Anniversary of its Creation

On September 26th, Luo Jinnian sat at his desk in his rented room, a blank document open on his computer screen.

Three years ago on this day, in a corner of this world, he typed the first word of his life—the first word after his rebirth. He never remembered the exact date he came into this world, but the date he published his first short story online, "Grandma," was another birthday he had chosen for himself.

So he chose this day to dedicate a story to those who had been waiting for him for the past three years.

It was exactly 8 p.m.

A new post appeared on the official website of the magazine "Story Club" without any prior notice.

Poster ID: Early Spring Tea.

Title: Seven Deadly Sins.

The text is breathtaking from the very first line.

An obese man, consumed by gluttony, died at his family's dining table, his face buried in a bowl of pasta, his fingers covered in grease. On the wall behind the refrigerator, someone had written the word "Gluttony" in grease.

A wealthy defense lawyer was murdered in his office, with the word "Greed" written in blood on the floor. A piece of flesh had been cut from his body, the wound so clean it looked like some kind of ritual had been performed.

A drug dealer was bound to a bed, kept in darkness for a full year, sustained only by liquid food regularly injected by his killer. His body had long since festered and stank on the sheets. A note was pasted on the wall: "I finally remembered he was a living person."

A prostitute was murdered with a specially made instrument, and the entire incident was recorded on a videotape. The cover of the videotape was handwritten with the word "Lust".

A model was found in a mansion with slashes on her face, her left hand severed, and her right hand clutching a phone—in her last moments, she was dialing for help. Another hand was glued to an open Bible, turned to the page on "Pride."

Five murders. Five crimes. Two police officers.

One is Inspector Somerset, a seasoned detective with seven days left until retirement. He is calm, experienced, and meticulous. He has lived half his life in this perpetually rainy city, witnessing all the darkness, yet still believes he must do one last right thing. The other is Detective Mills, a young, hot-blooded, and short-tempered detective who has just been transferred to the same police station. He has moved to this chaotic city with his pregnant wife, believing he can change something.

Over five days, they were led by the nose step by step by that unseen killer.

Luo Jinnian's fingers barely stopped moving on the keyboard. He didn't need to conceive the story structure, consider the characters' lines, or think about the plot's direction—this novel, like everything he had brought from his previous life, already had a complete form in his mind. He only needed to do one thing: recreate it.

To restore that nameless city where it always rains.

Recreate the moment when Somerset discovered the murderer's logic while browsing Dante's Divine Comedy in the library.

This recreates the nausea and anger Mills felt when he witnessed the scene of the first victim being forcibly fed to death.

Let's reconstruct John Du. The killer. The one who claimed to be chosen by God, the fanatic who saw himself as an executor of "divine punishment." He wasn't the bloodthirsty serial killer that most people imagine; he killed not because he liked it, but because he felt these people deserved to die.

Those who indulge in gluttony deserve to be stuffed to death.

Greedy people deserve to have their own flesh cut off.

Lazy people should be confined to their beds and rot until they die.

Lust, pride, envy, and wrath—the remaining four deadly sins—he will use his remaining four lives to complete this grand ritual.

Luo Jinnian wrote a passage in the document that allowed the killer to speak for himself, placing it roughly in the first third of the novel. These few lines elevate the entire novel from a "serial murder case" to a philosophical level:

"I was chosen by God."

"This world is rotten to the core. People watch evil happen every day and then turn away. Gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, wrath—these sins happen every day, and nobody sees anything wrong with them. I'm just here on God's behalf to remind them—you are sinners."

Somerset asked him, "What makes you think you have the right to judge others?"

John Du replied, "Because I did not choose to turn a blind eye."

"You can't see it. You're too busy, too busy making money, too busy living, too busy ignoring the evil happening right under your noses. What you need isn't police, what you need is a—prophet."

The latter half of the novel is the most suffocating part of the entire work.

After committing the five deadly sins, the murderer suddenly appeared at the police station and surrendered.

His request was simple: take Somerset and Mills to the suburbs, where there were two more corpses. The last two sins.

The body lay in a clearing on the outskirts of the city. The setting sun painted the entire sky orange-red—the brightest scene in the entire work, and also the darkest.

On the way there, a package was delivered to Somerset, who was waiting in his car. Inside the box was the head of Mills' wife. The killer said, "I envied you, Detective Mills. You had a happy family, a loving wife, and an unborn child in her belly. I had none of that. So I killed her."

"I'm just jealous."

The contents of the box contained the answer to that "delivery," the final piece of the puzzle that John Du completed with his life—he was "jealousy," and Mills was "anger."

Mills drew his gun and aimed.

Somerset desperately pressed down on his hand: "Don't shoot! If you shoot, you'll fall into his trap. He killed your wife, he killed Trish, he deserves to die, but not because of you. If you shoot, you lose!"

Mills cried. Tears streamed down his face, and his voice, forced through clenched teeth, sounded like a wild beast trapped in a snare: "I don't know... I don't know..."

Somerset said, "Put down your gun. Please. You shouldn't end up like this. Your life shouldn't be ruined by this madman. You still have a future, you can start over. Put down your gun."

In the original novel, Mills' gunshot rang out seven times.

After the final shot, the killer died, lying on his back with a strange, satisfied smile on his face. He had finally completed the last piece of the puzzle with his death, while Mills would forever bear the sin of "Wrath" and spend the rest of his life in prison.

This is the cruelest part—the killer lost his life but won the whole game.

The final part of the story is Somerset's monologue, which quotes a line from Hemingway.

"This world is beautiful, and it's worth fighting for. I only agree with the second half of that statement."

The full text of "Seven Deadly Sins" was published before midnight.

He leaned back in his chair, stared at the "Published Successfully" message for a few seconds, then turned off his computer, lay down on the bed, and closed his eyes.

The next morning, Luo Jinnian was woken up by her phone vibrating.

Forty-seven missed calls. More than three hundred unread messages.

Before he could even read the first message, the phone rang again—it was Meng Zhaoming's.

"Was that thing you posted for real?"