I am Zhu Shi, a demon huntress of Mount Luo.

My brother, Zhu Chang'an, has recently become a potential target for the fallen demon hunters. Although I think the likelihood of this is very low, we genuinely don’t have any solid leads to trace the fallen hunters.

What I didn't expect at all was that he would visit the hospital to see our mother. While I’m happy he has the heart to do so, what if the fallen demon hunters really launch an attack and harm those around him? I can’t explain to him why even a military hospital isn't safe, and I’m not good at lying. I’ve been struggling to come up with a reasonable excuse to get him to leave.

Besides, sharing a room with him feels uncomfortable. He’s under surveillance by several agents, and I have to keep up the pretense of being a literary university student in front of him. The agents' gazes feel scorching, making it difficult to relax. So, I found an excuse to step outside for some fresh air and ease my strained nerves a bit. With surveillance around him and my spells set up, as well as my senses extending throughout the inpatient building, I don’t have to worry about someone taking advantage of the situation.

When I went out, he even asked me why I was taking my guitar case. The truth is, it contains my spiritual weapon, but I could only tell him it was for playing some tunes in the courtyard. I don’t intend to let him know about my work in Mount Luo.

As soon as I stepped out of the inpatient building, I saw Agent Kong walking toward me from across the way. He was probably coming to switch shifts with the other agents.

In Mount Luo, agents are officially referred to as "Probes." Their primary role is to investigate leads related to paranormal events and notify demon hunters to handle them, though they also take on various other tasks.

Agent Kong, however, is one of the elites among them. His insights into paranormal events are even more profound than mine. My university happens to fall within his patrol area, so we've collaborated a few times. I’ve heard from others that his superiors have recently forced an unreasonable workload on him, leaving him with no choice but to run around posing as a police officer.

Many demon hunters look down on agents, considering them failed candidates who couldn’t become demon hunters. That notion implies that anyone who isn’t a demon hunter is inherently inferior—a sentiment they genuinely seem to believe. For the same reason, they also look down on ordinary civilians. I suspect Agent Kong’s superiors share that perspective. I can’t stand that attitude and don’t get along with those people at all.

Since there were still thirty minutes until his shift change, we chatted for a while in the courtyard pavilion. Agent Kong, a man in his thirties, didn’t have much common ground with me when it came to casual topics, so we ended up talking about work. Soon, our conversation turned to the anomaly that had occurred in the fifteenth-floor room, which he had mentioned during our phone call earlier in the day.

"Zhu Chang'an mentioned that the cause of the basement's appearance is still unknown," Agent Kong said with a worried expression. "Even though I was the one who asked if you were available to handle it, are you really up for this?"

"Whether I can handle it or not, I'll only know once I try. Besides, we don't even know if that basement is one of those paranormal phenomena capable of affecting people regardless of distance. He's my brother—I have to protect him."

"But your specialty is combat, right? If it's too difficult, you could ask another demon hunter who’s more skilled in this area."

"I can't just ask other demon hunters to deal with a paranormal phenomenon whose nature even I don’t understand."

"Alright, since you're so determined, I won't try to dissuade you," he said with a sigh, then shifted the topic. "But while you're dealing with the basement, you could also use the opportunity to probe that Zhuang Cheng."

"Zhuang Cheng? You still think he’s connected to the basement's appearance?"

"That’s a secondary reason, and the likelihood is low," he explained. "What I’m mainly saying is that he’s very likely already come into contact with our world. Over the past two years, paranormal events have been occurring more frequently, yet someone like him—who persistently chases after such phenomena—has remained completely unscathed. Don’t you find that a bit odd? Perhaps he’s gained some sort of protective power."

He’d said something similar the last time we spoke, but this time I caught a different implication. "Are you suggesting we recruit Zhuang Cheng as an ally?"

"Even if he can’t become a combatant, he could definitely make an excellent agent. For him, it would be a dream come true, wouldn’t it?" he said with a smile. "Discovering talented individuals from outside the organization is technically part of my job as a Probe, but if you’re the one to bring him in, you could also be his mentor, guiding him to assist you. Even if he has no magical powers, he’s a very capable person and would undoubtedly be a great help to you."

"Thank you for the suggestion, but..."

Though I agreed that Zhuang Cheng was an exceptional individual, certain truths might not align with Agent Kong’s assumptions.

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I recalled how I first met Zhuang Cheng.

---

It was around my first year of high school that I first heard about Zhuang Cheng from my brother.

Unlike ordinary families, the Zhu family I belong to is a family of demon hunters. Legend has it that one of our ancestors even became a Great Impermanence, though the family has since fallen into decline. Originally, it should have been my brother who inherited the family’s magical artifacts and became a demon hunter. However, due to an accident, I became the heir instead, while he lost his childhood memories. The family also shielded him from all knowledge about the world of demon hunters.

Although he is said to have lost his memory, it wasn’t a complete erasure. Fragments and vague impressions remained. As a result, he has always strongly believed in the existence of supernatural phenomena, claiming to those around him that he had seen and encountered such things before.

