Chapter 34 : End of Volume 1

The sound of keyboard tapping came to an abrupt halt.
Xu Zhi’s knuckle hovered half a millimeter above the enter key.

The leaves of the maple tree outside the Shanhe Group staff dormitory were swept into the room by the hot afternoon wind of late summer through the half-open window.

On the screen was the title “Lin’an University Incident Case Report.”

It had been two days since the incident at Lin’an University.
The riot had eventually been covered up as an explosion and road collapse caused by a biogas leak.

“Ding!”

The moment the notification sound of a successful report submission sounded, Xu Zhi quickly switched screens, and the cat-eared avatar of “A-Lin” jumped into his sight.

“What are you doing?”

He quickly sent this message.
This time, there was no red exclamation mark.

“Hey, don’t go!”

Zhou Xuan’s wail and the mournful sound of fabric about to tear came from outside the half-closed door.
This guy had been beaten black and blue in that incident to maintain the spirit-trapping formation.
Fortunately, Gu Xiyan was there to protect him, otherwise, he might have really died there.

At this moment, he was struggling with Gu Xiyan.

His plastered leg was stuck in the crack of the door.
Covered in bandages, he was tightly clutching Gu Xiyan’s skirt, not letting her go.

This was of course not a struggle between a young boy and a girl about love, but…

“Let go! I’m going back to play games!”

Gu Xiyan kicked out.
This guy looked like he was seriously injured with his bandages, but in fact, after Lu Qingyu’s treatment and the self-healing effect of his spiritual energy, his superficial wounds could be healed in about a week.

“You can go! Leave the report!”
Zhou Xuan refused to let go.

Because Gu Xiyan had solved the Skin-Painter clones in the artificial lake with him, the content of the report was almost the same.
As a result, she had come over and directly taken the report that Zhou Xuan had just written with his injuries.

This was the reason for their struggle.

“Write another one yourself!”
Gu Xiyan covered her skirt and kicked him in the face with her black stockings.
“Let go!”

“No! Unless you leave the report!”

“Ahem!”

Xu Zhi coughed twice, leaning against the doorframe.
The two in the corridor froze in a comical tug-of-war posture.

“Report yourself…”

Before Xu Zhi could finish, a “didi” sound suddenly came from the computer’s speakers.
It seemed to be someone’s reply.

“write…”

He immediately turned his head and went back into the room, his trailing voice cut off by the completely closed door.

The two in the corridor, who were still in a tug-of-war posture, looked at each other.

“So attentive, is he in love?”
Gu Xiyan pinched her chin.

“I had already divined that he had a romantic encounter.”
Zhou Xuan let go of Gu Xiyan’s skirt, with a look of “I knew it.”

“Who do you think it is? Lu Qingyu?”

“Doesn’t seem like it…”

And in the room, the cat-eared avatar on the screen was jumping, and messages were coming in like rain.

“I’m going to work!”

The leaves of the maple tree outside the dormitory window rustled in the wind.
Bai Ling’s thumb hovered over the send button.

The chat box with Xu Zhi on her phone screen was flooded with more than a dozen messages she had sent.
They were just some meaningless topics like daily life, but she was still holding her phone like a treasure.

The jade pendant was now back on her neck, its familiar, warm touch against her skin.

The building number 12 they had originally lived in had been so severely damaged that they had to move to the even older building number 4.
The trees outside had also changed from camphor trees to maple trees.

Chengzi was still excitedly describing her savior sister.
“That savior sister ‘swished’ her saber, and the demon was ‘snapped’ in half…”

“That’s the eighth time,” Su Jiu Li replied while putting on a delicate light makeup in the makeup mirror.
“Did you sleep your brain into a mush?”

“You said in your dream that I had turned into a fire-breathing qilin.”

Lin Xiao Xia said in a muffled voice from behind the bed curtain.

Chengzi didn’t seem to have forgotten what had happened that night, but Su Jiu Li and Lin Xiao Xia just thought she might have been confused and had mistaken her dream for reality.

“I’m going out!”

Bai Ling dropped such a sentence and left the dormitory with her small crossbody bag.

She dodged the bedsheets hanging out to dry downstairs.
The scorching summer sun baked the asphalt road, giving it the unique burnt smell of asphalt.

The skin on the back of the road repair worker’s neck was peeling from the sun.
Gravel splashed onto the “Construction Ahead” warning sign.

The cafeteria, which had been half-destroyed, was now surrounded by a blue fence.
The deafening noise of construction came from inside.

Bai Ling nimbly bypassed the warning line set up by the traffic cones, her heart secretly pounding as she looked at the mess.

When she was dealing with those demons, her demonic energy had been surging, and she hadn’t paid attention.
Now that she looked at it, the destruction they had caused was truly shocking.

