41. Fallen Demon Hunter vs. Esper 4

According to the materials I consulted at Luoshan, some anomalous phenomena can indeed allow individuals to travel back and forth between the past and the future. However, these are extraordinary occurrences absolutely impossible to replicate through human effort, and they are rare experiences that cannot be sought out but only stumbled upon.

Just how firm is Luoshan’s stance on this "impossible to replicate" and "rare" nature? One only needs to look at their public archives to understand. Ritual knowledge related to space-time travel is displayed openly for anyone to read. The content can be summarized as: "I successfully traveled to the past and future through the following steps, but for some reason, I haven't been able to do it again since. Anyway, I'm writing it down here—believe it or not."

While Luoshan’s attitude toward these claims isn't as contemptuous as a serious scientist viewing a "self-taught amateur inventor of a perpetual motion machine," they truly do not take them to heart.

If the "Monster Maker" was not lying, he likely traveled to the past or future using a method that cannot be replicated. Given the innovative nature of his monster technology, it is more likely the future. Of course, he could have simply obtained technology that would only appear much later by "foreseeing the future," though his tone did not suggest as much. If I want to make the Seed of the Heart truly my own, starting from the "future" seems like a viable direction.

I do not know how to "foresee the future," and I am even less certain of my ability to "travel to the future." However, with no other leads, I cannot afford to remain idle. I have no choice but to practice the ritual knowledge found in the public archives. Dwelling repeatedly on the difficulties in my mind is the most meaningless of actions; everything must begin with practice.

And so, I went out to kill.

The prey this time, as always, were special ability users from the civilian population. Those possessing special abilities—or "mana"—can often serve as substitutes for many ritual materials. Killing them on-site and using their blood as components for the ritual array is enough to make many such arrays function with effectiveness far beyond expectations.

As a Luoshan agent, if I were to rashly collect many ritual materials through my connections, I might arouse suspicion from those with sharp eyes. Killing is the most convenient method. Furthermore, due to the nature of my work, I am quite adept at discovering those with mana among the public. Soon, I found a tenant in an apartment complex not far from Xian-Shui University.

On the surface, he was just an ordinary office worker living in a room on the fifteenth floor, but in reality, he was a dormant superhuman. The moment I saw him, I caught the fragrance of his high-quality soul.

Relying on my official status as a Luoshan agent and years of experience, I quickly gained a degree of his trust. Through my inquiries, I learned that his ability was "Phasing"—the effect being to turn his body into a phantom, capable of passing through any object.

In other words, while his ability is active, no object can cause him harm. I suspect that even if a nuclear bomb were dropped on him, or even an asteroid struck him, he would be invincible as long as he maintained the ability. It is a defense-oriented supernatural power of extremely high value.

The reason he kept his identity hidden was likely due to a lingering sense of awe toward the state and society, and a lack of interest in a life of novelty and excitement. However, one could see an arrogance in his eyes toward the common masses; he no longer considered himself a mortal. Even while living among crowds, he likely likened himself to a wolf lurking in a flock of sheep, taking pride and pleasure in that secret.

Unfortunately, most of these "superhumans" who possess only one exceptionally long board can be dealt with by a sneak attack from behind. They are invincible while their ability is active—which is to say, if they are caught before they can activate it, they are nothing more than ordinary mortals.

I sent out my doppelganger and, with a minor ruse, easily killed him in his rented room. He did not even have the chance to activate his "invincible" super-power until the very moment of his death.

As for the ritual array set up with his blood, there were one or two symbols intended to target the space-time of my search, which I could not fill in because I could not determine exactly how many years into the future the Monster Maker's technology originated. As a substitute, I added my own blood as a "monster" into the array; theoretically, this could serve as a replacement search condition.

And indeed, theory remained theory. I failed.

Not only that, but the leakage of mana fluctuations during the failure attracted a Luoshan "Wu-Chang" (Impermanent) who happened to be patrolling the area.

The Wu-Chang responsible for patrolling that sector was Zhu Shi. She is not as easy to deal with as that superhuman, and I did not want to escalate the situation, so I had to order my doppelganger to retreat for the time being.

***

Time has now passed, and we are eight months later today.

Through repeated hunting, the strength of my Seed of the Heart has reached a bottleneck.

The Monster Maker told me that to break through to the next stage, I must either overcome my inner demons, allowing my soul to sublimate naturally, or consume a sufficient quantity of souls to force my soul to sublimate.

I chose the latter path.

Many other things have happened in these eight months.

First, the Monster Maker has added another monster in Xian-Shui City.