Naturally, the family never acknowledged his claims, and outsiders were even less inclined to believe him. When he was in middle school, he was ridiculed and bullied by his classmates, and his teachers often called him in for talks. People are easily influenced by their surroundings, especially during adolescence—a time when personalities undergo rapid growth and change. External validation or denial becomes especially critical during this period.

After losing his memory, my brother indeed never encountered anything supernatural again. Over time, he might have gradually convinced himself that those fragmented memories and impressions were just childhood fantasies. Eventually, he stopped bringing up those things altogether.

Even so, I’m sure that deep down, in some corner of his heart, he still harbored a sense of defiance and anticipation, hoping for an opportunity to vent and release those feelings.

I deeply sympathized with my brother, but at the same time, I also envied him.

I had once thought I would never become a demon hunter.

One day, while we were having dinner, he suddenly mentioned someone—a peculiar guy from his high school who was obsessed with investigating urban legends. His name was Zhuang Cheng.

This person reminded me somewhat of my brother’s past self. Although Zhuang Cheng didn’t openly proclaim the existence of the supernatural to others, he was fervently trying to prove it, even more zealously than my brother had been back then.

I thought my brother was rekindling his interest in the supernatural again. For reasons that I couldn’t explain to outsiders, my family and I didn’t want him getting involved in this world, so I criticized the topic from a normal person’s perspective, dismissing it as “a waste of effort.” After a moment of silence, my brother agreed with me.

Later, I investigated Zhuang Cheng myself. It turned out his interest in urban legends didn’t start in high school; at the latest, it began during middle school, where he displayed an extraordinary enthusiasm. His classmates remembered him vividly, but hardly anyone was close to him.

A senior at my high school, who had been his classmate in middle school, spoke of him with a look of unease.

“That guy... he used to bring candles to school all the time.”

“Candles?”

“Yes, candles. He’d take them out of his desk drawer now and then, and then just stare at them with this terrifying look in his eyes, like he was possessed or something. You know how he was obsessed with ghost stories and always going to haunted places? I’m sure he was possessed by something unclean...”

In addition, I heard from others that he used to focus on studying concepts like feng shui and occult rituals. He often carried compasses and divination tools to experiment with. After a while, he seemed to lose interest and shifted his focus to other fields, all of which were still related to mysticism. Most people thought he was either mentally unstable or immature, and the gossip and ridicule he endured were even worse than what my brother faced during middle school.

Yet he seemed completely unfazed, as if the voices around him couldn’t reach his ears. Everything he did was utterly self-driven and unconstrained by others' opinions.

In high school, there was a girl in my class who was into paranormal romance novels and developed some peculiar fantasies. She tried to portray herself as a “paranormal girl,” claiming she could “see things.” Naturally, he picked up on it and tracked her down, “exposing” her on the spot. Her entire act was mercilessly torn apart.

There was even a time when a feng shui master from overseas came to town to swindle a local tycoon. Somehow, as a high school student, he caught wind of the scam, showed up, and exposed the fraud right then and there.

Years passed, and who knows how many times he had encountered fake paranormal phenomena. Yet he remained as “mentally unstable” and “immature” as ever.

Although this is just my own guess, my brother may have been drawn to this very trait of his.

So, later on, when I criticized Zhuang Cheng in front of him, he no longer agreed with me like he used to, pretending to side with me while secretly thinking the opposite. Instead, he started to support Zhuang Cheng.

It was only after that, when I thought back, that I realized he had been quietly keeping an eye on Zhuang Cheng's movements, collecting information about him like a fan.

Whenever he mentioned Zhuang Cheng, his tone became more animated, as if he regarded him as another version of himself that could have been.

“You know, he went to another province just before graduating high school to investigate a case of missing children. It’s said to be related to a local folk legend, similar to Japan’s ghost stories. Actually, it’s tied to some powerful evil forces behind the scenes there…”

After hearing similar topics repeatedly, I had to admit that Zhuang Cheng was indeed a "legendary figure."

But this is dangerous, too dangerous.

One day, Zhuang Cheng will find himself in an inescapable predicament, dying with regret, consumed by the very thing he relentlessly pursued.

It started around two or three years ago when organizations worldwide connected to the supernatural began to notice that anomalous phenomena, once hidden in the shadows of the world, had begun to occur more frequently. Distortions in space and time, once rare, were increasing in number. The intensity of these phenomena was rising year by year, with reports of ordinary people dying because of these anomalies piling up.

In Mount Luo, some even made heretical predictions, claiming that these were signs of a great calamity approaching.

If we define human history up until now as the "Age of Humanity," then starting from today, within the next ten years, the prosperous era of human history will come to an end.

Afterward, not only all humans, but every living being and every anomalous entity will be destroyed under this great calamity.

Ultimately, all matter will cease to exist.

And the next era… well, there probably won't be another era.

If it had to be named, it would be called the "Era of the Apocalypse."