Half a dormitory building, half a cafeteria, and a whole road.

This was their battle record.

Bai Ling stepped over the puddle of last night’s rain at the bus stop.
She couldn’t help but think of what had happened that night.
In fact, Guan Qing had come to find her after the spirit-trapping formation had been removed that night.

At that time, she was still slumped on the rubble of the cafeteria, Xu Zhi’s jacket wrapped around her trembling body.
The smell of smoke couldn’t cover the osmanthus scent seeping from her body.

The logistics team of the Demon Suppression Division was busy, and the red and blue flashing lights illuminated the sky.

“It’s a good thing your demonic energy was exhausted, so they couldn’t detect you.”

Guan Qing stood in the shadow of the ruins.
The members of the Demon Suppression Division passing by seemed to be oblivious to her.

“That kid’s baleful aura is so strong it could cure bacon. How dare you get close to him? Don’t you want to live?”

As her words fell, the screw cap of her pipe came down on the back of Bai Ling’s head as expected.

“How can I perfectly control my demonic energy?”
Bai Ling clenched the cuff of her jacket, her eyes, filled with tears, full of a serious look.
“Teach me!”

“What if you can’t hide it anymore?”

“If I can’t hide it anymore, then we’ll talk about it then,” the girl muttered with a pout.

Guan Qing just sighed.
Seeing the girl’s eyes, she knew that this silly girl was serious.

“A snake’s heart craving warmth is an instinct. A human’s heart craving warmth can be fatal…”

“I can teach you, but it’s not free.”

The moonlight swept across the tops of the roadside trees.
The Demon Suppression Division’s searchlight illuminated the shadows, but Guan Qing was already gone…

She boarded the bus.
The sunlight danced on Bai Ling’s hazy eyelids.
Before long, the beauty salon with the old sophora tree at the entrance was clearly visible.

“This young man, I see that you have a heaven-facing bone on your forehead and a spiritual light in your eyes. You must be a reincarnation of an immortal, a god who has descended to the mortal world. I have finally found you… Hey, hey, hey, don’t go. I’ll read your palm, 20% off!”

The hot air still lingered on the overpass in the afternoon.
Xiao Mochen’s sunglasses, perched on his nose, reflected the sunlight.

The sound of a straw stirring the ice cubes in a milk tea mixed with the chirping of cicadas.
Unfortunately, no one paid any attention to this fortune teller holding a milk tea.

A shadow suddenly covered Xiao Mochen’s small stall.
He looked up.
A woman in a moon-white cheongsam was standing in front of him with a parasol.

“This young lady, you have a baleful aura at the corner of your eyes. You must be possessed by a demon…”

Xiao Mochen’s sunglasses reflected the faint glimpse of Guan Qing’s thigh at the slit of her cheongsam.

“Stop pretending!”
Guan Qing sat down on the red plastic stool in front of the stall.
The golden thread phoenix on the hem of her moon-white Suzhou-embroidered cheongsam curled slightly with her movement.
“Don’t you know if I’m a human or a demon?”

“I didn’t expect that you, a blue luan that I’ve been chasing for decades, would come to me on your own.”
The fortune teller, Xiao Mochen, twisted a few strands of his goatee and smiled.
“Since you’ve come to me, you must be here for a fortune reading. Are you asking about your future or your marriage?”

“Tell me about this.”
Guan Qing placed a bronze nuptial wine cup engraved with a winding lotus pattern heavily on the stall.

“Yo! A Tang Dynasty nuptial wine cup. This is a rare find. Where did you find it?”

Xiao Mochen chuckled and picked up the nuptial wine cup to examine it.

“Six years ago, in the courtyard where you got rid of that little fox.”
Green smoke gradually drifted from Guan Qing’s pipe.
“What exactly happened back then?”

“The secrets of heaven cannot be revealed.”
Xiao Mochen tore off the take-out order from the milk tea bag and stuffed it into his inner pocket.
“Unless you give me another tail feather.”

“In your dreams!”
Guan Qing threw out a bank card.
“200,000, say it or not!”

“Back then, that little fox didn’t have the ability to get this nuptial cup.”

Xiao Mochen smirked, and the wide sleeves of his Daoist robe flew like a crane’s wings as he tucked the bank card into his sleeve.

“Unless someone… broke the red thread.”

The asphalt road suddenly rippled.
The shadow cast by Guan Qing’s parasol clasped Xiao Mochen’s wrist like a sharp claw, her pupils having turned the color of chalcedony.

“Keep an eye on that apprentice of yours. If he dares to lay a hand on that little snake…”

The old pipe was suddenly pressed against Xiao Mochen’s throat, and the blue luan demon fire in the jade pipe bowl condensed into a flame the size of a needlepoint.
“I’ll kill you first, and then I’ll kill your apprentice.”