I have secretly made contact with this monster. He never hides the traces of his crimes and harbors a hatred for the wealthy and powerful, the origins of which I do not know. In fact, he is quite wealthy himself, yet he resents those with more money and power than him, having killed five local elites in the past two or three months.

I despise him. He carelessly leaves his own biological traces at crime scenes. I left hairs with follicles in that fifteenth-floor room intentionally to distance myself from the act, but why does he do it? Fortunately, the Luoshan forces in Xian-Shui City lack experience in modern criminal investigation and have temporarily conflated me with him. Perhaps he will expose himself sooner or later and implicate my existence.

Dealing with him in secret is not so simple. We monsters all possess the skill to summon a mirror image of ourselves through the power of shadows. Although these mirror images are much weaker than our true bodies, he also possesses an innate ability called "Shadow Shift," which allows him to ignore spatial distance and instantly swap positions with a distant clone.

This ability has a "cheat" function: it can be triggered passively. If he encounters a fatal blow he cannot react to, the ability will trigger automatically out of a mysterious mechanism to protect his life. It is the height of shamelessness.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons he is so unbridled. Regardless, I am powerless against him. Zhu Shi is currently handling cases related to him, and I only hope he dies by her sword sooner rather than later.

Then, the day before yesterday, I encountered a mysterious superhuman.

It happened during the day while I was resting at the Luoshan office across from the Public Security Bureau. An unprecedented commotion broke out across the street. I rushed over only to find that someone had infiltrated the bureau to steal firearms and ammunition—a major incident for them. Moreover, I smelled the scent of a soul there.

Just as a predator can smell a wounded, bleeding prey in the air, if there is a prey with a wounded soul near me, I can find them more easily. And at that moment, I smelled exactly such a scent. I ordered my doppelganger to move in that direction, and I discovered the source behind a fried chicken shop.

It was a pale, exhausted-looking girl of about thirteen or fourteen. She was holding a real gun, clearly the culprit who had infiltrated the bureau.

Judging by the scent of her soul, she should have been a formidable superhuman. When she was in peak condition, I doubt she would have even spared a glance at characters like my doppelganger and me. But her current state was abysmal—even worse than my doppelganger.

If I could consume her soul, my Seed of the Heart would surely break through to the next stage, with plenty to spare!

I immediately ordered my doppelganger to ambush her, but the result was a great disappointment.

She possessed the power of spatial teleportation. Although she was caught off guard and severely wounded at first, she immediately teleported to a distance beyond the reach of my soul’s scent.

Shortly after, an unexpected change occurred. My superior gave me the profile of an individual and demanded I find her by any means necessary. The target was none other than the girl who had escaped from me.

I am not the only one looking for her; my superior, their superiors, and other factions within Luoshan have all mobilized. They are well aware of her spatial teleportation power, and they even plan to expand the search nationwide, determined to get their hands on her at any cost.

A storm beyond imagination has swept my mind into a tempest.

—Who exactly is that girl?

***

Since the nature of the incident has become so grave, I dare not pursue the girl any further and must focus on another matter.

This matter is one I cannot ignore: Zhu Chang’an, the older brother of Zhu Shi, rented the fifteenth-floor room from eight months ago—the residence of the "Phasing" superhuman—and discovered the ritual array I left behind. And that ritual array, without me noticing, had activated on its own.

I do not know if it was a successful activation. I heard that a mysterious hole appeared in the center of the array, which I can only interpret as the effect of the ritual. After Zhu Shi told me about this and asked me to investigate, I set off without hesitation.

Once again, I came up empty-handed. I did not see the hole in the fifteenth-floor room; instead, I saw Zhuang Cheng.

Zhuang Cheng is a somewhat well-known figure within the local Luoshan forces. In these increasingly chaotic times, it is mind-boggling that someone like him, who tracks anomalous objects, should return empty-handed time and time again. A few Luoshan agents I know occasionally chat about him; even my superiors and the local Wu-Changs remember his name.

After learning his background, I did not stop doubting him. I wondered if he had truly encountered anomalous events and was merely hiding what he had seen, pretending to know nothing about our world. What motive could he have for hiding his experiences? My suspicion followed a logical path: he had benefited from past anomalies, perhaps even obtaining anomalous power.

Or perhaps it is precisely because he obtained such power that he was able to escape from those events. Because he could not describe his experiences without revealing his own power, he chose to say nothing.

Such a special ability user is exactly my kind of prey.

But perhaps it is a coincidence. In the past, whenever I intended to investigate and hunt Zhuang Cheng, I would always abandon the plan for one reason or another, and in the end, it would come to nothing.