“ZFB received, 200,000.”

The threat was interrupted by the sudden notification sound of a received payment.

Xiao Mochen shook his phone and grinned, the half-missing canine tooth shining in the sunlight.
“The fate of those two little ones has long been intertwined by the nuptial wine, just like the pearls in this milk tea.”

He shook the empty cup.
The last two brown sugar pearls were stuck to the bottom of the cup.
“Either they all remain, or none of them remain.”

“Believe it or not, I’ll kill you right now!”

In the high-level office of the Lin’an Shanhe Group, Ye Zi’s red-soled high heels tapped on the floor like a burning fuse.

An evidence bag was slammed onto the desk.
It was a fragment of an express box.
The solidified black mucus had spiderweb-like cracks on the AXE Group logo.

“Someone shipped a demon to Lin’an University! Shipped!”
Her wine-red nails were almost leaving crescent-shaped dents on the walnut desk.
“Do you know how serious this incident is?!”

“Did anyone die?”
Cheng Yu’s slippers rested on the edge of the ashtray full of cigarette butts, his chair tilted at a dangerous angle.

One more degree and this sloppy man would have fallen on his butt.

“At worst, we’ll just strengthen the demonic energy detection mechanism for logistics in the future.”

He said nonchalantly, but his attention was all on his phone game.
“Tsk, I missed again.”

“It’s a perfect match with the demonic energy pattern of the Skin-Painter’s core sample.”
Ye Zi threw the test report on the table again.
“It’s the same one as the one that was frozen in the lake!”

“That mysterious snake demon! Xu Zhi’s report said he had encountered her at least three times!”

“And AXE Group! Why would the killer use their logistics system? Aren’t they a supplier for the War Preparation Bureau?!”

“This case has so many suspicious points, and you’re asking me to close it?!”

“The higher-ups told me to, so what can I do?”
Cheng Yu suddenly spun his office chair, making it creak, mixed with his lazy yawn.
“43% of the budget allocated to the Demon Suppression Division by the higher-ups this year comes from the supply contract with AXE.”

“The higher-ups told you to close it, so you just close it?! How can you be a Demon Suppression Supervisor like this?!”

“Ding—”

A special notification sound pierced through the atmosphere of an impending routine argument.

Ye Zi took out her phone.
An account with the nickname “Senior Bro” had sent a message.

Senior Brother: “I’m coming back next week. I’ve brought you a gift.”

She looked at the lazy and sloppy man in front of her again, and turned and left without a word.

It wasn’t until her figure had completely disappeared at the office door that Cheng Yu quit the phone game, revealing the photo on his screen saver.
It was an old, yellowed photo.
In the picture, Ye Zi was sticking a Daoist talisman on his forehead.

“You’re too stubborn. There are some things you’re not meant to know…”

Cheng Yu caressed the screen saver and murmured to himself, as if reminiscing about the past.

The smell of burnt plastic mixed with the salty smell of ionized air filled the laboratory.
The tea-haired woman’s stiletto heels crushed the glass shards on the floor, which were stuck with a culture medium.

This was Laboratory No. 3 of the AXE Group in Lin’an.
Looking at the mess on the floor, it was obvious that a big mess had just happened here.

A broken cable was sparking with a blue light, illuminating the woman standing in front of the broken culture tank.

That woman had her long hair highlighted in pink, with deep dark circles under her eyes.
The hem of her white lab coat was stained with an unknown reagent.

“The data you wanted.”
The tea-haired woman placed the suitcase heavily on the floor.
“What kind of mess happened here?”

“Experimental Subject No. 7 escaped.”
The pink-haired woman turned her head.
Her name tag on her white lab coat read her name—Dr. Luo.
“It’s a real mess.”

“No. 7?”
The tea-haired woman covered her mouth in feigned surprise.
“Isn’t that the source of this thing?”

She kicked the silver suitcase at her feet.
The suitcase contained the sample data of the stitched monster she had personally released into Lin’an University.

“On the night you released your stitched monster into Lin’an University.”
Dr. Luo’s flat glasses flashed with a reflection.
“The surveillance footage of Experimental Subject No. 7 is missing exactly twenty-three seconds.”

“Don’t you want to explain?”

“I have a solid alibi!”

The tea-haired woman took out her phone and showed her a selfie.
In the photo, she was holding the shoulder of a dark-gold-haired boy.
The firelight from the cannon exploding on the giant monster’s body in the background became the fill light for this selfie.

“See, I was at Lin’an University at that time!”

But Dr. Luo had no intention of listening to her excuses and turned to leave.
“The boss is coming back soon. You’d better restrain those little tricks of yours.”